In 1876, Tarlton Arterburn claimed they had taken profits of "30 to 40 percent a head" during their slave-trading days, and that Northern abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe had visited the Arterburn slave pen in Louisville while researching Uncle Tom's Cabin and A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

There is now a historical marker in Louisville at former site of the Arterburn slave jail, acknowledging the myriad abuses and human-rights violations that took place there.

When Mary Eliza died 86 years later in Louisville, Kentucky of la grippe and senility, her 1931 death certificate listed Margaret Shipp as her mother and Tarlton Arterburn as her father.

[8] Beginning in 1845, the Arterburns began running a "series of advertisements which ran for several years" seeking to purchase "100 negroes for the Southern market, for which we will pay the highest prices.

"[9] In 1845, Tarleton Arterburn advertised 70 "field hands, house servants" to be sold at the "Ferry Landing opposite Vicksburg.

"[14] On Tuesday, August 24, 1852, seven enslaved men staged what was known as a "stampede," or mass escape, from the slave pen of the "Messrs.

[15] On Saturday, August 28 it was reported that two of the seven freedom seekers were recaptured and would be returned to Arterburn in Louisville: "A party in pursuit came up with five of the slaves 15 miles beyond Jeffersonville, and commanded them to surrender, instead of which they ran off.

Two shots were fired, wounding Luther, a smart daring fellow, for whose apprehension $250 reward is offered, and bringing down another of the party.

"[19] Apparently it was believed in Louisville that Arterburn's slave pen was the inspiration for early chapters of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

When Mrs Stowe called there was a goodly number of negroes on hand, exactly how many I do not now know...She said that she wanted to purchase a likely young woman to take back East, I suspected her real purpose was to examine the inside a of slave-pen but kept quiet and called a bright mulatto girl to whom I gave the wink and said 'This lady wishes to take you to New York where you will be free and have a good time.

'"In Arterburn's telling 'Cinda then sang a few lines of "My Old Kentucky Home,"[19] a song explicitly about family separation in American slavery.

"[21] In Emily Bingham's 2022 book about the history of the song she wrote that Arterburn used this anecdote to "exonerate himself, mock abolitionists, and defend slavery as a benevolent institution.

"[20] In 1854, Jordan and Tarlton Arterburn sold Ann, Lovinia and Lucinda from the estate of John G. Warren, with the approval of the county chancery court.

[22] In February 1856, a Louisville resident name C. Crutchfield wrote to planter and former slave trade Rice C. Ballard that upon discovering the self-emancipation of Big Lewis (who had escaped with help from the Underground Railroad via the frozen-over Ohio River), Crutchfield had "immediately" sold his wife and children to "Alterburn.

Tarlton ARTERBURN & CO. will arrive in few days with 60 CHOICE NEGROES consisting of FIELD HANDS, BLACKSMITHS, HOUSE SERVANTS, &c, being the most complete assortment ever offered in this market.

He had accused her of stealing, threatened to slit her 10-year-old son's throat, punched and knocked down both her and her blind four-year-old son, threw her only possession from the Arterburn homestead (a chair) over a fence into a field, threatened to slit her throat, and then "desisted...and tried to persuade her to go back home with him.

Jordan Arterburn's listed occupation was "retired negro trader," and Tarlton's was "real estate agent.

His brother, Crawford Arterburn, is the richest farmer in Jefferson county, and owns hundreds of acres of the finest land in Kentucky.