at McAllister's Military Academy in Bardstown. In 1812, young James Guthrie took a job on a flatboat transporting goods (and slaves) down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, Louisiana. After three such trips, he decided to change careers, and began to study law under Judge John Rowan, along with Ben Hardin and Charles A. Wickliffe. In 1821, Guthrie married Eliza Churchill Prather. The couple had three daughters—Mary Elizabeth, Ann Augusta, and Sarah Julia—before Eliza Prather Guthrie died in 1836. Sarah Julia Guthrie married chemist J. Lawrence Smith, after whom the J. Lawrence Smith Medal is named. Career Admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1817, Guthrie began his private legal practice in Bardstown. In 1820, Governor John Adair appointed Guthrie as Commonwealth's Attorney for Jefferson County, Kentucky, whereupon Guthrie relocated to what was then the town of Louisville. In 1824, he served on a committee which sought to have Louisville recognized by the state legislature as a city (the state's first). The effort failed, but Guthrie was elected to the town's board of trustees, and later became its chair. The following year, Guthrie became a director of the newly formed Louisville and Portland Canal Company. He helped secure federal funding for a bypass around the Falls of the Ohio. However, although Kentucky's long-time Senator Henry Clay supported such internal improvements, his political opponent Andrew Jackson when elected president, cut off these funds shortly after taking office in 1829. Guthrie then secured private funds and the canal was completed in late 1830. Within a few years, however, steamboats became too wide for the canal, and their increasingly high smokestacks interfedered with bridges, so it became more an impediment than an aid. Kentucky politician Jefferson County voters elected Guthrie, who ran as a Democrat, to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1827. In his first year, he chaired the Internal Improvements Committee. In this capacity, he promoted construction of a number of roads and canals, as well as a railroad connecting Louisville to Frankfort. During his service in the House, Guthrie came to chair the Committee on the Courts of Justice. In 1828, Guthrie mustered enough support to secure city status for Louisville. He was elected to the new city council, and quickly became chair of its most powerful committee, the finance committee. Guthrie also served in the House (a part-time position) until 1831, when he was elected to the Kentucky