| Notes |
- During the War of 1812, Ludovicus served as clerk on board the
American Privateer Regulator which was taken by His Majesty's ship Statira. He
was set at liberty without exchange and permitted to return to the Port of
Boston by order of Vice Admiral Herbert Sawyer, Commander in Chief of H
Majesty's Ships on the Halifax Station (document dates Sep 1812
They left Massachusetts and spent some time in Kentucky and Indiana,
and arrived at the Springs in 1828. He was commissioned a Justice of the Peace
for Franklin County, Indiana, on 16 Jan 1819, by the state of Indiana. A
portrait of Ludovicus hangs in the state archives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Family tradition says that he had some kind of problem, probably rheumatism or
arthritis, after his imprisonment at Nova Scotia, and that he came to t
Springs for treatment of that condition. When he arrived at the Springs he
almost immediately began improving the few cabins that were there and opened a
house of entertainment, the first inn of the area. By July, 1828, the Arkansas
Gazette reported "Good fare, clean linen, sliver forks and spoons, much
attention to guests and moderate charges, entitle Mr. Belding to
encouragement." The Beldings charged $1.00 per day for a man and his horse and
provided at least some sense of luxury. By the next year the Springs we
being advertised throughout the east as a spa destination for people wi
chronic and paralytic affections and rheumatism. By 1832 a resident wrote that
"Last season it was supplied every other day with vegetables; this seas
every day by the same man; and many others find it to their interest to bring
in casually their surplus fruits, etc."
Ludovicus was instrumental in preserving the Springs for future
generations. He saw that if present trends continued the Springs wou
taken over and maybe even ruined by a few people. Feeling that the Springs
were too valuable an asset to lose in this way, Ludovicus made a trip to
Washington D.C. to plead his cause. Due to the efforts of Arkansas'
congressional delegate, Ambrose H. Sevier, a bill was passed on 30 Apr 1832
creating the Reservation. Henry states that at his birth in 1830 Ludovicus
sold goods in Hot Springs and and a contract with the government to furnish
beeves to the Indians who had been recently located in the territory west of
Arkansas.
In 1831, Ludovicus built a log cabin on Gulpha Creek and moved there
to begin farming and supplying livestock for government contracts. Lydia was
his able assistant in this enterprise, as she had been in all the other
However, in the fall of 1833 Ludovicus was stricken with that scourge of the
Gulpha, malaria. At the springs the water was too hot for mosquitoes to live,
but not so on the Gulpha. On 9 Oct 1833, Ludovicus died, leaving Lydia alone
to operate the farm and raise and educate their six children
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Bassett Family Association Database
1791 - 1833 (41 years)