Author: thekaintuckeean

No Destination: Campbellsville

Centrally located Campbellsville – Taylor County’s seat – is eighty miles from Lexington, Louisville and Bowling Green. Established in 1817, the town’s history is quintissentially Kentucky. Began as a grist mill, grew in population as a stop on a stagecoach route and later a rail line, and the target of Civil War raids by the infamous Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Today, Campbellsville’s Main Street (pictured, above) remains active with a number of businesses due at least in part to the presence of Cumberland University.

What is now Campbellsville was on the Cumberland Trace – that route through the Cumberland Gap that would serve as the early route for western settlers; ultimately those who passed through what would become Taylor County continued past the Cumberland River to what is now Nashville, Tenn.

Taylor County was separated from Green County in 1848 (named for General Zachary Taylor in the same year that he would become President) and Campbellsville at that time was selected to be the seat of the new county. The first courthouse was erected soon thereafter and was destroyed during an 1864 raid by Confederate forces. The next courthouse was built and survived until 1965 when it was razed in favor of a “contemporary” brick design. This is another instance in which, architecturally speaking, the courthouse project currently underway in Kentucky is “a good thing” as the new Taylor County Courthouse has that “modern take at an old building” quality that at least returns a bell tower to the courthouse square. All historic markers, however, remain at the site of the 1965 courthouse.

Nate, on his courthouse visits, loves the feel of coming over the hill into a town to see the tallest building in town – his immediate indicator of the courthouse’s prominence and central role for a community. Not in Campbellsville: the tallest spire will lead you up a hill to the Campbellsville Baptist Church (pictured, right). The congregation began as early as 1791, but the name of the church was not adopted until 1852. Following a 1962 fire, the present church was constructed. It replaced a 1916 sanctuary that consisted of “a domed ceiling and four walls of stained glass.”

No Destination: Campbellsville University

Founded in 1906, Campbellsville University (“CU”) was founded by the Russell Creek Baptist Association. Affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church, CU enrolls of about 3,000 students of various faith backgrounds.

Regular readers may recall from last week that another community (Glens Fork) courted the Baptist association in the late 1800s before Campbellsville was selected as the home of the institution.

Originally the institution was not a college – it began as the Russell Creek Baptist Academy which was a private elementary and high school. It was in 1923 that the General Association of Kentucky Baptists met and gave authority  for a junior college to be opened. By the late 1930s, both the elementary and high schools were gone leaving only Cumberland College (renamed to CU in the 2000s). In 1960, the college gave out its first four-year degrees.

Notable alumni of CU include former Kentucky Governor Wallace Wilkinson (1987-1991) and the current head basketball coach of Mississippi State University (Rick Stansbury). Wilkinson, however, did not graduate from CU – he later transferred to UK, but never graduated. Stansbury did graduate from CU and led the school’s basketball team to the NAIA tournament.

A Third Blog

I have discussed with you before my need to write, to blog. I have blogged for many years (since 2003) on various sites I have maintained. I won’t here discuss my past blogging attempts, but want to focus on my current blogging adventures. I have decided to maintain multiple blogs with each focusing on a different matter so that readers can focus on their interests. Please follow all (if you want) and comment! [Bloggers love comments!]

My blogs:

  • The Kaintuckeean – Of my current blogs, this is the ‘oldest’ though it only dates to the middle of last year. On it, I discuss and share photos from my sojourns and discoveries around the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A lot of history, a little anthropology and a lot of what interests me. I think that Kentucky is a wonderful, beautiful state and I try and share that here.
  • 5:9 Focus – Named after the verse in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus observes “blessed are the peacemakers.”As a Christian Ecumenical, I believe in finding harmony among all Christians and in finding common ground with other faith communities. I share insights, prayers and other ‘divine’ thoughts here.
  • PJWB – My initials. Not to creative, but this is more of my journal. Not a ‘pick my nose’ journal, but a ‘this is interesting’ journal. As I surf the web or read books or listen to music, I might discover something that I want to share. And a Facebook status doesn’t quite cut it. Plus, I might include an amazon.com link where you can buy a product and I could earn a commission. [Bloggers love making $0.02 in a day!] This also serves as my ‘home page’ with links to the other blogs more prominently placed.

I hope you will read, or at least explore, all of them. If not, writing helps me to think about what I enjoy. So, yes… I do all of this for myself! [Did you think this blog was about you? – Carly Simon] Let me know what you think. Subscribe to RSS feeds or email or twitter updates or however you can keep informed. I promise I’ll try and make it interesting!

No Destination: Green River Lake

Situated between Adair and Taylor counties, Green River Lake is a man-made lake that encompasses 8,210 acres. Created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through the 1969 impoundment of the Green River, the project cost approximately $33.4 million.

Despite this seemingly high cost, the Corps points out the economic benefits of the dam: annual tourism of $34.75million and savings from prevented floods over the impoundment’s first forty years (through 2009) of $129.997million.

Visiting in the winter, I saw the waters at their lower levels. This also allowed for repairs to be made to the dam. It was an interesting moment: look to the right and feel like a kid, enjoying the big trucks move dirt; look to the right and be an old man appreciating the glory of nature.

As an aside, the Green River, at 370 miles, is the longest river to flow completely within the boundaries of Kentucky. [cite] Its fount is in Lincoln County and it flows into the Ohio River in Henderson County

No Destination: Federal Hill

Visiting Bardstown for a wedding last summer, I knew one destination that I could not miss. Federal Hill, colloquially known as My Old Kentucky Home. Of course, my arrival there was moments before the state park closed so while I toured the grounds, I did not enter any of the buildings.

As folklore goes, it was on an 1852 visit with his cousins (the Rowans) here that Stephen Collins Foster was inspired to write what later became the state song. There is some debate as to the veracity of this story. Foster could have been inspired on an earlier (and well-documented) 1833 visit to Augusta, Kentucky. The song was adopted as the official state song in 1928; its words were revised in 1986 also by legislative fiat (changing the word from “darkies” to “people” after a performance of the song by a Japanese choir upon the opening of the Toyota Plant in Georgetown. It was said that the lyrics “convey connotations of racial discrimination that are not acceptable.”) Also generally eliminated by the 1986 legislation: verses 2 and 3. Verse 3 is below; you can see why it was removed:

The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darky may go;
A few more days, and the trouble all will end,
In the field where the sugar-canes grow;
A few more days for to tote the weary load,
No matter, ’twill never be light;
A few more days till we totter on the road,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

John Rowan, a jurist and congressman, began construction of Federal Hill in 1795 but the work was not finished until 1818.  According to The Kentucky Encyclopedia, John Rowan’s granddaughter (Madge Rowan Frost) sold the estate to the Commonwealth in 1921 who has since maintained and operated the site.

No Destination: Columbia-Union Presbyterian Church

The oldest church in Columbia was erected just beyond the town’s original boundary. Known only as the Columbia Presbyterian Church until 1925 when it took on the combined name with the Union Presbyterian Church (the county congregation, the congregations having actually merged in 1912), the church has a storied past.

The church was constructed in 1857 and contained a balcony for slaves, though the balcony was removed in1885. During the Civil War, the attic was used both as a lookout for rebel forces and as a place to make bullets. Doors inside the church were taken down following an 1863 skirmish and were used as stretchers to carry the wounded back to the church where the structure served as a temporary hospital. A 1908 renovation replaced the plain (or frosted) windows with the stained glass windows seen today.

The steps leading to the door of the sanctuary are original from 1857, hand carved from Kentucky marble (aka limestone).

See: Columbia Magazine’s Walking Tour of Columbia.

SOS: What is Your Favorite Place in Kentucky?

Today I’m asking, What is your favorite place in Kentucky? Is it a town, a county, a restaurant, a natural wonder or something else? Share in the comments a little bit about it…

SOS or Share on Saturday is a new feature I’m starting. Hopefully, lots of readers will share their links, photos, experiences and thoughts on a variety of topics. The idea is to get you, the reader, to share! Of course, I’d love for you to comment on every post that interests you!

No Destination: Daniel Trabue

Daniel Trabue was an early founder of Columbia and constructed the above house in 1823 (it has since been expanded). He served as a trustee for the town, the county sheriff, and justice of the peace. He operated a grist mill and a retail store. To be sure, the story of Columbia is not complete without reference to Trabue. But greater still, the story of Kentucky is incomplete without Trabue.

He was a fourth-generation North American Huguenot born in 1760 in Virginia’s Piedmont region. Trabue was a teenager when he encountered Indians along the Wilderness Road, was present at Daniel Boone’s court-martial following a loss to the Indians at Boonesborough. After serving three years in Kentucky, Trabue returned to Virginia to try his lot at business. It was during this time that he experienced, as a non-soldier, the events leading up to the colonist’s victory at Yorktown. By 1785, he yearned to return his young family to Kentucky and they settled in Fayette County.

In 1788, Trabue signed a petition to divide Fayette County, arguing that he was too far from the county seat of Lexington to be able to readily conduct business, caused an overburdened judicial docket and did not provide adequate representation in the Virginia legislature. The Virginia General Assembly agreed and Woodford County was born. In 1796, Trabue sold his Woodford County home and took his family from the Kentucky River basin to that of the Green River some 45-miles to the southwest in Green County.

In December 1801, the General Assembly created Adair County. Trabue’s home was one-quarter mile within Adair County and thus his “fortunes were to be tied to those of Adair County.” [cite] It was from here that he went on as an intregal part of the development and growth  of Columbia.
At the age of 67, he wrote a narrative of his life. This narrative later became the origin of “Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.” (I am putting this book on my Kentucky ‘wish list’). Although narratives are often fraught with historical innacurracy, his accounts still make history all the richer. As was said in the introduction of Westward (the source of much of the above history):

Daniel Trabue had indeed been a pioneer in the land beyond the mountains. As a settler there, he had helped to wrest Kentucky from nature and from the Indian’s tenuous hold and to plant the white man’s culture in Trans-Appalachia. He had done all of this, and of equal importance he had left a rich and meaningful narrative about much of what he observed and did.

No Destination: Columbia

The county seat of Adair County is full of history, and it is clear that the community is dedicated to the preservation of the same. On the courthouse “lawn” (watch out Nate; when you get to Columbia, the Courthouse is situated in the middle of the town square with nary a place to walk on) there lie several historical markers. The old courthouse remains the focal point of downtown with a preservation effort underway to deconstruct the additions erected in 1976 (presumably, this will recreate a courthouse lawn). As in so many Kentucky counties, a new judicial center has been erected taking some business out of downtown Columbia.

Even so, the downtown public square bustles with shops. The Columbia Bank has operated since 1866; cafes and shops remain active. The only sign of decay is the old Columbian Theater, whose empty marquis reminds us of the loss of small theaters at the expense of the multi-plex.

Columbia is the home of Lindsey Wilson College, a liberal arts college. The town hosts its annual festival, Downtown Days, each summer with nearly all of the town’s 4,000 inhabitants (2000 Census) coming to celebrate.

The town, first settled in 1800, was laid out as the county seat in 1802. It was the childhood home of Jane Lampton, the wife of John Marshall Clemens and the mother of “Mark Twain.” The Courthouse has many interesting features, but I will (as usual) leave those for future posts as part of the Kentucky120 Project.