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- Letter from Susan P. Christy to sister-in-law, Margaret Wickliffe Preston (R. Wickliffe's youngest daughter then in Spain), October 29, 1859, Box 74, W-PFP:
"My dearest sister,... your name was the last that his lips ever uttered audibly... after his last sleep had begun as they thought, that he roused himself and said "my dear children! Sally, Mary, Margaret! -- Margaret!"
- Robert Wickliffe came to be known as the "Old Duke" once his namesake, Robert Wickliffe, Jr., began his political career. According to George W. Ranck's History of Lexington (Cincinnati, 1872), he "came from Virginia at an early day, and by his energy, persistent labor, and ability, gained a conspicuous position at the bar. He ... was for half a century one of the leading spirits in state politics.... He was one of the shrewdest and ablest land lawyers in Ky, and as such made himself rich (p. 382)." Wickliffe was one of the corporators of the first railroad in the West and the second one in America, originally known as the Lexington & Ohio Railroad on which ran the first steam locomotive built in the U.S. (invented by Thomas Barlow of Lexington). He was a state representative in 1819, 1823, and 1824; and a state senator in 1829. During the Old Court-New Court controversy (1819-1823), he led the Old Court (anti-Relief) faction. He served on the board of Transylvania University during Dr. Holley's administration, and was a trustee at Christ Church Episcopal. He was a leader in the movement to popularize the idea of the common school and in 1837 advocated a general system of education for the whole state -- a call taken up by his political enemy and kinsman, Robert J. Breckinridge. By the 1840s he owned more than 200 slaves, making him the largest slaveowner in Kentucky. See J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Slavery Times in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1940), p. 45.
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