Off wikipedia, since Lost seems to like relating charas to real life people(Locke, Rousseau, Kate(?)):
James Ford was an American civic leader and business owner in southern Illinois at the turn of the 19th century. Despite his clean public image, he was also secretly a river pirate and the leader of a gang that would come to be known as "Ford's Ferry Gang". His gang was the river equivalent of highway robbers; they would hijack ferries and flatboats with tradable goods from local farms coming down the Ohio River. At one point, they used the "Cave-in-Rock" as their headquarters, on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, which is about 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana.
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James Ford was an American civic leader and business owner in southern Illinois at the turn of the 19th century. Despite his clean public image, he was also secretly a river pirate and the leader of a gang that would come to be known as "Ford's Ferry Gang". His gang was the river equivalent of highway robbers; they would hijack ferries and flatboats with tradable goods from local farms coming down the Ohio River. At one point, they used the "Cave-in-Rock" as their headquarters, on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, which is about 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana.