James Ford also was an associate of John Hart Crenshaw, an illegal slave trader and a kidnapper of free African Americans, and may have taken part in the Illinois version of the Reverse Underground Railroad.

At one point, the outlaws used "Cave-in-Rock" as their headquarters on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, approximately 85 miles downriver from Evansville, Indiana.

His father died while Ford was still young, and his mother then married William Prince, who brought the family to what would become Princeton in Caldwell County, Kentucky.

The military experience of James Ford was limited to commanding frontier Kentucky and Illinois territorial militia units.

Even without any combat experience, serving as a militia officer helped Ford acquire local prestige and created opportunities for him in the political and business affairs of the Ohio River valley of Kentucky and Illinois.

Ford was captain of the Livingston County cavalry company in the 24th Kentucky Militia Regiment between July 1, 1799, and December 15, 1802.

The fort used by the Grand Pierre militia company may have been the blockhouse formerly located north of the present-day water tower that was used later by the Sturdivant Gang for counterfeiting in the late 1810s and early 1820s.

[22] At the time the state and federal censuses were conducted, Steele was a criminal member of the Sturdivant Gang of counterfeiters which operated in the Rosiclare area of Hardin County from the 1810s to 1820s.

[25][26] In another tale, James Ford allegedly bound hand to foot an offending slave and dragged him to death behind a mule, through a field of tree stumps.

The road from the Old Slave House of Crenshaw in Illinois crossing the Ohio River to Ford's Ferry, Kentucky, was a heavily traveled route of the infamous Reverse Underground Railroad, which sent its victims to a life of enslavement in the Southern United States.

His head is large and well shaped; his sandy brown hair, now thin, is turning gray, for he must be fully fifty years old; his eyes, of a steel-gray color, are brilliant and his glance quick and penetrating; his nose rather short and thick; his upper lip remarkably long, his mouth large, and his lips full and sensuous.