Major Fowler married the widow Esther Sanders, _née_ de Vie, of Newport, Ky. She was of French descent, and a lady of great beauty and accomplishments. She made his home one of happiness and hospitality. She sometimes accompanied him on his surveying expeditions and bore domestic charms to the tent in which they lived, as she did to the palatial mansion at home. She was a woman of fine business capacity, who, when her husband was not at home, attended to his affairs, and especially to his farm in the suburbs of Covington. Here fine stock and abundant crops owed much to her constant care and supervision. The grapes that grew on the place were made into wine and the apples into cider, in accordance with the knowledge she had inherited from her French ancestors. Her great-grandchildren of to-day tell of the life of the camp, when she was with her husband in his surveying expeditions. The tent floor was nicely carpeted; a comfortable bed invited repose after the toil of the day; dainty china, bright cut glass, and shining silverware, handsome enough to be preserved as family heirlooms by their descendants, were used on the camp table. It was something of Parisian life in the dreary wilderness. Major Fowler died in Covington in the year 1850. His life as a surveyor and explorer in the West subjected him to many hardships, but a constitution naturally vigorous was preserved with care until he reached his eighty-sixth year. He has numerous descendants in Kentucky, Ohio, and other States, some of whom occupy high social positions. Mrs. Coates, to whom I am indebted for this manuscript Journal, is, in the paternal line, the granddaughter of Captain John Cleve Symmes, author of the “Theory of Concentric Spheres,” 12mo. Cincinnati, 1826, and great-grandniece of Hon. John Cleve Symmes, a member of Congress from New Jersey, who purchased of the United States government that vast body of land in the State of Ohio, lying on the north bank of the Ohio river between the two Miamis. With the knowledge and consent of her father, the late Americus Symmes, she gave me the manuscript in the belief that I would make some good use of it. After thinking for a time that I would place it among the Filson Club Publications, I changed my mind and turned it over to you to be published. I think this is the best use I could have made of the manuscript, and I shall now wait with impatience until I see your work published in the best style of Francis P. Harper, and read your ample notes and comments, which I doubt not will be after the inimitable manner of your Lewis and Clark, your Pike, and your Henry and Thompson. Truly, R. T. DURRETT.