The details of young Stephen's childhood are lost to history. Enslaved blacks accounted for about 20 percent of Kentucky's population by 1860, many of them in larger cities like Louisville and Lexington, and more on the hemp and tobacco farms of the Bluegrass Region and the Jackson Purchase. We might assume that Stephen's parents were house servants, but such specifics are buried in time.

What we do know about Stephen's life begins mostly in early adulthood. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation didn't extend to slaves in the border states like Kentucky, but the end of the Civil War brought their freedom. Stephen kept his former owners' last name, Landrum, and came to live on Dog Alley in the black section of Glasgow, off what is today James Street.

Stephen Landrum couldn't read or write, but he had a head for math and didn't need paper and a pencil to make calculations. He never had children, instead investing his time and energy into other pursuits-most notably, carefully managed real-estate transactions and rentals. Because he barely trusted banks, he kept his money in cash, and that's how he made his purchases and sales. By the time he died in 1923, he'd amassed a fortune of $100,000 and was one of the wealthiest black men in Glasgow. He was also extremely generous. is how he was known.

Although Landrum didn't trust banks, he trusted his local attorney of 20 years, the Honorable Mr. E.H. Smith, later editor of the Kentucky State Bar Journal. After Landrum died, Smith recounted some of his eccentricities around money.

In his book Lost and Found Coin Hoards and Treasures, Q. David Bowers shares a 1996 letter from coin collector Bob Ross, who recalled opening a pool room in Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1954. Ross remembered. Where had the coins come from?

Uncle Steve's preference for keeping gold and silver coins and doing business in cash was confirmed by his attorney, Mr. Smith, writing in the Kentucky State Bar Journal in 1940. Smith reminisced.

When Smith drew up Uncle Steve's will a few years before his death, he charged him $25 for the service. Uncle Steve paid him with 250 silver dimes.

30 years after Uncle Steve Landrum passed, a Glasgow businessman bought an 1850 half dollar (like the one pictured here) rumored to come from the old man's hidden stash. (Courtesy of Stack's Bowers Galleries.)

Dennis adds:

To read the complete article, see:
From the Colonel's Desk: The marvelous fortune of Glasgow's Landrum(https://news.coinupdate.com/from-the-colonels-desk-the-marvelous-fortune-of-glasgows-uncle-steve-landrum/)