Early Stone Houses of Kentucky 0813124794

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early stone houses of kentucky

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Early Stone Houses of Kentucky c a ro lyn murray-wo o ley The University Press of Kentucky

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Photographs by Matt Wooley, chief photographer, unless otherwise noted. Frontispiece: The James Lindsay house, built circa 1786.

Publication of this volume was made possible in part by the Dry Stone Conservancy.

Copyright © 2008 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 12 11 10 09 08

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murray-Wooley, Carolyn. Early stone houses of Kentucky / Carolyn Murray-Wooley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8131-2479-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Architecture, Domestic—Kentucky. 2. Stone houses—Kentucky. 3. Vernacular architecture—Kentucky. 4. Kentucky—History. I. Title. na7235.k4m87 2008 728’.3709769—dc22 2007040477 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in China. Member of the Association of American University Presses

To the hundreds of friends, both old and new, whose interest, generosity, and help have made this work a joy. My unbounded thanks to each of you, and especially to my son, Matt Wooley, for his insightful photography.

contents Acknowledgments ; xiii Introduction ; 1 part i. ulster gentry life in kentucky 1. Kentucky Land and Life ; 9 2. Stone House Descriptions ; 19 3. Stone House Construction ; 33 part ii. portfolio John Allen, ca. 1790 ; 66 John Bell, ca. 1795 ; 68 Robert Boggs, 1791–1792 ; 70 James Branham, ca. 1795 ; 72 John Brown, 1780s ; 74 Peter Brown, 1806 ; 75 George Clark, ca. 1779 ; 76 Benjamin Collings, ca. 1810 ; 78 William Cooper, ca. 1800 ; 80 Josiah Crawford, 1793 ; 82

William Crow, 1780–1783 ; 84 Alexander Dunlap, ca. 1790 ; 86 Henry H. Ferguson, ca. 1849 ; 88 Joel Frazier, 1810 ; 90 William Garrett, 1812 ; 92 Robert Guyn Jr., 1802 ; 96 James Harlan, ca. 1785 ; 98 William Henry, before 1790 ; 100 John Hinkson, ca. 1785–1795 ; 102 Nathan Huston, 1792 ; 104 Abraham Irvin, ca. 1790 ; 108 Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County, ca. 1785 ; 110 Thomas Kennedy of Kenton County, 1791 ; 112 James Lindsay, 1785–1786 ; 114 John Logan, ca. 1789 ; 116 John Long, 1792 ; 118 James McAfee, 1790 ; 120 William McBrayer, 1814 ; 124 John McCaughan, ca. 1823 ; 126 James McConnell, late 1700s ; 128

The Widow McDowell, ca. 1785–1790 ; 130 Samuel McDowell Slave Quarters, ca. 1820 ; 132 John McGee of Mercer County, 1790 ; 134 John McGee of Nelson County, before 1790 ; 136 James McKee, 1809 ; 138 Samuel McMillan, ca. 1800 ; 142 Jonathan McMurtry, ca. 1825 ; 146 John Andrew Miller, 1784 ; 148 Robert Poague, early 1800s ; 150 David Sawyer, 1814 ; 152 John “Two-Nine” Scott, ca. 1790 ; 156 Joseph Shawhan, 1816 ; 158 John Smith, 1807 ; 160 William Taylor, before 1802 ; 162 Henry Thompson Sr., ca. 1785 ; 164

Color gallery follows page 180

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John Henry Thompson, ca. 1842 ; 168 William Thompson, 1801–1806 ; 170 Michael Wallace, after 1790 ; 172 Robert Welsh, ca. 1810 ; 174 James Wilson, ca. 1785 ; 176 Conclusions ; 179 appendix 1: Colonial Locations of Ulster Kentucky Stone House Owners ; 185 appendix 2: Stone Houses of Other National Origins ; 187 Notes ; 195 Glossary ; 205 Bibliography ; 209 Index ; 217

acknowledgments i would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the Dry Stone Conservancy for their financial support of this book and for their work to preserve Kentucky’s cultural landscape. Among many hundreds in my life, I am particularly grateful to Bob Wooley, who shared my interests and made family outings adventures in discovery; to Med Moreland, who conducted me around Northern Ireland and provided unrelenting “encouragement”; to Lucy Toss Chandler, who drove me around Ulster on another trip and who always has confidence in me; to Bob Polsgrove of the Kentucky Heritage Council, who commissioned the inventories and never gave up on me; to Philip Robinson for his heartwarming hospitality and for sharing his knowledge of Ulster houses; and to Forrest Calico, Edna Talbott Whitley, Clay Lancaster, Ann Bevins, Frances Keightley, Bettye Lee Mastin, David Hall, and Samuel Cassidy— Kentucky historians who have been keepers of the houses’ living memories. This book is intended as a tribute to the Kentucky families from the north of Ireland, whose vision and perseverance helped found this commonwealth.

early stone houses of kentucky

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The thirteen colonies in 1776. The shaded area shows the territory governed by Virginia during the colonial period. From 1738 to 1772, the territory that would become the Commonwealth of Kentucky was included in Augusta County, Virginia; from 1772 to 1776, it was part of Fincastle County, Virginia; and from 1776 to 1780, it was Kentucky County, Virginia. In 1780, Kentucky County was divided into nine new Virginia counties and remained thus until Kentucky achieved statehood in 1792 (Rone 1965). (Reproduced by permission from Hammon and Taylor 2002, xiii)

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introduction the story of one stone house in the early spring of 1775, Henry Thompson and his associates undertook a mission that was not for the fainthearted. He, with his kinsmen and friends, collected horses, ammunition, tools, and provisions for their journey to the wilderness of Kentucky. With only vague maps and hearsay reports of the territory they intended to explore, these intrepid men left their established homes in Pennsylvania to improve their prospects. The group included William Steele, William Nesbit, Joseph Mitchell, and Thompson’s brothers-in-law, William McClintock, John Miller, and Joseph Houston, most of whom were younger sons of prosperous immigrants from Ulster (the north of Ireland). They journeyed together with the purpose of marking and surveying claims to qualify for land grants from the Commonwealth of Virginia. At that time, Virginia claimed all of the territory bounded by the north border of North Carolina, the Mississippi River, Canada, and the west border of Pennsylvania. Land grants in Kentucky territory therefore came from Virginia (see map, page xii). The group explored land together, then selected suitable settlement sites and cast lots for them. The surveyor marked the corners of Thompson’s future plantation by blazing his initials on significant trees. William Steele’s young son served as chain carrier and carried a gun [ 1

The Henry Thompson Sr. plan and facade as they were in 1790.

to guard the men from Indians while they were working. They set a flat stone with the initials “H:T:” in the ground at Thompson’s improvement to identify his claim and survey (William Steele Sr. and William Steele Jr. depositions, November 10, 1810, Nicholas County Day Book, 4). The company then dispersed and commenced making improvements—building cabins and planting crops—to meet Virginia’s requirement to prove intention to inhabit the land and thus qualify for a settlement claim (William McClintock deposition, November 10, 1810, Nicholas County Day Book, 4). In 1782, Henry and Mary Thompson and their infant son, Henry Jr., moved to Kentucky from their home in the Sherman River valley near Carlisle. The Thompsons were isolated settlers in the region between Maysville and Lexington during a very dangerous time, the year after the notorious Indian massacre at Blue Licks. They lived at first in a “rude cabin in the howling wilderness,” 14 feet square, that Thompson and William Steele had built in 1775 adjacent to Thompson’s spring (Perrin 1882b, 518). That the Thompsons could afford to commence construction on one of the finest Kentucky houses of that day soon after their arrival in Kentucky indicates that the family had access to considerable financial resources as well as talented craftsmen within the region.1 The Thompsons

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then owned two slaves, who may have resided in the cabin that also served as the kitchen until about 1790, when Thompson commissioned stonemason Thomas Metcalf to construct a kitchen adjoining the main house. The Thompsons reared their three sons and two daughters in this house. When Henry Jr.’s family enlarged the household, the Thompsons again expanded the house, this time more drastically. This remodeling included adding a large, two-story wing on the southwest end of the house and converting the original parlor into a central passage with an open stair. It is unclear whether this change was meant to follow the new (in Kentucky) fashion of center-passage plan houses or was made only to accommodate Thompson’s growing family. Henry Thompson Sr. was one of the founders and a ruling elder for twenty-four years of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, located on Steele’s Run, which the family attended without fail to the ends of their lives. Thompson had prospered enough financially by 1814 that he, with James McKee and William Boles, purchased the saw- and gristmills on the north bank of Hinkston Creek at Millersburg (Bourbon Deed Book L, 8; William Steele deposition, Nicholas County Day Book, 4). Henry Thompson Sr. died in 1827 and was buried in the old Millersburg cemetery at the Bourbon-Nicholas county line.

Henry Thompson Jr. emerged as an important community leader in his own right, serving as a Kentucky state legislator. He, like his father, held office as a ruling elder in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, for thirty years. In addition to enlarging the mansion house, he upgraded the plantation and purchased more slaves to help with the crops. This was evidently a moral conflict for him, for in his will he provided money for his slaves to return to their homes in Nigeria. At his death in 1853, he had ten slaves, 686 acres of land, and his interest in the mills in Millersburg. The slaves and household goods alone were valued at more than $10,000.

Thompson’s story was repeated across this new land of Kentucky. Houses like the one he built soon dotted the countryside, and in such houses traditions lived on—for a while. Now many of them sit neglected, their histories forgotten, yet each can tell us much about that era, the people who lived in it, and their world. This book tells those stories.

Above left: The Thompson house as enlarged in the early nineteenth century. (1966) Above: Stonemason Thomas Metcalf added an adjoining kitchen to the Thompson house about 1790. (1966)

research overview With two exemplary exceptions,2 the more substantial houses of Ulstermen are seldom identified separately introduction [ 3

Above: Henry Thompson Sr.’s gravestone, old Millersburg cemetery. The text reads, “Henry Thompson Sen / Who was a ruling / Elder of the assoc / iate reformed Church / 24 Yrs / Born in 1740 / Died in June 1827.” Above right: Henry Thompson Jr.’s gravestone, old Millersburg cemetery. The text reads, “Henry Thompson / died Feb 16, 1852 / aged 69 years / 3 months & 8 days // He was a Ruling Elder in the / Associate Reformed Church for 30 years // The souls of believers are at their / death made perfect in holiness and do im / mediately pass into glory and the body / dies being still united in Christ do rest / in their graves till the resurrection.”

from other dwellings in the American cultural hearths from which they emanated. The possibility that building traditions continued has therefore rarely been considered. The popular assumption is that architectural traditions were assimilated in the colonies by the time of the Revolutionary War and that the building practices of various national groups cannot be identified separately after that time. It is exciting, therefore, to find that for forty years after the war, wealthy Ulstermen in Kentucky continued their cultural building traditions, including the use of stone as a building material. This finding helps reveal settlement patterns in Kentucky: stone houses are indicators of Ulster settlement.

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Stone houses don’t fit with the popular perception that early Kentucky settlers lived in rustic log cabins, but the settlement period experience was not the same for everyone. The majority of eighteenth-century settlers at all economic levels did live in log houses—even so eminent a family as that of Ulster descendant John Breckinridge lived in a double log house. Log, however, was not the only frontier building material. Of existing Kentucky structures built before 1800, 51 percent are log, 24 percent are brick, 17 percent are stone, and 7 percent are frame (Macintire 2004). Most of Kentucky’s pre-1800 stone houses are gone—lost to neglect, demolition, and alteration—leaving but a fraction of the number originally built. Of the 455 known stone dwelling houses of the Kentucky settlement period, only 156 have been maintained or restored.3 This volume concentrates on existing early stone houses. The material places them in a distinct category, and the surviving houses are few enough to allow detailed study. This book provides an updated view of the cultural and economic status of Ulster-descended gentry in Kentucky, people heretofore rarely identified or studied as a group. It provides an accessible and detailed record of the stone houses they built and categorizes early stone houses of all national groups in Kentucky, showing the plans chosen by the owners (see appendix 2). This volume recognizes the supreme importance of floor plans in identifying antecedents and is based on systematic fieldwork and on patterns found across a substantial number of buildings. Research commenced in the 1980s with surveys of more than 600 early stone buildings in the Kentucky Bluegrass Region. Computer searches of existing survey files helped locate Kentucky stone houses that had been cataloged by the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Lexington–Fayette County Historic Commission. Local newspapers, libraries, and historical societies helped locate others. I reexam-

ined all the buildings in the surveys, inspected others in outlying counties, and recorded their plans, photographs, and measurements. Some of the surveyed houses were in ruined condition, and some have since been demolished, but 276 of the resurveyed buildings were eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and were subsequently listed in two theme nominations, 213 in Early Stone Buildings of Central Kentucky and 63 in Early Stone Buildings of Kentucky: Outer Bluegrass and Pennyrile. More than half of the 276 registered stone buildings were houses; these are the houses included in this study. Matt Wooley, chief photographer, photographed the houses for the color section, took more black-and-white photographs, and edited the historic photographs. This volume only briefly mentions the other stone buildings—mills, inns, taverns, warehouses, churches, courthouses, springhouses, icehouses, smokehouses, barns, burial cairns, iron furnaces, and lime kilns. It does not include the superb drystone buildings at Pleasant Hill in Mercer County, built by the Shakers, whose national origins are mixed. Those buildings are fully described by Clay Lancaster (1991). County histories and newspapers sometimes mention stone houses that no longer exist; those houses are not included in this study because the floor plans are unknown. This book describes only the 169 dwellings for which I could determine both the original floor plan and the original owner.4 Of the 169 identified owners of early stone houses included in this study, 78 were of Ulster ancestry, and the remainder were of other European origins: 34 owners were English, 17 Welsh, 12 German, 11 Scottish, 9 French, 4 Dutch, 2 Swiss, 1 Polish, and 1 southern Irish. Additionally, 11 owners’ ancestry is unknown or disputed. All of these houses were studied to determine whether they exhibited any traits that identified them with a particular national origin.

The field survey revealed three clear differences between Ulster Kentuckians’ houses and the houses of other Kentuckians. First, based on population percentages and remaining examples, Ulster descendants were almost three times more likely to choose stone as a building material than were settlers of any other nationality. Second, Ulster descendants were much more likely to build a hallparlor plan house (two rooms side by side, with gable-end chimneys) than were other groups. Ulster immigrants and descendants chose the hall-parlor plan for 79 percent of their stone houses, whereas, for example, the English chose the hall-parlor plan for only 32 percent of theirs. Other groups built far fewer hall-parlor houses. Third, other groups added an ell to the rear of the house, whereas Ulster Kentuckians made gable-end additions. Only a small number of early stone houses—those whose owners were wealthy or politically important— retain the names of their original owners. My first task, then, was to determine the identity of the first owners, a task requiring deed research and plat drawing from archaic, handwritten boundary descriptions in faded eighteenth-century survey books. Discovering the owner’s name, however, did not identify his or her national origin. To find the national origins (the countries of emigration) of families who owned Kentucky stone houses, I searched both printed and electronic genealogies, biographies, and the family history files of the Kentucky Historical Society’s Martin F. Schmidt Library. Although these files contain some conflicting statements, they are the most reliable available. I sought biographical information about stone house owners to identify their roles in the community and to help form a composite picture of the Ulster Kentucky elite: when the owners or their ancestors came to the American colonies, what country or province they were from, where they lived in the colonies, where in Kentucky they located, how much introduction [ 5

land they owned, what positions they held in local society, what their occupations were, whether they held public office, what religion they followed, and whom they married. I did not attempt to verify or disprove the family records. Information on the houses is drawn from county court deeds, wills, and order books, Virginia and Kentucky land records, court depositions, tax lists, census records, land survey and grant records, newspapers, the Lyman C. Draper Manuscript Collection, family history files, published architectural books and articles, and unpublished field survey data.5 The locations of the houses in this study are purposely left vague to protect the privacy of the residents and to protect vacant houses from intruders. An obvious question regarding Ulster settlers in Kentucky is what percentage they were of the total population. There are no statistics on the national origins of Kentucky settlers according to family genealogical records. There have been many attempts to determine the ethnic origins of Kentucky’s early settlers through surname studies and to deduce each group’s population percentage. All attempts have provoked valid criticism, for it is impossible to determine frontier origins on the basis of surnames alone. Surname dictionaries identify the ancient source of a name, but they do not identify the homeland of people who relocated through the centuries, from country to country and from continent to continent, carrying their surnames with them.6 Without an unchallenged estimate of the ancestry of Kentucky’s early population, I used the estimates calculated by Thomas L. Purvis in 1982.7 Even though other national groups also settled where good building stone was available, Ulster folk built the greatest total number of stone houses in Kentucky. Learn-

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ing more about them helps explain why they did this. For eighteenth-century Ulster planters in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, led by Glasgow- or Princetoneducated Presbyterian clergy and lawyers, schooled by itinerant Ulster schoolmasters, and isolated in varying degrees from the quicker life of the seaboard, cultural survival was probable. The melting pot schema of the United States was more a romantic idea than a reality prior to the nineteenth century: backcountry studies provide striking evidence for the continuity of European customs, institutions, and mentalities in the New World. While it is important to recognize differences between Old and New World practices, it is also informative to pinpoint similarities and linkages. My intention is to identify these linkages. In this group of people, I use the term “national group,” not “ethnic group,” because of the ongoing debate about ethnic origins. In the United States, the people from the north of Ireland are usually collectively referred to as the Scotch-Irish. However, the people of Ulster originated in many countries (primarily Scotland and England), and thus I use the terms “Ulstermen,” “Ulster Americans,” and “Ulster Kentuckians.” (For brevity in the text, the adjective “Ulster” means “descended from Ulstermen.”) I use “northern Ireland” as well as “the north of Ireland” to indicate the north part of the country of Ireland as it was in the eighteenth century.8 I use “central Kentucky” and “the Bluegrass” interchangeably. The glossary defines various architectural terms. Construction details are included in chapter 3 because they are not available elsewhere and the houses are disappearing.9 The choice of tense (present or past) in the house descriptions indicates whether the house is extant or extinct.

part i

Ulster Gentry Life in Kentucky

chapter 1

kentucky land and life almost 200,000 emigrants from the north of Ireland came to the American colonies before the Revolutionary War. Analyses of shipping records reveal that 181,000 people came from Ulster to the colonies between 1700 and 1840 and that 149,500 of those came between 1776 and 1809—3.76 times as many northern Irish as English, Welsh, and Scots combined (Fogleman 1998; Alexander 2006). Among these Irish, 137,200 paid their own passages, a fact that separates them from groups of landless poor and indentured servants. They disembarked at Delaware Bay ports or traveled up the Delaware River into southeast Pennsylvania. New Castle Hundred, Delaware, is cited more often than any other location as the Ulster Kentuckian immigrants’ first American destination. The second-most-named place of settlement is the region around Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin estimated that by the eve of the Revolution, Ulster people and their descendants composed about one-third of Pennsylvania’s inhabitants and occupied more than half the seats in the assembly (Dickson 1966, 224). In the eastern colonies, wealthy Ulster settlers reestablished themselves as planters, merchants, manufacturers, ship owners, and political leaders. By the mid-eighteenth century, wealthy families from both Delaware and Pennsylvania, as well as monied newcomers, [ 9

land and speculation

Fertile More fertile Most fertile

Above: Kentucky soil fertility. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, adapted by permission from Ulack, Raitz, and Pauer 1998, 22) Below: Locations of Ulster Kentucky stone houses, 1780–1830. (Map by author)

contributed Ulster settlers to the Valley of Virginia, primarily to what are now Augusta, Rockbridge, and Botetourt counties. Here they developed communities and established plantations. Both commerce and land speculation enabled prestigious Ulster families to control the powerful and lucrative appointive offices in the Upper (southern) Valley as justices of the peace, sheriffs, court clerks, militia officers, vestrymen, burgesses, and, most important, surveyors.

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These families extended their power and control to the newly opened Kentucky region of Virginia. Before Kentucky achieved statehood in 1792, the process of obtaining land was controlled by the policies of southwestern Virginia. Unlike the method of granting land above the Fairfax Line, where grants of a few hundred acres were designed to encourage actual settlers, the process by which land passed into private possession in the Upper Valley and Kentucky was fundamentally undemocratic. The 1779 land laws provided wealthy Virginians the opportunity to amass vast fortunes by registering claims to thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of Kentucky acres that they held while they waited for prices to rise.1 Monied Virginians, particularly Ulstermen in the Upper Valley, quickly realized that there were fortunes to be made in land speculation. The laws favored men with the cash, connections, and information necessary to exploit the laws, and no one was more powerful than surveyors and real estate speculators. They fastened legal claims on the choicest Kentucky tracts before actual settlers began to arrive in appreciable numbers, and most of the newcomers thus found it necessary to purchase land from the speculators who preceded them. Absentee speculators also operated by making huge grants to wealthy, wellconnected individuals, who in turn divided and resold the land to bona fide settlers. Locating, holding, and selling land warrants to later settlers created the capital with which successful planters built their fortunes and developed their estates.2 Pre-Revolution landowners became the planters, lawyers, officials, and land speculators in the growing district of Kentucky, leading postwar settlers to complain of large landholders who grabbed all the good land, raised land prices, and tried to shut out the yeoman farmer. Class dis-

tinctions based on wealth and landholding became more apparent as the colonial regions became more thickly populated. Control and management of public affairs passed into the hands of a small number of persons whose positions rested almost entirely upon their wealth and landholdings (Byrd 1951a, 182–88; Byrd 1951b, 291–92).3 The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky contains the richest and most valuable land in the commonwealth. It was the first choice of settlers and speculators and of the families who built stone houses. In 1784, Levi Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, wrote to his cousin Major John McCulloch of Philadelphia (owner of the brigantine Anna), “I know that money laid out for land will soon double itself. . . . Cousin Bob has been doubling in the Landmongers Business” (McCulloch Family Papers, reel M5031, 133–34). Ulsterman John Breckinridge recognized no limit on the quantity of good land that he might acquire. So lucrative was Breckinridge’s law practice, especially his services on behalf of speculating Virginia gentlemen, that within a decade his own Kentucky holdings totaled almost 30,000 acres (Aron 1990, 283). In addition to investments in treasury warrants from the government, the purchase of military warrants from soldiers of the French and Indian War provided the opportunity to acquire land. Two-thousand-acre tracts in the heart of the Bluegrass had been surveyed as payment for officers, and many were willing to sell their warrants. Alexander Breckinridge, brother of John, took advantage of this circumstance and purchased warrants from soldiers who did not plan to move to Kentucky. He was in charge of the family’s land claims and carried military warrants for 200,000 acres with him when he came to Kentucky in 1783 (Dicken-Garcia 1991, 96). Land south of the Green River was reserved for veterans of the Revolutionary War, and many of them also sold their rights to later settlers. This region, however, was not settled until after the turn

Military surveys Settlement and preemption claims

Land Reserved for Veterans of the Revolutionary War

of the century, when the heyday of drystone house construction was waning. Surveyors played a critical and lucrative role in the distribution of Kentucky land, reserving the best land for themselves and their friends. This prerogative, in addition to the substantial fees they collected, made the county surveyorship a powerful position. Ulstermen in the Upper Valley held tight control over surveyorships in the entire area south and west of the Fairfax Line. Ulsterman Thomas Lewis received the Augusta County surveyorship appointment from the College of William and Mary in 1745, and over the next three decades he exercised control over every applicant for crown land, newcomer and resident alike. Most of the surveyors who worked under Lewis were fellow immigrants from the north of Ireland; among them were James Patton, Andrew Lewis, William Preston, James Trimble, and John Poague (Hughes 1979, 89). Kinsmen and younger sons of the Ulster gentry received appointments to deputy surveyorships in Kentucky.4 As surveyors and chain carriers, they saw firsthand the Kentucky lands and took advantage of opportunities to mark off tracts for themselves.

Early Kentucky land grants, 1774–1780. (Reproduced by permission from Hammon 1986, 249)

land and life [ 11

Among the surveying groups are many who subsequently built stone houses on their Kentucky claims. John Floyd came to Kentucky to manage the interests of Fincastle County, Virginia (which included all of what is now Kentucky and part of what is now West Virginia), surveyor William Preston and his connections, among whom were two of Preston’s young nephews. John Brown, son of the Presbyterian clergyman of the same name, then a student at William and Mary, consulted with his uncle William Preston about western land matters; his interest would increase with the years. William Breckinridge, another Preston nephew, surveyed with Floyd on Beargrass Creek (in present-day Jefferson County, Kentucky), where he made land claims. The McAfee brothers, James, Robert, and George, came to Kentucky in 1773 from Fincastle County, explored the region bordering the Salt River, selected good land, and built a small fort (station) for protection from the Indians. In addition to the Virginia surveyors and scouts, land claiming parties from Pennsylvania came down the Ohio River in 1775 and 1776 from Fort Pitt to the north side of the Kentucky River, where they built station camps, marked tracts in the region, and founded Lexington (Abernethy 1937, 250; Woods 1905; Wooley 1975).5 Popular, if florid, Kentucky writer James Lane Allen mused that “acquisition of land was the determinative principle of the new civilization. . . . The surveyor’s chain should be wrapped about the rifle as a symbolic epitome of pioneer history” (1911, 51). Although Ulster planters acquired extra land as an investment, they were not usually the largest land speculators in Kentucky. Most of them owned a few hundred to a few thousand acres, although Ulstermen Christopher McConnico and James Reynolds were among six Ulstermen who each received Virginia land grants totaling more than 200,000 acres in Kentucky. David Ross and Jonathan Dunlap each received more than 100,000 acres, and the 12 [ early stone houses of kentucky

Bell family held surveys to more than 225,000 acres, on most of which they received grants. Reports of the number of acres each grantee received fall into broad patterns (Jillson 1926; Brookes-Smith 1976; Hammon 1992). The majority of grants awarded to the Ulstermen who built stone houses were under 10,000 acres each, although four were between 10,000 and 22,000 acres and one was a 67,000-acre partnership. Twenty-one grants were in the 3,000 to 10,000 range. The remaining fifty-six stone house owners received grants in the 1,000- to 3,000-acre range, with 1,400 (the acreage of a settlement and preemption) being the most common amount.6 This endowment vastly increased the wealth of the Ulster gentry.

ulster gentry life in the bluegrass Most of the people who built stone houses in Kentucky were from Virginia and Pennsylvania. They had a choice between two routes from the East to the Bluegrass, both of which required weeks of frightening, debilitating, and costly travel. The overland route, via Cumberland Gap, was a shorter trip but could take much longer than the river route. Overland migrants from Virginia traveled south on the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, up the valley to the Holston River, then west through the Cumberland Gap, over the mountains, and, after reaching the Bluegrass plateau, north-northwestward to Boonesborough. To use the Ohio River route, travelers left Winchester, Virginia, on Braddock’s Road and then journeyed through Pennsylvania, traveling west to Redstone or Pittsburgh. Other migrants from Pennsylvania used Forbes Road from Carlisle, going west to Pittsburgh. At the end of either road, migrants loaded their goods on flatboats for the downriver part of the trip. They debarked at Limestone, Kentucky (now Maysville), where they reloaded their belongings onto horses and wagons for the last part of the

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journey to the central Bluegrass. Others continued down the river to debark at the Falls of the Ohio, Louisville.7 Of the Ulster families who built stone houses in Kentucky, the counties in the American colonies in which they resided just before the move to Kentucky are known for eighty-four of them (see appendix 1). Fifty-seven were from Virginia. The greatest number from a single county was seventeen, from Rockbridge County. Combining the Virginia families from Rockbridge, Rockingham, Botetourt, and Augusta counties—all Upper Valley counties—brings the total number of known stone house owners from the Upper Valley to thirty-one. After Virginia, Pennsylvania was the next most frequent last place of residence for Kentucky’s stone house owners. Of the twenty-one Pennsylvania families, six were from Cumberland County and eight were from southwest Pennsylvania (Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland, and Yohogania counties), thought at the time to be in Virginia. Known last residences of other Ulster Kentucky stone house owners were scattered: two each from New Jersey and North Carolina and one from Maryland. Of the fifty owners who were studied for the portfolio, seven were themselves born in Ulster. Twenty were the sons of Ulster emigrants, eleven were grandsons, and four were great-grandsons. No generation is recorded for the remainder. These new residents faced a challenging life on the Kentucky frontier of the 1770s. Nearly everyone camped at first in small cabins within forts for protection from Indian attacks. Living conditions were primitive, but the settlers regarded the crudity of the new settlements as a temporary condition. Groups of settlers remained relatively isolated from one another as long as the danger of Indian attacks persisted, delaying the development of a sense of community outside the forts.8 A complex and class-conscious political environment quickly developed in Kentucky, where a landholding

e

elite of large planters provided a traditional leadership structure for the conduct of political and civic affairs. By 1800, wealth was distributed ever more unequally among Kentucky’s free adult males, reflecting the uneven distribution of wealth in the East, with a Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality) of about .80. Although land was relatively abundant in Kentucky in 1800, some tracts were larger than others, and more important, some men owned many properties. Thus Kentucky’s initial inequality was as large at the turn of the century as it had been twenty-five years before (Soltow 1983, 633). This inequality in early land distribution contributed to the system of tenancy that persists in the Bluegrass Region. A disproportionately large number of Presbyterians figure conspicuously in Kentucky’s formative years: families such as McDowell, Todd, Brown, Scott, Marshall, McAfee, McCalla, MacCoun, Breckinridge, Trotter, Campbell, Tilford, Wallace, Rice, and Morrison (Sonne

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Settlers’ migration routes from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Kentucky. (Map by Dick Gilbreath)

land and life [ 13

Ulster Kentuckians in the Troy neighborhood of Jessamine and Woodford counties founded Ebenezer Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and are buried in the cemetery. The congregation erected the stone meeting house in 1803–1804.

1939, 3, 16). Reverends Caleb Wallace and David Rice, Presbyterian clergymen, played a major role in agitating for dissenters’ toleration and for separation of church and state. The disestablishment of the Anglican church in Virginia was very much a part of the Kentuckians’ interest. Even Episcopalian George Nicholas played a decisive role in defeating the attempt to achieve a general assessment for support of religion and in fighting for the repeal of the law incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church in Kentucky. Family histories report that many Ulster Kentuckians were covenanters (founders of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland) and seceders (members of the Associate Presbyterian Church). In 1782, these two groups formed the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America.

14 [ early stone houses of kentucky

Membership in the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky included, in addition to the Scotch-Irish, many families of English-Irish descent. Also, some of the French Huguenots who had lived in Ulster were Presbyterians, as were a few Ulster families who had been Quakers in Pennsylvania, such as the Crawfords, who came from counties Down and Fermanagh in northern Ireland.9 Devotion to the Presbyterian Church and his native land is evident in the legacy of David Robinson, an English-Irishman who died in Fayette County, Kentucky, in 1805. He willed “two hundred pounds sterling money of Great Britain” to the “Presbyterian Congregation in the Parrish Lifford, County Donegal, in the Kingdom of Ireland” and made another bequest to the Hibernian Society in Philadelphia for the benefit of poor persons from Ireland in America (Tipton Papers, 5:66). The first Presbyterian churches in Kentucky include Bethel, Cane Ridge, Concord, Crab Orchard, Ebenezer, Hopewell, Mt. Horeb, Mt. Zion (Lexington), New Providence, Paint Lick, Pisgah, Salem, Shawhan, Steele’s Run, and Walnut Hill.10 Many of these are still in use. Ulster settlers were leaders in establishing schools, even when wilderness still surrounded the new settlements. By 1782, only one year after the fort was built at Lexington, John McKinney conducted classes in the new schoolhouse. Elijah Craig opened a seminary in Scott County in 1787 where he taught Latin, Greek, and the sciences (Staples 1939, 297–98). Before 1790, schools in Lexington taught Latin, Greek, French, arts, and the sciences, including bookkeeping, surveying, navigation, geography, geometry, trigonometry, and algebra (Delcamp 1916, 65). Ulster Presbyterians established Kentucky Academy at Pisgah in 1796. In 1798 the academy received a charter from the state legislature to unite with Transylvania Seminary for the establishment of Transylvania University (Coleman 1967, 45). By 1803, the subjects taught by Transylvania’s all-Presbyterian faculty included

mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, sciences, belles lettres, composition, history, Latin, Greek, and French (Leavy 1943, 40). Slavery was a feature of Kentucky from the time of first settlement. A strong interdependence generally existed between masters and slaves: they worked together clearing forests, building houses and fences, planting gardens, tending livestock, and protecting themselves and their families from the Indians. Slavery was the norm in regions of early settlement on the eighteenth-century frontier because of the huge demand for unskilled labor to open new land for agriculture (Eslinger 1997, 178, 185). The ready market for slaves encouraged some migrants to bring surplus slaves for western sale. The first federal census in 1790 listed 11,830 slaves in Kentucky—more than 16 percent of the population. Slavery grew rapidly. By the first half of the nineteenth century, blacks made up more than 30 percent of the population in Bluegrass counties, with Woodford County more than one-half black (Lucas 1992, xv–xviii). Ulster leaders were divided on the ethics of slaveholding. Presbyterian minister David Rice represented the views of many Kentucky leaders in his 1792 antislavery pamphlet Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy. Many Presbyterians, opposed to slavery for religious and moral reasons, organized an effort to return slaves to Africa, but with little success. Baptist and Presbyterian legislators led the effort to outlaw slavery in Kentucky;

Pisgah Presbyterian Church was founded in 1784 by Ulster families from the Upper Valley of Virginia. The stone meeting house was built in 1812 and remodeled in 1868 in the Gothic style. Kentucky Academy was chartered in 1794 under the Transylvania Presbytery. The three bays on the left are part of the old academy building that was “Gothicized” in the mid-nineteenth century and enlarged in the colonial revival style in 1954.

land and life [ 15

when it failed, some of these families sold their holdings and moved to Ohio. Among them was Robert Patterson, a founder of Lexington. Although settlers brought as much as they could when they came to Kentucky, including fine furnishings and silver articles, goods from the East were much in demand, and traders quickly followed the settlers. In 1775, the first year of permanent white settlement, a store in the log blockhouse at Boonesborough sold goods on credit, brought in by packhorses, flatboats, and canoes. In 1777, a French trader’s boat arrived on the Kentucky River at Boonesborough laden with goods (Shane, interview 18S:233). By 1780, most merchandise was brought in packhorse trains from Philadelphia and Baltimore. As trails improved, wagons conveyed goods to Fort Pitt, where flatbottomed boats took over the transport to Kentucky. Major agricultural products of the Shenandoah Valley came to Kentucky—tobacco, hemp, wheat, and improved cattle breeds. In return, Winchester, Virginia, became a cattle distribution center, moving cattle from Kentucky to the eastern markets of Philadelphia, Alexandria, Baltimore, and Richmond (Gaines 1904, 12; Mitchell 1972, 478). George Anderson, from Enniskillen, northern Ireland, opened a dry goods store in Lexington in 1788. Tegarden and M’Cullough advertised merchandise including many varieties of cotton, linen, and wool fabrics, shoe buckles, cutteaus (knives), ivory combs, muscovado (sugar), spices, dyes, shot, and castings, all imported from Philadelphia. In 1789, John Duncan’s new store offered law, history, languages, science, and children’s books. Artisans—clockmakers, watchmakers, silversmiths, jewelers, and coppersmiths—had shops in Lexington by 1789. In 1792, John Jackson returned from Edinburgh with “the largest and fullest stock of dry goods then imported

16 [ early stone houses of kentucky

to any store in the west,” very little of which was essential for life in this early settlement (Whitley 1956, 96; Kentucky Gazette, April 1788, 1789; Byrd 1951, 190; Klotter 1981, 2:544). Owning such costly possessions established the same social status as did owning a stone house. Kentuckians recognized huge opportunities in manufacturing and trade and were soon capable of producing most of the raw materials used to manufacture needed items. By 1788, the most important manufactured goods were leather, hemp rope, flax, wool, cotton, iron, copper, lead, tin, brass, silver, paper, gunpowder, salt, sugar, cider, brandy, whiskey, salted pork, bacon, linseed oil, flour, starch, earthenware, fur hats, soap, and candles. Produce for export included tobacco, hemp, flour, salted beef and pork, bacon, whiskey, barley, corn, butter, cheese, and lard.11 In 1789, Ulstermen founded the Kentucky Society for Promoting Manufactures and bought a 3-acre plot in Danville on which they built several stone buildings to house workmen. They imported machinery from Philadelphia to manufacture cloth to compete with European imports. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky had established itself as the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing center of the trans-Appalachian West, and Lexington was the largest town in all western America (Watlington 1972, 192–94; Aron 1990, 340). Public records indicate that Bluegrass counties typically had stone courthouses, though most of these have been replaced with larger facilities. Only one original courthouse remains, in Green County. Very few stone distilleries, warehouses, and tanneries remain. Stone water-powered grain mills and sawmills, of which there were once many hundreds, are the most numerous remaining industrial buildings.12

Green County has the oldest remaining stone courthouse in Kentucky, built in 1802. Down the street in the background are other stone buildings: Greensburg Bank, Allen’s Inn, and the county clerk’s office. Paul’s Mill was one of the twenty-four licensed mills in Woodford County approved in 1789. The millrace ran around the back of the building.

[ 17

chapter 2

stone house descriptions kentucky settlers transformed a wilderness into an agricultural landscape in barely twenty-five years, and this landscape still reflects the standard of living that wealthy planters established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What houses they built, where they were located, and how their farmsteads developed are part of the story of today’s countryside. A few gentry families braved the extreme hardships of wilderness life during their first years in Kentucky, virtually camping on their landholdings while preparing the land for cultivation and habitation. Some families lived for a while in forts for communal safety, going out to their individual farms during the day to clear land, plant crops, and erect essential buildings. Other families divided: the wife and young children remained east of the mountains while the husband and his help prepared the land for occupancy.

locations Like the settlement patterns of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Ulster settlement in Kentucky was dispersed. Each plantation was a separate entity, not headquartered within a village as [ 19

Springs usually emerge from an opening in a hillside. Preston’s cave spring emerges from a cave and forms part of the headwaters of Wolf Run Creek.

in Great Britain. Extended families often located their households in the same county, but their lands were independent and self-sufficient. Other closely related families settled in entirely separate neighborhoods. The Pattersons, Lindsays, Januarys, McConnells, and Millers, all closely related, settled widely apart in Fayette, Scott, and Jessamine counties. Even brothers sometimes established their claims several counties apart. James and Jonathan McMurtry, grandsons of a leather manufacturer in Phila20 [ early stone houses of kentucky

delphia, came with their parents to Kentucky from Rockbridge County, Virginia. As adults, they both established tanneries, James in Harrison County and Jonathan in Jessamine County, fifty miles apart, and both built stone houses. No records tell us why they resided so far apart, but two tanning businesses undoubtedly better flourished separately, serving different neighborhoods. In other families, brothers selected the best mill sites from their family holdings, which might also be in separate counties. Since the acreage of the Ulster gentry was so extensive, even home sites on contiguous holdings, such as those of the extended families of Pisgah Presbyterian Church in Woodford County and Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Jessamine County, were separated by many miles. In towns, however, Ulster kinship groups lived close together. The Todds, a family of merchants, attorneys, surveyors, and physicians, owned seven stone houses in Lexington and Paris (Kentucky), in addition to those they built on their rural estates. Unfortunately, almost all of the hundreds of stone houses that once lined the streets of early Bluegrass villages have been demolished and built over. The James McKee house in Millersburg stands as an exceptional example. Water—for transportation, power, and farm and household use—was a critical factor in selecting sites for land claims (see plates 1–3). Clear, rapidly flowing springs abound in the Bluegrass Region because of its karst topography (underlain by caves, sinkholes, and underground streams). When streams emerge from underground, they create springs, which were important landmarks in claim descriptions. Survey boundaries were designed or adjusted to include at least one large spring or watercourse. Land claimants built first their station cabins and later their permanent houses convenient to the springs. Many early properties bordered navigable streams, and on such a property an Ulster settler would locate his house

on a low rise several hundred yards from the creek, usually perpendicular to it. Early roads followed the creek valleys, but most eighteenth-century water routes are no longer navigable, and newer roads were aligned to follow higher ground, leaving early houses unseen from the present roadways. Most stone houses are located near the centers of the original tracts and are accessible only by farm lanes—a seclusion that adds rural ambiance to the settings and contrasts with later, hilltop Greek revival houses that face the present roads. Ulster householders had a strong preference for facing their houses south. The reason for this may be surmised: to catch the winter sun on the front of the house, which had the most glass for solar heat and light, and to protect it from winter’s north winds. Field notes on seventy-three of the houses record that thirty-eight face a southerly direction; thirteen face east; eight face west; five face northeast or northwest; and only three face due north, one toward an early road and the two others toward major watercourses. The remaining six houses have identical front and rear facades and so could have faced either direction. The houses are situated on neither the highest nor the lowest elevation of the surrounding acreage and are often built endwise into a gentle slope, allowing for a walk-out cellar on one end. This siting follows a long tradition in Ulster, where houses derived from the house-byre were built endwise into a slope to direct drainage away from the living quarters. When a house is sited across a hillside, the front typically faces downhill. None of the Ulster Kentucky stone houses were built on hilltops (see plates 4–7). The mansion or big house on a well-established plantation soon came to be surrounded by domestic dependencies: kitchen, springhouse, icehouse, smokehouse, washroom, dairy, slave quarters, henhouse, weaving or spinning house, coach house, and riding stables. The

Boggs plantation site plan. (Map by Samuel Cassidy)

house descriptions [ 21

Above: Robert Boggs house. This view is of the original rear of the two-story main house and kitchen, now connected by the addition of a dining room in the hyphen. A modern wing (not shown) is on the left of the house. The bur oak tree shading the house was here in 1791 when the house was built. Above right: The ever-flowing Boggs’s cave spring forms the headwaters of Boggs Fork and was the reason Boggs chose this location. A modern addition to the servants’ house is visible in the background. Right: The Boggs family lived in this dogtrot log house, built in 1784 (relocated in 1872 and again in 1974), while their stone house was under construction.

22 [

grounds did not follow the formal layouts of Tidewater plantations; the front yard of the house was often as much a working space as the backyard. At Samuel McMillan’s, for example, even though the formal front facade boasted a modillioned cornice and half-round classical doorway, the large entrance to the abutting dogtrot was also at the front of the house, as was the only exterior doorway to the adjoining kitchen. Even slave quarters often opened onto the front or side yard of the house. Domestic outbuildings were in turn surrounded by agricultural buildings: hemp house; blacksmith shop; carpenter shop; lime kiln; barns for livestock, tools, equipment, and grain; and, on many farms, water-powered saw- or gristmills. Mills were a major component of many prosperous plantations. In 1789 alone, the county court of Woodford County approved construction of twenty-four mills (Woodford County Order Book A). Every farm did not include all of these facilities; landowners chose those

most important to their farming operations.1 The family graveyard was located on most farms in a pasture near the house, surrounded by a rock fence. Very few Kentucky farmsteads remain even partially as they were built. One that does is the plantation of Robert Boggs, a native of Mill Creek Hundred in Delaware. Boggs was an early companion of Colonel Daniel Boone and one of the founders of Boonesborough. He selected for himself 400 acres of land with an excellent spring on a fork of Boone Creek and purchased additional acreage until the farm totaled 1,056 acres by 1827. In the early nineteenth century, the farmstead included blacksmith, carpenter, and leather shops, a hemp house–granary, a large smokehouse, an icehouse, a carriage house, a ropewalk, barns, and stables, plus quarters for forty slaves. The farm was largely self-sufficient for all its inhabitants, including the slaves. Hemp was an important cash crop, but the main business was the breeding of mules for the southern and

Above left: The Boggs family’s octagonal, stonewalled burying ground is situated on a hill east of the house. The first burial was Mary Huston Boggs in 1791. Above: The Boggs plantation’s combination meat house and brick office was built before 1800. It is located in the front yard of the main house. The 13 × 14 foot meat house is an unconnected room behind the office.

house descriptions [ 23

Above: The brick hemp house was completed before 1800 for the storage of hemp coils produced on the Boggs plantation. Above right: Situated downhill from the Boggs house and kitchen, the icehouse used ice cut from the pond and packed in straw for food storage. It was built about 1795. Right: The quarters for the Boggs family’s house servants, built before 1800, were located in the side yard of the main house. Field slaves lived in log cabins about one-quarter mile downstream from the cave.

24 [

western markets. Otherwise the acreage developed as a diversified farm producing, in addition to hemp, corn, wheat, oats, tobacco, and hay and small herds of cattle, swine, and sheep (Cassidy 1985, 442, 587–88).

original floor plans Clues abound in the present-day Kentucky landscape that help decipher how men and women used the land and resources they found. Many of the eighteenth-century survey lines became the boundaries of modern farms. On many boundaries, rock fences separate one property from another. On others, lines of old-growth trees mark the divisions. Foundation ruins tell the positions of historic farm buildings. Springs indicate the locations of early house sites. In many cases, the structures are still here to inform us. Between 1780 and 1830, 79 percent of Ulster Kentuckians who could afford a stone house chose to build a hall-parlor plan. This figure, which is significantly higher than the percentage of other national groups who chose this plan, indicates a strong adherence to tradition among Ulster settlers.2 They also built other plans: a few centerpassage, three-room, side-passage, and double-cell plans. This section describes typical features of these plans. The hall-parlor layout is of two rooms side by side, single pile (one room deep), with opposing doors, front and rear. The doors open directly into the main room, the hall, which is the larger room and is used as the primary living space. The smaller room, entered from the hall, is the parlor, used as a formal sitting room or bedchamber.3 Even the five-bay, two-story mansion of John Smith in Harrison County has a hall-parlor plan, as did the elaborately decorated four-bay house of Samuel McMillan (see portfolio). Hall-parlor houses have several minor variations. On the front and rear facades, the middle doors may be

slightly off center to allow the two rooms to be nearly equal in size. Some houses with this mild facade asymmetry have second-floor windows aligned with those on the first, but others have evenly spaced windows on the second floor, out of alignment with those below (see the Logan and Kennedy of Bourbon County houses in the portfolio). Rear fenestration may not match the front. A four-bay house may have three bays on the rear, and a three-bay house may have only two bays on the second floor or on the rear (see the Harlan and McDowell houses in the portfolio). Ulster Kentucky houses do not have windows in the gable ends on the first or second floors but do have small square casement windows in the garrets on one or both sides of the chimneys. A few houses have an additional first-floor exterior doorway on the gable end. Depending on the room’s use, this door allowed food to be brought in from the kitchen, provided access to a future expansion, or permitted visitors a separate entrance into the plantation office. A beaded plank wall usually separates the hall from the parlor, although in larger houses, this wall may be stud, lathe, and plaster. A door connecting the two rooms is near the center of the partition wall, below the sloping stair enclosure. Space for the enclosed winding stairway is taken from the parlor, but the stairway is typically entered from the rear of the hall, just inside the back door. Some houses have a vestibule at the top of the stairs with a doorway to each bedchamber. A few houses have an enclosed winding stair in the hall chimney corner or a second stairway in the chimney corner of the parlor (see the Boggs house in the portfolio). In existing examples with two stairways, there is no connecting door between the upstairs rooms. Each room usually has a fireplace. Of the Ulster Kentucky houses in the study, more than half are two or more stories. Most of the two-story, threebay, hall-parlor houses are 22 to 24 feet deep and between house descriptions [ 25

30 and 40 feet long, although a few fall outside this range: Henry Thompson Sr.’s was 26 × 30 (with a summer beam), and James Branham’s is 22 × 44. Four- and five-bay hall-parlor plans are longer, but not deeper: Jonathan McMurtry’s five-bay house is 22 × 44, and John Smith’s is 24 × 48. Twenty-four feet is about the maximum depth for a house without an intermediate end-to-end summer beam. Three-room plans, with summer beams, are a little deeper: David Sawyer’s is 25 × 34, William McConnell of Bourbon County’s is 24 × 36, and William Thompson’s is 26 × 38. A full-size, unheated cellar under the main house provided storage and a naturally insulated work room. Access to the cellar is from outside the house, with stone steps dug into the embankment. At a few houses, the cellar steps are protected from weather by a small, enclosed porch. Cellars rarely contain fireplaces, an exception being the Robert Guyn Jr. house. (Some house descriptions report fireplaces in cellars that are in fact relieving arches for the weight of the hearths above.) Cellar floors are flagstone or tamped clay. Very few Ulster Kentucky houses were built without cellars—the only ones known are the McDowell, Henry, and McGee houses. The remaining sixteen Ulster Kentucky stone houses that are not hall-parlor houses have a variety of plans: three-room, double-cell, center-passage, side-passage, and one-room. Of the seventy-eight first-generation Ulster Kentucky houses in this study, nine are three-room plan houses, all of which were built by families from Pennsylvania. These, like the hall-parlor houses, have opposing front and rear doors opening into the hall, with the smaller side of the house divided into two rooms, each with a diagonal corner fireplace sharing one inside chimney in the center of the gable end. A beaded board partition wall is located between the hall and the parlor or chambers, and an en26 [ early stone houses of kentucky

closed corner stair rises from the back of the hall, with the space for the stairway taken from the small back room.4 There are only two double-cell stone houses known to have been built by Ulster Kentuckians, although other cultural groups built several of them (see appendix 2). Double-cell houses are similar in dimensions and details to hall-parlor houses except that they have four bays, including two front doorways, each opening into a firstfloor room. Each room has a separate stairway to the second floor. The Kentucky double-cell stone houses are similar to log houses that have two side-by-side rooms. Of the four center-passage houses known to have been built by first-generation Ulstermen in Kentucky, only the glorious James McKee and Peter Brown houses remain (see portfolio). Records of the houses of Andrew Todd (see chapter 3) and Thomas Kennedy of Kenton County (see portfolio) exist in the archives. The McKee house is also unique among stone houses of the first generation for its double-pile, center-passage plan, although the extinct Thomas Kennedy house in Kenton County appears also to have been double-pile. William McClintock’s side-passage house is the only one of its kind among Ulster Kentuckians. McClintock’s house was built about 1825, late in the drystone period, by the nephew of Henry Thompson, whose parents came with the Thompsons from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, where this plan was popular among Germans (Van Dolsen 1990, 22–25).5 McClintock’s house, now demolished, had an open stair in the passage on the west side that opened into the two rooms located one behind the other on the east side. Each room had a fireplace that was centered in the end wall of the room, but their flues took diagonal paths toward each other to share a single inside stack above the first floor in the gable end of the house. Other side-passage houses in Kentucky did not have Ulster owners.

Although one-room log houses were the most common early house type in early Kentucky, the Crawford house is the only Ulster-built one-room stone house (see portfolio). Other national groups in Kentucky occasionally built them (see appendix 2). One-room stone slave cabins and one-room stone kitchens are, however, regular parts of the Ulster Kentucky repertoire. The kitchen was usually built contemporaneously with the main house; these were not the original dwellings of the owners, although oral traditions often relate that they were. A second one-room building of Ulster connection is Jacob Hunter’s, which was probably a retail store but is now in ruins. Joseph Shawhan’s two-story, three-bay, one-room plan office is an appendage to his original log house. Four known Ulster houses in Kentucky are unique: John Scott’s four-room plan, David Sawyer’s chamber outshot, Michael Wallace’s saltbox, and Henry H. Ferguson’s dogtrot (see portfolio). The most common slave houses in Kentucky are doublepen buildings—two rooms side by side with a fireplace in each gable end. Each room has an entrance from the house yard and a window on the rear, with no door connecting the two rooms. Alternatively, some slave quarters have a central chimney with a fireplace opening into each room (see the McDowell slave quarters in the portfolio). Rarely, the slave quarters are one room with a loft (see the Garrett quarters in the portfolio). The majority of quarters are frame or log, but those on the larger plantations were of

One of the Alexander slave quarters (the others have been demolished) is located in the side yard of the house. It contains two rooms, each with a fireplace in the gable end. The McCrackin slave quarters step down the hillside in the front yard of the house. Each section has one room, a loft, and a fireplace in the gable end.

house descriptions [ 27

stone or, sometimes, brick. Regardless of their construction material, existing quarters follow similar floor plans. They are situated in the backyard, the side yard, the barnyard, or even the front yard, placed for practical reasons rather than formality. Most often, only one cabin is in the house yard, but where there are more, they face the yard in a single line or in an L shape in a yard corner (MurrayWooley 1999, 337–39).6 The kitchen is separate from the main house in Kentucky stone houses, following the common arrangement of detached kitchens in eighteenth-century Piedmont and Valley of Virginia plantations (Wells 1993, 15; McCleary 2000, 105). The very early John McGee of Mercer County house is the only stone house in Kentucky whose kitchen is an integral part of the main house, having a cooking fireplace in the first-floor hall (see portfolio). The primary reason for separating the kitchen from the main house, according to oral tradition, was to prevent a fire from spreading from the huge kitchen fireplace to the rest of the house. Having a separate kitchen also kept the heat, mess, and undesirable smells of food preparation away from the main house. A desire to elevate family labor above slave labor seems not to have been a factor in kitchen placement, because whether or not the household included slaves or hired help, the kitchen was separate. Kitchens in Kentucky are usually single-room buildings located in the rear or side yard, a few feet from the main house. A single door to the kitchen is located on the eave side or gable end of the kitchen, depending on which provides the shorter path to the hall or dining room in the main house. Kitchens are often connected by a covered hyphen or dogtrot to a door in the main house’s gable end. Some kitchens abut the main house, forming a wing, but without an inside connecting doorway (see the Branham house in the portfolio). The cooking fireplace—5 or more 28 [ early stone houses of kentucky

feet tall, 7 to 8 feet wide, and 2 to 3 feet deep—may fill the entire gable end of the kitchen, with a stone hearth spanning the width of the room. Unlike the chimney stacks of the main house, kitchen chimneys are usually exterior, shouldered front and back at roof height. There are no built-in bake ovens, as the bread of the South is cornbread baked on a special skillet over the fire. A massive log lintel spans the fireplace opening; this is heavily chamfered on the inside edge to direct smoke upward and to reduce the likelihood of sparks’ igniting the sooty timber.

changes in floor plans Modifications show that owners alter their houses to accommodate new situations and choices. The stone houses in this study have sheltered a chain of residents, and in the layers of subsequent use they show different attitudes toward utility, community, style, and self. According to need and fashion, the style and space of some house forms underwent radical changes, thus transforming the originals into unrecognizably different forms (see, for example, the Alexander Dunlap house in the portfolio). No eighteenthcentury Kentucky house remains completely unchanged. Changes range from lengthened windows, added brackets on cornices, added porches, and reoriented entrances, to additional rooms and floor space. When Ulster families needed or wanted more rooms, they enlarged their houses by adding wings on the gable ends, following a tradition that was a widespread carryover of Scottish and Irish custom. A linear series of rooms and workspaces under a common ridge reflects the postmedieval transformations of the Celtic longhouse tradition. Other national groups added to their houses by building ells on the rear, a practice not adopted by first-generation Ulster Kentuckians. Second-generation Ulster Kentuckians, however, did begin to choose the

more popular plans of the changing times, particularly when cost was not a factor. The plan of choice switched from the traditional hall-parlor to the fashionable center-passage I house, foretold by the 1805 construction of the house of first-generation Ulster Kentuckian Andrew Todd (see chapter 3). The material of choice changed as well—from stone to brick—as residents located clay deposits suitable for brickmaking and as brick came to be connected to the image of an impressive mansion house. By the early nineteenth century, more houses were built of brick than of stone. The Brown family is a high-profile example of these changes. Originally from County Londonderry in the north of Ireland, the Browns settled in Augusta County, Virginia. Reverend John Brown graduated from Princeton University (then the College of New Jersey)7 in 1749 and married Margaret Preston, daughter of John Preston and Elizabeth Patton, members of the landowning elite in the Valley of Virginia. In about 1783, one of their four sons, John Brown, and his wife, Margaretta Mason, moved to Woodford County, Kentucky. Brown engaged his cousin Oliver Brown, direct from Londonderry, to build a twostory, three-bay, hall-parlor stone house on Brown’s plantation, Sumner’s Forest (see portfolio). John Brown was active in politics, and by 1796 he found it expedient to move his family to Frankfort, Kentucky’s state capital. As the state’s first U.S. senator, he engaged Thomas Jefferson, whom he met in Washington, to draw plans for the new residence, but the plans arrived too late and the house was already under construction with designs likened to the work of William Buckland—a classical five-bay, doublepile, two-story, center-passage brick mansion with Georgian features.8 Senator Brown named the house Liberty Hall after the academy in Lexington, Virginia, that his father helped found. In due course, his parents also moved to Kentucky, where Reverend Brown became the minister

at nearby Pisgah Presbyterian Church. The parents lived in the stone house built for their son at Sumner’s Forest (Simpson 1932, 127; Coleman 1967, 63; Thomas 1939, 31; Railey 1968, 78–79; Lancaster 1991, 120). Other Ulster Kentuckians accommodated their growing families and nodded to fashion with less upheaval and expense than the Browns when they enlarged, remodeled, and updated their original hall-parlor stone houses. The new owners of John Andrew Miller’s house emulated the Greek revival style by adding a two-story columned porch across the front of the house (see figure, p. 30 top). William Lee Graddy purchased John Long’s mansion house, and later added a Greek revival wing and a two-story, gabled portico at the entrance (see portfolio). Richard Branham in Scott County added a similar portico (see

Liberty Hall, the John Brown family’s fashionable Georgian house in Frankfort.

house descriptions [ 29

portfolio). Robert Boggs provided a formal dining room for his house by enclosing the open space on the gable end between the house and the kitchen. James McAfee and John Hinkson updated their stone houses by painting them brick red. Henry Thompson Sr. enlarged his hallparlor house by adding a two-story, two-bay wing on the gable end and converting the original parlor into a center passage (see portfolio). William Crow provided a center passage in his hall-parlor house by appropriating the needed space from the hall. The John Crow–Joshua Barbee house in Danville underwent a complete metamorphosis when the owners expanded the original three-bay house to seven bays and covered the middle three bays with a massive Greek revival portico (see figure at left). Reconfiguring floor plans sometimes required the exchange of window and door openings (facing page, top). The installation of heating and electrical systems made a less visual impact. The most common and simplest amenity, a porch in a newer fashion on the front, both provided a pleasant (southerly-facing) place for relaxation and updated the house (see the Hinkson, William Thompson, and John Henry Thompson houses in the portfolio). When William Garrett’s descendants wanted a bigger, more fashionable house, they built a large, centerpassage Greek revival mansion at a right angle to the original house, relegating the stone house to an appendage (facing page, bottom). Heirs of Terah T. Haggin did the same. Thomas Sharpe of Bracken County kept up to date with evolving styles by establishing his kitchen as a

Later owners of the John Andrew Miller house “updated” their plain early stone house by adding a two-story columned porch and balcony on the front. The original three bays, to the right on the John Crow house, became merely part of the wing when the house was remodeled and enlarged. A large corona covers the unmatched cornice sections.

30 [ early stone houses of kentucky

large ell on the rear of his early-nineteenth-century center-passage stone house. Indeed, most of the secondgeneration Ulster Kentucky stone houses have centerpassage plans. John Henry Thompson, son of Henry Thompson Jr., built on his share of the original 1,000-acre Thompson grant a five-bay, single-pile, two-story, centerpassage stone house with an open dogleg stair in the passage and a paneled fireplace wall in the hall with matching compass-arched presses (see portfolio). No inhabited early Kentucky stone house has survived as built. Some families simply added amenities to the basic house; some added rooms for growing and extended families; and others updated their houses as fashions changed over the years.

When the floor plan of the Richard Young house was reconfigured, the main entrance on the east facade was converted into a window. The addition of another entire house on the gable end of the William Garrett house converted the original house to an ell. The porch and chimney of the stone house are visible on the right.

house descriptions [ 31

chapter 3

stone house construction with very few exceptions, the owners of stone houses in Kentucky were not the carpenters and masons who built them. Landowners hired local and itinerant building contractors, although little is documented about these craftsmen and about the process of house construction. This chapter presents a collection of information that provides clues to this story.

builders and contracts No single stonemason stands out among the hundreds of masons at work between 1780 and 1830 in Kentucky. Some of the better-known builders of the period were Oliver Brown, William Chenoweth, Lewis Craig, John Crow, William Crow, Jesse Graddy, Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County, Patrick McGee Jr., John Metcalf, Thomas Metcalf, Peter Paul, David Sawyer, and James Wilson. Only four of these—Chenoweth, Kennedy, Sawyer, and Wilson—are known to have built and lived in their own houses. Oliver Brown came to Kentucky with his two brothers from County Londonderry, northern Ireland, in 1807. He was a cousin of Kentucky senator John Brown, for whom he built the [ 33

Dentil work distinguishes this cornice on the William Garrett house, built by masonry contractor Oliver Brown.

stone house at Sumner’s Forest. He also built the stone house of William and Elizabeth Garrett, whose daughter Nancy became his wife. Brown’s work is characterized by tightly shaped voussoirs and decorated cornices (see figure above). At first Brown resided in Frankfort, where he constructed an early building for the state legislature and worked on the first state capitol. For these services he received in payment 300 acres of land on the outskirts of Versailles, Kentucky, where he came to reside in 1814 (Railey 1968, 194). John and Thomas Metcalf are the best known of early Kentucky stone building contractors. The Metcalf family originated in Scotland and relocated in Yorkshire, England, then in Enniskillen, northern Ireland, and emigrated from there to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1730. John and Thomas Metcalf were born in Fauquier County, Virginia, sons of John Metcalf, a captain in the Revolutionary War. John Metcalf Jr. graduated from Cambridge University; he was a surveyor and became a very success34 [ early stone houses of kentucky

ful building contractor, responsible for the finest stone houses in Kentucky, including the James McKee house in Millersburg (see portfolio). Thomas Metcalf worked for his older half-brother John and also became a renowned stonemason. Fame, time, and tradition have blurred the distinction between the work of the two brothers. Folk myth further confuses the question by attributing to the younger brother, Governor Thomas “Stonehammer” Metcalf, almost all the stone houses in the Bluegrass, a number far too large for a single stonemason to have built.1 Metcalf work is distinguished by fine ashlar, distinctively shaped voussoirs, square mortar joints, and classical trim (see figures, facing page). Unfortunately, neither brother’s business records have survived. According to the census records, John Metcalf owned sixty-four slaves in 1811; tradition is that they assisted him in quarrying and hauling stone, but nothing is recorded about their possible masonry skills. Ulster-descended Peter Paul came to Kentucky from Monongahela County, Pennsylvania. After a sojourn to London with his father, he contracted to build stone houses for wealthy Bluegrass landowners such as Charles Grimes, employing a crew of thirty Irish stonemasons assisted by Paul’s three slaves. Blind windows in the gable ends of the Grimes house reflect his awareness of the Georgian style (see figures, p. 36). Crews often learned the craft of stonemasonry through apprenticeships, and county court records contain the names of hundreds of stonemasons and their apprentices.2 How the stonemasonry craft operated must be induced from scraps of information. Surviving contracts tell part of this story. In 1802, Robert Guyn Jr. contracted with Thomas Hogan to build the stone house on Guyn’s Clear Creek property (see portfolio).3 The full text of the Guyn-Hogan contract follows.

Above left: Dentils and modillions decorate the cornice on the James McKee house, built by John Metcalf. Above: Distinctive tooling on this keystone is considered the signature of John Metcalf, although it may be the work of an unnamed voussoir carver who worked for him. Left: Thomas Metcalf’s superb masonry was exhibited in the wing of the Henry Thompson Sr. house, laid in regular courses (“ranged”) partly in a Flemish bond pattern. Weathering has removed the pointing mortar in the wall.

[ 35

Blind windows in the gable end of the Charles Grimes house, built by Peter Paul, illustrate the Georgian design ideas brought by Paul from London. These spaces are filled with closed false shutters (left) and stone (right).

Artickles of agreement made and concluded between Robert Guien Jun’ of the one Part and Thomas Hogan Stone Mason of the Other Part and Both Parties of the County of Woodford and State of Kentucky— Witnesseth that the said Thomas Hogan is to Build a stone house for the said Robert Guien Jun’. of the following Demsions (Viz) The House To be Twenty Nine feet Long and Twenty one feet in Width one Storrey of 36 [ early stone houses of kentucky

Which is to be Chiefly under the Ground and the Wall to Thirty Inches in thickness and of Convenient highth the first Storrey a Bove the Ground to be Twenty Nine feet long By Twenty one feet in Width and the wall to be Twenty four Inches in thickness and of Convenient hight and the Second Storry a bove Ground to be of the same Deminsions and the Wall to be Eighteen Inches in thickness and of Convenient highth with Chim-

neys at each end of the House with Two fire Places in each Chimney one of which is to be Carried from the Bottom of the Cellar and all of the fireplaces to be of Convenient Size or Bigness and that the said Thomas Hogan Shall Do of the Said Work in a Compleat and Workman Like Manner the work to be what is Called Mixt-work and the Said Robert Guien obliges himself to furnish Said Hogan with proper materials and attendance for Carrying on Said Work and to pay him at the Rate of Two Shillings and Six pence per pearch for Said Work to be paid in Trade and to be Valued at Cash price and the Work To be Compleated and finished off in the Course of the ensuing Summer Season, and for the True performance of every of the above artickles and agreements each of the Parties Binds themselves to the other in the Sum of Two hundred Dollars In Witness whereof We have hereunto enterchangeably Set our hands and Seals this Eleventh Day of September one Thousand Eight Hundred and Two—

Testers W. A. Cunningham Robert Black

Robert Guyn (L.S.) Thomas Ogan (L.S.)

Like thousands of documents used for traditional buildings in centuries past, the Guyn-Hogan contract was based on the assumption that both parties understood more than the contract itself stated. It shows a great deal of trust in the expectations of both parties. The contract does not specify items that were taken for granted, nor does it itemize what was to be delegated to other builders, nor does it specify details that were to be decided as the building progressed. The two parties did not need to specify those things a present-day reader needs to envision the house, such as Who will do the carpentry, joinery, plastering, mortaring, and painting? How many windows

and doors will the house have? Where are the stairs to be? How tall is “convenient”? Will there be a porch at the front door, which is several feet off the ground? What merchandise or produce will be “paid in trade”?4 Robert Guyn Jr.’s agreement to supply Thomas Hogan with the stone for the house may have been customary. In 1805, Samuel Turner engaged independent quarrier Benjamin Penn to supply stone: Said Pen doth oblidge and bind himself to quarry good stone that is such as shall be so esteemed by workmen sufficient to build a house of such size as Mr. Turner may chuse as soon as three hands constantly employed can do it, . . . which stone are to be put in such a place as a waggon can readily come at them and hawl a full load & for every perch of solid stone wall including windows, doors, & c that may be built of said stone he is to receive two shillings to be paid in two rifels of 24 dollors each & the ballance in cash as soon as the house is built. (Todd Family Papers, reel 994060, pt. 20)

Turner was to pay only for the amount of stone actually put into the walls; there was no consideration for stone that was delivered but unusable or for stone broken or ruined by the masons. In great contrast to the simple contract between Guyn and Hogan, the 1805 contracts written by Dr. Andrew Todd of Bourbon County are quite detailed, providing specific instructions to his mason, carpenter, and farm manager.5 The house Todd designed and commissioned was an impressive center-passage stone house in the newest fashion, two stories tall and five bays wide, with a full cellar (now gone). This was one of only four known center-passage stone houses built by first-generation Ulster families in Kentucky. As he made his plans, on March 12, 1796, Todd wrote his kinsman John McCulloh house construction [ 37

Andrew Todd drew this plan for his carpenter. The front of the house is at the top of the drawing.

in Maryland, reporting that “building is very high in this place, stone work at 10 per perch, the workmen funding themselves and providing all the materials and help” (McCulloch Family Papers, reel M5033, 97). Nevertheless, Todd went forward with his building plans. The annotated drawing Todd included in his agreement with his carpenter, Samuel Patterson, provides a clear picture of the mansion house he envisioned. He specified that a space of 4 feet 1 inch is to be allowed for each 24-light window [12 over 12] in the front [5 bays] on the first and second story. The front door to be 4 feet 1 inch wide also. He is to leave space for a 15-light window at a proper height in the backside of the house at the turn of the stairs in the passage. The door and other windows in the back of the house 24 lights and spaces as marked in the plan, and two 20-light windows in the back of the large room 2nd story. . . . The spaces between the window and door frames to be 4 feet 9 inches and 4 feet 9 and 1/b inches at the corner spaces

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Dotted lines drawn in the smaller side of the house divide the side into two rooms, front and back, with corner fireplaces sharing the gable-end chimney. This could have been an alternative idea for the first floor or Todd’s plan for the second floor. Anticipating expansion with an ell on the rear of the house (another departure from Ulster tradition), Todd stipulated that “a space of 3 feet 5 inches for a door hereafter, but into which a frame for a 15 light window is to be put at present, is to be left in the center of the back wall of the small room.” Looking ahead to light this room when the ell blocked the back window, he also asked for “a space of 3 feet 5 inches to be left in the [gable] end of the smallest room for an 15 light window hereafter but in which no frame is to be placed at present, but the space filled up with stone for the present. This space is to be equally distant from the jam of the chimney and the inside of the back wall” (Todd Family Papers, reel 994060, pt. 29). Todd also arranged to pay the tenant on his plantation, John W. Gains, to engage and board laborers to quarry good building stone from the farm and attend the masons. The workmen were evidently to assist Thomas Gibson, whom Todd paid for “quarrying 380 perch of stone at 1/3 per perch for 23/15/0.” Todd also paid James Robinson for boarding masons in May and June as well as after the harvest and for boarding hands while pointing the house in 1806–1807. Todd’s records indicate that he may have engaged the craftsman who pointed the exterior masonry walls to plaster the interior walls as well. Todd credited Gains for “attending on Mr. Leity while pointing 6 days 0/15/0, plus putting lime into the Sellar, sons hawling water, to getting logs for the lime kiln, and to boarding 3 plasterers for 2 weeks” (Todd Family Papers, reel 994060, pt. 22). Todd’s contract with his carpenter specified “door frames and window frames from 24 lights [12 over 12] to

15 lights [9 over 6] in size with a single architrave and a space for weights and pullies to run in at 12/ each.” The front door frame was to be 4 feet 1 inch wide and high enough to receive four panes above the door, and the top of the door frame was to range with the top of the window frames, “making shingles to average 4 inches 17/ per 1000. To making sash six pence per light, making doors 2/ per panel. Making batten doors 4/ each. Flooring, plained one side, tounged and grooved running joint 12/ broke joint 15/ per square. . . . Plain cornish with O.G. [ogee molding] and bedmould 1/[?] in length. . . . Open newel stair case, hand rail, and banisters at L6/[?] per storey. Blocks to work in the wall, setting door frames and window frames included” (Todd Family Papers, reel 994060, pt. 29). Patterson agreed to haul materials to the site for a “reasonable price” and to procure nails and other hardware from Lexington or wherever he thought best. The contract includes nothing about the joiner. Todd was to pay half Patterson’s price in cash in two payments: the first when the house was shingled and the second when the work was finished. The second payment was to be in plantation produce when the tenant paid his share, to be delivered on the plantation at market price. In Nelson County in 1786, Captain John Cape (sometimes indistinguishable from “Cope” in handwritten documents) built a stone house in Bardstown for Israel Dodge, who supplied some of the materials and contracted with the other needed “mechanics.”6 One of these mechanics was Christopher Kauffman, house joiner and carpenter, who agreed to send to one or two or more gentlemen Mechanics in the Town of Carlisle in Pennsylvania, who are to fix the prices of such work done in that place, and in that currency—that the prices so fixed shall be reduced to Virginia Currency. And an addition of fifty per centum

made to them which shall be the price. In consideration of which the said Dodge Promises and obliges himself to pay the said Kauffman agreeable to such Prices and in the following manner . . . Two thirds of the whole amount to be paid in land at 25 pounds per hundred acres with an “indisputable Estate of inheritance, by a Deed in fee simple to the said Land,” and the remaining third to be paid in produce—beef, pork, merchandise and so on at the current cash prices. (Nelson County Loose Paper Records).

That construction costs in Bardstown, Kentucky, were half again as much as in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, adds another factor to the cost of living in early Kentucky.7 Methods of payment and prices for construction work varied. John Cape also contracted to build the first Nelson County courthouse in 1787, payment for which was to be made in the following manner: One hundred pounds to be paid at the seting, of the first frame, three fourths of said sum in cash, the other one fourth in furs, two hundred pounds in any merchantable county produce, on the fifteenth day of January next; also one hundred fifty pounds of the last payment will be received in live stock if paid by the first of April next, The different articles of produce in discharging the above payments are to be at the following prices Viz: Buffalo 2d.pr.lb. pork at 20/ pr.lb. Bacon at [?] pr.lb. butter and cheese at 6d.pr.lb. good wheat weighing fifty eight pounds per bushel at 4/6 corn at 1/6 pr. bushel, rye at 4/pr. bushel, good beverage at 6/ pr. pound. Racoon & fox fir at 1/6 each[?], barley at 4/. (Nelson County Order Book 1)

In some cases, the contractor engaged the craftsmen for specific tasks. Maddox Fisher contracted to build a brick house construction [ 39

house for Henry Clay in 1801.8 For the stone foundation, Fisher agreed to “purchase the stone & have the same laid by a skilful mason, in like manner furnishing the lime & all attendance at the price of 11 / 3 per perch.” Clay’s account with John Fisher in 1813 included the item “furnishing and Laying 24 purch Stone at your farm in foundation of wing at $2 pr purch—$48.00” (Hopkins 1959, 51, 792, 824). Additional masonry terms and a foundation depth appear in the contract for the Green County Courthouse, built by Waller Bullock, contractor, and Robert and Frederick Ball, stonemasons. The specifications state that three sides of the courthouse were to be laid in “straight regular courses” and the other side was to be “good common work.”9 The work was to be “sunk in the ground at least two feet in every part.” Door and window frames were to be a single architrave made out of solid timber, tongue-and-groove floors of ash at least 11/b inches thick, nailed down, with baseboards in every part of the courthouse (Green County Deed Book 4, November 29, 1803). From such documents as these, a sketchy picture of the building business in early Kentucky emerges: The owner may have contracted only with the builder, who subcontracted out part of the work, or he may have engaged all the individual craftsmen himself. The owner may have furnished all the material, or he may have paid the contractor to procure it. The owner paid the builders in a variety of ways: produce, livestock, land, merchandise, or cash.

stonework Explorers and surveyors did not realize at first that excellent building stone lay several feet below the rich Bluegrass topsoil. The first Kentucky governor, Welshdescended Isaac Shelby, supervised construction of his stone house in Lincoln County in 1786. His house was 40 [ early stone houses of kentucky

greatly admired, a source of conversation and wonder. The governor’s guests were surprised to find a stone house in Kentucky, and when they asked where he obtained the stone, he wryly replied that it was quarried in Virginia (of which Kentucky was at the time a part, but the joshing governor did not remind his listener of that detail). That good building stone lay under the deep topsoil was soon recognized as another asset to Bluegrass landowners when stonemasons and quarrymen probed and extracted stone from steeper hillsides and creek banks with which to build the houses described here. Central Kentucky is underlain by Ordovician limestone. The most prevalent stone color is the blue-gray Lexington limestone; most of the houses in the portfolio are built of various strata of Lexington limestone. Near the Kentucky River, gorges have exposed the oldest freestone in the state, geologically termed Oregon limestone and commonly known as Kentucky River marble. It is a golden color and is used for contrasting voussoirs in houses near the Kentucky River. Tyrone limestone is extracted from the layers above the Oregon. It is identified by glasslike edges and sparkling fossils, which earned it the name bird’s-eye limestone. When quarried it is a taupe color that weathers to pure white. The Old State House in Frankfort is built of Tyrone limestone with Oregon limestone columns. The walls of the Robert Guyn Jr. and Jonathan McMurtry houses in the portfolio are of Tyrone limestone. In the Knobs Region of the state, stonemasons quarried goldencolored laurel dolomite (a type of limestone sometimes mistakenly described as sandstone) for houses in the outer Bluegrass. Laurel dolomite lies in thick layers that provide stone for buildings with large ashlar courses, such as the Peter Brown house in the portfolio. (For more information on central Kentucky landforms and rock types, see Murray-Wooley and Raitz 1992, chapter 1.) Quarries were dug as close to the building site as pos-

sible and preferably uphill from the site for easier hauling, as Kentucky limestone weighs 170 pounds per cubic foot. “Stone boats” pulled by mules or horses slid the stone to the building site. (Abandoned quarries, which dot the landscape throughout the Bluegrass Region, often became stock watering ponds when quarriers struck underground water ledges that filled their working pits.) Quarriers extracted the stone using shims and wedges, locally called feathers and plugs. They drove the metal wedges sequentially into a row of drilled holes until the pressure broke off the stone block. Another method incorporated wooden wedges that the quarriers soaked with water after driving them into drilled holes, causing the stone to split along the drilled line as the wood expanded. In freezing weather, water-soaked wooden wedges expanded as they froze, breaking the block. When quarried, the limestone is “green,” and its moisture content allows the mason to work it with hammer and chisel into the desired shape without cracking the stone. Stone houses were never built from fieldstone, which, having been exposed to the weather, is “rotten” and cannot be shaped without cracking. Masonry coursing in Kentucky ranges from random to ashlar, with all qualities in between. For a rough rubble wall, masons used the more or less rectangular stones as they came from the quarry. For walls of coursed rubble or squared stone, they first worked the quarried stones into more regular rectangular forms using compasses, straight edges, and experienced eyes to lay out the edges, then hammers, chisels, mallets, and points to square off the stones. On houses of exceptional quality, the mason used a bush hammer, a tooth chisel, or both to provide a fine finish to the faces of the exposed stones and coursed them in a Flemish bond pattern. [

Terminology for masonry patterns differs over time and place, even from county to county. Local historical mentions of masonry patterns include the following:

Stone required shaping when it was to be laid in regular courses. This masonry shows typical tooling marks made with a chisel. Most of the original mortar is gone, and some seams have been smeared with concrete mix.

Coursed rubble—stone of varying sizes, laid in courses, possibly the same as “mixed work” or “good common work.” Mixt [mixed] work—specified in the contract for the Guyn house. Good common work—specified for the rear of the Green County Courthouse. Straight regular courses—similar to “ranged work” and “broken ashlar”; specified for the front and sides of the Green County Courthouse. house construction [ 41

Ranged work—course heights vary, but all stones are squared and are of the same height within each course, as at the Green County Courthouse; specified for the Old State House (Kentucky Gazette, January 19, 1793); also known as “broken ashlar.” Ashlar—dressed stone in courses of similar heights, showing “feather pointing.” Sawn ashlar—tightly fitting, laid in courses of equal heights; used for the walls of the Old State House in Frankfort.

Masons lavished their best work on the house fronts.10 Often, the front facade has carefully tooled regular courses while the sides and back are irregular. Some houses now have different orientations than they did originally, since facing directions changed as watercourses diminished in importance and new roads were built. When the facades are identical in fenestration, it is sometimes possible to determine which facade was the original front by its higher-quality masonry. Most stone houses’ windows have flat (jack) arches, with the diagonal sides of the voussoirs either radiating like a fan or parallel to each other. Voussoirs may have uniform parallel angles or splayed or radiating angles and may have skewbacks. Voussoirs and keystone may be all of the same height, or the keystone may be taller than the voussoirs. Only two stone houses in this period had segmental-arched (compass) lintels above the windows and doors. Both were built for families from Pennsylvania: one for James Lindsay in 1785–1786 (see portfolio), the other for Thomas Kennedy in Covington, now demolished. Of all the Ulster Kentucky houses, only one, the house of William McBrayer, has coursing This exceptional stonework has a broached finish and was laid in regular courses in a Flemish bond pattern.

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Coursed rubble is the most common stone masonry pattern in Kentucky, what early masons referred to as mixed work. Most of the mortar pointing in this wall has weathered away. In mixed work, the coursing is of varying sizes, laid in broken courses of irregular heights.

[ 43

44 [

Facing page, left: Ranged work, also called good common work or broken ashlar, is laid in straight courses of varying heights. The stone here has been damaged by repointing with hard concrete mortar. Facing page, right: Only a few Kentucky houses were built in ashlar. This one has courses of similar height laid in straight rows in a Flemish bond pattern. Above: The feather pointing detail of this tooling pattern may be compared with that depicted on page 35. Above right: Masons used mechanically sawn Tyrone limestone at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill and the Old State House in Frankfort, but sawn ashlar work is not known on individual houses.

[ 45

Seen from the corner of the house, the masonry on the front facade is clearly of higher quality than that on the gable end.

that continues across the window heads without voussoirs, and only two houses, David Sawyer’s and James McGready’s, have lintels of single stones spanning the openings; these are scored to resemble voussoirs (see figures, p. 48). No houses have timber lintels on the outside walls, although large timber lintels span the openings and support the upper courses on the weatherprotected inside walls, which are covered with plaster.

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Chimney stacks usually protrude into the body of the house, leaving flush gable-end walls without exterior projections. Some houses have an inside chimney on one gable end and an outside chimney on the other. Occasionally a chimney on one end of a house projects only three or four inches. An exterior chimney has a shoulder with a drip edge on the front and rear of the chimney at attic floor height, but the shoulder does not extend around the outer chimney face. Chimney tops typically have a projecting course second from the top, with the top course indented inward all around. Gutters for water runoff are 2-foot-wide paving stones next to the house at ground level, sloping downward away from the house. A few houses possess original date and initial stones, but they are not easy to find. A skewback at the eave of David Sawyer’s house bears the inscription “D, C, S, 1814.” Colonel John Smith had “1807” carved in the keystone over his front door. Illegible initials and “1818” are carved in the gable end of the Ben Moran house. Plaster in the cellar of Richard Young’s house is inscribed “1796.” Nathan Huston’s initials are weathered and difficult to see unless the light is just right (see portfolio). If there is no inscription, the period of construction can sometimes be deduced by a sharp jump in property value between deeds. Masonry in early Kentucky buildings is dry-laid, meaning that the walls are built without mortar. The mortar (pointing) applied to the joints is not structural, nor was the mud that filled the voids between the course stones. Drystone walls are double faced, laid up in both inner and outer coursed layers that are interwoven and connected with regularly spaced tie (through) stones every 4 feet or less. The voids between the wall faces are packed with smaller stones and remaining crevices filled with mud or a combination of mud and straw or animal hair for insulation, but this filling does not provide structural support.

Parallel voussoirs. These voussoirs, shaped as parallelograms laid to mirror each other on opposite sides of the keystone, are the work of John Metcalf. Parallel voussoirs with skewbacks. Large stones with an oblique angle support the parallel voussoirs in James Wilson’s work.

[ 47

Above: Splayed voussoirs with skewbacks. Voussoirs with increasingly obtuse angles from the keystone create a sunburst effect in this masonry by David Devore. Above and below right: David Sawyer used large dolomite slabs for the lintels above the doors and windows of his house and scored them to resemble parallel voussoirs.

When the stonework was fully complete and dry, the mason or the plasterer came back and pointed the joints with lime mortar to keep out water. Whether or not stone houses have a footing is open to question; footings were not mentioned in contracts and are not open to view. At one Kentucky stone house in Nicholas County, however, when a bulldozer lowered the grade in the backyard, it exposed a 4-inch foundation projection, and erosion has exposed another in Garrard County. At another stone house undergoing restoration in Bourbon County, digging a drainage trench around the wing exposed a 2-foot-deep foundation 2 to 3 inches wider than the wall it supported.11 Moreover, projecting

48 [ early stone houses of kentucky

footings exist, one course tall, at the bottoms of Kentucky rock fences (Murray-Wooley and Raitz 1992, 26, 63). With or without a projecting footing, house foundations extend 1 or 2 feet into the ground. Specifications for the 1793 Woodford County Courthouse called for the foundation

to be 2 feet in the ground, the same as the Green County Courthouse of 1803, with no mention of a footing in either case.12 Walls of each story of a house—cellar, first, and second—are successively less thick, stepping in a few inches on the inside of the stone walls at each floor. Thus cellar walls are about 30 inches thick, first floor walls are usually 22 to 24 inches, and second floor walls are usually 18 to 22 inches. A house that has a water table may have it only on the front, on both front and back, or all around the house. Strangely, there is no standard water table height, but most are at the first-floor level, a few inches above the cellar entrance.

Since stone wall cavities were filled with mud, house walls were sealed with lime mortar to prevent rain from seeping into the wall cavity and softening the fill. Highly reactive quicklime causes clay particles to gel, forming a hard surface that resists further absorption. Lime, the essential ingredient in historical mortar, was far easier to obtain in Kentucky, where it was readily produced from burned limestone, than it was in the Tidewater, where it was made by burning seashells. In 1797, lime sold for nine pence per bushel in Lexington (Kentucky Gazette, July 12, 1797). Evidence of lime production lies in today’s Kentucky road names, such as Lime Kiln Fork, Lime Kiln Hill, Lime Kiln Ridge, Lime Kiln Road, and Limekiln Hollow

Left: Chimney tops typically have a projecting row of stones one course from the top. The top row is indented from the plane of the chimney sides. A projecting water table at the roofline directs water away from the chimney stack. Above: The date stone on the James Bogie house, once centered in the wall above the front door, was inscribed “JB, OCT 18, 1811.” The stone has since been removed.

house construction [ 49

Because the ruins of this wall interior have been exposed to the weather for many years, the soft filling between the inner and outer faces has washed out. No tie stones are visible, but they appear elsewhere in this and most stone masonry walls.

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(Field 1961, 144). Portland cement should not be used in authentic repointing of dry-laid walls because it makes the mortar too hard and causes the stones to crack in freezing temperatures. Mortar did not contain Portland cement until after 1870, when it was used for mortared walls of stone veneer. Most burned and powdered lime for early mortar and plaster was made near the site. A small lime kiln remains in the barnyard of a stone house in Woodford County, built into a hillside. The kiln is domed, in the shape of a beehive. It measures 13 feet 9 inches across at the base, the widest point. At the lowest point in the base is a small arched opening 1 foot 3 inches tall. The kiln is 9 feet in diameter at the top and has an opening 5 feet across in the center that can be reached from the back of the kiln (uphill). Layers of limestone rock and wood fuel, preferably hot-burning hickory, were thrown into the chamber from above, and the fire was kindled from the opening at the base. The resulting product, lime powder, or lime dust, is the primary ingredient in lime mortar and lime plaster.13 Only two primary original mortar shapes—ribbon and ridge—exist on historic stone houses in Kentucky. Ridge pointing, also referred to as prism and bevel pointing, is locally called steeple pointing because of its raised, pointed shape. Ridge pointing is the most common shape on Kentucky houses, appearing on the sides and back of ashlar-fronted houses, and is usual on all walls of rubble masonry. Ribbon pointing, locally called square pointing, appears on ashlar and ranged masonry and is found on the more important buildings, usually only on the front. Both ridge and ribbon pointing provide a drip edge that directs water away from the stone face. The craftsman who came back to point the exterior walls may also have applied the interior plaster. Both the pointing and the plastering were done after the house had been finished for a few months

Left: A small lime kiln in the side yard of a stone house is nearly overgrown with vines and is long unused. The arched opening for rekindling the fire is visible at the kiln base. Below left: Square pointing was often applied to the joints on the front of the house only, as it is time consuming and costly. Below: Ridge pointing cracks as it weathers, requiring periodic repointing. This is Tyrone limestone.

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carpentry work

Exposed lookout. The short length of joist material is flush with the stone of the exterior gable end. Disrepair, with part of the fascia missing, exposes the ends of the attic floor joists.

to allow time for the base coat to dry and the house to “settle” (see Andrew Todd’s contract with John W. Gains, pp. 38–39). Because whitewash and stucco (rendering) became common in Ulster only after the primary exodus of emigrants to America, it was not a custom carried to Kentucky; rendered walls were virtually unknown here. Field records note that fourteen stone houses show evidence of having been stuccoed or whitewashed at some time. Only three of these had Ulster Kentucky owners, and the stucco was not original on any of the three.

52 [ early stone houses of kentucky

Although houses of Ulstermen in Kentucky demonstrate continued cultural traditions in floor plan preference, the construction details of their stone houses are similar to those of other national groups’ stone houses and to those in surrounding states.14 Structural and carpentry practices (as opposed to plan preferences) reflect the customs and abilities of craftsmen-builders of the day as well as the available tools and materials. Because many owners employed the same building contractors, construction techniques and woodwork profiles are similar in houses of all national groups within the same time period, and cultural identification via woodwork is impossible. The roofs of Ulster Kentucky houses, without exception, are gabled and have a slope of about 35 to 38 degrees. There is minimal projection at the eaves and none on the gable ends. Wall plates that partially cover the stone wall tops form a level base on which the attic floor joists rest. The rafters are either half lapped or mortised at the roof ridge and pegged together without a ridge beam. They are strengthened to prevent sagging in two ways. The more common practice is to use dovetailed collar ties between the rafter pairs to unite them into a triangular truss. The other method is to install short, upright studs (ashlars) between the sloping rafters and the attic floor joists, forming a knee wall. Temporary diagonal scantling stabilized the trusses until the builder secured them permanently with sheathing or roofing lathes. The rafter bottoms have a toe-joint notch (termed “bird’s-mouth” in Ulster) that fits over the inside edge of the plate located on top of the joists at the eave. The attic floor joists are cantilevered past the wall plate and are the framing members of the cornice. At the house corners, a short length of joist material (“lookout” or “return”) is built into the stone wall, either within the wall or flush

with the exterior gable end. These lookouts support the fly rafter upon which the roof sheeting is fastened at the gable end. The vertical fascia board covers the fly rafter at the lower end of the rake and the ends of the protruding joists. Ulster Kentucky cornices do not wrap around the ends of the house, as English and German-Kentucky houses’ cornices sometimes do, but are returned on the front and

Clockwise: Typical cornice return. The vertical fascia covers the ends of the protruding attic joists; the horizontal soffit covers the underside of the protruding joists; the crown molding covers the joint between the fascia and the roof sheathing and shingles; and the bed molding covers the joint between the soffit and the stone wall. The cornice does not wrap around the end but is “returned” on the front of the house. Cornice diagram. Dentil molding below the bed molding decorates this ornate cornice. The gable end has a flared rake.

house construction [ 53

In this typical window sill, the sill itself and the trim are all one piece, and the vertical window frame rests on the sill.

back facades. The fascia covering the exposed ends of the attic joists has a soffit on the underside. Bed molding covers the joint at the bottom of the soffit. On the gable ends, the rake is a single beaded board tapered toward the chimney, covering the ends of the roofing lathes or sheathing (“sheeting”). The gable rake may end in a curve to widen it out at the bottom and cover the end of the top plate. Roofing was split shakes or hand-cut shingles, attached to the roofing lathes with small pegs. The best wooden shingles had rounded corners that resist curling. No original wooden shingles remain; over the years, most wooden roofing has been replaced with newer roofing material or covered with metal or asphalt. The window sash are usually nine over six on the first 54 [ early stone houses of kentucky

floor and six over six on the second. These in some cases are replacements for older sash that had twelve and eight panes. Window glass and nails were brought by special order overland from Philadelphia and then downriver to Limestone, Kentucky, until 1792, when the firm of Elliot and Williams in Lexington announced the arrival of a shipment of window glass in 8 × 10 inch size. Window sills are wooden, with a nosed sill and concave trim all of a single piece, the sill sloping downward for water drainage. Frames are pegged at the corners and finished with a beaded edge and ovolo molding until about 1815–1820, after which time most houses have cyma moldings, a helpful dating tool. Heavy shutters protect the windows during inclement weather; these are strengthened with

Left: Closed shutters are reinforced on the outside with strong diagonal batten strips. Right: Open shutters have three exposed panels each. These shutters retain the original wrought iron hardware: hinges, bars, pins, and hasps.

diagonal battens on the outside (closed) and display three panels per shutter when open. In some cases, the window trim is carved from the same piece of timber as the window frame; in other cases, the trim is applied. Rectangular cellar windows usually, but not always, are aligned under the first-floor windows and also have pegged and beaded frames. They are protected by a row of square wooden bars set diagonally in the frames. Cellar windows do not have glass panes.

Exterior doors have six, eight, or nine panels and are reinforced on the inside with beaded boards set diagonally or in a chevron pattern. Most doors had full-width wrought iron strap hinges, although very few of these remain. Doorsills are wood or stone, the highest quality of stone having a nosing continuing around the ends of the tread and vertical tooling on the riser. Above the doorways, the tops of rectangular transoms align horizontally with the tops of the windows. All these details are typical house construction [ 55

Here, horizontal cellar window bars are divided by a mullion. This flat arch is a good example of splayed voussoirs without a taller keystone in the center. Cellar window bars, whether vertical or horizontal, are set diagonally into the window frame.

56 [

Above left: Six-panel exterior door. Above right: Diagonal battens and strap hinges on the inside of the paneled door.

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of all national groups’ Kentucky stone houses during this period. Stone house framing is also fairly standard. Stone walls step in a few inches on the inside of the walls at each floor level, providing a ledge on which the notched floor joists rest. Floor joists run front to back of the house. First-floor joists (the ceiling joists of the cellar) are whole logs flattened with an adze on the top to make a level surface for the flooring. In larger houses, either transverse summer beams support the longer joists that rest on them, or the joists are paired and mortised into the summer beam. Second-floor joists are pit-sawn timbers. Attic-floor joists continue across the top of the house walls on top of the wall plate. Tongue-and-groove ash planking is typical flooring material on the first floor; poplar is usual for the second floor and attic, but occasionally pine was used. Floor boards laid with staggered joints indicate higher quality and cost than those installed with running joints. Room height varies within customary parameters. A common cellar height is 7 feet, although in some cellars, the floors have silted in by several feet, drastically reducing the cellar height. The distance from the first floor to the second-floor joists is 8 or 9 feet, occasionally more, and the height of the second-floor ceiling is usually 7 or 8 feet. In the earliest Ulster Kentucky houses, the ceilings were left open, and both the ceiling joists and the underside of the upstairs flooring have beaded edges. In later houses, the ceilings were finished with lathe and plaster, and some early houses received this treatment later on, as

From the cellar, looking upward, the first-floor joist is a whole log notched to rest on the indentation in the wall at the first-floor level (cellar ceiling). Atypically, the cellar walls in this house are plastered. The tongue-and-groove flooring rests directly on log floor joists flattened on the top to provide a level base for the flooring.

58 [ early stone houses of kentucky

This ruined house reveals the two coats of plaster on the stone wall. The horizontal line near the bottom of the picture shows that the chair rail was fastened to the wall before the plaster was applied. The chair rail left this line when it was removed.

dust sifting through the floorboards presented a housekeeping challenge. Woodwork—door and window trim, baseboards (“mopboards” or “washboards”), and chair railing—was installed before the walls were plastered. Masons built around wooden blocks in the stone walls that had been strategically placed for attaching the woodwork. Carpenters formed the chair rail and window apron from one continuous timber. In at least one case, the interior chair rail, its trim, the window apron, the interior windowsill, and the exterior sill and trim were all cut from a single timber, quite a carpentry feat. A restoration craftsman discovered an even greater surprise at Samuel McMillan’s

house in Harrison County, where the windowsills, chair rail, wainscot, and baseboard were a single piece of walnut, 16 feet long, cut from a tree more than 4 feet in diameter (Stanley Kelly, personal communication with the author, October 2004). “Joinery” is the skilled art of fitting together several pieces of wood so that they seem one entire piece. At McMillan’s, not only did they seem so, they really were. Good-quality woodwork was fairly similar throughout the Bluegrass Region in the better houses of all cultures. Moldings and joinery details depended on the skills and tools of the joiner, not necessarily the preferences of the owners, and often derived from pattern books. Trim house construction [ 59

Above left: A typical early mantel with plain corner blocks. Some mantels are plainer yet, being simple shelf mantels without corner blocks. Above right: Reeded, breakfront mantel.

60 [

applied to interior door and window surrounds, like exterior trim, was ovolo at first and cyma after about 1820. Interior doors, usually six-panel (“cross and bible”), have raised panels on one side and flat, recessed panels on the other side, or flat flush panels with beaded edges. The thick panels prevent warping. Architraves are usually single but, in more formal rooms, may be double. All the stone houses have chair railing and baseboards but no interior cornices, except on paneled fireplace walls (“fire walls”), and these cornices do not continue around the rest of the room. Door and window jambs may have reeded or plain raised panels or may be covered by a single board. Plasterers finished the interior stone walls in two or three coats. The undercoat included coarse sand and animal hair (claimed by old-timers to be buffalo hair). The plasterer pushed the undercoat into the crevices between the stones to key it to the wall. He then scored it in a diamond pattern and allowed it to dry before applying the smooth lime plaster topcoat. The partition wall between the hall and parlor was of half-lapped vertical planks—walnut, cherry, or poplar—beaded on the edges and finished with oil or whitewash. Other than the paneled fire wall, the partition wall is the only wall with a cornice covering the tops of the wall planks. The partition wall often has a peg rail—a beaded board with a row of turned pegs for hanging clothing and other articles—about 6 feet from the floor. Most late-eighteenth-century mantelpieces are simple—a shelf supported by crown molding, an unadorned Where flooring abuts the hearthstones, it is finished with a wooden trim piece, mitered at the corners. The hearth cradle of a second-floor fireplace is exposed in the ceiling of the parlor below. To support the weight of the hearth stones, extra framing members are installed between the floor joists.

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frieze, and ovolo trim around the architrave, standing directly on the hearth or on a plinth. More costly houses have breakfront mantels, gougework, and reeding. Tripartite stone hearths are the norm. Three large, flat stones—the center one wide enough to span the fireplace opening—were smoothed, squared, and banded. The mantel rests on the smaller hearthstones at each end. The hearth is bordered with a wooden trim piece running crosswise to the floorboards that abut it, and the ends of the trim piece are mitered into the adjoining floorboards at the sides of the hearth. The heavy hearthstones are supported by extra structural supports in the ceiling below. The fireplace opening is spanned by a segmental arch of shaped, tightly fitting voussoirs. Presses (cupboards) on one or both sides of the hall fireplace have paneled doors matching others in the room, although some late-eighteenth-century presses have classical features, including half-round architraves with fluted “keystones.” Nineteenth-century mantels include classical elements typical of Kentucky houses of the period: columns, pilasters, fluting, reeding, sunbursts, and dentils. Although the woodwork of Ulster Kentuckians’ houses is similar to that of other national groups’ houses of the period in Kentucky and elsewhere, there are three outstanding exceptions. The creative hand-carved woodwork of the James McKee, Peter Brown, and Josiah Crawford houses indicates that at least one skilled woodcarver traveled in early Kentucky. The fanciful mantel at the McKee house continues the expressive craftsmanship displayed

On the Crawford mantel, a meandering vine pattern surrounds the fireplace opening, and reeded urn shapes are carved in the frieze. Unique hand-carved stringboards in the Brown house may be the work of the same unknown craftsman who created the Crawford mantel, in the same county.

62 [ early stone houses of kentucky

at the front doorway, containing a “seven-pointed star on the center block, a candle on each end block, and swag between. A motif of three leaf-bearing branches in a narrow-waisted reeded vase is centered on the overmantel panel, which like the stone fireplace itself, is flanked by pilasters” (Lancaster 1991, 52). McKee’s woodcarver may have also worked at the Crawford house, where the mantel has a reeded vase motif in the center of the frieze and vine carving around the architrave. The Brown house,

where unusual gougework appears in the tread ends and mantels, may have benefited from the same woodcarver. The elaborate exterior decoration at the McMillan and McKee houses also was not typical for Ulster Kentucky stone houses. These two houses boast half-round transoms, paneled reveals, double architraves, modillions and dentils in the front cornices, and local interpretations of classical doorway surrounds. Before the John Scott house was demolished in 1987, its front porch, if original, appeared to be the only surviving gabled porch on an Ulster house, although the house of French descendant Joel DuPuy also has one, and there may have been others. Existing gabled porches are replacements, such as those at the William Garrett and

Left: Detail of the hand-carved woodwork of the McKee front doorway. Above: On houses with open stairs, the newel cap is typically square, formed by mitering together four trim pieces.

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Robert Boggs houses. David Sawyer’s house must also have had a gabled porch, but only the foundation remains as evidence. One-story, shed-roof porches were probably the norm on Ulster houses, and many still (or now) have them. Some that are now gone are shown in old photographs, such as those on the John McGee and John Logan houses (see portfolio). Although Ulster Kentucky houses traditionally have enclosed winding stairs, three of the houses—James McAfee’s, John Logan’s, and Samuel McMillan’s—have open stairs in the living hall along the partition wall. All three of these stairways rise from the front of the house, just opposite the front door. The Logan house has a single run and square balusters. The McAfee house has, and the McMillan house had, a dogleg stairway with turned balusters and a flat landing. McAfee’s has a closed stringer; McMillan’s had open treads and carved decoration on the tread ends. The John Long and Robert Boggs houses each

64 [ early stone houses of kentucky

have an open corner stairway in the hall, located in the corner beside the fireplace (see portfolio). Aside from a few exceptions, carpentry in the houses that appear in the portfolio follows the construction described above. The details of stone house framing and trim come from studying the houses themselves; the details are similar to those of stone houses in adjoining states of the same period. It is the consistent choices of material, plan, and additions that distinguish the houses of the Ulster Kentuckians from those of other national groups. Differences in masonry work reflect the properties of the stone on the site, the quality and cost of masonry requested by the owner, and the skill of the masons. The resulting stone houses are the combined product of place, time period, local material, available craftsmen, and owners’ preferences.

part ii

Portfolio this portfolio is a cross-section of stone house types built by Ulster Kentuckians between 1780 and 1830. (For descriptions of stone houses built by other national groups, see appendix 2.) Construction features common to all these houses are detailed in chapter 3; di¹erences in details and special features are noted in the following case studies. Some houses that are no longer extant (as indicated by the use of past-tense verbs) are included to show unusual features to help complete the picture of early Kentucky stone house types. The case studies in the portfolio are listed in alphabetical order by surname. Measured drawings show the houses’ overall similarities as well as their size variations. The plans and elevations in the case studies were drawn at a scale of 1/h inch to 1 foot, then inked freehand and reduced by 35 percent. When there is an original window somewhere in the house, sash of the same size are drawn in. When there is no indication of the original feature, the space is left blank. Dotted lines indicate a known change.

john allen figures p.1a–d. John Allen. Clockwise on spread: a. Allen elevation. b. Allen plan. c. Allen’s hall-parlor house has front doors into both the hall and the parlor. d. The Allen house’s once-separate kitchen (not shown) is now connected to the wing, center left. (1970)

66 [ john allen, ca. 1790

The stone house built for the John Allen family about 1790 is a two-story, three-bay, hall-parlor house with interior chimney stacks and, atypically, no cellar. The ceilings were originally exposed, with beaded ceiling joists. The enclosed corner stair rose from the front of the hall, with its space taken from the parlor, but the stair now rises from the parlor. It is built against the partition wall, which (uniquely) is a stud wall with mortared brick nogging that rises to the top of the second floor. A one-and-a-halfstory stone wing adjoins the west gable end of the house. Beyond the wing, the kitchen was once separate, with access to the house via a covered dogtrot, but it is now connected. The house is located on a rise facing a branch of Clear Creek, on which Allen built his mills. William Allen, grandfather of John, came from the north of Ireland to Augusta County, Virginia, where the family were members of Augusta Stone Church. William’s three sons were James, Hugh, and John. In 1765, Hugh

Allen married Jane Anderson; their children—John, William, and Hugh—were born in Augusta County. Hugh Allen Sr., a lieutenant in Colonel Charles Lewis’s regiment, was killed in 1774 in the Battle of Point Pleasant, the last battle of Lord Dunmore’s War. He is buried at the battle site beside Colonel Lewis in Mason County, West Virginia. Hugh Allen’s sons Hugh and John received land grants for their father’s French and Indian War service: 1,000 acres to John on Clear Creek and 1,000 acres to Hugh on Beargrass Creek, signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1780. John Allen was a Revolutionary soldier who enlisted in Fauquier County, Virginia. After the war, he moved to Kentucky to inhabit the 1,000-acre grant awarded to his father. The Allens were members of Pisgah Presbyterian Church, where John was an elder for many years. His income derived from the mills he built, owned, and operated on Clear Creek (Waddell 1888, 410; Sally Pulliam [owner] to author, March 1987).

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john bell figures p.2a–c. John Bell. Clockwise on spread: a. Bell elevation. b. Bell’s four-bay, hall-parlor house, with its twentieth-century porch. c. The kitchen ell on the Bell house (on the right rear) is unusual in that it is an integrated, original element.

68 [ john bell, ca. 1795

The two-story, four-bay stone house of John and Jane Bell has a hall-parlor plan and interior chimneys in the gable ends. The one-story ell on the rear was built at the same time as the house, which is unusual among the Ulster stone houses in Kentucky. Originally, the house had an enclosed corner stair adjacent to the front door, but the stair was relocated when the owners remodeled the interior. The house faces south and is located in a picturesque setting that includes a nineteenth-century deer park. The site also includes a two-story stone springhouse and granary, a brick smokehouse, board-and-batten frame slave quarters, and ruins of the barn. The Bell family, originally from Scotland, relocated in Ulster when the family was removed from the West Marshes in 1587. The king had issued proscriptions against the families MacGregor and Bell because they were considered “unruly clans.” Descendants William Bell, his wife, Mary Poage (Mary McGowin in other accounts), and their oldest sons left Newry, Ireland, between 1738 and 1740, moved to Virginia, and settled about 8 miles northeast of Staunton. They were staunch Presbyterians and founded the family locally known as the “Stone Church Bells” of Augusta County. William Bell was buried in the churchyard there in 1757.

William and Mary Bell’s second son, David, born in 1722 in Ulster, came with his parents to Augusta County. Shortly after his marriage to Florence Henderson in 1738, he purchased 400 acres in Beverly Manor on a branch of the Middle River in Augusta County adjoining the 200acre tract on Poage’s Run, the home place of his parents. He was captain of one of the militia companies of Augusta County and served in the French and Indian War in 1758. He furnished large quantities of cattle and provisions to the Virginia troops in the Revolutionary War. John Bell, son of David and Florence Bell, married Jane Mills, daughter of John Mills Sr., also a native of Ireland. John Bell came from Augusta County to Fayette County, Kentucky, about 1790, when he and his brother James inherited the military survey of 2,000 acres awarded their father for his service in the French and Indian War. John Bell farmed on a large scale, raising herds of hogs and cattle that he marketed in the southern states, chiefly in Virginia and South Carolina. The farm where the Bells reared their nine children was named Stoneleigh. Bell was a ruling elder in the Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church for many years (Bell n.d., 35, 41, 45, 92–93; Kentucky Gazette, 1801; MacKenzie 1907, 83, 84, 95; “Some Revolutionary War Soldiers” 2005, 104).

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robert boggs figures p.3a–e. Robert Boggs. Clockwise on spread: a. Boggs elevation. b. Boggs plan. c. The breakfront mantel in the Boggs hall has detailed gougework and reeded pilasters. d. Boggs house east facade, the original front. e. The Boggs house was built to face east but was reoriented when the present road was put in. This is the west facade, the original rear.

70 [ robert boggs, 1791–1792

In 1791, Robert and Sarah Boggs commissioned an Irish stonemason, David Devore, to quarry stone and build their stone house.1 The house is a cross-passage, hallparlor plan with an interior gable-end chimney in the parlor and an exterior chimney in the hall. The two rooms were divided by a board partition wall (now removed), and each room has an open winding stair in the rear corner. Window frames have double architraves, and the beaded ceiling joists are exposed. Window sash are nine over six on the first floor and six over six on the second; single-hung casement windows flank the chimneys in the attic. The stairway to the attic is located above the hall stair. There is a full cellar under the main house with vertical wooden bars on the windows. The separate kitchen was linked to the main house by a covered dogtrot that was enclosed about 1800 to create a dining room. An enclosed stair from the kitchen leads to a sleeping room above, lighted by dormer windows, which are uncommon in Kentucky. The house was built to face the valley but has been reoriented to face west, with a gabled entrance porch on the west side and a shed porch across the eastern side, now the rear. The octagonal family graveyard is to the east across the valley on a small hilltop, enclosed with a rock fence.

Robert Boggs, son of James Boggs, was born in 1712 in County Donegal, Ireland, and at age four was brought to Mill Creek Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, where he lived the rest of his life and died in 1804. His wife was Margaret Robinson, daughter of James Robinson, also of Mill Creek Hundred, all of whom were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The Boggses’ third son, Robert, was born in 1746 in Mill Creek Hundred. He lived in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in 1774 before he came to Kentucky as a chainman for Colonel John Floyd, deputy surveyor of Fincastle County, Virginia. He was one of the founders of Boonesborough and lived in the fort there while selecting lands on which to make claims. He returned east and served as captain under Major Evan Shelby on the Cherokee expedition in 1776 and was captain in Colonel Patterson’s battalion of Delaware militia, serving under Washington at Valley Forge in 1777–1778. After the war, Boggs married Sarah McCreary Huston, daughter of James Huston (kinsman of Nathan Huston, page 104), in Greenbrier County, now West Virginia, and they moved to Fort Harrod, Kentucky, to await adjudication of Boggs’s claims before the Virginia Land Commission, a total of 2,276 acres in Fayette, Clark, and Jessamine counties. In 1784, the Boggs family left the

fort and traveled to their land at Cave Spring, where they first camped in a skin-lined bark tent and then built a log house, where they lived until their stone house was complete in 1792. They brought in cattle, swine, horses, chickens, and sheep, and in time their plantation became self-sufficient, having a blacksmith, carpenter, leather shop, hemp house–granary, large smokehouse, icehouse, ropewalk, and the usual barns and stables (see chapter 2). The largest cash “crop” was mules; the second-largest was hemp. In time, inhabitants of the plantation included more than forty slaves. The Boggs family were founding members of Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church, built on land they helped purchase. Robert Boggs died in 1827, at age eighty-one, in Fayette County, Kentucky (Cassidy 1985, 414–52; FamilySearch.org, ancestral file v4.19).

robert boggs, 1791–1792 [ 71

james branham figures p.4a–d. James Branham. Clockwise on spread: a. Branham elevation. b. Branham plan. c. Branham’s house faces north, toward Elkhorn Creek. The abutting (but not connecting) kitchen is on the right. The two-story porch was added in the mid-nineteenth century. d. Branham house, rear. The back porch of the kitchen on the left (now enclosed) provided the only access to the dining room. The frame ell on the rear was added in the mid-1800s.

72 [ james branham, ca. 1795

James Branham’s stone house has two stories and three bays with a hall-parlor plan, interior gable-end chimneys, a front door more than 4 feet wide, and a full cellar. It has pegged window frames with ovolo trim. The enclosed winding stair rises from the front of the house, with space for the stair taken from the west room. Atypically, the house faces north, toward the large, navigable creek that borders the front yard (see plate 1). The kitchen abuts the west end of the house and has an exterior chimney. Access to the house from the kitchen is along a covered porch behind the kitchen. An enclosed stairway in the kitchen, built against the house gable-end wall, leads only to the room above. The dining room, on the west side of the house, has a crossetted (eared) mantelpiece with ovolo molding. A press to the right of the fireplace contains a small, hinged pass-through from the kitchen (similar to the pass-through at the James Ramsey house in Augusta County, Virginia). A two-story gabled porch was added to the front entrance in the mid-nineteenth century, at which time the center upstairs window was converted to a doorway to the second-floor porch. A vertical board wall

was later built front to back of the hall, converting the house to a center-passage plan. John Branham, grandfather of James Branham, was born in northern Ireland in 1721. The family immigrated to Augusta County, Virginia, sometime before midcentury. John’s son Richard was a sergeant in Washington’s regiment in the French and Indian War and received 200 Kentucky acres for his military service. The grant, on the south side of North Elkhorn Creek, was surveyed in 1783, at which time Richard was living in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Richard’s son James is on the 1790 tax list in Culpeper County, Virginia, with two slaves. He moved to Kentucky to occupy his father’s 200-acre grant, and either he or his father had the stone house built around 1795; James also built and operated a mill on the creek in front of the house. Richard’s will was probated in September 1814, leaving one-third of his estate to his wife, Hannah, and the other two-thirds to his sons, James, Tavner, George, and Harbin (FamilySearch. org, ancestral file v4.19; Strickler 1924; Christian 1860; Bevins 1981, 72–73).

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john brown figure p.5. John Brown’s house at Sumner’s Forest. The three bays on the left front were the original house. It had an early two-bay frame wing on the right. This is the house in which Brown’s father, Reverend John Brown of Virginia, last resided. (Reproduced by permission from Coleman 1967)

74 [ john brown, 1780s

The stone house that the younger John Brown commissioned on his Kentucky plantation was a two-story, three-bay, hall-parlor stone house. Brown hired his cousin from Londonderry, Oliver Brown, to build the house. John Brown’s descendant Joseph Humphreys enlarged the house by converting the parlor into a passage hall and adding a two-story library on the west end. The house, long neglected, was torn down in 1950. The elder John Brown, son of James Brown and Jennett Stevenson, immigrated to Augusta County, Virginia, from County Londonderry in Ulster. He graduated from Princeton University in 1749. He married Margaret Preston, whose parents were John Preston and Elizabeth Patton. Brown directed the founding of Liberty Hall Academy, the forerunner of Washington and Lee University. Their son John was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1757. He was educated at Liberty Hall and at Princeton and served in the

Revolutionary War under General Washington. He came to Kentucky as a surveyor with John Floyd and developed a great interest in western lands. In 1783, he and his wife, Margaretta Mason, moved to Woodford County and purchased part of the 2,000-acre grant of General Jethro Sumner, on which they built a stone house. They named their plantation Sumner’s Forest. Brown was the first U.S. congressman from the district of Kentucky while it was still a part of Virginia and the first U.S. senator from the state of Kentucky. In 1796, Brown moved his family to Frankfort to a fashionable house named Liberty Hall (see chapter 2). At the same time, he brought his parents to reside in the stone house in Woodford County, near Pisgah Presbyterian Church, where Reverend Brown was a pastor (Coleman 1967, 63; Railey 1968, 78–79; Simpson 1932, 325–32).

peter brown In 1806, Peter and Elizabeth Brown commissioned a twostory, four-bay, center-passage stone house built on a high cellar. The construction date is verified by an inscription on a timber in the cellar: “Built 1806; plastered 1807 by John Cox.” It is one of the few Ulster Kentucky stone houses with a stair passage. The front door is located in the second bay. The house had pegged frames with ovolo trim, but these features have been replaced on the front with reeded trim and square corner blocks, perhaps installed in a 1918 remodeling. Chimney stacks are interior and are flanked by square attic windows. Unique carving on the stringboard and mantels may have been done by the same craftsman who carved the singular mantel at the Crawford house (see page 62). Brown’s house is built of large blocks of laurel dolomite, quarried on the property. The cave spring in front of the house is 1,000 feet deep and large enough to hold fifty cattle.

Peter Brown was born in 1748 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, son of William and Ruth Brown. He served in the Revolutionary War as an aide to General Washington. In 1781, he married Elizabeth Beall, daughter of Andrew Beall, also of Prince George’s County. In 1810, he owned twenty slaves and land and mills in Washington and Nelson counties, Kentucky. At his death in 1830, he willed the 325 acres on which the stone house stands to his daughter Isabella Muir and the mills and other land to the three sons of his daughter Nancy Ray. The Browns’ national origin is undocumented, although descendants have always said that they are Scotch-Irish (Nelson County Will Book G, February 1831; Brown family bible, private collection; Mary Ellen Moore deed research, 1985, author’s collection; David Hall [historian], personal communication with the author, 1986; John W. Muir [descendant] to the author, 1987; John Ballard [owner] to the author, 1987).

figures p.6a–b. Peter Brown. a. The off-balance fenestration of the P. Brown house provides an entrance into the off-center passage. b. The carving on the P. Brown mantel is the work of an unknown itinerant woodcarver.

peter brown, 1806 [ 75

george clark George and Margaret Clark’s stone house was a one-story, hall-parlor house with interior gable-end chimneys, situated crosswise to a gentle slope. It was built at Clark’s Station, on the north bank of Clark’s Run, the branch of Dick’s River that bears their name, at the forks of what are now Lancaster and Stanford pikes in Boyle County. The land was settled by George Clark before November 1779, and the house is considered to be the first stone house in Kentucky (Dunn n.d., 20; Fackler 1941, 4). The east and west facades were identical. The house was demolished when the Danville-to-Lancaster turnpike was built. George Clark’s ancestry is complicated because there were many George Clarks in eighteenth-century Virginia. This George Clark was of northern Irish descent and married Margaret Whitley (sister of Colonel William Whit-

76 [ george clark, ca. 1779

ley) in Augusta County, Virginia. Her parents, Solomon and Elizabeth Barnett Whitley, were born in Ireland and died in Rockbridge County, Virginia. George Clark came to Kentucky with his brother-in-law Colonel Whitley in 1775; he fought in seventeen battles against the Indians, including Bowman’s expedition on the Little Miami River. Clark was a sergeant in Benjamin Logan’s militia in 1778 (Collins 1874, 1:12). He volunteered to go with Simon Kenton and Alexander Montgomery to Chillicothe to retrieve their horses. He was nearly captured with Kenton but escaped on a log raft across the river (Collins 1874, 2:447). George and Margaret Clark’s four children were born between 1770 and 1780 (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 51034). In 1790, Clark moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he died in 1792 (Shane, interview 12C:56).

figure p.7. George Clark’s house is renowned as the first stone house in Kentucky, built soon after 1779 at Clark’s Station near Danville. (Photo courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey, 1940)

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benjamin collings Benjamin and Sarah Collings’s stone house has two stories and three bays built on the hall-parlor plan. It has a one-story stone kitchen on the north end with a huge cooking fireplace. The family cemetery on the hill south of the house contains the graves of Benjamin, Sarah, his parents, and other members of the family, including Amandy Jane Collings, who was killed in the New Madrid earthquake of 1812 (Spencer [County, Ky.] Magnet, May 29, 2002).2 The house was obviously strongly built; it survived the massive earthquakes of December 1811 and January 1812. The earthquakes came in a series that shook the earth and darkened the sky throughout the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. Gigantic crevices formed Reelfoot Lake in western Kentucky, and at one point the Ohio River turned on itself and ran upstream to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. A Collings family diarist wrote that “tables and chairs turned over . . . and all of us were knocked out of bed. The roar I thought would leave us deaf if we lived. . . . We was all banged up and some of us knocked out for a while and blood everywhere.” The Collings house survived while neighbors’ houses did not, but some of the family moved to Indiana after the fright (Spencer [County, Ky.] Magnet, March 27, 2002). 78 [ benjamin collings, ca. 1810

According to descendants, the Collings family of Spencer County migrated from Ireland (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 1887a, 776; Kerr 1922, 5:485). William Edward Collings, grandfather of Benjamin, was born in 1724 in Essex County, New Jersey, and came to Cox’s Creek in Nelson County, Kentucky, about 1780. His will in 1787 in Nelson County names his “true and loving friend, John McGee,” to be the sole executor of his estate. William’s son Zebulon, Benjamin’s father, was born in 1746, also in Essex County, New Jersey, and died in 1823 in Nelson County, Kentucky. He was a Revolutionary War soldier nicknamed “Zebulon the Powder Maker,” serving in George Rogers Clark’s western army with his three brothers from Amboy, Middlesex County, New Jersey. After the war, Zebulon Collings received three land grants, two on Froman’s Run and one on Beargrass Creek. (There may be a connection to the Froman family: John McGee and his brother Patrick, a stonemason, were married to Froman sisters [see John McGee of Nelson County, p. 136]. They are also connected to the Crist family, as Elizabeth Collings married George Crist.) Zebulon and his wife, Lydia Spencer, lived briefly in Yohogania County, Virginia, before moving to Nelson County, Kentucky; he died there in 1823.

Benjamin, son of Zebulon, was born in 1769 in Middlesex County, New Jersey, and came to Kentucky with the rest of his extended family. In 1790, Benjamin married Sarah McGrew, and in 1808, they purchased land on Plum Creek in what is now Spencer County, where they built their stone house. Benjamin Collings died in 1830 in Spen-

cer County and is buried in the family graveyard on Plum Creek. His will allocated his plantation, slaves, distillery and appurtenances, flax and spinning wheels, livestock, farming equipment, household goods, and cash to his wife, children, and grandchildren (Ancestry.com, entries 6844, 1479, and 284843).

figure p.8. Benjamin Collings’s hall-parlor house once had a two-story wing on the right end. The formerly separate kitchen was connected to the house by enclosing the dogtrot.

benjamin collings, ca. 1810 [ 79

william cooper figures p.9a–c. William Cooper. Clockwise on spread: a. Cooper elevation. b. Cooper house, east gable end. The house front is now hidden by shrubbery. c. Cooper house. (1968)

80 [ william cooper, ca. 1800

William and Hannah Cooper’s stone house is a one-anda-half-story, three-bay, hall-parlor house on a high cellar. In the nineteenth century, a gabled porch was added to the front entrance, and later, a frame ell at the rear. The house faces south, built sideways into the hillside and above a slope to the spring that forms the headwaters of Cooper’s Branch. The old Lexington-to-Lancaster stage road ran alongside the branch, to the west of the house. William Cooper, like George Clark, is difficult to trace because of the large number of people of the same name. In 1790 tax lists, there are six people named William Cooper in Virginia and ten in Pennsylvania. The following information concerns this William Cooper who resided in Garrard County, Kentucky. Adam Cooper, father of William, was born in 1742 in Ireland and died there in 1767. His son William was born in 1766 in County Tyrone, Ireland. By 1789, William immigrated to Virginia, where

he married Hannah Evans in Berkeley County, now West Virginia. From Berkeley, William and Hannah moved to Kentucky, where he had a settlement certificate for land improvements. Three of the Coopers’ children were born in Garrard County, Kentucky—George in 1790, Joseph in 1792, and Mary in 1794—but it was not until 1800 that the Coopers purchased the land on which they built their stone house. In 1800, they purchased 100 acres from Robert Craig on Mann’s (or Cooper’s) Branch of the Kentucky River, to which tract they added 471/b acres by 1802. Cooper died in 1804 in Garrard County. His son George inherited the property and purchased adjoining land in 1825 and 1837. James William Cooper, who may have been the son of George, was born in 1840 in Garrard County; he married Sarah Jane Trotter (H. E. Montgomery to the author, 1982; FamilySearch.org, ancestral file v4.19; Cooper family file 1, Kentucky Historical Society).

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josiah crawford figures p.10a–d. Josiah Crawford. Clockwise on spread: a. Crawford elevation. b. Crawford plan. c. Crawford’s is the only known Ulster-derived one-room plan house. It is now situated between large brick additions on each end. d. Crawford mantel and press. The size of the fireplace was reduced to accommodate a coal grate. For a detail of this mantel, see page 62.

82 [ josiah crawford, 1793

The stone house that Josiah and Dinah Crawford built in Kentucky is the only known single-room Ulster stone house in the Kentucky records. It faces west, toward a branch of Cox Creek, and is built on a high cellar with exterior access on the house front. It has two bays on each floor. An enclosed corner stair rises from the southwest corner along the south gable end. As in the James McKee and Peter Brown houses, the hand-carved gougework and tendril carving on the mantelpiece may be the work of a creative itinerant woodcarver. The chimney has a warming oven above the mantel and a powder bin in the end of the chimney stack. The house was enlarged by Abel Crawford, son of Josiah, who added a two-story brick room on the north end, with federal woodwork and another enclosed corner stair. Abel’s daughter Ruth E. Cartmell inherited the house from her father in 1869. She and her husband built a large, two-story Italianate mansion on the south end of the stone house, subordinating the original house to part of an ell.

The father of the Josiah Crawford who died in Nelson County, Kentucky, was also named Josiah; he was born in 1742 in Baltimore. His father was James, son of James who was born in 1675 in New Castle, Delaware, and died in 1710 in Philadelphia. In 1793, the younger Josiah Crawford and his wife Dinah Ricks moved from Washington County, Pennsylvania, and purchased land on Cox Creek in Nelson County, Kentucky, which was part of James McDonald’s 1,000-acre grant (Ben Coke to the author, 1987). The Crawfords are uncommon among Ulster Kentuckians in having had Quaker connections. Josiah Crawford was born in 1767 in Philadelphia. His wife, Ruth Ricks (Dinah Ricks in other sources), was born in 1773 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Both were Quakers, and although they owned slaves, they became abolitionists. In Kentucky, they attended the Cox Creek Baptist Church, as did many former Quakers (family history files).

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william crow figures p.11a–d. William Crow. a. Crow elevation.

84 [ william crow, 1780–1783

William and Sarah Crow built their stone house between 1780 and 1783 on the land adjoining that of his brother John. It has four bays and two stories and a one-bay, oneand-three-quarters-story stone wing. The house has a water table and exterior chimneys. If the date of construction is accurate, the house was extensively remodeled in the 1800s in the Greek revival style, giving it a centerpassage plan (see Newcomb 1940, plate 5). All existing woodwork is Greek, applied on top of the original federal window frames. The spring is down a slope northwest of the house. Brick slave quarters are in the rear yard. William Crow was born in 1755 in New Castle Hundred, Delaware, the son of Walter and Ann Miller Crow, who had five sons—James, John, Benjamin, William, and Jacob—and three daughters.3 Walter Crow operated a tavern in New Castle Hundred until 1764, when the family moved to Rockingham County (then Augusta), Virginia, to Little Linville Creek near Harrisonburg. About 1770, William moved with his brother John to the Monongahela Valley, which was then thought to be in Virginia. There, in Yohogania County, William served as a bondsman, juror,

and road reviewer. He was a captain in the Revolutionary War. John explored Kentucky in 1774 with James Harrod and established Crow’s Station at his spring. In 1780, William claimed the tract adjoining John’s on the eastern boundary of the settlement. Altogether, he made twenty claims of land in Kentucky, totaling 40,135 acres. In 1781, he married Sarah Lawrence, with whom he had twelve children. William’s father, Walter, died in Kentucky, but his will was probated in Rockingham County, Virginia; William and his mother, Ann, were named executors. William owned a distillery on Dick’s River in Kentucky that remained in operation until it was burned during the Civil War. His wife, Sarah, died in 1812, and in 1819, he married Patience (Owsley) Bledsoe in Garrard County. He had been a Presbyterian but became a Baptist in later years. He died in 1821 and was buried beside his first wife on a hillside between the home places of the Crow brothers (Corinna C. Balden [descendant], unpublished research, family history files).

b. Crow’s four-bay, hall-parlor house. c. Crow house and wing. At some point, the eaves on the house were extended. d. Crow house with its twentieth-century porch. (Photo courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey, 1940)

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alexander dunlap The house built by Alexander and Agnes Gay Dunlap is a hall-parlor plan with exterior gable-end chimneys. Judging by the height of the shoulders on the chimneys, the house originally must have been two stories. It was built above Dunlap’s Spring on a branch of South Elkhorn Creek in Woodford County. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the stone house was almost surrounded by the two-story, foursquare frame house that stands on the site today. The family home place is a two-story, centerpassage brick house built upstream from the stone house, on Pisgah Pike. Dunlap’s grandfather, also named Alexander, was born about 1690 in Ayrshire, Scotland, where he was the sixteenth Laird of Dunlop. He “suffered for the Presbyterian cause,” as had his forebears. In response to Catholic pressure, he signed control of the estate over to his son John and emigrated to Ulster. Alexander was a soldier in the siege on Londonderry, where he died in 1687 (Ancestry .com, World Tree entries 1371 and 6360). His son Alexander migrated to Augusta County, Virginia, to the Calfpasture Valley, with his wife, children, and indentured servant. In 1743, he was the most western settler on the Virginia frontier. He was appointed a

86 [ alexander dunlap, ca. 1790

captain of horse but died the next year, in 1744. His wife, Ann McFarland, reared their three children, John, Robert, and the third Alexander, who was born in Augusta County in 1743. Alexander became an Indian fighter on the Weaw campaign and received the title of colonel for service in the Virginia state militia. He built his home on the Greenbrier River, in what is now Pocahontas County, West Virginia; during the Revolutionary War, it was an outpost known as Clover Lick Fort. Dunlap came to Kentucky in 1784 and soon thereafter brought his wife, Agnes Gay, and their children from their home on the Greenbrier River to the neighborhood of Pisgah in Woodford County, where they joined their relatives the Gays, the Stevensons, and the McConnells and founded Pisgah Presbyterian Church. Dunlap and his wife reared nine children, all of whom were educated at Pisgah Academy. In 1804, after his wife had died and all his children had grown to adulthood, he moved to Ohio, where he followed the teachings of Reverend Alexander Campbell, joined the Disciples of Christ, and founded Dunlap’s Chapel. The next Alexander Dunlap, the ninth child of Alexander and Agnes Gay, was born in 1785 in Kentucky, soon

after his parents settled in Woodford County. He married Mary Caldwell and served as a colonel of the state militia and, in 1825, as a member of the Kentucky legislature. Their children were George Caldwell, Susan, and William A., whose son Ernest inherited the family estate in Woodford County that is still owned by their descendants (Railey 1968, 150–56).

figures p.12a–b. Alexander Dunlap. a. This is the only visible exterior portion of the Dunlap stone house. b. Dunlap’s one-story, hall-parlor stone house was incorporated into the American foursquare that now almost surrounds it.

alexander dunlap, ca. 1790 [ 87

henry h. ferguson figures p.13a–c. Henry H. Ferguson. a. Ferguson elevation. b. Ferguson plan.

88 [ henry h. ferguson, ca. 1849

The one-of-a-kind drystone house of Henry H. and Margaret Ferguson (now gone) was unique both for its dogtrot plan and for its late construction date—about 1849, long after most drystone construction in Kentucky had ceased. The house is included here even though it is outside the period of study because it was the only known stone dogtrot house in Kentucky. It originally was composed of two freestanding stone rooms connected by the covered (later enclosed) dogtrot, with an exterior chimney in the gable end of the east room and an interior stack on the west end. This singular house could easily have been mistaken as an office for the milling complex that was on the north border of this tract, but the 1877 Beers insurance map clearly identifies it as the residence of H. H. Ferguson, owner. The house was built on land granted to wealthy Virginia surveyor Hancock Lee. After Lee’s death, his son Thomas L. Lee received power of attorney to handle the more than 3,000 acres in Kentucky inherited by the family, most of whom resided in Fauquier County, Virginia. Although the deeds state that the land on which this stone house

is situated is the “360 acres whereon said Lee now [1834] resides,” it seems unlikely that he lived in this house. Railey (1968) reports that the Lees “once owned the farm that was so long owned by Squire Henry Ferguson” (197) and that the Lees built “a splendid brick residence there early in the nineteenth century” (124). The brick house must have been on another part of the 360 acres. The land was owned by Thomas L. Lee from 1834 to 1849 and by Henry H. Ferguson from 1849 to 1879. The Kentucky Heritage Council survey form attributes a building date of “1840–50?” to the Fergusons’ house (Woodford County Deed Book T, 292). Moses Ferguson, Henry Ferguson’s grandfather, was born in 1736 in County Antrim, in the north of Ireland, and died between 1791 and 1801 in Kentucky. Henry H. Ferguson married Margaret Kent Hurst and lived in this stone house near Spring Station in Woodford County. The family were prominent Presbyterians and belonged to Harmony Presbyterian Church on Leestown Road (FamilySearch.org, ancestral file v4.19; Railey 1968, 208).

c. The Ferguson dogtrot between the two stone units was filled in to create a center-passage hall. (1982)

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joel frazier figures p.14a–d. Joel Frazier. Clockwise on spread: a. Frazier elevation. b. Frazier plan. c. Frazier house. (1975) d. Frazier house. (2005)

90 [ joel frazier, 1810

The stone house built for Joel and Margaret Frazier in 1810 has three bays and is one story, built on a high cellar. The interior chimney on the east gable end opens into the hall and is flanked by square casement windows in the attic. Originally, the house had three rooms; the two back-toback chambers on the west end had separate chimney stacks whose faces were, atypically, not corner fireplaces but were parallel with the gable wall. The house faces due south above a steep bank descending to the Licking River. There is a springhouse in the side of the riverbank. A stone foundation beyond the east end of the house seems to have been the foundation of a separate kitchen. Frazier descendants occupied the house until the mid-1800s. Between 1890 and 1903, the house was drastically remodeled. The tops of the west-end chimneys were removed and roofed over. The exterior doors and windows were replaced, and the interior was completely remodeled in the Victorian style, obliterating the original plan. In 1927, a frame shed-roof dining room and kitchen were added to the east gable end (Wilson n.d., 48–49). In 2005–2006, the house was again enlarged, with wings on both ends.

Information on the Frazier (Fraizer, Frazer) family of Harrison County is incomplete. Family descendants relate that they are Scotch-Irish. George Frazier, father of Joel, is thought to have been born in North Carolina or Maryland. His wife was Mary Wilson, and their children were George, Elizabeth, Rebeccah, Joel, James, John, and Polly, some of whom were born in Washington County, Pennsylvania. They moved to Kentucky before 1791, when the elder George is listed on the Bourbon County (part of which became Harrison County) tax list. The Kentucky census of 1800 lists George, James, Joel, and John Fraizer in Harrison County. Their father died in 1801 in Harrison County (Ancestry.com, entry 7267). Joel Frazier, son of George and Mary Frazier, was born in Pennsylvania. He came to Kentucky with his parents and lived in Harrison County, Kentucky, where he was a farmer and county official (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 1888, 62). He married Margaret “Peggy” Miller in 1794. Their children—Hugh, Linn, Joel, Samuel, Margaretta, and Jane—were born between 1796 and 1818 (Ancestry .com, entry 15883).

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william garrett figures p.15a–f. William Garrett. a. Garrett elevation. b. Garrett plan.

92 [ william garrett, 1812

William and Elizabeth Garrett’s stone house, built in 1812, has two stories, three bays, and a hall-parlor plan. Each room originally had a winding stair in the back corner beside the interior chimney. There was no cellar. Details include dentiled exterior cornices, interior double architraves, and crossetted mantelpieces. A one-and-a-halfstory kitchen abuts the house on the north gable end with an interior chimney serving the cooking fireplace. The peak of the kitchen roof is centered to cover both the kitchen and the integrated porch on the east side that shelters the pathway from the kitchen to the dining room. A shed-roof stone pantry with a cellar was later added to the west side of the kitchen. The house faces east, toward a spring and a branch of Clear Creek. A one-room stone slave quarters remains in the side yard opposite the kitchen. In 1834, John Garrett inherited the house and added a five-bay Greek revival frame I house at a right angle to the south gable end of the stone house, reducing the stone house to an ell. Both the frame house and the stone house have one-story columned porches from this period (see also chapter 2).

Descendants relate that William Garrett’s father was Scotch-Irish from the north of Ireland and that William was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1749. According to family tradition, he marked land in Kentucky in 1775 and then went to Virginia to fight in the Revolutionary War. He married Elizabeth Black in Augusta County, Virginia. In 1785, the Garretts, the Black family, and Thomas Woods traveled together to Kentucky, where they joined the Robert Guyns. Together, they built Black’s Station and founded Ebenezer Presbyterian Church. William and Elizabeth Garrett settled on the 1,000acre preemption for which he qualified by improving his claim in 1776. The Garretts owned one slave in 1806 and increased the number to seven by 1815. In 1812, Oliver Brown built this fine stone house for the Garretts, whose daughter married Brown. The Garretts moved their membership from Ebenezer to Pisgah Presbyterian Church, where William was an elder. His plantation acquired an extended reputation for well-bred and well-trained horses (Graddy 1939, 314–17; Railey 1968, 32).

c. The original portion of the Garrett house, built in 1812 by Oliver Brown.

[ 93

d. Garrett house, north gable end. The one-story kitchen abuts this end. The rear slope of the kitchen roof was extended to cover a later pantry and cellar access. See also the Greek revival addition on the other end of the house, p. 31.

94 [

e. Crossetted mantel in Garrett hall. f. Garrett’s slave quarters has one room and a loft.

[ 95

robert guyn jr. figures p.16a–d. Robert Guyn Jr. a. Guyn elevation. b. Guyn plan.

96 [ robert guyn jr., 1802

Robert Guyn Jr. contracted with Thomas Hogan in 1802 for the construction of his two-story, three-bay, hallparlor stone house with interior gable-end chimneys. The first-floor windows are both wider and taller than those on the second floor, and, unusually, there is no transom above the center door. It has a common rafter roof with collars and exposed lookouts. The enclosed stair is located on the beaded-board partition wall between the two rooms, with stair space taken from the parlor. There is a full cellar with plastered walls, a 5-foot fireplace, and (originally) earthen floors. This was probably the first kitchen, although there was a separate kitchen at one time northwest of the house. The walk-down entrance to the cellar is on the east front facade. The upstairs floor plan echoes the plan below but has a fireplace over the hall only and batten doors instead of the paneled doors on the first floor. A one-and-a-half-story, four-bay ell, added to the rear of the house in 1837, has two large rooms, one with a fine, elaborate federal mantel with paired columns and rope moldings. This house and that of David Sawyer are the only Ulster Kentucky houses known to have paneled walls and ceilings. Both are located where lime for plaster was available, but both men owned sawmills that proba-

bly provided the paneling materials. Guyn’s mill is located a few hundred yards downstream from the house. Robert Guyn (Gwin, Gwynn, Guin), of Welsh-Irish ancestry, came to Virginia in 1736 from the north of Ireland on the ship Walpole with Captain James Patton. He purchased 544 acres from Patton in Augusta County, Virginia, on the west side of the Calfpasture River, part of Patton’s 30,000-acre grant. Guyn married Jane Kincaid, also of Ulster ancestry, about 1742. Also in 1742, he purchased 142 acres of Benjamin Borden’s tract. He also later received land certificates for military service in Captain William Preston’s company of rangers in 1758 and in Captain Lewis’s company on Boquet’s expedition in 1764. He was constable in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in 1746, and was a trustee of Clear Creek Presbyterian Church. Robert and Jane Guyn’s nine children were all born between 1742 and 1761 in Augusta County. Robert Guyn Jr., their third son, was born about 1744. In 1784, at age forty, he moved to Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap with his wife, Jane Raburn, and their children, in company with the Garrett, Black, Cathers, Wilson, Cunningham, and Woods families. The Guyns settled on Clear Creek near Black’s Station, where they

established a prosperous milling community that includes one of the few remaining vertically driven water-powered sawmills in Kentucky. This mill is documented in the Historic American Engineering Record. All these families, Associate Reformed Presbyterians, founded Ebenezer Presbyterian Church near Troy, which was also attended by the Frost family, another Welsh-Irish family who came from northern Ireland. The Guyns’ son, also named Robert, married Jane Black (Morton 1920; family history files; Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 1887b; Railey 1968, 80).

c. The masonry on the Guyn house is “mixt work.” (1982) d. The Guyn house with a glimpse of the federal ell on the rear. (2006)

robert guyn jr., 1802 [ 97

james harlan figures p.17a–c. James Harlan. a. Harlan elevation. b. Harlan plan.

98 [ james harlan, ca. 1785

The two-story, three-bay stone house of James and Sarah Harlan, built about 1785, had a three-room plan, reflecting the family’s Quaker associations in Delaware and Pennsylvania. The parlor and chamber side of the house had two corner fireplaces in the south gable end and an enclosed winding stair rising from the rear of the hall, with space taken from the rear chamber-parlor side along the board partition wall. This house and the McKee house are the only two Ulster Kentucky houses with access to the cellar from inside the house; cellar stairs descended from below those between the first and second floors. The house had an interior chimney stack on each end and only two windows on the second floor, like the Taylor house. The superior stonework was of squared blocks laid in regular courses on all four sides. Soon after its construction, the house was enlarged with two additions on the north end, creating a second two-story, three-bay block connected by a single-bay, two-story stone link. By 1954, the north additions had collapsed. Then, in 1975, the original block was severely damaged by a tornado, and the house was subsequently demolished. The house faced east, downhill toward the Salt River and Harlan’s spring. The Harlan (Harland) family, like the Caldwell and Crawford families, is another good example of Quakers

from Ulster. The earliest American ancestor was George Harland, whose grandfather was James, followed in every generation by sons alternately named James and George, down to the James who is the subject of this profile. The first George Harland moved to County Down, Ireland, sometime before 1678, when he married Elizabeth Duck in the Friends church at Lurgan, County Armagh, Ulster. George and Elizabeth Harland had nine children: four in County Down, Ulster; three in New Castle County, Delaware; and two in Chester County, Pennsylvania. When they immigrated to the colonies in 1687, they dropped the final d in their name. In 1695, George Harlan was governor of Delaware. The first James Harlan, son of George and Elizabeth, was born in 1692 in New Castle, Delaware. His four older siblings were born before the family came to the American colonies. James married Elizabeth Davis in 1715 in Kennett Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, where his father had given them a 200-acre farm. James is buried in Hopewell Meeting Grounds, Frederick County, Virginia. The second George, James and Elizabeth’s sixth child, was born in 1718. He immigrated to Frederick County, Virginia, where he and his wife, Ann Hunt, whom he married in 1746, joined the Presbyterian community and church.

c. The abandoned Harlan house. The chimney of the two-story addition is visible on the far right. (1968)

He is buried there in the Tucarora Burial Ground. They had six children, including James and Silas, born between 1746 and 1758 in Frederick and Berkeley counties, Virginia, about 6 miles from Martinsburgh. James accompanied his older brother Silas in 1773 in a company captained by James Harrod to explore lands in the vicinity of what is now Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where they established the site for the new settlement. They returned in 1774 to stake their own land claims, some near the present site of Danville and others along the Salt River. In 1778, Silas and James built Harlan’s Station. Silas commanded a company under George Rogers Clark in 1779, and in 1782, he was a major in the Battle of Blue Licks, where he was killed. He had written a will leaving his lands at Harlan’s Station to his brother James. At the time of Silas’s death, he was engaged to be married to Sarah Caldwell, daughter of Henry and Martha Caldwell.

James inherited the land along the Salt River and the station. About 1785 he married Sarah Caldwell. Soon thereafter he commissioned construction of his stone house and began managing the farm. He served as a captain of infantry in the War of 1812. James and Sarah Harlan had nine children. Their son James Jr. became commonwealth attorney and Kentucky secretary of state and was a U.S. representative for two terms. He was a Whig and a Unionist during the Civil War. Lincoln appointed him district attorney of Kentucky, the office he held until his death in 1863. James Jr.’s son was John Marshall Harlan, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1860, John Harlan’s farm was valued at $26,880, among the dozen highest valuations in the county (Cotterill 1917, 267; Collins 1874, 2:517; Biographical Encyclopedia 1878; Harlan 1914, 40, 659; FamilySearch.org, ancestral file v4.19).

james harlan, ca. 1785 [ 99

figures p.18a–e. William Henry. a. Henry elevation. b. Henry plan.

william henry

c. The mill dam on North Elkhorn Creek provided water power for Henry’s large grain mill.

100 [ william henry, before 1790

William and Julia Henry built their stone house before 1790 on his 1,000-acre land grant, the home place named Cherry Spring, and built Henry’s Mill, a large grain mill, on North Elkhorn Creek in front of the house. The house is a three-bay, one-and-a-half story, hall-parlor house to which a one-room wing was soon added on the south gable end. When the wing was added, the carpenter constructed a dormer in the back roof slope to provide light to the hall chamber. All three chimneys are exterior, with shoulders. The window frames and trim are carved from a single piece of wood. The front door has nine panels. The interior partition wall is of adzed 3 × 4 inch timbers, covered with split lathes and plaster. The enclosed winding stair rises from the rear of the hall (the south room), with space taken from the parlor. The addition contains a second stairway to the chamber above. There is a cellar under the wing only, containing a heating fireplace but no windows. The exterior cellar entrance is from the south gable end of the two-bay, 11/b-story addition. Robert Henry Sr., grandfather of William Henry, lived in Argyleshire, Scotland. His three sons, Samuel, Robert Jr., and William, moved from Scotland to Ireland, where they became wealthy merchants with large shipping interests. Robert Jr. was educated first in Edinburgh and

then, after immigrating to the American colonies about 1740, at Princeton University. In 1755, Reverend John Todd installed him as pastor of Cub Creek Presbyterian Church in Charlotte County and Briery Presbyterian Church in Prince Edward County, both then part of Lunenburg County, Virginia. Robert Jr. married Jean Johnson, who had been born about 1726 while her parents were on their way from Ireland to America. Robert and Jean Henry’s fourth son, William Henry, was born in 1761 in Charlotte County, Virginia. At age seventeen, William volunteered as a private soldier in the war for American independence. He and his brother Samuel came to Kentucky in 1781 from Prince Edward County, Virginia. William was a surveyor in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1782, and later in Scott County. He was a captain in the Woodford County militia in 1789, aide-de-camp to General James Wilkinson in 1791 in the Indian campaign, a legislator for twenty years, and a major general, commander of the First Division of the Kentucky volunteer militia at the Battle of the Thames in the War of 1812. In 1786, William Henry married Julia Flournoy, a daughter of Matthews Flournoy Sr., son of Jean Jacques Flournoy, who came to the Huguenot colony at Manakin about

1700. The wealthy Flournoy family were Calvinists and members of the Presbyterian Church. Matthews Flournoy built a two-story, hall-parlor stone house in Scott County, Kentucky, that is said to be the first house in Kentucky that had window glass, brought on horseback from Virginia. The Flournoy-Henry family, like the JanuaryMcConnell family, are an example of the integration of Protestant Huguenot descendants into Kentucky Presbyterian communities (Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 613; Bevins 1981, 64–65; Kerr 1922, 5:75, 5:178; Morton 1920, 343, 459; Collins 1874, 2:476). William and Julia Henry had eight sons and five daughters. All the sons became prominent citizens—Kentucky legislators, district judges, members of Congress, and officers in the War of 1812. Their five daughters, however, all died in infancy and are buried at Cherry Spring Presbyterian Church. After the last daughter died in 1814, the Henrys sold their plantation and mill and moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where William died in 1824 (Ancestry.com, entry 80762).

d. Henry’s three-bay, hall-parlor house was enlarged with a one-room wing on the gable end to accommodate his growing family of thirteen children. e. Henry house, rear. A dormer built into the hall chamber gave light to the chamber when the addition blocked the gable end windows.

william henry, before 1790 [ 101

john hinkson figures p.19a–d. John Hinkson. Clockwise on spread: a. Hinkson elevation. b. Hinkson plan. c. Hinkson’s house with its Victorian porch. d. Hinkson house, east gable end. The outline of the one-story kitchen and porch on the gable end is visible in this view.

102 [ john hinkson, ca. 1785–1795

The John Hinkson stone house has three bays, two stories, and a hall-parlor plan. An enclosed winding stair is located in the northwest corner of the hall, beside the chimney. The stonework is very high quality, and much original steeple-shaped pointing remains. Window frames are pegged and have ovolo trim. The original cornice has a diagonal fascia, identified by historian Edna Talbot Whitley as Metcalf work. The house once had a one-story kitchen on the east gable end, accessed via a doorway in the gable end of the parlor (similar to the Garrett house). The site includes a stone springhouse, frame smokehouse, and log barn with steeple-notched corners. John Hinkson’s father, Colonel John Hinkson, was born in 1729 in Belfast, northern Ireland, to John and Agnes Hinkson. As a young man, Colonel Hinkson migrated to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, but returned to Ireland about 1763 to receive some family patrimony. He stayed in Ireland two years and married Margaret McCrackin. He used his patrimony to purchase a store of goods that he brought back to the colonies. In Pennsylvania, he fought in Lord Dunmore’s War. In 1774, he sold 270 acres in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and the next spring, he explored for land in Kentucky. He established Hinkson Station on the old buffalo trace between

Georgetown and the Lower Blue Licks. The Hinksons moved to Kentucky in 1780 with six other families, who took refuge at McClelland’s blockhouse, which they successfully defended from the Shawnee Indians. Hinkson’s son Lieutenant Thomas Hinkson was ambushed and killed by the Indians in the notorious battle at Blue Licks. After relocating at Ruddell’s Station, the settlers were again attacked. This time they were captured by the Indian and British army and marched to Detroit, whence Hinkson escaped and returned to Lexington to warn the settlers of another impending Indian attack. Colonel Hinkson owned and operated a mill in Bourbon County, was a member of the first court of Bourbon County, and was a major in the militia by 1787. He died in 1789, at the age of sixty, while on an exploration to New Madrid, Missouri, in Spanish territory (Shane, interview 2S:334; Whitley 1957–1958, no. 45; Ancestry.com, World Tree entries 29380, 15489, and 51073; Cynthiana [Ky.] Democrat, August 19, 1976). John Hinkson, son of John and Margaret Hinkson, was born in 1779 in Monongahela, then thought to be in Virginia. It is not known whether father or son commissioned the stone house attributed to John Hinkson. The younger John married Margaret Worl, daughter of Atwell Worl.

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nathan huston figures p.20a–f. Nathan Huston. a. Huston elevation. b. Huston plan.

104 [ nathan huston, 1792

The stone house commissioned by Nathan and Ann Huston has the best masonry of any early stone house in Kentucky, yet its master craftsman is unknown. The stonework is regularly coursed ashlar with alternate headers and stretchers in a Flemish bond pattern, very similar to the work on the Henry Thompson Sr. kitchen. The stretchers are of blue limestone and the headers are rose-gray; the wall is sealed with square limestone mortar joints. The date “1792” is carved in plaster in the cellar, and the initials “NH” are incised in the east cornerstone, in the second course above the water table, which is at first-floor level. Exterior window frames have double architraves. The two-story, three-bay house has a hallparlor plan with interior gable-end chimneys. Like those in the Henry Thompson Sr. house, the front and rear doors are slightly off center, and the second-floor middle windows are aligned above the doors, front and rear. The enclosed corner stair with a flat landing rises from the parlor (as opposed to the hall) at the rear of the partition wall, with stair space taken from the parlor. A press with flat panel doors is to the right of the parlor mantel, and an exterior door in the gable end of this room to the left of the mantel, opposite the separate kitchen, indicates that

this room was the dining room. Small square windows on both sides of the chimney stacks light the attic. The one-story kitchen, whose huge chimney is also interior, is set a few feet north of the front wall of the house, to which it is connected by a dogtrot, later enclosed. Cellar access is from the dogtrot in the front corner of the gable end. The house faces southeast and is located on a small branch of Dick’s River. The Huston (Houston) family were Presbyterians from lowland Scotland who moved to northern Ireland in the 1600s and spread to counties Antrim, Tyrone, and Donegal. The family were well-educated gentry, merchants, and professors. They were Presbyterian covenanters who, about 1735, immigrated to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where one of them was a surveyor for William Penn. In the mid-1700s, Huston family branches went to Rockbridge County, Virginia; to Staunton and to the Cowpasture River in Augusta County, Virginia; and to the Greenbrier Valley in what is now West Virginia. Nathan Huston was born about 1760 in Augusta County, the son of Archibald Huston and Mary Stephenson, members of Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. Nathan’s wife was Anne Montgomery, whose parents also moved to

Kentucky before the Revolutionary War and built a stone house soon afterward. Huston, who came to Kentucky with Benjamin Logan, was a delegate from Lincoln County to the Kentucky constitutional convention in Danville in 1788 and the founder of Hustonville (Cassidy 1985, 455–57; FamilySearch.org, ancestral file v4.19; Ancestry .com, World Tree entry 34285; Morton 1920, 343, 459).

c. Huston’s house and kitchen were later connected by the two-story insert between them. The center upstairs window was made into a door when the house had a flat-roofed front porch.

nathan huston, 1792 [ 105

d. Huston house, rear view.

106 [

e. The superb masonry of the Huston house was laid in a Flemish bond pattern. A clipboard rests on the water table. f. The initial stone, “NH,” on the right front corner of the Huston house, in the second row above the water table, cannot be discerned today because of stone weathering. (1968)

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abraham irvin Abraham Irvin’s large stone house was originally built on the hall-parlor plan, with three bays and two stories, but the interior floor plan has been changed. The originally detached kitchen off the east gable end is now connected to the main house by an enclosed passage. The house has characteristics of the transition from the federal style (breakfront mantels, paneled jambs, chair rail) to the Greek revival style (narrow, mitered window frames, two-panel doors). The house is now stuccoed, which may have been done to mask alterations. Early dependencies include a smokehouse, a log barn, ruins of a large, circular icehouse, and rock fencing along the road frontage and farm boundaries. Abraham Irvin (also recorded as Abram Irvine) was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in 1766. He was the grandson of John Robert Irvine, who was born about 1700 in Londonderry, Ireland, and the son of Abraham Irvine, who was born in 1725 in Scotland and died in 1801 in Mercer County, Kentucky. John Robert Irvine, a Presbyterian minister, embarked from the north of Ireland with his family in 1729 and settled in Pennsylvania. The Irvines lived there until 1737, when they and the James McElroy family relocated in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Their son Abraham married Mary Dean, who had also been born in Ireland. The Irvins were ScotchIrish Whigs. 108 [ abraham irvin, ca. 1790

Abraham Irvin, son of Abraham and Mary Dean Irvine, born in 1766 in Rockbridge County, Virginia, came with his brothers, sisters, and brothers-in-law to Kentucky in 1787 and settled on the Salt River.4 Irvin’s first wife, Sarah Henry, died of consumption in 1801, after the birth of one daughter. She was the sister of William Henry of Scott County. Irvin was married a second time, to Margaret “Peggy” McAfee, daughter of George McAfee of the Mercer County McAfees, with whom he had five children (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 83774). Irvin was a wealthy early landowner in Boyle County (then Mercer County), with surveys of 6,180 acres on Barnett Creek in 1785. Three years later, he was granted 500 more acres on Hardin and Cartwright creeks, in Nelson County. In the constitutional convention of 1785, the general assembly of the Kentucky district court passed an act to establish the town of Danville; Abram Irvin, “gentleman,” was one of the trustees. He was a Presbyterian and a trustee for the Masons. One of Irvin’s daughters married Samuel McDowell, and another married Colonel Joseph McDowell, of the prominent McDowell family. Irvin’s kinsmen also include the Lyles, Pauldings, and Caldwells. He died in 1850 in Boyle County, Kentucky, and he and his wife are buried in a box tomb in the Old First Presbyterian Graveyard (now McDowell Park) in Danville (Klotter 1981, 1:565; Fackler 1941, 53–54, 103–4; Green 1889, 2).

figures p.21a–b. Abraham Irvin. a. The original front of the Irvin house, now the rear. The house has been remodeled and stuccoed. b. Irvin house yard. The white stuccoed building on the left is the meat house. The kitchen is in the left wing, and the pit of the icehouse is in the foreground.

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thomas kennedy of bourbon county figures p.22a–d. Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County. a. T. Kennedy of Bourbon County elevation. b. T. Kennedy of Bourbon County plan.

Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County was a stonemason, plasterer, and carpenter by trade.5 He built his own stone house, a three-bay, two-story, hall-parlor plan with interior gable-end chimneys. His house was a good example of form following utility, with an off-center door on the first floor into the main hall and evenly spaced windows on the second. The dividing wall between the hall and the parlor was stud and plaster. As is typical, an enclosed winding stair rose from the back of the hall, with space taken from the parlor. The ceilings, 10 feet tall on the first floor and 8 feet on the second, were also plastered. The house had a cellar divided by a stone wall into two rooms, one of which had a fireplace. As the needs of Kennedy’s family grew, they added a two-bay, two-story, one-room wing on the south gable end. There were no connecting doors between the original house and the wing. A one-story shed-roof porch across the back of the house provided access to all three first-floor rooms. The house faced west and was situated on a rise above Kennedy Creek at the back. It burned in 1982 while undergoing restoration. The Kennedy cemetery, with fine ashlar stone walls, is located across the front yard.

110 [ thomas kennedy, bourbon county, ca. 1785

Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County was unlike most Ulster Kentucky stone house owners in that he was not wealthy and he was not a Presbyterian. His father, John, was kidnapped on the shores of northern Ireland and sold in Maryland for a term of years. As an adult, he was a physician by nature and “a man of great fortitude in whatever he conceived to be the path of duty.” He had six sons by his second wife, the second of whom was Thomas, born in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1744. Thomas Kennedy was baptized in the Church of England but attended both the Baptist and Methodist churches, “resolving through the balance of his days to do as much good and as little harm as possible, trusting to a merciful God for the result.” In 1776, Kennedy came to Kentucky to mark land for himself and his two brothers, John and Joseph, but returned to Virginia during the worst danger from Indians. After the Revolutionary War, he left Fauquier County, Virginia, for Kentucky during the fall and winter of 1779–1780 with his family and a train of packhorses. The winter was so severe and forage so scarce that, one by one, the horses gave out and the family had to abandon them, along with Kennedy’s tools and their supplies. His wife died in 1780,

after which he took the children for a time to Strode’s Station, where he met and married the widow Cook, his third wife (Kennedy 1852). In spite of his having claimed settlements and preemptions of 1,400 acres each for himself and his two brothers, Kennedy eventually lost all except 150 acres because of overlapping land claims. He sold tracts of land to pay attorneys in lawsuits to protect his claims and then had to reimburse the buyers at higher prices when the purchased lands were challenged by other claims—even though he had hired reputable agents James Duncan and Edward Wilson to secure the claims. In addition, he had expected to be paid 200 acres by each of his brothers for locating their lands in Kentucky for them but was instead sued by one brother’s widow for possession of the land on which Kennedy lived and had built his stone house, which land was to have been his in payment. Through sacrifice of all his other land and the dedication of his son Jessa to repayment of the family debts, Kennedy was able to retain his slaves and stone house in Bourbon County that finally descended to his son. Jessa was a founder of the Universalist Church in Bourbon County, justice of the peace, constable, and member of the Kentucky legislature (Kennedy 1852).

c. The T. Kennedy of Bourbon County house with its two-story, twobay addition on the right. The facade of the original hall-parlor section shows the off-center placement of the front door. d. Ruins of the T. Kennedy of Bourbon County house, which burned in 1982.

thomas kennedy, bourbon county, ca. 1785 [ 111

thomas kennedy of kenton county figures p.23a–c. Thomas Kennedy of Kenton County

a. A historic plaque marks the site of the T. Kennedy house in Covington, Kentucky. (Photo courtesy of the Kenton County Public Library)

Thomas and Dinah Kennedy’s stone house in Kenton County was the first of its kind in the region, built in 1791 on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. It was the most costly of all the early stone houses in Kentucky, described at the time as a mansion on a grand scale. Two wide galleries ran across the river frontage with a full view of the Ohio River. The house was five bays wide and two (or two and a half ) stories tall on a full, high cellar and had a one-story wing. Windows had segmental arches and twelve-over-twelve sash on both floors. Written accounts describe a dentiled cornice, paneled woodwork, and a broad staircase (implying a center passage). Early photographs show that the house had interior gable-end chimneys and an exterior chimney in the wing. The cellar had four bays and a double-cell plan. The gable ends were very wide (and blank except for a single door to the dining room or office), suggesting that the house had a classical double-pile plan. The original estate included the house, barn, springhouse, henhouse, and smokehouse—all of stone. The house was demolished by the City of Covington in 1909. This Thomas Kennedy was a third-generation Ulster American. His grandfather, Reverend William Kennedy, was born in 1695 in County Londonderry in the north of

112 [ thomas kennedy, kenton county, 1791

Ireland; he married Mary Henderson and died in 1777 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His son James Kennedy was born in 1730 in Bucks County and married Jane Maxwell. Thomas, son of James and Jane Kennedy, was born in 1741 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He married Dinah Davis, whose family were Welsh and lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Ancestry.com, World Tree entries 18228, 2646, and 293). Thomas and Dinah Kennedy and their three daughters came to Kentucky in 1791 from Brandywine, Pennsylvania. They floated with their possessions on a flatboat down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Licking River, where they disembarked. Kennedy and his brother Francis established the first commercial ferry on the Ohio River in 1792. Thomas Kennedy operated his ferry from the Kentucky (south) side of the river opposite his brother’s ferry landing in Cincinnati (then Losantiville). While ferrying supplies for the army, Francis was knocked overboard by cattle and drowned in the river. He was buried in the First Presbyterian Church yard in Cincinnati. Thomas Kennedy purchased more than 200 acres on the south bank of the Ohio River from James Welch for $750. In addition to ferry operator, Kennedy was a surveyor and a tavern operator. The Kentucky Post described

him as an “Irish Gentleman of wealth and education.” Festivities at the Kennedy house included “people of antique magnificence, gentlemen in curled wigs, knee breeches, blue, scarlet and gold lace and of belles with high heels, brocaded dresses, and high head gear.” Kennedy was a member of the first Campbell County Court, one of the first trustees of the town of Newport, one of the first justices of the peace of Campbell County, and one of the first trustees of Newport Academy. In 1806, he opened another ferry, crossing the Licking River between Newport and the future town of Covington, Kentucky. In 1815, he sold most of his acreage at the junction of the Licking and Ohio rivers (except his stone house) to the Covington Company for $34,000, and another 50 acres with ferry rights for an additional $34,000. The buyers immediately announced public sale of lots in “Covington, a new town” in the new county of Kenton. Kennedy died in 1821 in Covington, having willed the remainder of his estate to the heirs of his daughter Hannah and to his sons Joseph and Samuel (Bricking, n.d.; Kennedy Papers).6

b. T. Kennedy of Kenton County house. According to written accounts, this was the south facade. The north facade had a two-story loggia facing the Ohio River. (Photo courtesy of the Kenton County Public Library, 1895) c. The Covington flood wall, painted by Robert Dafford, depicts the T. Kennedy of Kenton County house on the hill above the south bank of the Ohio River and Kennedy’s ferry on the river below.

thomas kennedy, kenton county, 1791 [ 113

james lindsay figures p.24a–c. James Lindsay. Clockwise on spread: a. Lindsay elevation. b. Lindsay house. (1968) c. Lindsay house as restored. (1985)

114 [ james lindsay, 1785–1786

About 1785–1786, James Lindsay commissioned his stone house in Kentucky on a 1,000-acre tract on a branch of South Elkhorn Creek. It is a two-story, three-bay stone house built on the three-room plan, with interior gableend chimney stacks. This and the Kennedy house in Kenton County are the only two known Kentucky stone houses with segmental arches above the windows. The house caught fire in the late nineteenth century, destroying most of the roof, floors, and woodwork, which have recently been replaced in the colonial style (Bevins 1981, 65–66). The Lindsays of Kentucky are descendants of Lord Alexander Lindsay of Scotland. A branch of the family moved from Scotland as part of the plantation of Ireland, where they owned land in County Tyrone. Some of them later immigrated to Pennsylvania and settled at Falling Spring, now in Franklin County. William Lindsay, born in 1728, father of Joseph, William, Henry, and James, was a man of wealth and influence; he purchased several thousand acres of forests and meadows, raised herds of fine cattle, and owned and operated large mills. The Lindsay home at Falling Spring in Pennsylvania was a large stone mansion surrounded by extensive grazing lands. William Lindsay’s wife was Margaret Ewing. Their son Joseph was a mer-

chant in the West Indies, an extensive trader with the Indians before the Revolutionary War, and later commissary for the western army. Joseph was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks, leaving his wife, Ann Kennedy, a widow for the third time. A cousin, Colonel Reuben Lindsay of Caroline County, Virginia, was a profitable businessman and tobacco shipper who advanced 1,000 pounds in gold for the American independence effort. Lindsay kinsmen were the Poagues, Kennedys, Thompsons, and Pattersons, all of whom were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who migrated to Kentucky from Pennsylvania. They, with other wealthy Presbyterians, settled in the Bethel community of Scott County. When the “New Light” revival spread through Kentucky in the early 1800s, the Lindsays and the Pattersons became covenanters. James was a Swedenborgian, reading everything he could procure and following the beliefs of the Church of the New Jerusalem (Conover 1902; Shane, interview 16CC:289–91). This church is still active today, known as the New Church of Jerusalem; its members believe that “all religion is of life, and the life of religion is to do good.” Noted followers of Swedenborg include Walt Whitman, Helen Keller, and John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman.

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figures p.25a–e. John Logan. a. Logan elevation. b. Logan plan.

john logan

c. The one-of-a-kind faceted newel of the Logan stairway.

116 [ john logan, ca. 1789

John and Sarah Jane Logan’s stone house has two stories and three bays, built on the hall-parlor plan about 1789. The three bays are not symmetrical: the central doorway is off to the left, not aligned with the second-floor windows, which are themselves unevenly spaced in the facade. The open stairway rises from the front in the hall and is built along the partition wall. There are interior chimneys in each gable end. The rear facade has four bays on the first floor—window, door, door, window— providing access directly from the back porch to the hall and the parlor. The rear of the second floor has only two openings, aligned above the first-floor windows. A shed-roof porch once spanned the rear of the house, and a smaller shed-roof porch sheltered the front entrance. The cellar under the west room has exterior access only. The foundation of the old kitchen is off the northwest rear corner of the house. A stone meat house and ruins and foundations of several outbuildings remain on the site. The house is situated on a bank of Logan’s Creek, facing south toward the old Wilderness Road. Patrick Logan, born in 1640, moved from East Lothian, Scotland, to Lurgan, County Down, in northern Ireland in the mid-1600s. His son James was born in County

Armagh, Ireland, in 1674. James’s son David left Ireland with his wife, Jane McKinley (sister of the governor of Delaware), and their two children about 1739 and moved to Orange County, Virginia, where he received a headright grant for land in Virginia in exchange for importing himself and his family at his own expense. He became constable for Augusta County. The Logans owned land in Rockbridge County and were members of Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. David and Jane’s sons, Benjamin, Hugh, John, William, and Nathaniel, were all born on Kerr’s Creek. David died in 1757, when their oldest son, Benjamin, was fourteen. According to the laws of primogeniture, Benjamin (who later became a distinguished general in Kentucky) was entitled to the entire estate, but he chose to divide it with his brothers. John Logan, brother of Benjamin, was born in 1747 and was sent to England for his education. He was among the first to bring slaves into Kentucky, where he settled in 1779 with his wife, Sarah Jane McClure, and their seven children on his 1,400-acre settlement and preemption right. He was still on the tax list of Botetourt County, Virginia, in 1784, with three slaves. Logan was a lieutenant colonel and later colonel of the county militia, a member

of the first court in Kentucky, three times a member of the Virginia General Assembly, a member of the Kentucky constitutional convention, a Kentucky senator from 1792 to 1795, and first state treasurer, the office he served from 1792 until his death in 1807 (Young 1898, 14; Klotter 1981, 1:694; Waddell 1888, 318; Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 243; Morton 1920, 343, 456; Green 1889, 119; Shane, interview 12C:47).

d. Logan house, with a shed-roof front porch. The windows were lengthened in the mid-1800s. (1968) e. Logan house, rear. A shed-roof porch spanned the entire back of the house and provided sheltered access from the kitchen, the foundation of which is in the foreground of this picture. (1968)

john logan, ca. 1789 [ 117

john long figures p.26a–d. John Long. a. Long elevation.

118 [ john long, 1792

John and Mary Long’s stone house is a three-bay, twostory, three-room plan house. An open corner stair rises from the back of the hall. Soon after construction, the kitchen was incorporated into a three-bay, one-and-ahalf-story brick wing with two dormers, located on the east end of the house. This wing contains the huge cooking fireplace. In 1806 Long decided to sell the property; he advertised in the Frankfort (Ky.) Western World his “elegant stone dwelling house” for sale together with its “horse mill, distillery, orchards, and other appurtenances of a well-established pioneer plantation.” William Lee Graddy, son of Jesse Graddy from North Carolina, bought the plantation in 1816. In 1828, he and his wife, Martha Carlyle Graddy, added the pedimented portico at the main entrance and a Greek revival addition on the west gable end—a one-and-a-half story, two-bay brick wing with one dormer. His descendants removed the wall between the front and back parlors, enlarging the parlor side of the main house. Many of the outbuildings survive. East of the kitchen is a stone woodhouse, behind which is a dairy built into an embankment. A brick smokehouse is behind and to the east of the kitchen wing. The springhouse is down a small hill behind the smokehouse, and a

two-room frame slave cabin faces east behind the main house. The Long family left England during the reign of Charles II to escape religious persecution of the Presbyterian covenanter sect and relocated in the north of Ireland. Francis Long, the father of John, was born in Ulster in 1703. Between 1725 and 1730, Francis, with his mother and brothers, immigrated to the American colonies and settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania. John was born in 1749 in Pennsylvania but lived in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1775, when he married Mary Haynes. In 1789, the Longs moved from Rockbridge County, Virginia, to Kentucky, where they purchased the preemption grant of Bartlett Searcy. On this plantation they built their stone house in 1792 and reared their twelve children. They were members of Pisgah Presbyterian Church. Long was a road surveyor and juryman in his county. He had fifteen slaves in 1810. In 1816, the Longs sold the stone house to William Lee Graddy, whose descendants have resided there ever since (Pierce 1957; Mrs. Robert McMurtry, interview by the author, September 1986; Morton 1920, 88; Railey 1968, 148).

b. Original section of the Long house, built in 1792. c. Long hall with its corner stair. The portrait is of Jesse Graddy, whose son purchased the plantation in 1816 and whose family have resided there ever since. d. Outbuildings in the Long backyard include a center-chimney slave quarters, a covered icehouse, and, in the foreground, a brick meat house.

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james mc afee figures p.27a–f. James McAfee. a. McAfee elevation. b. McAfee plan.

120 [ james mcafee, 1790

James and Agnes McAfee commissioned their two-story, hall-parlor house in 1790 to be built from stone quarried on their land, from the quarry that still exists. The stonemasons were James Curran and Joseph Adams, both of whom afterward married McAfee’s nieces. The carpenter was William Davenport (Rebecca Wilson Conover, personal communication with the author, 1987). This house and that of Samuel McMillan in Harrison County (demolished) are atypical of Kentucky houses in that they have four bays. Each house retained the hall-parlor, cross-passage arrangement with the entrance directly into the hall, and each had a dogleg stair in the hall just opposite the front door. In both cases, the fireplace walls were paneled. McAfee’s gable-end windows on the first and second floors and partition walls of studs and plaster are also unusual in Ulster Kentucky houses. Both gableend chimneys are interior. The hall is on the east side of the house. The first-floor ceilings are 9 feet 6 inches. The floors are ash. An exterior door to the left of the parlor fireplace in the west gable end indicates that this was the dining room, with access to the then-separate kitchen. The woodwork has double architraves; the exterior doors are six-panel on the exterior, diagonally battened on the interior, and have strap hinges. An 1895 photograph

shows a single-bay, single-story gabled porch at the front entrance (figure P.27e). This was replaced by the present bungalow-style porch. The rear roof slope was extended at an early date, and a one-story room and loft and a porch (soon enclosed) were added. Remnants of brick red paint in crevices of the masonry walls indicate that the house was once painted to emulate brick, the more fashionable building material in the nineteenth century.7 James McAfee, son of John McAfee and Elizabeth Montgomery, was born in County Armagh, Ireland, in the 1672 family home, a two-story, hall-parlor stone house. The family were Presbyterians and rigid seceders. James was proud to have fought in 1690 for King William at the Battle of the Boyne. His wife was Jane McMichael, daughter of Malcolm McMichael. When James’s father, John, died in 1739, the division of patrimony was insufficient to comfortably support all the family, and James decided to pursue the opportunities in the American colonies. James and Jane McAfee brought his mother, Elizabeth Montgomery McAfee, and their three sons from their ancestral home in Ireland to New Castle, Delaware, in 1739. McAfee followed the weaving trade for a while to conserve money and soon bought 100 acres on Octorora Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The McAfees

c. McAfee’s stone house, commenced in 1790, was soon enlarged by extending the rear roof slope to cover an added room and a back porch. The originally separate brick kitchen, on the far left, is now connected to the house by a series of additions. The front porch is early twentieth century.

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did not stay there very long, however, for they found the farm too small for their growing family. They moved to North Carolina for two years near the Cowpens River, but in 1748 they bought two tracts on Sinking Creek and Catawba River and moved again, to Augusta County, Virginia. There they owned and operated grist- and sawmills, and McAfee served as a surveyor. James and Jane McAfee’s oldest son was James, who had been born in Ulster in 1707.8 His wife was Agnes Clark, daughter of Thomas Clark. All the McAfee brothers— James, Robert, George, William, and Samuel—earned rights to Kentucky land for their service in the French and Indian War. In 1773, James, George, and Robert came from Botetourt County (then Fincastle) to explore and survey Kentucky land, with James as the leader of their surveying company. They came down the New River to the mouth of the Kanawha and thence by boat down the Ohio to the Kentucky River. They went up the Kentucky River and stopped at the present site of Frankfort, where they made surveys, then moved farther south, upriver, and surveyed locations on the Salt River. The land claimed by the McAfee company in Kentucky totaled 52,000 acres, 10,000 of which were on the Salt River, where they settled. They returned to Virginia in the fall and then were prevented by the 1774 Cornstalk war from reentering Kentucky until 1775. Upon their return to the Salt River land, the company established a stockaded station at a large spring on James McAfee’s tract. Indian attacks and the Revolutionary War prevented them from bringing their families to Kentucky until 1779, but in that

d. McAfee gable end. It is unusual for early Kentucky houses to have windows in the gable ends. e. This nineteenth-century photograph shows the original gabled front porch of the McAfee house. (Photo courtesy of the Filson Library, Louisville, Kentucky)

122 [ james mcafee, 1790

year, all the brothers, their wives, children, elderly mother, and slaves moved to Kentucky and settled on their various land holdings, although they lived together for several years at McAfee’s Station, until danger from the Indians had lessened. During that time they cleared land, planted crops and gardens, increased their stock of horses and cattle, imported some swine, and built mills and houses, selling surplus lands to raise capital. They founded New Providence Presbyterian Church in the village of McAfee, adjoining their settlements. All were Whigs and friends of wealthy Kentuckians John Brown, Christopher Greenup, and Robert Payne. James McAfee fought in the Battle of Point Pleasant; was a lieutenant in the Virginia militia; and furnished money, provisions, and whiskey to the troops during the war. He imported forty head of cattle to Kentucky in 1775, most of which were killed during the war. In 1782 he traveled to New Orleans and then to the West Indies before returning to Kentucky. In 1790 he commenced building his stone house on the northeast corner of his station site. He modeled the house after his family home in County Armagh. McAfee lived in this house with his family until his death in 1811, at which time he owned 1,700 acres, mills, and seven slaves (Klotter 1981, 1:729; Woods 1905, 153; Daviess 1924, 39; McAfee 1927, 1–235). McAfee’s biographer and great-grandson Neander Woods lamented that with all his knowledge of Kentucky botany and geography, McAfee was a “man of scarcely any sentiment or romance. . . . [H]e was intensely, severely practical . . . a systematic man and close observer. He took note of the good or bad soil, the timber, the water, the adaptation of the country to farming purposes, but he ignored the esthetical side of life. The sense of humor is never revealed in his journal—not a word of sarcasm, wit, or ridicule does it contain . . . no philosophizing whatever” (Woods 1905, 196).

f. The water flow from McAfee’s spring is ceaseless, and in average weather (neither rainy nor dry), the water emerges at about 125 to 150 gallons per minute. The spring drain was lined with stone walls and the spring itself covered with a springhouse to allow access while avoiding muddying the water and keeping out livestock.

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william mcbrayer figures p.28a–e. William McBrayer. a. McBrayer elevation. b. McBrayer plan.

124 [ william mcbrayer, 1814

The stone house built for William and Jane McBrayer with an 1814 date stone is a three-bay, one-and-threequarters-story, hall-parlor house with interior gable-end chimneys and dimensions of 22 × 38 feet. It is identical front and back and has a gable-end exterior doorway in the west end, the same end that has steps descending to the full cellar on the other side of the chimney. This suggests that the kitchen once stood outside the west end of the house; there are no fireplaces in the cellar. The stair enclosure is along the partition wall. The roof has a 43-degree slope, steeper than is typical, providing more headroom in the garret, one room of which has a small fireplace. Recent remodeling extended the roof and added large dormers and a room on the north front. William McBrayer was born in 1754 and “Departed this Life the 5th day of January 1820 in the 66th Year of his age.” He was “An Honest Man the Noblest work of God,” according to his tombstone in the McBrayer cemetery near Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. He was one of the six sons of James McBrayer and Jane Montgomery, who migrated to Virginia from Killyleagh, County Down, Ireland.

William McBrayer was among the first explorers at Harrodsburg with the McAfee company from Botetourt County, Virginia, where in 1779 he was a witness for the sale of the younger James McAfee’s land. He was a constable in Samuel McAfee’s company and served during the Revolution under General George Rogers Clark. McBrayer preempted 1,400 acres in what is now Anderson County and claimed and sold additional land in Lincoln County, where he was deputy surveyor, for a total of 2,570 acres. His land grant in 1782 in Anderson County, Kentucky, was deeded to his father, “James McBrayer, Gent.,” 624 acres in three tracts, as the assignee of his son William. After Mercer County was formed, McBrayer served as road overseer, appraiser, juror, witness, examiner, and deputy surveyor. When Franklin County divided from Mercer, he was its first surveyor, justice of the peace, county lieutenant, and county sheriff. His first marriage was to Jane Phillips and his second to Jennet (Harbison) Walke. He was a Presbyterian and a Freemason. His son Alexander was a trader and member of the Kentucky legislature (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 1887b, 11; Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 290; Gresham 1896, 69).9

c. McBrayer house, west gable end. The roof is steeper than usual, providing headroom for the two finished rooms in the garret. d. McBrayer house, south front. McBrayer’s house was identical front and back. It is the only known stone house that does not have voussoirs; instead, masonry coursing continues above the doors and windows. (1985) e. McBrayer house as remodeled. (2005)

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john mccaughan figures p.29a–c. John McCaughan. Clockwise on spread: a. McCaughan elevation. b. The McCaughan house, built about 1823, retains the identical form of Ulster Kentucky houses built forty years earlier. c. McCaughan house. (Reproduced from the Nashville Tennessean, December 26, 1939)

126 [ john mccaughan, ca. 1823

When John and Hannah McCaughan came to Kentucky, they lived in a log house for several years, until about 1823, when they contracted with an itinerant masonry contractor for the construction of their new “rock house,” as it was referred to in deed books ever after. The house has a typical two-story, three-bay, hall-parlor plan with internal gable-end chimneys and an enclosed corner stair on the partition wall. The two facades are identical and fenestration is symmetrical. It has a full cellar with a stone floor and (reportedly) two fireplaces. A log kitchen and slave quarters, also with stone flooring, were originally on the east end of the house, which has a gable door into the hall, but they have been replaced with a modern kitchen wing. On the west gable end, a small covered porch protects the cellar entrance. Except for its symmetrical fenestration, this plan is identical to that of Henry Thompson Sr.’s in Nicholas County, built about forty years earlier. McCaughan’s house is among the last drystone houses built in Kentucky. John McCaughan was born in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Ireland, in 1773, the oldest son of Patrick and Rose Stuart McCaughan. He was trained as a weaver and worked as a clerk and teacher in Pennsylvania before

securing a commission as surveyor in western Kentucky. Between 1803 and 1815 he received land grants in his own name totaling 2,500 acres. He was a devout Presbyterian covenanter who in 1781 married Hannah Johnston, a member of the Associate Presbyterian Church. Together they joined the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Livingston County, Kentucky, thirty miles from their home. They attended church only on special occasions and conducted regular Sunday services in their home for their family, slaves, and neighbors. In addition to surveying, a skill he taught his son Charles, McCaughan ran a mill and his farm, both of which he operated with hired help and slaves. He came to believe that owning slaves was wrong, however, and between 1831 and 1835, he emancipated his slaves and gave each of them a small farm. The McCaughans then moved to Preble County, Ohio, with their three younger children, leaving an older son, Kain, to manage the farm until the last of it was sold in 1849 (McCaughan 1895; Evelyn Williams and Minniebell McKaughan Perkins [descendants] to the author, 1988). The McCaughans were among the many Kentucky Presbyterians who came to oppose slavery and moved to Ohio.

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james mcconnell figures p.30a–c. James McConnell. a. McConnell elevation.

128 [ james mcconnell, late 1700s

The James McConnell house is a one-story, three-bay, hall-parlor stone house on a high cellar with interior chimneys in each gable end. The interior of the house has been totally altered, and the windows, doors, and almost all original woodwork are gone, but the house is honored as the oldest stone house in Lexington and as a tribute to the McConnell brothers, founders of the town. It is located at the site of McConnell’s Station at the Royle Spring on Town Branch. James McConnell’s brother William built two similar stone houses, the first at the sinking spring on his 1,400-acre tract, now honored as McConnell Springs Nature Preserve, and the second (soon enlarged), also a National Register historic site, on the north side of Frankfort Pike, facing Town Branch.10 The extended McConnell family of Kentucky came from County Londonderry, Ulster, to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in the early 1700s and settled on Conococheague Creek. Some of the family settled in New Jersey, others in Rockbridge and Botetourt counties, Virginia. The reuse of given names by all branches of the family makes absolute lines of descent and origins of family branches nearly impossible to establish. They were all Scottish and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

The Lexington McConnells explored and marked land claims in Kentucky in 1774 and 1775. They were camped at a huge spring on the claim of William McConnell when news reached them of the patriots’ victory at the battle at Lexington, Massachusetts. They selected the name Lexington for the Kentucky town they envisioned.11 The exploring party delayed settlement during the most dangerous years of Indian attack, 1776–1779. James McConnell’s brothers, William and Francis, each obtained grants to 1,400 acres on the west side of what became the Lexington tract. All three brothers fought in the Revolutionary War. Few families sacrificed so many of their men to the American Revolution. Francis and William joined their Dunlap kinsmen and fought in the war in North Carolina, where Francis and Colonel Robert Dunlap were killed in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781. Ensign Francis McConnell (nephew of William) was killed by the Indians at Harrodsburg on April 29, 1777. James McConnell and another William McConnell (a nephew) were killed on the way to defend Bryan’s Station in August 1782. Andrew McConnell and yet another James McConnell were killed at the Battle of Blue Licks (the

“last battle of the Revolutionary War”) on August 19, 1782. James McConnell, brother of Andrew, was killed by Indians on Beargrass Creek. William McConnell, son-inlaw of Andrew McConnell, was killed by Indians while moving to Field’s Station near Danville. Others of the Lexington McConnells served and died in the war in the western territory, at the River Raisin, and in the Battle of the Thames. After the war, James McConnell remained in Pennsylvania until his mother died, at which time he joined the rest of the family near Lexington. The 1,400 acres that James had inherited from his brother Francis included McConnell’s Station at Lexington, and it was on this tract that James built his stone house (Shane, interview 19C:164–65; Marjorie Harding [descendant], personal communication with the author, 1988).

b. The McConnell house, near the heart of Lexington, has not escaped the intrusion of industry, in the form of the vastly expanded McConnell quarry. c. McConnell house, rear. The embankment of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad leans against the back wall of the McConnell house. The cellar of the house is now filled with concrete to buttress it against the embankment.

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the widow mcdowell figures p.31a–d. Widow McDowell. a. Widow McDowell elevation. b. Widow McDowell plan.

The widow McDowell’s stone house is a typical two-story, three-bay, hall-parlor house with interior gable-end chimneys, built about 1785–1790. An enclosed winding stair rises from the back corner of the hall beside the fireplace and provides space for a closet under the stair. There is a press on the left of the fireplace. The fireplace wall is paneled with vertical beaded boards and has cornice molding. Beaded boards also form the dividing wall between the hall and the parlor. Original woodwork is beaded and has ovolo trim. Atypically, the first-floor ceiling is also composed of beaded boards, attached to the bottoms of the ceiling joists. Upstairs, the ceiling joists are exposed, and beaded attic flooring forms the second-floor ceiling, installed on top of the beaded ceiling joists. The absence of gable windows in the attic is unusual, as is the absence of a cellar. The house originally faced McDowell’s Run, 270 feet to the northwest, but was reoriented to face the existing road on the southeast, at which time a one-story frame ell (now collapsed) was built onto the original front. No historical outbuildings survive. The McDowell family belonged to the clan of the Duke of Argyle in Scotland. To escape persecution during the reign of Charles I, they crossed the channel over to County

130 [ the widow mcdowell, ca. 1785–1790

Londonderry in Ulster, where they resided until 1721, at which time they moved to Pennsylvania. They lived in Pennsylvania for ten years before moving to Rockbridge County, Virginia, where the family was prominent, influential, and wealthy—surveyors, statesmen, and members of Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. They were kinsmen of the Irvines, Poagues, Harvies, Reids, Moores, McClungs, and Breckinridges (Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 36). John McDowell, a surveyor of the Borden tract, was the leader of a Virginia militia unit. He was killed in hostilities between the Virginia militia and a traveling band of Iroquois (Hofstra 2004, 44–47). His wife was Magdalena Woods; their sons, Samuel and James, became well-known leaders in Virginia. Both received 1,000-acre military grants in Kentucky for service in the French and Indian War. James’s wife was Elizabeth Cloyd, born in New Castle, Delaware, the daughter of David Cloyd and Margaret Campbell. James died in 1771 in Fayette County, Kentucky, and his land was “laid off” for his heir-at-law, also named James McDowell. The widow McDowell moved her household after the Revolutionary War, riding horseback and accompanied by

her slaves, to McDowell’s Run in Bourbon County, Kentucky, where she commissioned her stone house (Whitley 1957–1958, no. 16). Land sales in 1817 of James McDowell’s military grant in Bourbon County show that both James McDowell II and James McDowell III (then listed as Sr. and Jr.) continued to live in Rockbridge County, Virginia (Bourbon County Deed Book M, 345).12

c. The widow McDowell’s hall-parlor stone house was built facing McDowell’s Run. d. Widow McDowell house, rear view. Both chimney tops are missing.

the widow mcdowell, ca. 1785–1790 [ 131

samuel mcdowell slave quarters figures p.32a–c. Samuel McDowell slave quarters. a. S. McDowell elevation. b. S. McDowell plan.

132 [ samuel mcdowell, ca. 1820

Samuel and Mary McDowell moved to Kentucky in 1783 and developed their plantation near Danville on the 2,000-acre grant he received for his service in the French and Indian War. One of the oldest remaining buildings on the plantation is a double-cell, central-chimney stone slave quarters, 17 feet 11 inches × 33 feet 5 inches, built early in the nineteenth century. Each of the two rooms has a front door and window and another window at the back. The fireplaces in the two rooms share a single chimney stack. There were once five similar quarters built in an L around the back and side yards; this one was kept as a “souvenir.” Unfortunately, its roof was blown off in a tornado in 1979. Samuel McDowell was a brother of James McDowell. Both were sons of John McDowell and Magdalena Woods

and grandsons of Ephraim McDowell, who had emigrated from Londonderry, northern Ireland. The family were prominent Scotch-Irish Presbyterian leaders of Augusta County, Virginia. Samuel McDowell had a long and outstanding career as a distinguished public servant in Virginia and Kentucky, including service as captain in Lord Dunmore’s War and the Battle of Point Pleasant, colonel in the Revolutionary War, member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from Augusta County, commissioner of Kentucky land claims, president of the Kentucky constitutional conventions, and judge of the first Kentucky district court. He and his wife, Mary McClung, were the parents of the well-known Dr. Ephraim McDowell of Danville (Schachner 1921, 1–11; Fackler 1959; Collins 1874, 2:92).

c. The roof of the S. McDowell slave quarters was blown off in a tornado in 1979.

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john mcgee of mercer county figures p.33a–d. John McGee of Mercer County. a. J. McGee of Mercer County elevation. b. J. McGee of Mercer County plan.

The house built for John and Mary McGee in 1790 has several unique features. It is the only Kentucky stone house with a cooking fireplace in the main house, the 6-foot opening of which is spanned by an adzed oak lintel. Like the houses of John Allen, William Garrett, and the widow McDowell, the house has no cellar. The stairway beside the fireplace makes a 180-degree turn, as does the stair in the McDowell house. A batten partition wall, now removed, separated the hall and parlor. Both chimneys are interior. The plastered window reveals in the house are also unusual. Exterior fenestration is asymmetrical, having window, door, window on the first floor, with the door off center to the left, similar to the fenestration of the John Logan house. Second-floor windows, however, are aligned above the first, but unlike Logan’s, McGee’s house has no center window on the second floor. Also unique to this house is lack of a cornice. The joists do not protrude outside the front wall face, and the rafters rest on the top plate, protruding about 9 inches beyond the wall face, on the underside of which the soffit board is fastened. The rafters have half-dovetailed collar ties. The hewn timber ruins of a one-story frame wing remain on the north gable end, a room having no connecting doorway into the main house. The chimney here is exterior. A one-story shed-

134 [ john mcgee, mercer county, 1790

roof porch with chamfered posts once spanned the east front. A stone-lined root cellar is northeast of the house. The house faces east, backing to the Salt River. An ell was built on the rear of the house during the federal period. John McGee, born in 1730, is another Ulster Kentucky stone house owner who was born in Ireland. Five McGee brothers—John, William, James, David, and Robert—were born in County Antrim, sons of John McGee and Ann Dejarnette (FamilySearch.org, pedigree resource file 366568). They migrated to America about 1750. In the 1760s, each of the McGee brothers purchased land in the area of Augusta County, Virginia, that became Botetourt County, all of which they sold when they moved to Kentucky in the 1770s. Their father died in Prince Edward County, Virginia, about 1780 (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 5697). John McGee lived on Catawba Creek in Botetourt County, where he married Mary McCoun about 1767. In 1773, Robert McAfee and James McCoun, both brothers-in-law of McGee, surveyed for him 1,000 acres on both sides of the Salt River in Kentucky. In 1774, McGee served as a private in the Botetourt County militia under the command of General Andrew Lewis and fought in the Battle of Point Pleasant. McGee joined the McAfee company on its second trip to Kentucky, in 1775. During that trip, Wil-

liam McBrayer, another member of the company, assisted McGee in building a cabin on his Salt River claim. All the members of the McAfee company, most of whom were related by blood or marriage, had intended to bring their families to Kentucky in the spring of 1776. They commenced transporting their movable possessions by water but were impeded by the extremely dry season that made the rivers too shallow for canoes, causing them to turn back to Virginia. Campaigns against the Cherokees and then the Revolutionary War forced them to postpone the move until 1779. This time the families and their possessions traveled on packhorses through southwestern Virginia and the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. The Indians continued to attack the Kentucky settlements, and McGee’s entire family—parents, wife, and young sons and daughters—stayed in McAfee’s Station, where they survived the hard winter of 1779–1780. Indian attacks forced them to return to the safety of the station several times. In an attack in 1781, the Indians captured Mary McGee’s younger brother, Joseph McCoun, and took him across the Ohio River to an Indian town on the Mad River, where (his family later learned) they burned him at the stake. By 1785, such tragedies were mostly over, and the people of the Salt River settlement organized and built the New Providence Presbyterian Church, in whose graveyard John McGee was buried in 1810. The inventory of his estate included eight slaves, livestock, farming equipment, spinning wheels, and household furnishings, including “all the puter” (Harrodsburg [Ky.] Herald, [1980s]; Klotter 1981, 1:743–51).

c. J. McGee of Mercer County house, east front. The ell at the rear has federal woodwork. (1982) d. This old photo of the J. McGee of Mercer County house shows the original porch and abutting kitchen. (1968)

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john mcgee of nelson county figures p.34a–b. John McGee of Nelson County.

Stone Castle, the home of John and Elizabeth McGee, was located on an old buffalo trace that early settler Paul Froman incorporated into a wagon road in 1781. The house had two stories and three bays and was built on the three-room plan. The walls were 27 inches thick. The house had at least two unusual elements that distinguished it from others in Kentucky: the eaves were extended on the gable ends, and the front cornice wrapped around the house corners. These features also exist on the German Kentucky Henry Crist house. The McGee house was destroyed when a new owner tried to excavate a cellar and the blasting damaged the walls (David Hall, personal communication with the author, 1982, 2006; Smith 1971, 116; Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 3133; FamilySearch.org, pedigree resource file disc 47, pin 760738). The McGee family of Nelson County is a singular example of the integration of Scotch-Irish and German residents from Frederick County, Virginia.13 McGee’s Virginia ancestors included grandparents and great-

a. A historic marker is near the site of the demolished J. McGee of Nelson County house, Stone Castle.

136 [ john mcgee, nelson county, before 1790

grandparents whose names were Froman, Hite, Cartmell, Crist, Speers, McCarty, and Richardson. Thomas, John, and Patrick McGee were the three sons of Patrick McGee Sr. and Jane Hall. John married Elizabeth Froman, and Patrick Jr. married Rachel Froman. The three McGee brothers came to Kentucky from York County, Pennsylvania, about 1775 to explore and claim land. They moved in 1783 to Bullitt’s Lick before settling 5 miles north of Bardstown in Nelson County, where they jointly acquired the 1,000-acre Paul Froman claim. The McGees were land locators, salt makers, ferry and tavern operators, and soldiers in the Revolutionary Army. Patrick McGee Jr., a stonemason, assisted in the construction of many stone buildings in Nelson County between 1780 and 1820. In 1785 he built this house, Stone Castle, for his brother John. John and his wife Elizabeth Froman had twelve children, born in Frederick County, Virginia, and in Nelson County, Kentucky. John McGee died in 1810 and is buried in the McGee graveyard about 4 miles north of Bardstown.

b. J. McGee of Nelson County house in the nineteenth century. The three-room, two-story house, like the McAfee house, had windows in the gable end. The hall is on the left. The parlor and chamber on the right had corner fireplaces sharing the same chimney stack.

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james mckee figures p.35a–f. James McKee. a. McKee elevation. b. McKee plan.

138 [ james mckee, 1809

The impressive stone house of James McKee and his family is a six-bay, two-story, double-pile house with a centerpassage plan.14 The dogleg stairway in the passage has open treads and turned banisters. A solid stone wall once separated the passage and the two family rooms on the south end of the house from the two rooms on the north end, used as McKee’s retail store and milling office. The center window of the commercial half of the house was originally a ground-floor doorway into the retail store. McKee’s house is outstanding for several reasons: First, the sophisticated cornice with modillions and the unique carving surrounding the front door are unparalleled in Kentucky houses. As described by architectural historian Clay Lancaster, the front doorway displays “primitive leaf-on-branch motifs aligned to the pilasters and alongside the arch, and peculiar triglyphs alternating with pierced metope lozenges in the frieze beneath the pediment” (1991, 51). Second, the fanciful carving continues into the front parlor, where the paneled fireplace wall has an arched-top press and pilasters at the corners. The overmantel has a large cutout of a scroll-handled vase with leaf sprays.15 The mantelpiece is decorated with incised, convex, and gouged carving. The wainscot is segmented by reeded pilasters below the chair rail. And third, finely

finished, hand-cut stonework on the front facade is laid in straight courses, a masonry pattern often identified as the work of John or Thomas Metcalf. Sturdy construction is evidenced both by the solid stone wall running front to back of the house and by the 9 × 9 inch summer beam that is exposed in the attic. Attic rafters have no collar ties and no knee wall. Entrance to the stone-floored cellar, which is below the left half of the house only, is under the main stairway. The McKee family, Scottish-descended Presbyterians, left County Down in Ulster in 1737 and migrated to the region around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Five to ten brothers, by various accounts, came to America. Some of them established permanent homes in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Various McKee sons and grandsons were militia officers, sheriffs, surgeons, and Virginia state legislators; one was a trustee of Washington and Lee. All owned slaves. In 1757, Robert and John McKee moved to Kerr’s Creek in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and in 1760, William moved to Augusta County. James McKee’s will in Rockbridge County in 1778 names sons William, Samuel, John, and Robert, so James may have been the father of the McKee brothers who moved to Virginia. John McKee’s first wife was Jane Logan, to whom he was married in

c. McKee’s house and office are in the six bays on the left. McKee’s bank is in the two bays on the right.

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1744. She was killed in 1763 by the Shawnee Indians in one of their raids in Rockbridge County. His second wife was Rosanna Cunningham, whom he married in 1765. John McKee’s will in Rockbridge County in 1792 names sons John, James, Robert, William, and David. This may have been the James who built this house in Bourbon County, Kentucky; he is of the right generation. FamilySearch International Genealogical Index lists James McKee of Kentucky as having been born about 1770 and married to “Mrs. James McKee” in about 1790. Their daughter Elizabeth McKee was born about 1796 and died in 1829. However, it is nearly impossible to ascertain whether this is the correct James McKee, because all the McKee brothers named their sons for other members in the family and each generation has the same given names (Morton 1920, 348, 367; Railey 1968, 229–31).16 Existing tax records list James McKee in 1799, and he appears as the owner of a retail store by 1802 (Whitley 1975). Apparently the store did well, for by 1809 he was able to buy lots 17 and 54 in the heart of Millersburg and erect a stone house on the property (Bourbon County Record Book 1, 465).17 He later built a stone bank building and adjoining brick row house on the north end of his house. In 1830 and 1832, he sold the brick house and the stone bank to Lewis Vimont, retaining the stone house and office for his own residence. When McKee died in 1833 or 1834, Vimont bought McKee’s remaining property, including the acreage surrounding the large stone house (Bourbon County Deed Book Z, 150, 222; Bourbon County Deed Book 37, 16).

d. The McKee front door surround is the unique work of an unknown woodcarver. (The Greek revival period door is a replacement.)

140 [ james mckee, 1809

e. McKee fireplace wall. Singular woodwork continues in the interior of the house. f. McKee stair bracket detail.

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samuel mcmillan figures p.36a–e. Samuel McMillan. a. McMillan elevation. b. McMillan plan.

142 [ samuel mcmillan, ca. 1800

Samuel McMillan and James McKee owned the two finest known Ulster stone houses in Kentucky. The house of Samuel and Esther McMillan, which has been demolished, was a four-bay, two-story, hall-parlor stone house with uncommonly elaborate detailing. The main entrance had a half-round fan window, leaf-carved trim, and ninepanel door backed with chevron-patterned beaded boards on the interior. The cornice had modillions and dentils. The open dogleg stair in the northwest corner of the hall had scroll-carved stringers, nosed treads, and turned banisters and newels. The hall had cherry wainscot and a reeded breakfront mantel with crossetted architraves flanked by paneled presses. The parlor had a dentiled mantel with a bowed frieze and crossetted architrave and a paneled press with dentiled cornice. The partition wall was plaster over stone. Paint colors were peach in the hall with brown woodwork and tan in the parlor with green woodwork; the walls had one coat of paint only, directly on the plaster. Kitchen walls were pink over whitewash. Interior window jambs were reeded and had double architraves. The first-floor joists were stripped logs, flattened on top, and the second-floor joists were pit sawn. There were no fireplaces in the cellar, whose entrance was on the front of the house. Window frames retained driven

pins to hold shutter hinges. A one-story, shed-roof porch spanned the rear. The two-bay kitchen wing on the north end was connected to the house by an enclosed stone dogtrot built as a unit with the kitchen and house. The entrance to the dogtrot was a large, compass-arched doorway at the front. The kitchen chimney stack was interior; the huge cooking fireplace lintel was a hewn timber, 111/b feet long and 17 inches tall, extending the full width of the chimney breast. The fireplace opening was 51/b feet tall, 3 feet deep, and 8 feet wide, reducing to 7 feet wide at the back of the firebox. The kitchen chimney narrowed on the front and sides at the attic floor level. The house was severely damaged by neglect and vandalism over the years and was sold for its materials to build a replica in Jefferson County. The Kentucky Heritage Council provided a grant to Terry Russell in 1987 to document the ruins of the McMillan house, including framing details, cornice elevation and sectional, crown molding profile, floor plans, elevations, and photographs. The McMillan family moved from the north of Ireland to Scotland before the plantation of Ulster in the 1600s and later moved back to Carnmoney (now Newtownabbey), above Belfast Lough in Ulster. Samuel McMillan’s grand-

c. McMillan house. The arched dogtrot connected the one-story stone kitchen to the dining room. (1974)

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d. McMillan cornice with modillions and dentils.

144 [ samuel mcmillan, ca. 1800

parents were William and Margaret Rea McMillan, both born in County Antrim, in northern Ireland (Ancestry .com, entry 67836). They moved from there to Fagg’s Manor in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1742. Their son John, born in 1752, graduated from Princeton University in 1770 (Slosser 1933, 139). Reverend John McMillan originated the famous Chartiers Hill Presbyterian Church in southwestern Pennsylvania (Bennett 1933, 240, 214). He was “large in frame, wore cocked hat, knee breeches, stockings, and buckles long after the fashion was outmoded” (Macartney 1933, 129). His will in Washington County, Pennsylvania, written in 1832, when he was eighty years old, names sons William of Mercer County, Kentucky; John; and Samuel (then deceased; Bennett 1933, 240). Reverend McMillan’s son Samuel McMillan was educated at the University of Edinburgh when his parents lived in Pennsylvania. He came to Kentucky from Virginia in April 1776 with Captain John Haggin and resided with Haggin’s family on Paddy’s Run in Harrison County until they were driven off for safety to McClelland’s Station that same year. McMillan fought in Indian wars, was a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War in Virginia, and was a spy for George Rogers Clark during the war. After the war, he lived in Lexington, Kentucky, until after 1790, when he received title to 10,000 acres of land in Bourbon County. He married Esther Fraizer, whose family owned the Joel Fraizer (Frazier) stone house in Harrison County. McMillan was the first county judge in Harrison County and one of the largest landowners in the county. The frequency of his name in Bourbon County (parent county to Harrison) land records indicates that he was an early land speculator. He died in 1816. (Wilson n.d., 3; Kerr 1922, 4:567; Armstrong 1918; Collins 1874, 2:326; Peddicord 1986; Vivian Davis, personal communication with the author, 1985; Jane McMillin Breckner to the author, 1988; Ellen Eslinger, personal communication with the author, 1986; Harrison County Will Book A, 335).

e. McMillan house. (1984)

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jonathan mcmurtry figures p.37a–c. Jonathan McMurtry. a. McMurtry elevation. b. McMurtry plan.

146 [ jonathan mcmurtry, ca. 1825

Jonathan and Mary McMurtry’s stone house is one and a half stories, has a hall-parlor plan, measures 21 feet 8 inches × 43 feet 6 inches, and is unusual in having five bays. Both chimneys are interior. The lower-pitched roof and classical woodwork point to a construction date of about 1825. The superior-quality masonry, of Tyrone limestone, retains its original pointing. The front and rear doors open into the northwest hall. The enclosed corner stair rises from the front of the house within space taken from the hall and has access from both the hall and the parlor. Garret windows, six-pane casements, are taller than usual. The house, which is unaltered, contains fine woodwork—reeded jambs, double architraves, ovolo trim, reeded and pilastered breakfront mantels, pegged panel doors with lift latches, chair rail, and paneled-door presses in the hall. The full cellar, with access from the rear of the house, has no fireplaces and is undivided. A stone dairy and 30-foot-deep stone-lined dug well are in the backyard. Rock fences line the lane to the house and barn. The McMurtry family moved from Scotland to the north of Ireland and then, in 1734, to America, where they

first settled in New Jersey. Joseph McMurtry relocated in Philadelphia, where he was a manufacturer of morocco leather. His son, also named Joseph, became a surveyor in Botetourt and Augusta counties and married Rosanna (Nancy) Campbell. Their son James lived in Bedford, Augusta, and Botetourt counties, Virginia. His will in Rockbridge County in 1794 names sons Samuel, William, James, and Joseph. Joseph came to Mercer County and founded McMurtry’s Station near Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill (Shane, interview 12C:185, 201); his sons were James, David, and Jonathan. Jonathan McMurtry acquired the “old Fry survey.” He married Mary (Polly) Steele and was a tanner in Jessamine County, where he had a bark mill and tanyard on nearby Indian Creek. His brother James also built a stone house in Harrison County, Kentucky, where he, too, operated a tannery. David’s son John McMurtry became a nationally renowned Lexington architect. The McMurtrys were Presbyterians in Virginia but became Baptists in Kentucky (Mrs. Robert McMurtry to the author, June 1986; family history files; Perrin 1882a, 704).

c. McMurtry’s is the only known five-bay, one-story Kentucky stone house, built about 1825. It is of white Tyrone (bird’s-eye) limestone in fine ashlar masonry.

[ 147

john andrew miller figures p.38a–e. John Andrew Miller. a. Miller elevation. b. Miller plan.

148 [ john andrew miller, 1784

The John Andrew Miller family commissioned their two-story, three-bay, three-room stone house in 1784. The house is 24 × 32 feet with interior gable-end chimneys. Diagonal corner fireplaces in the gable ends of the smaller rooms share the same stack. The enclosed stair entrance was originally from the rear of the hall, just inside the back door. Opposing front and rear doors are slightly off center, as are the second-floor middle windows. Another exterior doorway in the gable end of the hall forward of the fireplace opened into a log dining room that was added at an early date and has since been replaced. Doors are six-panel on the outside, diagonally battened on the inside, and retain their original H and HL hinges. Firstfloor ceilings are 9 feet tall. The partition walls (now removed) were stud and plaster, rather than the usual vertical boards. The roof system has common rafters with collars, spaced 2 feet on center, half lapped and pegged at the ridge. The collars are trenched and pegged into the rafters. The attic is 81/b feet from the floor to the ridge, with the collars 3 feet below the ridge. The rafters rest on the wall plate without notching. The attic was once divided by a board partition wall but did not have a ceiling. The first floor is supported by a hewn log summer beam running

front to back of the house, and the unnotched floor joists rest on top of the summer beam. First-floor wall thickness is 24 inches above the water table; second-floor wall thickness is 22 inches. The cellar entrance is on the west end of the house, with the steps protected by a gabled stone porch. The Millers were Presbyterians from County Antrim, northern Ireland, of Scottish and English descent, who migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, before 1752. John Andrew Miller was the son of Alexander Miller, a Presbyterian minister. From Carlisle, part of the family went to Rockbridge County, Virginia, where they were members of the Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. John Andrew and his brother William assembled in 1775 in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, with a party of surveyors from Virginia to explore and mark land claims in Kentucky. John Andrew Miller claimed and was granted 1,000 acres on Miller’s Run, where he established his plantation and built a mill on the creek in the valley west of his house. Miller served as county sheriff and magistrate. His brother-in-law, Robert Patterson, also from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, was one of the original settlers of Lexington (family history files; Morton 1920, 103; Brockman 1916; Christian 1860; Bevins 1981, 69–70).

c. Miller’s house is sited near the crest of the slope down to the creek on which Miller built his mills. The three-room plan of the house has been altered and the center door made into a window. The log wing on the east gable end has been rebuilt with an arched loggia, and another wing has been added to the west end. d. Miller’s house was “updated” in the mid-nineteenth century with a Greek revival porch, since removed. (1968) e. The Miller house retains the covered entrance to the cellar.

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robert poague figures p.39a–d. Robert Poague. a. Poague elevation. b. Poague plan.

150 [ robert poague, early 1800s

The building date of Robert and Jane Poague’s stone house is unknown, but the house has features of earlynineteenth-century construction. It is a two-and-a-halfstory, three-bay house with a hall-parlor plan, built with a full cellar, exterior gable-end chimneys, and a dentiled cornice. Except for later Greek woodwork in the hall, the woodwork is federal throughout, including the six-panel front door with beaded diagonal battens on the inside. Atypically, the enclosed corner stair rises from the parlor and has a curved, plastered ceiling. Another enclosed corner stair rises from the second floor to the attic; the attic has a fully plastered tray ceiling and is divided into two rooms by a board partition wall. The original kitchen may have been replaced by the two-story, two-bay frame ell that has a gable-end stone chimney. The house faces south on a gentle slope to the creek. The Poague (Pogue, Pollok, Polk) family is of Scottish origin. They participated in the plantation of Ulster on land in the Laggan and Foyle river valleys in County Donegal. Robert Poague, grandfather of this portfolio subject, was from County Antrim, Ireland, and immigrated first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1737. He proved his importation at his own expense and bought 1,078 acres in the Bev-

erly Manor in Augusta County, Virginia, near Staunton. Robert married Elizabeth Preston, daughter of Archibald Preston. He owned a mill and was a justice of Augusta. They were members of the Old Stone Presbyterian Meeting House. By 1764, Robert and Elizabeth’s son William lived in Rockbridge County near Natural Bridge, where he was a surveyor and sergeant of the militia. In April 1762, he married Ann Kennedy, widow of John Wilson. The Poague family—William, Ann, and their five children—moved to Kentucky in 1775 and stayed at Fort Harrod, surrounded by wilderness. In 1778, Poague was traveling with a party from Fort Harrod to attend the court at Logan’s Station when they were attacked by Indians. Poague, wounded, fell from his horse; he hid until nightfall, when the men from Fort Harrod found him. He died from his wounds three days later, leaving his wife and six children. (His wife later married Joseph Lindsay.) Robert Poague, oldest son of William and Ann, was born in 1766 in Rockbridge County (then Augusta); at age nine, he came with them to Kentucky. Robert married Jane Hopkins, daughter of John Hopkins and Jean Gordon, whose mother was also a Poague. He taught school at Fountain Blue in the Salt River community founded by

the McAfees. Later, taking advantage of his land grants, Poague and his family moved to Mason County, where he was “a highly influential and honorable citizen” (Shane, interview 5BB:166). He, with partners Bodley and Hughes, purchased 10,000 acres near May’s Lick. He commanded a regiment in the War of 1812, in which he attained the rank of general (Kellogg 1929, 224–28; Green 1889, 55; Klotter 1981, 2:91; Morton 1920, 55–56, 59, 456; Waddell 1888, 258, 323).

c. The Greek revival porch was added when the hall woodwork was updated. Poague’s house is atypical in having two exterior chimney stacks. (1983) d. Poague cornice with dentils.

robert poague, early 1800s [ 151

david sawyer figures p.40a–e. David Sawyer. a. Sawyer elevation. b. Sawyer plan.

152 [ david sawyer, 1814

David Sawyer, a skilled and creative stonemason, built his stone house in 1814. His house is the only one-and-ahalf-story three-room stone house in Kentucky, and it has several singular features: stone skewbacks, an outshot on the gable end beside the chimney in the front chamber, stone windowsills, and scored, solid stone lintels. Laurel dolomite slabs were big enough to form window and door lintels of a single piece that he scored to resemble individual voussoirs with keystones (see figures, p. 48).18 The cornice returns are also single stones, as are the door- and windowsills, which are chamfered on the edges. This excellent masonry must be attributed both to the highquality stone that Sawyer quarried on his farm and to his skill in extracting and working it. Other details include a bracketed shelf beside the front doorway for holding a lantern. Strangely, the water table is 3 feet 10 inches below the doorsill, while the total distance from the doorsill to the ground is 5 feet 10 inches. The unique outshot feature in the front chamber is 1o1/b feet along the outside gable end of the house; the exterior depth is 18 inches. It is covered by a shed roof, the top of which is below the level of the east facade eaves and is even with the top of the first-floor windows. Entrance to the cellar is from the outside, at the bottom of the outshot,

below the level of the first floor. Since the shed roof slopes downward, its eave is 5 feet above the top of the cellar door, which is at the first-floor level. Inside the northeast chamber, the niche provided by the outshot is only 3 feet 6 inches long, hardly enough for a bed. It does not have shelves or doors. The intended purpose of this feature is a mystery; the lifelong residents, who use it as a closet, have always thought it curious. The house was built to face east, as can be induced by the more decorative lintels above the door and windows on the east facade. It has a three-bay facade with opposing front and rear doors both slightly off center to accommodate the plan. The hall is on the south end of the house; the parlor and chamber are on the north end. An enclosed corner stair rises from the hall just inside the front door, with space taken from the northeast chamber. A doorway from the hall to the parlor is in the partition wall behind the stair enclosure. A door in the gable end of this room provides access to the separate kitchen (originally stone, now replaced in frame). The parlor and chamber each have a corner fireplace sharing the same stack in the center of the north gable end. The attic is divided into two rooms. The enclosed stair leads to a finished room above the hall that has a small fireplace; the other room

c. Sawyer’s house faces east, toward the spring branch. The sloping roof of the outshot is on the right gable end.

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is unfinished attic space. The rafters, with collars, rest directly on the wall plate without notching. Also unique (except for the Robert Guyn Jr. house) is that all the walls and ceilings are completely lined with poplar panels. Built-in wardrobes (presses) are on each side of the hall fireplace. All the doors are batten and have strap hinges; none have panels. The house has a full cellar with a heating fireplace in the west angle of the diagonal chimney. Turned wooden spindles, also one of a kind, are set vertically directly into the stone lintels and stone sills. The cellar ceiling joists are whole logs, 20 inches apart on center, flattened on top. This house is in original condition except for the addition of minimal electricity. The same family has owned it for more than a hundred years. David Sawyer’s grandfather, William Sawyer, was born in 1703 in County Londonderry, Ulster. Sawyer descendants report that William came with his parents in 1717 to Kennebeck, Maine. He moved with his family to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1734 and lived there until his death in 1784 at age eighty-one. He and his wife, Sophia Clemson, had seven children. Their son James was born in 1742 on the family’s plantation in Lancaster County. He first married Mary Garrison, who was born in New Jersey, and later married Hannah Haynes. In 1771, James migrated to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and located on 400 acres that his father had purchased. James Sawyer’s will of 1788 directed that

154 [ david sawyer, 1814

his plantation of 1,300 acres be divided equally among his three sons: David, Benjamin, and James. He also bequeathed to David 350 acres in Kentucky that he bought from Amos Balch, along with his “large bible and silver shoe buckels and my brownbess” (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 13934). David Sawyer was born in 1776 in Mecklenburg County. He and his brothers came to Kentucky from North Carolina in 1797 and purchased individual tracts.19 All of them were devout Presbyterians, and all of them married daughters of the Henderson family. David and Benjamin were elders of the Salem Presbyterian Church; David was a juryman, magistrate, sheriff, and justice of the peace in 1825. A daughter of David and Charity Sawyer married William Bloomer McMillan, son of John McMillan and Martha Balch. Her father, James Balch Jr., was a minister and friend of Reverend James McGready, one of the fathers of the great revival of the nineteenth century. The Sawyers brought Reverend Balch to their synod, although they took a calm stand against the revivalists, regarding them as erring brethren and fanatics.20 David Sawyer died in 1875 at age ninety-nine. The carved headstones and footstones of David Sawyer and his brother Benjamin were stolen from Salem Presbyterian Church Cemetery in 1982 by Sawyer descendants from Enid, Oklahoma (Coffman 1962, 58; Mary Koprowski [descendant] to the author, March 30, 1987).

d. Sawyer house, southeast corner. Lookouts in the corners are stone rather than the usual wood. e. “D, C, S, 1814” is inscribed in the southeast corner lookout of the Sawyer house.

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john “two-nine” scott John and Mildred Scott’s stone house, demolished for its materials in 1987, had several unique features and a complex form reminiscent of houses in the Atlantic coastal region. It was essentially a double-pile, hall-parlor plan with a back vestibule behind the hall containing an enclosed corner stair. The floor plan was very similar to that of the James Irwin house in Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, except that the Scott house was reversed and had five bays rather than four (see Van Dolsen 1990, 9). It was also similar to Huguenot plan houses except that it had exterior gable-end chimneys (see Noble 1984, 62–63, figure 7-12b). The huge exterior chimney stacks on the gable ends contained multiple flues; those on the south end served two fireplaces on the first floor, one on the second floor, and a cooking fireplace in the cellar. The chimneys, 16 and 14 feet wide, had shoulders front and back at both the roof and the second-floor level, but the shoulders did not go around the stacks. The house was also unique (in Kentucky) in having dormers, three

156 [ john “two-nine” scott, ca. 1790

in the front roof slope and two on the rear. Both the front and rear entrances were sheltered by gabled porches with chamfered posts. One exterior door in the south gable end accessed the parlor or dining room on the first floor, and another door near the rear led to the cellar kitchen. (For drawing, photo, and plan, see Lancaster 1991, 50–51.) John “Two-Nine” Scott was an Irish Presbyterian who came to the colonies from the north of Ireland in 1775; he gave himself the nickname “Two-Nine” because he had arrived in America with two shillings and nine pence. He settled first along the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. He married Mildred Peak about 1786, and they came to Kentucky in 1787 and purchased land in Jessamine County. (The records do not tell how he built his wealth.) Scott served with General Wayne in the French and Indian War and became a member of the Kentucky state legislature in 1800 (Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 143; Ancestry .com, World Tree entry 65366).

figures p.41a–b. John “Two-Nine” Scott. a. Scott’s stone house was unusual in its plan, double-shouldered chimneys, and dormered roof. (1982) b. Scott house, rear view. (1982)

[ 157

joseph shawhan figures p.42a–c. Joseph Shawhan. a. Shawhan elevation.

158 [ joseph shawhan, 1816

The two-story, three-bay stone addition to Joseph Shawhan’s log house is reported to have been built in 1816. The two-story single room, now the main house, originally was an appendage to the now-demolished log house that was situated on its east gable end. The stone section was the farm office for Shawhan’s very successful horse breeding and distilling businesses. An enclosed corner stair rises from the front right corner of the room. The large breakfront mantel has a heavy sunburst, fluted pilasters, and fluted square corner blocks. All the woodwork is fluted. The 1943–1957 owner tore down the log section of the house but left the fireplace (see Wilson [1957?], 51). Shawhan’s great-grandfather, Darby Shawhan, was born in northern Ireland in 1673 and died in Kent County, Maryland, in 1736. He married Sarah Meeks in 1707. They purchased 100 acres on Morgan’s Creek in 1709 and added 50 more acres, “Darby’s Desire,” in 1714. Their children were all born between 1709 and 1728 in Kent County. Their oldest son, Daniel, sold his land in Kent County in 1740 and moved to the extreme western part of Baltimore County (now Frederick County), Maryland. He was a corporal in the Maryland colonial militia in the French and Indian War. He owned a shoe factory and raised horses

and cattle. In 1759, he and his wife, Jennet, and their six children moved to Hampshire County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Daniel and Jennet Shawhan’s son Daniel was born in 1738 in Kent County, Maryland. He met and married Margaret Bell (who was born in Belfast, northern Ireland) in Frederick County in 1762. In the 1770s, the family moved to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where Shawhan prospered as a farmer and as a distiller of fine whiskey. He served in the Revolutionary War and fought in the Battle of Yorktown. When the agitation in Philadelphia to prohibit whiskey production in western Pennsylvania became an issue and it was foreseen that this region would be part of Pennsylvania and not Virginia, the family sold out and moved to Kentucky. There Shawhan resumed distilling Bourbon whiskey; his secret formula became known for its smooth taste and continued to be distilled for two centuries. Daniel and Margaret Shawhan had seven children, the youngest of whom was Joseph (Paris Kentuckian-Citizen, March 14, 1944). Joseph Shawhan was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1781. He came to Kentucky with his parents and, after his father’s death in 1791, made his home with

his widowed mother, his brother John, and his unmarried sisters. As a young man, he took flatboats with produce down the Licking River to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and on down to the port of New Orleans, where he sold the cargo and traveled back to Kentucky on foot with the proceeds in Spanish doubloons—through the Indian lands and wilderness (Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 178). As Shawhan carried on the distilling business, the excellence of his whiskies brought him prosperity. He owned several

large distilleries, was prominent in public life, and served several terms in the Kentucky legislature. He was a great lover and breeder of horses and attended the races in Lexington for seventy-one years. He was killed in 1871, aged ninety years and three days, having been thrown from his horse as he returned from the Lexington races. He was the oldest turfman in Kentucky and a farmer of 3,600 acres of Bluegrass land in Harrison and Bourbon counties (Collins 1874, 1:217).

b. About 1830, horse breeder Joseph Shawhan commissioned the formal one-room stone office addition to his log house (no longer standing). The stone building has been whitewashed and the roof extended. c. The federal style mantel helps date the Shawhan stone addition.

joseph shawhan, 1816 [ 159

john smith figures p.43a–e. John Smith. a. Smith elevation. b. Smith plan.

160 [ john smith, 1807

Colonel John Smith’s house, Stony Castle, is the largest hall-parlor stone house in Kentucky. It is five bays wide, 24 × 48 feet, and two stories tall, with interior gable-end chimneys. The keystone above the front door bears the owner’s initials and date: “JS 1807.” The middle bay is slightly off center to allow the two rooms to be almost equal in size, each having an enclosed winding stair in the rear corner. The second-floor rooms have no connecting doorway. The house is atypical for Ulster Kentucky houses in having the kitchen in a rear ell. The large hall fireplace has a crossetted double architrave below a shelf mantel with articulated center and corner blocks. The fireplace walls are finished with vertical board-on-board. A stone wall divides the cellar into two rooms, each with its own access from outside, on the gable ends. The Smith graveyard is east of the house in the rear yard. The Kentucky Historical Society installed a historical marker at the Smith house in December 1967, noting that it was “built by postmaster John Smith in 1807 on land granted by Patrick Henry, Gov. of Commonwealth of Virginia.” There were hundreds of men named John Smith during the Kentucky settlement period. It would be impossible to trace them without family help. Descendants of this Smith family relate that their ancestors were from the

north of Ireland (Anna Meyers McKee [descendant], personal communication with the author, July 1987). John Smith, founder of the family in Virginia, proved his importation with his family in 1740 from Ireland to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and finally to Orange County (now Augusta County), Virginia, by way of Philadelphia (Harrison 1984, 8; Waddell 1902, 150). They were Presbyterians and landowners in what are now Rockbridge and Rockingham counties, which divided from Augusta (Biographical Encyclopedia 1878, 84).21 Charles Smith, father of John, was born in Virginia in 1735 and died in Kentucky. “He was a plain old Virginia farmer who never held or sought office” (Shane, interview 5E:87). Charles received a 500-acre Revolutionary War grant for furnishing 1,325 pounds of beef to the Revolutionary army, but he did not move to Kentucky with his family until after the Indian wars. He was a surveyor in Bourbon County from 1782 to 1788 (Whitley 1957–1958, no. 16). Charles Smith was the son of George Smith and Elizabeth Hawkins; he married Martha (Patsy) Jones about 1740 in Culpeper County, Virginia. They had eleven children; the oldest was John, born in 1759; the youngest, Elizabeth, born at Bryant’s Station in 1783, was their only child born in Kentucky. After his wife’s death, Charles

renewed his acquaintance with a childhood sweetheart, Rebecca Bryant, by then a widow, whom he married in 1820, when he was eighty-five and she was eighty-three. They are buried in the cemetery behind the house. The Smiths were tall, blue- or gray-eyed, fair-skinned, and had auburn hair, sometimes red and curly (Ancestry.com, World Tree entries 2864 and 17943). In 1775, sixteen-year-old John Smith, son of Charles and Martha, came to Kentucky from Orange County, Virginia. He served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. In 1785, he bought 1,500 acres adjoining his father’s 500-acre grant at the price of twelve and a half cents an acre, paid for in maple sugar. He was issued a tavern license in 1793; he was convicted in March 1795 for profane swearing. He operated a horse-powered mill and was appointed postmaster of the first post office between Covington and Lexington. He operated the post office from a room in his home, which was on the stagecoach line. During the Civil War, General John Hunt Morgan and his officers used the Smiths’ house, and the soldiers camped in the fields.

c. Smith’s huge five-bay house, built in 1807, faces the old stage road between Lexington and Covington. All windows have been lengthened and the wood trim has been replaced. d. Sunlight highlights the water table of the south gable end of the Smith house. e. “JS 1807” is inscribed in the keystone over the Smith front door.

Charles Smith Jr., brother of John, was captain in the Bourbon County militia, justice, trustee of Paris, delegate to the state constitutional convention, member of the Virginia legislature in 1789, and Kentucky representative in 1792 (Anna Meyers McKee to the author, January 1986; Harrison County Order Book A, 38, 53; Ellen Eslinger, personal communication with the author, 1982).22 john smith, 1807 [ 161

william taylor figures p.44a–e. William Taylor. a. Taylor elevation. b. Taylor plan.

162 [ william taylor, before 1802

William Taylor built his stone house before 1802. It has a two-story, hall-parlor plan and an early frame wing, now collapsed, on the east gable end. It is built of Tyrone limestone that has weathered on exposure to pure white. One chimney is interior and one is exterior. The large stones of the firebox are golden Oregon limestone. The unique window frames have mitered corners but are pegged together. The enclosed winding stair rises from the parlor at the front of the house on the partition wall, with space for the stair taken from the parlor. Access to the half cellar is from the east gable end, behind the chimney stack. The front and rear facades are identical, three bays down and two bays up, similar to the John Logan house front. Either facade could be considered the front, but the house probably faced north, toward the creek and old road bed just down the bank from the house. Ruins of one of Taylor’s mills are on the creek bank in front of the house, and ruins of other industrial buildings are along the creek, east of the house. William Taylor was born about 1753 in County Armagh, northern Ireland. His father, John, and grandfather, Isaac, brought him in the family group to Augusta County (now

Rockbridge County), Virginia. There, Isaac bought 600 acres on Mill Creek from Benjamin Borden and 200 acres on the Roanoke River from James Patton. Isaac Taylor and his wife, Isabella Wilson, had five children born in counties Antrim and Armagh in Ulster and two born in Rockbridge County, Virginia. At the time of Isaac’s death in 1781, his estate was valued at 6,893 pounds. John, the third son, was born in Ireland in 1731 and died in Augusta County, Virginia, in 1772. He and his wife, Ester Waite, had eleven children, the sixth of whom was William (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 160649).23 William Taylor became the second husband of Hannah Hubbard Hinde, whom he married about 1812 or 1813. She was the widow of William Kavanaugh and a daughter of Thomas Hinde. William and Hannah Taylor’s sons were William and Edmund Todd. Soon after the elder William settled in Kentucky, he built and and began operating a fulling mill, which became part of an early industrial center containing factories, fulling mills, tanneries, and grain mills—one of the largest manufacturing centers west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1812. He died in 1814 while on a visit to Missouri (Owen 1967, 24–25).

c. Taylor house, original front. The front door has been closed and the house reoriented to face uphill, away from the creek. d. Taylor house, original rear. e. Taylor house, rear. This old photo shows the shed-roof porch, now gone. (1975)

[ 163

henry thompson sr. figures p.45a–f. Henry Thompson Sr. a. H. Thompson Sr. elevation. b. H. Thompson Sr. plan. c. H. Thompson Sr. sectional.

164 [ henry thompson sr., ca. 1785

Henry and Mary Thompson built their stone house on the land he had surveyed in 1775—a three-bay, two-story, hall-parlor plan, 26 feet deep and 30 feet long with interior chimney stacks in the gable ends. They built the house across a shallow hillside, allowing first-floor access at ground level from the front and cellar access at the rear. The center door opened directly into the hall on the left, and the rear door opposite opened onto the back porch. To the left of the hall fireplace was a fine arched-top walnut press with a wooden “keystone.” A vertical board wall with a doorway in the center separated the parlor from the hall. From the rear of the hall, an enclosed corner stair rose to the two second-floor chambers, where only the larger chamber above the hall had a fireplace. Another enclosed corner stair rose from the front of the smaller chamber to the attic, which was floored but unfinished. The attic floor joists were mortised and pegged into a summer beam that ran between the end chimneys. Siting for the Thompson house was unusual: it faced northwest and uphill; it sat crosswise along a gentle hillside, nearly, but not quite, at the crest. An old lane,

which became the Arthur Pike, ran within 50 feet directly in front of the house. Building stone came from the excavated cellar and from two small quarries on the hillside across the spring branch south of the house. The entire house was dry-laid, with walls nearly 3 feet thick at ground level and 2 feet thick at the roof line. Wall cavities contained a mixture of mud and animal hair, said by local folks to be from buffalo. The Thompsons commissioned Thomas Metcalf to construct a two-bay, two-story stone kitchen on the northeast end of the stone house.24 The kitchen had a cooking fireplace with an opening 5 feet tall, 7 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. The lintel was a walnut timber more than 9 feet long, 12 × 14 inches thick, and angled on the bottom inside edge to deflect sparks and direct smoke. The childish initials “HT” carved onto the frame of the closet under the stairs may have been the work of Henry Jr., which would indicate that the kitchen was there when he was still a child. (He was ten years old in 1792.) A hewn girder spanned the kitchen front to back at the second-floor level. This tied the three walls of the kitchen together, since the kitchen was built against the main house, which

served as its fourth side. The chamber above the kitchen was accessed only from a separate, enclosed stairway rising from the back porch. It had a small fireplace. The gallery-type porch across the back of the house provided the only access to the house from the kitchen—there was no connecting doorway. A trapdoor in the porch floor behind the hall opened onto steps that descended against the back wall of the house, leading to the cellar. About 1830, Henry Thompson Jr. remodeled the house to create a center-passage plan. This meant moving the wall between the hall and the parlor to the right, closing up and plastering over the parlor fireplace, installing an open stairway in this new passage, and exchanging the center door and right-hand window to provide an entrance to the passage, a change also applied to the rear of the house, retaining the cross-passage form. The new wing boasted an elaborate sunburst mantel and fine press suitable for the new hall. The chamber above the new hall had very high ceilings to accommodate a loom that could be raised on a pulley for the spinster sister, Ann, who was a weaver. The original house had a full cellar, the new wing had a half cellar, and the kitchen had a deep crawl-

space that in time yielded an archaeological treasure of broken pottery and glass. Ruins of old outbuildings in the backyard included a stone smokehouse, stone icehouse, and stone-lined cistern. The timber-framed combination stock and tobacco barn was aligned parallel to the house, 60 feet away to the northeast, across the barnyard. It still contains a 5-foot-diameter log hollowed out for a feeding trough. The pond in the valley behind the house site encloses the spring where the old cabin once stood. Henry Thompson was born in 1740 near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where his family settled after their arrival from the north of Ireland; they were devout Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Henry Thompson married Mary McClintock in Carlisle. Thompson and a group of fourteen Ulstermen were among the first to survey land in Kentucky, in what are now Nicholas and Bourbon counties. Thompson entered a claim for 1,000 acres that he divided with his father-in-law, Joseph McClintock, who had provided the expenses and equipment for the expedition. The Thompsons built their stone house in 1785 and began to establish their plantation. By 1814, Thompson, James McKee, and William Boles purchased the saw- and gristmills at

d. H. Thompson Sr. elevation, as enlarged. e. H. Thompson Sr. plan, as enlarged.

henry thompson sr., ca. 1785 [ 165

Millersburg. Thompson was a founder and ruling elder for twenty-four years in the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church on Steele’s Run. He died in 1827 and is buried in the old Millersburg cemetery (Nicholas County Will Book B, 372; Nicholas County Will Book B, 1827, 423; Nicholas County Will Book C, 1830, 2; Ardery 1972, 110; Perrin 1882a, 518; Bourbon County Inventory Book B, 1–2;

166 [ henry thompson sr., ca. 1785

Nicholas County Will Book E, January 1853, 373; Nicholas County Will Book F, February 1860, 439; Nicholas County Will Book F, 111; Bourbon County Deed Book L, 1814, 8; Bourbon County Will Book E, 1853, 373; Nicholas County Deed Book F, 1821, 22; Jillson 1926, 152; Virginia Grants Book 3, 1783, 85; Nicholas County Day Book, 1810, 4; Bourbon County Deposition Book A, 18).

f. H. Thompson Sr. house. (ca. 1966)

[ 167

john henry thompson figures p.46a–d. John Henry Thompson a. J. H. Thompson elevation. b. J. H. Thompson plan.

168 [ john henry thompson, ca. 1842

John Henry Thompson built his stone house on part of his grandfather Henry Thompson Sr.’s land grant. The house illustrates the growing influence of Georgian architecture on the choices of second- and third-generation Ulster Kentuckians. It is an I house, a type not represented in eighteenth-century Ulster Kentucky architecture. The house is an anomaly in that it has federal woodwork throughout although it was built about 1842, after the arrival of the Greek revival style. It is a two-story, five-bay, center-passage plan with interior gable-end chimneys. The central hall has a paneled, dogleg stair with open treads. The principal room has a walnut-paneled fireplace

wall whose shelf mantel is flanked by arched-top presses. Attic joists are set on the stone walls and are supported by a summer beam, although there is no summer beam under the first-floor joists. The masonry coursing continues across the window heads without voussoirs, and the second-floor windows are not as tall as they were in earlier houses. A one-story stone kitchen building at the back of the house has been replaced with a stone and frame ell. A craftsman-style porch replaced the original in the 1930s. John Henry Thompson, the youngest of the five children of Henry Thompson Jr., was born in 1822 (Perrin 1882a, 518). For Thompson family ancestry, see page 166.

c. J. H. Thompson house. The south gable end was demolished by a tornado and rebuilt with a brick chimney. The grandfather of the present owner added the art deco porch in the 1930s. d. One of two presses beside the fireplace in the hall. It is very similar in design to the press that was in the hall of John Henry Thompson’s grandfather, Henry Thompson Sr.

[ 169

william thompson figures p.47a–d. William Thompson Clockwise on spread: a. W. Thompson elevation. b. W. Thompson plan. c. W. Thompson house. The craftsman porch is a replacement. d. W. Thompson kitchen. A second story was added to the kitchen when it was connected to the main house.

170 [ william thompson, 1801–1806

William Thompson of Kentucky commissioned a twostory, three-room plan house on a full cellar with interior gable-end chimneys between 1801 and 1806. It faces south. The house has double paneled doors (front and rear), pegged frames, pit-sawn joists, and rafters with collars. The enclosed corner stair rises from the rear of the house along the center partition wall, with space taken from the west chamber. An originally separate stone kitchen located 10 feet east of the house is now attached to the main house and has an added second story with Greek revival woodwork. The kitchen has beaded, pegged window frames and a large exterior chimney. A smokehouse, foundations of a stone icehouse and barn, and a millwheel remain near the house. General William Thompson of Pennsylvania was born in Ireland in 1736 and moved to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, prior to 1755. He was a merchant and owned a gristmill, sawmill, and iron furnace. His wife, Catherine Ross, was a daughter of the Episcopal minister of New Castle, Delaware, and sister of George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. William and Catherine Thompson’s one-and-a-half-story, three-room plan stone house was built on Conodoguinet Creek in Cumberland

County. In the 1770s, General Thompson was deputy surveyor for western Pennsylvania. During the war, he was captured by the British and held captive for four and a half years before being allowed to return home in 1780. In 1781, he wrote a detailed will bequeathing his possessions and estate, yet soon after his death he was found to be insolvent (Van Dolsen 1990, 238–42). It can be surmised that the William Thompson of Boyle County, Kentucky, is the son of General Thompson, who had three sons: George, Robert, and William. The younger William was also a Pennsylvania surveyor; he came to Fort Harrod, Kentucky, in the 1770s. He had located large tracts of land in Kentucky on the Salt River, which he lost when he refused allegiance to the king of Great Britain. Not all was lost, however, because a William Thompson (it is not clear of which generation) built his Kentucky stone house at considerable expense, between 1801 and 1806, on a fork of the Chaplin River. The plantation was inherited by his son (or grandson) Arthur Thompson, whose wife was Martha Cockran (Rice 1975, 52; Rebecca Wilson Conover, personal communication with the author, 1987; Shane, interview 10E:162; Edwards 1971, 6).

[ 171

michael wallace figures p.48a–g. Michael Wallace. Clockwise on spread: a. Wallace elevation. b. Wallace gable end elevation. c. Wallace plan. d. Wallace house, front and east gable end. A mobile home is located directly in front of the house. e. Wallace house. (1968) f. The back roof structure in the Wallace attic, showing the through purlins of the roof framing. g. Wallace house, rear and west gable end.

172 [ michael wallace, after 1790

The four-bay, one-and-a-half-story, hall-parlor house built for Michael Wallace has features found in no other Kentucky stone house. Most obviously unique is the saltbox shape: the back roof slope extends down to cover the two rooms of the lean-to. As there is no break either in the masonry or in the roof system, this must have been the original construction. Moreover, the roof construction, seen only from the inside, is unlike any other known in Kentucky. The rafters are strengthened by 4 × 5 inch purlins halfway between the rear eave and roof ridge. Every fourth rafter is mortised to receive the tenons of the purlins, and the two rafters between the through purlins are tenoned into the purlins. The rafters are irregularly spaced, 19 to 21 inches on center, are half lapped at the ridge, and have collar ties 29 inches below the ridge. The parlor chimney is interior and the hall chimney is exterior. The water table spans the front of the house only. The house faces south and has an exterior door in the west gable end. The only stairway to the front upstairs chambers is enclosed between the two rear rooms and rises

from the rear of the lean-to. The triangular spaces above the back rooms were used for storage. Several branches of the Wallace family, having originated in the Highlands of Scotland, migrated to and then from the north of Ireland and settled in Albemarle County, Virginia, in the early 1700s. Brothers and sons, all descended from Peter Wallace of northern Ireland, named their sons Michael, William, and Andrew, creating several members of each generation with the same given names. Further confusing is that the Wallaces repeatedly married their Woods cousins. Several of these Wallaces— Michael, William, Allen, and Josiah, all of whom had sons with similar names—moved from Albemarle County to Kentucky. Sons of these brothers and cousins had sons with similar names, making it impossible to untangle the parentage of the Michael Wallace who built this stone house. Wallace’s tombstone states that he died in 1824, at age sixty-one. His young son James, who died at age four, and his daughter Elizabeth, who died from a kick from her horse at age twenty-three, are also buried in the graveyard.

[ 173

robert welsh figures p.49a–d. Robert Welsh. a. Welsh elevation.

174 [ robert welsh, ca. 1810

Robert and Mary Welsh’s one-and-a-half-story, three-bay, hall-parlor stone house faces east, backing to the rich bottomland along Floyd’s Fork. The house has one interior and one exterior chimney stack. It rests on a high cellar, the floor of which is at ground level at the rear. The house is typical of Ulster Kentucky construction. William Welsh, father of Robert Welsh, was born in northern Ireland in 1758; lived in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, where he married Maria Elizabetha Brewer in 1783; and died in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in 1819. William’s son Robert purchased 500 acres on Floyd’s Fork in 1809 and built this stone house soon thereafter. His wife

was Mary Guthrie. Their sons—James, William, Moses Cooper, Robert Jr., John N., George W., and Henry—were all born in Kentucky. Several of them moved as adults to western Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. At Robert’s death, he devised cash, two farms on Floyd’s Fork, crops, livestock, farming equipment, stock in Jeffersontown College and in the Louisville and Bardstown Turnpike, maps and books, and slaves to his wife, children, and grandchildren. His inventory also lists several thousand dollars in notes due him (Jefferson County Will Book, March 22, 1869; Ancestry.com, entry 16209).

b. Welsh house. (Photo courtesy of Louisville Metro Landmarks Commission, ca. 1980s) c. Welsh house, rear. (Photo courtesy of Louisville Metro Landmarks Commission, ca. 1980s) d. Welsh house as remodeled. (2005)

[ 175

james wilson James Wilson’s 1785 two-story, three-bay stone house originally faced south, toward the old Wilderness Road, but was reoriented to face north when the Lebanon Turnpike was built in the mid-1800s. The house has interior gable-end chimneys and originally had a hall-parlor plan but was altered to a center-passage plan when the house was reoriented. A corner stair rose from the rear of the hall, with space taken from the parlor. There was an additional stair in the southwest corner of the parlor. There is no cellar; the shallow crawlspace is on solid rock. The house is unique in its having round ventilation windows on the sides of the chimneys in both gable ends.

176 [ james wilson, ca. 1875

The ancestry of James Wilson, owner of this renowned stone house known as Wilson’s Station, eludes historians, although the Wilsons in Kentucky are known to be Scotch-Irish. James Wilson came to Kentucky from Albemarle County, Virginia, and was among those who qualified for a preemption certificate in 1775. The Wilsons were first cousins of James Wilson, signer of the Declaration of Independence (Shane, interview 9J:108). James Wilson died about 1806, leaving his wife, seven sons, and two daughters (Fackler 1959, 7–8; Hammon 1981, 273–83).

figures p.50a–b. James Wilson. a. The Wilson house originally faced south, toward the old Wilderness Road, but was reoriented to face the new nineteenth-century turnpike. The house was updated in the Italianate style, with expanded eaves and brackets, and the separate stone kitchen was connected to the main house by infilling the dogtrot. (Photo courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey, 1940) b. Wilson stair detail.

[ 177

conclusions this book elaborates on a little-noted aspect of Kentucky’s beginnings and development: settlers from the north of Ireland brought wealth and skills to the commonwealth, established lifestyles of privilege, and built the majority of Kentucky’s early stone houses. First-generation Kentuckians of Ulster descent continued traditions that set them somewhat apart from settlers of other national origins: the use of stone as a building material, the strong predominance of the hall-parlor plan, and the enlargement of houses by adding rooms on the gable ends. Although wealthy colonists of a variety of European backgrounds also built stone houses, and the British, in particular, chose hall-parlor plans, by the time of Kentucky settlement, most national groups other than the northern Irish had abandoned the hall-parlor plan in favor of the center-passage plan and preferred brick for their building material. Among first-generation Ulster Kentuckians who could afford to build stone houses, building preferences continued to reflect their heritage even though changing fashions, relative wealth, and access to sophisticated building contractors affected house details and construction techniques. No matter how much or how little the Ulster elite blended with other national groups in the colonies, when they moved to Kentucky, they continued for four [ 179

The Samuel McMillan house, victim of an entailed estate, desperately needed repairs that the farmer-owner could not afford. The house was demolished. (1982)

decades to build houses of the type with which they were historically accustomed. Their motivation may have been to establish their identities, to be admired, to proclaim a sense of importance, to live up to family expectations, to meet the challenge of the wilderness, or simply to provide strong and comfortable homes for themselves and their families. At the time of their construction, the stone houses of Kentucky were an incredible accomplishment, both physically and financially. They marked the status of the wealthiest inhabitants of the colonial frontier. Admiration for such quality is evident in the names “Stone Castle” and “Stony Castle” given to the houses of John McGee and John Smith, among others. This respect, 180 [ early stone houses of kentucky

however, was a function of the time and place. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, brick replaced stone as the more prestigious building material, and the golden age of early stone houses passed. Their original importance is little known and seldom appreciated. It is now hard to imagine that the ruins of decrepit stone houses, modest by today’s standards, were the mansions of some of the most prosperous families in Kentucky; that when built, they were the finest and most costly expressions of quality and wealth possible. By the height of the federal and especially the Greek revival styles, the two-story, hall-parlor stone house was considered outdated. The unlucky ones were abandoned by their owners and ravaged by the weather.

plate 1. Elkhorn Creek.

plate 2. Taylor Mill site.

plate 3. Silver Creek.

plate 4. William McBrayer plantation site.

plate 5. Henry Colvin plantation site.

plate 6. Robert Boggs plantation site.

plate 7. William Taylor plantation site.

plate 8. John Allen house.

plate 9. John Bell house.

plate 10. Robert Boggs house.

plate 11. Peter Brown house.

plate 12. James Branham house.

plate 13. William Garrett house.

plate 14. Robert Guyn Jr. house.

plate 15. William Henry house.

plate 16. John Hinkson house.

plate 17. Nathan Huston house.

plate 18. Abraham Irvin house.

plate 19. James Lindsay house.

plate 20. John Logan house.

plate 21. John Long house.

plate 22. James McAfee house.

plate 23. John McCaughan house.

plate 24. Widow McDowell house.

plate 25. James McKee house.

plate 26. Jonathan McMurtry house.

plate 27. John Andrew Miller house.

plate 28. Robert Poague house.

plate 29. John Smith house.

plate 30. Henry Thompson Sr. house.

plate 31. John Henry Thompson house.

plate 32. Robert Welsh house.

Some houses were used as storage sheds, sold for historic materials, or even torn down and ground into limestone fertilizer. Most fell drastically in value and, if still in existence, are viewed as poor old houses. Since stone houses are difficult to update with plumbing, heating, and insulation, some owners simply abandoned them and purchased convenient mobile homes. Other derelict stone houses found themselves on farms sold to developers and, if salvaged at all, surrounded by an alien landscape of new houses, streets, sidewalks, and overhead wires—and often subjected to unsympathetic remodeling. When the masonry of Robert Craddock’s house needed repointing, later owners instead encased the entire house with Perma-Stone (see figure, p. 182). Later owners of Thomas Dawson’s hall-parlor house added sheds on the front and back sides and converted the structure to a barn (p. 182). Henry H. Ferguson’s unique dogtrot house was considered unsuitable for rehabilitation and was torn down; a new house was built on the same site using the original stone. The visual effects of Ulster Kentucky stone houses on the landscape diminish year by year. On the other hand, some lucky stone houses have come to be cherished by homeowners and descendants who are able to maintain them. A well-preserved historical stone house today is worth many times the value of a new structure of the same size in the same location. Old houses that were disregarded at one time have been rediscovered. As buildings pass through stages of time and use, they lose and gain value, often experiencing reestablished regard. New generations seek them out on the backs of farms, William McBrayer house, before. The McBrayer house was surrounded by pastureland and rock fences. (1983) William McBrayer house, after. New owners have remodeled and enlarged the house. It is now surrounded by a subdivision of vinyl-clad housing.

conclusions [ 181

The owners of the Robert Craddock house chose to encase it in Perma-Stone. The farmer-owner of the Thomas Dawson house roofed over the chimney tops and added sheds to convert the house to a barn.

182 [

The Robert Boggs plantation house is carefully maintained by his descendants.

along the old lanes and watercourses, among new-growth trees and vegetation; when they find one, they know they have a treasure. Even if the house is severely dilapidated, if the roof is intact and the floors have not been overloaded beyond structural capacity (when used, for example, as a grain storage bin), it is a candidate for rehabilitation. One of the most exciting finds of this study is that the heretofore unstudied Ulster Kentucky stone houses are,

as an architectural collection, able to reflect a cultural group’s settlement pattern. Kentucky was one of the last regions of the colonial frontier to be settled before national styles influenced house forms. In a few short decades, even Ulster-descended gentry began to build houses inspired by fashion rather than tradition. The ability of these stone houses, as historical artifacts, to illustrate this pattern is a most powerful argument for their protection.

conclusions [ 183

appendix 1

colonial locations of ulster kentucky stone house owners

as reported by the families, these are the last locations of Ulster families who lived in the American colonies before they relocated in Kentucky. (This list does not reflect subsequent county boundary changes.) State

County

Family Name

Maryland

Prince George’s

P. Brown

New Jersey

Middlesex Morris

Collings Frost

North Carolina

Mecklenburg

McGready, Sawyer

Pennsylvania

Allegheny Bedford Chester Cumberland

Shawhan Patterson, Welsh T. Kennedy of Kenton Co., Todd McClintock, J. McConnell, W. McConnell of Fayette Co., Miller, H. Thompson, W. Thompson

[ 185

colonial locations of ulster kentucky stone house owners, continued State

County

Family Name

Pennsylvania

Franklin Lancaster Washington Westmoreland Yohogania Southwest Pennsylvania County not given

Lindsay W. McConnell of Bourbon Co. Crawford, Frazier, S. McMillan Hinkson, Miller J. Crow, W. Crow Linn McCaughan, Scott

Pennsylvania-Maryland border Virginia

Scott Albemarle Augusta Berkeley Botetourt Buckingham Culpeper Cumberland Fauquier Frederick Greenbrier Orange Prince Edward Rockbridge

Rockingham County not given

186 [ early stone houses of kentucky

Dawson, Ford, Wallace, J. Wilson John Allen, Bell, J. Brown, James Ellis, Jesse Ellis, Garrett, Guyn, Huston, Wright Cooper, Harlan Crockett, McBrayer, G. McAfee, J. McAfee, J. McGee of Mercer Co. Moseley Branham, Cole, Colvin B. Wilson T. Kennedy of Bourbon Co. J. Haggin, T. Haggin, J. McGee of Nelson Co., O’Neal Dunlap, Hunter, Stephenson Hume Henry J. L. Allen, Boggs, Irvin, J. Kennedy, Logan, Long, McDowell, McKee, James McMurtry, Jonathan McMurtry, Montgomery, Poague, Shields, Smith, Steele, Taylor Robinson Clark, McMakin, W. McMillan, Patteson

appendix 2

stone houses of other national origins

the table below displays the prevalence of each type of floor plan among the existing stone houses of first-generation Kentuckians for which both owner and floor plan are known, grouped according to the last country in which the owner or his ancestors lived before they migrated to America. Stone House Floor Plans by National Origin of Owner

Ulster England Wales Germany Scotland France Holland Switzerland Poland

Total

HallParlor

CenterPassage

3-Room

SidePassage

DoubleCell

1-Room

Other

78 34 17 12 11 9 4 2 1

62 11 5 7 5 5 3 1 1

4 12 8 1 2 1 0 1 0

9 3 2 1 2 0 0 0 0

1 2 0 0 1 1 1 0 0

2 2 2 1 0 2 0 0 0

0 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

[ 187

figure a1. Jacob Yantis house (Dutch).

The table shows that, in Kentucky, first-generation northern Irish immigrants who built stone houses were more than twice as likely to choose the hall-parlor plan as were their English counterparts: the northern Irish chose the hall-parlor plan for 79 percent of the stone houses they built, whereas the English chose that plan for only 32 percent of theirs. Indeed, although both the English and the Welsh had an ancient tradition of hall-parlor plan houses, the English built center-passage plan stone houses about as often as they did hall-parlor stone houses, and the Welsh chose the center-passage plan for their stone houses more often than they chose the hall-parlor plan. The numbers of stone houses built by other national groups are too small to allow statistically significant comparisons. 188 [ early stone houses of kentucky

There are few differences among the hall-parlor houses of groups of different national origins, although a unique feature of the Jacob Yantis (Dutch) house (figure a1) was in access to the enclosed stair, situated between the two rooms: the bottom four steps were angled left and right to allow ascent from both rooms (figures a2 and a3). Also, at Joel DuPuy’s (French) two-story, hall-parlor house (figure a4), both the hall and the parlor have enclosed winding stairs to the second floor built along the partition wall, the hall stair rising from the rear corner of the hall and the parlor stair rising below it, from the center of the partition wall. The biggest and finest center-passage stone houses were built by owners of various origins: France, Scotland, England, Germany, and Wales. Only one center-passage house,

figures a2 and a3. The one-of-a-kind enclosed stairway at the Yantis house angles on both sides, into the hall and into the parlor. Figure a2 was taken from the hall, and figure a3 was taken from the top of the stairs. figure a4. The house built by Joel DuPuy and his wife Lucy Craig has its original gabled front porch and the once-separate stone kitchen, on the far left (plan shown in Lancaster 1991, page 49). DuPuy was a Virginia Baptist of French Huguenot ancestry.

[ 189

figure a5. The fashionable David Steele house (Welsh) is the only center-passage, double-pile stone house with windows on all four sides (now hidden by the wings). The center five bays, built with a hipped roof, are the original portion of the house. It is now stuccoed. The once-separate stone kitchen on the north end of the house was connected by a covered dogtrot (for plan, see Lancaster 1991, 56).

David Steele’s (Welsh), and two inns have full double-pile Georgian plans with windows on all four sides (figure a5). The remaining twenty-eight single-pile, center-passage houses of all nationalities are I houses, with blank gable ends (figure a6). Prestigious center-passage stone houses have elaborate detailing as would be expected: open stairways, half-turned or dogleg with landings, turned banisters, pendanted newels, open stringers, and carved step ends; double-faced or shouldered architraves; paneled wainscoting; paneled fireplace walls with cornices; built-in presses with half-round arched tops and wooden “keystones”; and breakfront mantels decorated with various combinations 190 [ early stone houses of kentucky

of reeding, fluting, gougework, meander, dentils, pilasters, and sunbursts. The John Arnold (English) center-passage house has the only known corbeled cornice (figure a7). The choice of a center-passage house in Kentucky seems to have reflected the owner’s relative prosperity and sophistication rather than any carryover attachment to traditional forms. That the very large and expensive center-passage houses of Jacob Spears (German), Laban Shipp (English), and Governor James Garrard (French) are all attributed to builder John Metcalf suggests that the plan and details may have resulted from Metcalf’s recommendations rather than the owners’ traditional preferences. Among the more

figure a6 (above). Charles Whitaker house (Welsh). A few stone house owners of non-Ulster descent built single-pile, central-passage I houses in Kentucky. This one matches another built for Charles’s brother Abraham in the same county. figure a7 (left). The John Arnold house (English) has the only known example of a corbeled stone cornice in Kentucky.

costly English Kentucky houses is the one commissioned by Charles Grimes and built by Ulster masonry contractor Peter Paul, who advertised in 1802 that he had returned from London with the latest fashions and a crew of thirty Irish stonemasons. The house exhibits the contractor’s admiration of the new Georgian fashion with its blind windows in the gable end, the only such example in Kentucky (see figure, p. 36). Owners of three-room plans in all national groups migrated to Kentucky from Pennsylvania, where the plan was popular. The eight three-room English, Welsh, Scottish, and German houses are very similar to the three-room

houses of Ulster descendants. They have opposing front and rear doors opening into the hall and corner fireplaces in the gable ends of the two smaller rooms, and most have board partition walls and enclosed corner stairs. The finest three-room English Kentucky stone house was commissioned by George Harrison—an impressive two-story mansion with interior stud walls and an open corner stair with carved tread ends in the hall (figure a8). The owners have sensitively kept the attic open to view, displaying the summer beam floor system and heavy roof structure (figure a9). Small details help to set other three-room houses apart, such as the circular name and date stone placed in the gable houses of other national origins [ 191

figure a8. The magnificent three-room plan George Harrison house (English) has been carefully restored by its owners. The separate kitchen is on the right.

192 [ early stone houses of kentucky

figure a9. The rare queen-post roof system of the Harrison house has kneed purlins and collar ties, all pegged. The joists are notched and pegged into a summer beam that runs from gable end to gable end.

end of the Henry Crist (German) house, a Pennsylvania German practice (figures a10 and a11). There is no discernible pattern in the national origins of the owners of the five non-Ulster side-passage houses. These range in size from two single-pile townhouses (French and English) to three massive, double-pile, sidepassage mansions (Dutch, English, and Scottish), sometimes termed “two-thirds Georgian.” All of these houses are in northern Kentucky, a region whose building practices were largely influenced by Pennsylvania. Kentucky sidepassage houses have straight-run or dogleg stairways with carved tread ends, and although the houses are double-pile, fireplaces with multiple flues are united in a single interior gable-end chimney stack.

Neither is there a pattern of origin to the seven nonUlster double-cell stone houses. In these houses, each firstfloor room has a separate entrance and separate stairway, and there is seldom a connection between the two secondfloor rooms. Lack of access between the upstairs rooms was not unique to the double-cell plan, however; the hall-parlor house of Frederick Shryock (German) also has this feature, with a winding stair in the chimney corner of each firstfloor room. Also note that the presence of two front doors does not always indicate a double-cell plan; the two-door, four-bay, three-room plan of Andrew Bogie (Scottish) is one exception. Nicholas Stroube is the only known German in Kentucky who built a traditional four-room plan house. The house

houses of other national origins [ 193

dates to about 1820. Unlike the customary layout of German houses in Pennsylvania and Virginia, with a large chimney in the center of the house, Stroube’s house had chimneys in the gable ends with the flues joined into a single stack on each end. Between 1850 and 1890, a new generation of German immigrants built stone houses in the settlements on Four Mile Creek in Campbell County, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, but these later houses are not dry-laid; they are built with mortar (Gordon 1985). Scottish descendant Isham Henderson uniquely integrated an extra room on each end of his hall-parlor house, creating a four-room traditional longhouse (figure a12). The two end rooms have the only hipped roof on a stone house in Kentucky. There are only five examples of one-room plan stone houses. The German house is in Jefferson County (a county of high German settlement). Two of the English houses are in Clark County (a county of high English settlement), one is in Bourbon County, and one is in Jefferson County. All of these single-pen plans have a three-quarters or full second story.

figure a10. The three-room plan Henry Crist house (German) is built of laurel dolomite quarried only 50 yards from the house. figure a11. Stone circles in the gables of the Crist house were painted bright colors in the Pennsylvania German fashion to decorate the gable ends, one now hidden in the addition attic. Lightning damaged the chimney.

194 [ early stone houses of kentucky

figure a12. The six-bay hipped roof of the Isham Henderson house (Scottish) is unique in Kentucky. The entire longhouse is all original, having a hall and parlor in the center and a chamber on each end. The porch is a later addition, as is a stone ell on the rear.

[ 195

notes

introduction 1. Joseph McClintock, Thompson’s father-in-law, provided the capital for Thompson’s share of the expedition—funds for river and overland travel to select, mark, and survey the land; horses, boats, supplies, provisions, and tools; and later, funds for transport, lodging, and legal fees in Williamsburg to record the documents (deed from Henry Thompson to Joseph McClintock, 1821, Nicholas County Deed Book F, 22). 2. Van Dolsen 1990 identifies the stone houses in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, according to the owners’ national origins. Hofstra 1991a describes stone houses at Opequon, Virginia, built by wealthy settlers from northern Ireland. 3. Since 1985, I have found records or references to 455 stone dwellings in Kentucky, built between 1780 and 1830. This number includes quarters as well as inns, stores, and offices that also served as residences; it does not include mills, barns, kitchens, outbuildings, churches, or public buildings. Of these 455 stone dwellings, 156 have been maintained, mildly remodeled, or restored; 150 have since been demolished; 42 are in ruins, very poor condition, or abandoned; and 27 have been drastically altered, relocated, or subsumed in a larger house. Forty-seven of the dwelling houses are stone slave quarters; of these, 39 are in use, usually as storage; 6 have since been demolished; and 2 have been converted into residences. [ 197

4. Historian William F. Leavy used county records to reconstruct the as-built city of Lexington. The Patterson stone house, which was demolished in the 1970s during urban renewal, provides an example of how I used his work. Leavy 1943 contains the remark that “on the south side of High Street West you come to the old large two-story stone residence of Col. Robert Patterson, a commanding situation, with a spacious yard in front and on each side” (338). This adds Robert Patterson to the list of stone house owners but does not add his house to this study because the house is gone and the floor plan is unknown. The more well-known Patterson house today is the one-room log cabin in which the Patterson family lived temporarily when they came to Kentucky, while their stone house was under construction. This twice-moved and reconstructed log cabin is now on display on the Transylvania University campus in Lexington. 5. Early in the nineteenth century, Presbyterian minister Rev. John D. Shane realized that the human story of Kentucky settlement would be lost in another generation. He dedicated his life to his missionary work and to painstakingly recording hundreds of interviews with elderly settlers. These are preserved in the collections of Lyman C. Draper, founder of the Wisconsin Historical Society. The research collected for this study is now located in the Murray-Wooley Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Among other items, it includes a complete list of all known stone buildings, both extant and extinct, compiled from all sources; field notes and photographs of the stone buildings in this study; and biographical notes on known Kentucky stone house owners of all national origins. 6. The debate regarding surname studies is sometimes fierce. Writers on the subject include Grady McWhiney, Forrest McDonald, Ellen Shapiro McDonald, Thomas L. Purvis, W. S. Rossiter, David Noel Doyle, Stephan Thernstrom, Marcus Lee Hansen, Howard F. Barker, and John B. Sanderlin. Donald H. Akenson concludes that only personby-person family history studies can tell us the national 198 [ early stone houses of kentucky

origins of migrants. Therefore, when discussing origins, the present study refers to the country of emigration according to family history studies and not to surname origin. 7. Thomas L. Purvis intended to correct the population estimates by Barker and Hansen. Purvis’s estimates, like Barker’s and Hansen’s, are open to question because he could not distinguish between English surnames from England and English surnames from Ulster and thus classified them all as English. He likewise grouped the Scots and Scots-Irish together because there is no distinction in their surnames. Purvis’s estimates are, however, the best we have at present. Purvis estimated that 51.6 percent of Kentucky’s 1790 population were of English ancestry, 24.8 percent were of Scots-Irish and Scots ancestry, 6.7 percent were of Welsh ancestry, 4.9 percent were of German ancestry, 1.6 percent were of French ancestry, and 1.2 percent were of Dutch ancestry. 8. Six counties of the old province of Ulster now form the region of Northern Ireland that is a part of the United Kingdom, separate from the Republic of Ireland on the same island. 9. I regret two things in particular: First, the Kentucky portion of the Federal Direct Tax Assessment of 1798 (the “glass tax”) is lost from federal, state, and local library archives. The Library of Congress notes that the records were returned to the states and that Robert Breckinridge was paid for producing the assessments. However, neither the Kentucky Historical Society library nor the Kentucky State Archives has these tax records or any reference to them. Second, Kentucky estate appraisers did not list inventories room by room. A “beauro” valued at four pounds might be listed following six featherbeds worth forty-five pounds, next to two stills, tubs, and worms valued at forty pounds, followed by “1 Negroe robert” at one hundred pounds. There is thus no way to tell where the items (or people) in the inventory were located. The only reference I found to rooms by name was in Henry Thompson’s will, which stipulated that his son and family were to have their choice of the “fire rooms.” I have consequently used terminology

common to vernacular architecture: hall, parlor, chamber, passage, cellar, attic, and kitchen. chapter 1: kentucky land and life 1. For Kentucky land laws, see Hening 1809–1823. Hammon 1986 explains the complexities in obtaining Kentucky land. Hammon 1992 describes the serious problems that Virginia’s land policies generated, including too many certificates in the same areas, vaguely defined locations, impermanent landmarks, overlapping claims, and no means for cross-checking surveys. By 1797, authorities had issued warrants for more than 24 million acres in a state containing only 12.5 million acres. There are also good explanations of the land laws in Brookes-Smith 1976, Aron 1996, and Watlington 1972. 2. Studies of the upper and lower Valley of Virginia illustrate differences in the economic and social structure of the two regions. Warren R. Hofstra, documenting the development and evolution of colonial Frederick County, Virginia, shows that land speculators and proprietors encouraged settlers of the middle and lower classes who wanted to provide a competence for themselves and their children and that restrictions imposed on the agents’ own grants required population immigration. Thomas, Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck, “did not want ‘Any poor man to quit the Place for want of Land’” (Hofstra 2004, 132). In contrast, Turk McCleskey concludes from his study of Augusta County land and court records that a conservative social elite deliberately restricted the economic opportunities located at and beyond the edges of settlement and that in colonial Augusta County (which until 1770 included all the territory westward to the Mississippi River) a handful of men manipulated access to land and political power, not to create a more inclusive social order but to establish an exclusive frontier society characterized most prominently by its traditional contours (McCleskey 1990a, xiii). 3. Hinderaker 1997 provides a clear explanation of Kentucky’s beginnings—reasons for independence, reasons for some loyalism, Virginia’s claims in Pennsylvania, surveying

in Kentucky, land entries, Virginia’s land laws, land speculation, Indian relations, militia, and life in the forts—much taken from original sources in archival collections and the Draper papers. Hofstra 2004 is an excellent discourse on the peopling and development of Virginia’s Northern Neck and land distribution in the Lower Valley. McCleskey 1990a carefully explains the process of land acquisition and the status of Upper Valley landowners. Hughes 1979, a fascinating exposé of land acquisition in Virginia and Kentucky both on the ground and in the courts, unearths surveying disputes on the frontier and the resulting chaos in the land offices that lasted for decades; see especially chapter 8, “Chains to New Wealth in the Interior.” Dicken-Garcia 1991 provides a personal narrative of the Breckinridge family’s motives, expectations, fears, and experiences in relocating to Kentucky. Aron 1996 gives an intriguing and well-documented explanation of the Kentucky settlement process and its players, including the role of land speculation. Harrison and Klotter 1997 succinctly explains the process of claiming land on the Kentucky frontier (52–55). 4. Arthur Campbell was closely affiliated with the powerful Upper Valley group led by Preston, William Christian, William Fleming, William Russell, Stephen Trigg, and others of Ulster descent, as were John Walker and John Buchanan. Christian and Russell were brothers-in-law to Patrick Henry. Christian was also brother-in-law to Fleming, Trigg, and Caleb Wallace (Abernethy 1937, 222). Ulster surveyors in Kentucky include the names McMillan, Poague, Todd, McAfee, Kennedy, Huston, Marshall, Thompson, James, Stevenson, McCaughan, Harvie, McDowell, Henry, Long, Cole, Taylor, McMurtry, Steele, Anderson, Jackson, Ritchey, Ward, Cassidy, Crawford, Montgomery, McBrayer, and Boggs (family history files). 5. Scattered references note the land acquisition process for owners of stone houses. In 1774, settlement certificates for making improvements were issued to John Crow and Silas Harlan; preemption certificates for making improvements were issued to William Crow, John Crawford, Elijah Harlin, and John Wilson. In 1775, settlement notes [ 199

certificates were issued to William Cooper, John Haggin, John Hinkston, Benjamin Logan, Andrew Miller, James McAfee, George McAfee, and David McGee; preemption certificates were issued to Robert Boggs, Ebenezer Frost, William Henry, Joseph Lindsay, Andrew Lynn, William Lynn, William McConnell Jr., William McConnell Sr., John McGee, William Robinson, John Smith, Andrew Steel, Henry Thompson, William Thompson, and James Wilson. Other land explorers in Kentucky in 1775 were John Haggin, Thomas McDowell, and Robert Poague. In 1775, men who visited or resided at Boonesborough and scouted in the region included John Kennedy, Andrew Linn, Capt. William Linn, William Thompson, and William Wilson (Hammon 1981, 273–83). Ulster stone house owners from Pennsylvania who founded Lexington include the “explorers” William McConnell, Francis McConnell, John Smith, Cyrus McCrackin, and Robert Patterson (Wooley 1975, 14–22). 6. John Bell received 4,800 acres; John Crow 21,754; William Crow 4,269 (plus 30,250 acres in partnership with Richard Adams); John Hampton 5,400; James and Silas Harlan 6,520; William Henry 4,131; John Hinkson 5,400; Thomas Kennedy of Bourbon County 3,330; Thomas Kennedy of Kenton County 5,500; John Logan 6,130; James McAfee 4,047; William McBrayer 3,144; Francis and James (heir to Francis) McConnell 3,646; William McConnell 7,057; James McDowell (deceased) 3,000; Samuel McDowell 10,632; John McGee 6,182; James and William McKee 4,643; Samuel McMillan 3,200; William Montgomery 10,765; Charles Patteson 5,625; William Taylor 21,000; William Thompson 6,717; and James Wilson and partners 67,000. Hammon (1992) lists, in addition to the foregoing, Virginia grants to William Garrett of 6,000 acres and to John McGee of 9,700 acres (where Brookes-Smith [1976] counts 6,182). He also lists individual military grants (most 2,000 acres each) to John Allen, Hugh Allen, Joel Frazier, William Henry, James McDowell (deceased), and Samuel McDowell. 7. For a clear explanation of the process of traveling to Kentucky, including the advantages and dangers of both 200 [ early stone houses of kentucky

routes, and an illustration of the river boats the migrants used, see Harrison and Klotter 1997, 48–52. 8. Indians attacked several of the Kentucky forts, killed children and the elderly, and marched the able bodied north to Detroit and Canada. Captives of the gentry class were accorded special treatment as British prisoners. The commanding officer in Montreal arranged for the women prisoners from Martin’s Station, Kentucky, to be quartered in houses that had cooks and servants and, since prisoners were required to work, set them to making shirts with lace-edged ruffles for the British officers (Shane, interview 11CC:276). Social connections also benefited prisoner Capt. Isaac Ruddell. When the British officer at Detroit learned that Ruddell was a fellow Freemason, he paid a keg of whiskey to the Indians for the release of Mrs. Ruddell and three of her children and allowed the family to be reunited (Shane, interview 22S:1). 9. Some members of other nationalities so immersed themselves in American Presbyterian communities that, after a few generations in the colonies, they became completely identified with predominantly Scotch-Irish communities. The David family, which originated in Wales, is a good example. Three generations, each headed by a William David, lived in Pennsylvania. The fourth William David was born in Frederick, Maryland, in 1740. By the time he established his family on the banks of the Licking River in Kentucky, where he helped found Stonermouth Presbyterian Church, the family had been Presbyterians for so long that their descendants claim they are Scotch-Irish rather than Welsh. 10. During the colonial period, some Presbyterians in Virginia joined the Church of England to qualify for public office. Presbyterians predominated within the Augusta County gentry: six of Augusta County’s eight burgesses were Ulstermen, and even the supposedly Anglican vestry board was two-thirds Presbyterian because there were not enough Anglicans in Augusta County to fill the statesupported vestry rolls (Keller 1991, 80–81). By 1760, there were almost twenty Presbyterian churches in the Upper

Valley, compared with only one Anglican church (Mitchell 1974, 83). Many wealthy northern Irish descendants in Kentucky had earlier been members of New Providence, Timber Ridge, and Old Stone Presbyterian churches in Virginia and Tinkling Springs Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania. 11. Perkins 1991 discusses early Kentucky merchants and available merchandise. Dicken-Garcia 1991 lists advertisers and the merchandise they offered in the Kentucky Gazette in 1787–1788 (136–38). 12. Mills typically have a large diagonal fireplace in the corner of the building and heavy roof structures, some with king post framing. Some public and industrial stone buildings are included in the National Register of Historic Preservation’s theme nominations Early Stone Buildings of Central Kentucky (1983) and Early Stone Buildings of Kentucky: Outer Bluegrass and Pennyrile (1984). chapter 2: stone house descriptions 1. For descriptions of other typical outbuildings, see Kennedy and Macintire 1999. 2. Evidence of the Ulster preference for the hall-parlor plan also exists in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, where Nancy Van Dolsen found differences between the floor plans of the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. The German plan was generally square, with an off-center internal chimney and a two-, three-, or four-room plan. Among the settlers from the north of Ireland, the hall-parlor plan was so prevalent that Van Dolsen termed it the “Scotch-Irish plan” (1990, 1–3, 13, 26). 3. By the eighteenth century, the direct-entry, crosspassage house, with a hall-parlor plan, a central door, and a chimney in one or both gable ends, was a common house type all over Ireland. A long-standing Irish folk belief is that for a house to be lucky, it must be only one room deep (single pile) and rectangular (Philip Mowat [director of the Ulster-American Folk Park, Omagh, Northern Ireland], personal communication with the author, 1986). (This crosspassage plan contravenes the Chinese feng shui practice of avoiding opposing doors and windows, the idea being that

positive energy will circulate without exiting once it enters a space.) 4. The three-room plan was popular in Pennsylvania, where it is often termed the “Penn” or “Quaker” plan, although it was already known in the British Isles. In northern Ireland, rooms at the ends of houses were sometimes partitioned longitudinally by non-load-bearing walls to create front and rear rooms. An example from the Cromwellian period has masonry walls dividing the front and rear chambers, with back-to-back corner fireplaces centered in the gable end (Gailey 1984, 10, 176, 217). Henry Glassie illustrates a good example in a cross-passage house in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, in which a partition wall separates the hall from the parlor side of the house, which is subsequently subdivided longitudinally into a front parlor and back chamber, the front parlor having a corner fireplace (1982, 330). The three-room plan was also common in Wales, especially in the northwest, as early as 1560, although there, as in Ulster, hall-parlor plans were the most numerous (Smith 1988, 172–75, 313–16, 436). 5. The differences between three-room plans and sidepassage plans are in their development and room use. They both have three rooms, but in the three-room plan, the living hall is the primary reception and socializing room, whereas in a side-passage house, visitors enter the unheated passage hall, which is not intended as a living space. Threeroom plans have Welsh and Irish prototypes (see previous note). Side-passage plans, “two-thirds Georgian” (Glassie 1972, 36–38), reflected the trend toward increased privacy. Cynthia Gayle Falk (1996) concludes from her study in Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, that the German flurkuchen plan containing the three rooms kuche, stube, and kammer evolved into the double-pile side-passage Renaissance-inspired house by removing the kuche (kitchen) to a wing and using the space as a passage. Removal of the kitchen from the main house resulted in a house that looked similar to the three-room “Penn” plan but that developed by an entirely different process and had a different result. The three-room plan is a division of the notes [ 201

parlor of a hall-parlor plan into a front and back parlor, or parlor and chamber. In the double-pile, side-passage plan, the stube becomes the main living room (hall), and there are windows on the gable end. The three-room plan has blank gable ends and is much less deep, front to back; the hall is still the main living room. 6. Kentucky slave quarters are similar to those common throughout the South—double-pen dwellings with two front doors—although they more often have a chimney in each gable end instead of in the center of the building. Unlike buildings in the formal site designs of noteworthy plantations in Virginia and the Deep South, domestic and agricultural buildings in Kentucky were situated for practicality and convenience, not necessarily for aesthetic reasons. In some cases, house slaves inhabited isolated rooms in the main house or kitchen loft, such as at Henry Thompson’s, where there is an outside stair to a heated room above the kitchen (see portfolio). At the Thomas Kennedy town house in Covington, house slaves resided in the high basement, which was fenestrated as a double-cell cabin and also contained the main kitchen (see portfolio). 7. Although Princeton University was founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey and retained that name until 1896, family records commonly state that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century family members attended Princeton. 8. Other kinsmen of the renowned Brown family kept pace with the growing fashion for brick houses in the classical style. Samuel McDowell built a two-story, centerpassage brick house on his plantation near Danville. His kinsman, the wealthy Col. Thomas Lewis from Virginia, commissioned an elegant brick mansion in the federal style on his estate just west of Lexington in 1800 (Lancaster 1991, 143–45). chapter 3: stone house construction 1. Thomas Metcalf, a Whig in policy “but not in principles,” was elected to the state legislature, was a general in the War of 1812, was elected to Congress in 1818, became 202 [ early stone houses of kentucky

governor of Kentucky in 1828, and was later elected to the U.S. Senate. He “was a friend of the common man and promoter of western democracy” (Morton 1904, 21; Metcalf 1978; Shane, interview 11CC:185). 2. A few examples extracted from the many names in the Bourbon County records illustrate the apprentice system. In 1802, William Adair had two apprentices bound to him to learn the stonemasonry trade: Joseph Stewart, age “ten to eleven,” and John Cane, age nineteen, son of William Cane. In 1803, Joseph House took as an apprentice to the stonemason’s trade Matthew, age fifteen, son of Matthew Jenkins, and agreed to supply him at the end of his term with tools and a superfine broadcloth suit. In 1816, James Adair advertised a reward for the return of a runaway stonemason’s apprentice, Armistead Crump, age eighteen (Whitley 1957–1958, no. 61). Robert Ball, stonemasonry contractor for the Green County Courthouse, advertised for apprentices in the March 1801 Kentucky Gazette. In November, the 1801 Green County Minute Book recorded that the clerk was ordered to “bind out Will McCaffrey to Robert Ball to learn the art and mystery of a stonemason according to law” (Mary McCaffree to author, April 30, 1988.) 3. Fortunately, Mrs. A. J. Mann, former owner of the Guyn house, preserved a copy of the contract between Guyn and Hogan. The original is in a scrapbook that belongs to “Aunt Mary Schofield,” location unknown. 4. For more information on the understanding between owners and contractors, see Bishir 1991 and Upton 1988. 5. I am very grateful to Terry L. Todd for telling me about the construction information in the Todd Family Papers. Andrew Todd Sr. came as a young man from the north of Ireland in 1737 to New York State. There he married a widow McDowell and had several children, including Robert, John, William, and Andrew Jr. They lived in Chester and Bedford counties, Pennsylvania. Dr. Andrew Todd Jr. was surgeon on the ship General Green in the service of the State of Pennsylvania before moving to Kentucky with two of his brothers. They purchased town lots in Paris, Kentucky, in 1796 and became members of the Presbyterian church there.

Dr. Todd also began developing a plantation and planning construction of a mansion house on North Elkhorn Creek, a few miles outside town. 6. Many thanks to David Hall for sending copies of the Nelson County court records pertaining to this case, for locating the early stone houses of Nelson County, and for providing ongoing encouragement. 7. For information on the Carlisle Carpenters’ Society and its eighteenth-century builders’ price lists, which were a highly restricted trade secret, see Van Dolsen 1990, 76–77. In the mid-twentieth century, Milton E. Flowers, author of Carpenter’s Companies and Carlisle Architecture, discovered copies of the constitution of Carlisle Carpenter’s Company and the carpenters’ price lists of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1768 and 1760, in the Murray Papers, Hamilton Library, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Copies of these price lists are included in the Murray-Wooley Collection. 8. Many thanks to Jim Birchfield at the Special Collections Library, University of Kentucky, for alerting me to the Clay-Fisher agreements. 9. Masons at the Green County Courthouse evidently preferred to match the coursing pattern on the back of the building with the coursing they had put on the front and sides instead of laying “good common work” on the fourth side. There is no discernible difference among the four sides in the masonry quality or pattern—all are “straight regular masonry,” with shaped blocks laid in courses of varying heights. 10. Masonry coursing seems to have varied according to the type of stone available and to agreements between owners and contractors, rather than according to the masons’ abilities. The quality of masonry work is therefore of little use in identifying particular builders. Carefully tooled voussoirs may appear to be the signature of an individual craftsman, but we must be careful with such distinctions; the mason may have copied a pleasing shape from another craftsman. Moreover, masons traveled to find employment with various contractors, so unique masonry work was not necessarily the work of a particular contractor.

11. Although known Kentucky documents provide no evidence, specifications for a stone house in Maryland stipulate that the bottoms of the walls have “a projection on the outside of six inches all round, at least one course high” (Miller 1828, 71). 12. Footings may be unspecified in building contracts because there was a common understanding of whether they were needed. Restoration craftsman Stanley Kelley, who has considerable experience with early stone foundations, has never worked on a period house that has a footing under the foundation courses. He has observed that where there was to be no cellar, the masons dug a trench, leveled it off about 12 to 18 inches deep, and started building the foundation wall in the bottom of the trench. Kelly dismantled the foundation of the early-nineteenth-century two-story brick Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville when it was torn down in the 1970s and found that the stone foundation (which rose 8 inches above the grade line) was only 12 inches in the ground and had no footing, yet the brickmasonry it supported was perfectly intact. This and most other foundations on which Kelly worked were about 22 inches wide (Stanley Kelly, personal communication with the author, October 2004). 13. Nelson County Order Book 1, 1787, specified that the courthouse was to be of stone, well laid, and pointed on the outside with lime and sand. Other historical documents are no more specific. Kelly observes that no two mixes are exactly the same, even in the same wall section of a building; some joints are hard and firm and others are soft and crumbling. For repairs, he recommends mixing two shovels of sand and two shovels of lime with a small amount of water to produce “fine cement,” used for tuck pointing (1987, 10). 14. For detailed information on the construction of the typical hall-parlor house, see the case study of the Henry Thompson Sr. house in the portfolio. part ii: portfolio 1. Although the Devore name is of French origin, the family may have been among the French Protestants who notes [ 203

relocated in the north of Ireland and came to America from there, hence being identified as Irish. 2. I am very grateful to Jo Ellen Johnstone for telling me about her research and newspaper articles regarding the Collings family. 3. William Crow of Kentucky is sometimes confused with the better-known William Crow born in 1726 in Augusta (now Botetourt) County, Virginia. In 1761, that William Crow married Margaret Lewis Long, who was born in Donegal, Ireland. She was the widow of William Long and daughter of Col. John Lewis. William and Margaret’s five children included William Jr., Thomas, John, and Andrew Lewis Crow. William Crow Sr. owned and operated Crow’s Ferry on the James River and kept a store in Staunton, Virginia. He was a captain in the Augusta County militia under Col. William Preston (Crow 1961, 2). He bred and raced horses and was a slave owner, dealer in indentured servants, gambler, and large-scale cattle dealer (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 2414). Crow’s father-in-law, John Lewis of Ireland, shot his English Lord while protecting his family. He fled from Ireland to Portugal in 1731 and then found refuge under Governor Gooch of Virginia (Ancestry.com, World Tree entry 11993). 4. Yvonne Logue of Harrodsburg and the Harrodsburg Historical Society generously researched the deeds and wills for the Irvin property. 5. Two men named Thomas Kennedy built early stone houses in Kentucky—one in Kenton County, and this one in Bourbon County. A third Thomas Kennedy built a brick mansion in Garrard County. The relation, if any, among the three is not known. 6. I am very grateful to Wayne Onkst, director of the Kenton County Public Library, for providing me with information regarding the Kennedy family. 7. The Historic American Buildings Survey includes three pages of measured drawings of James McAfee’s house, survey number KY-71, delineated by Herman A. Weiter in 1940. 8. For excellent narratives of the ancestors, migrations, land explorations, Indian troubles, journey to Kentucky, 204 [ early stone houses of kentucky

and life in Kentucky of James McAfee and his family, taken from McAfee’s journal and from family records, see McAfee 1927 and Woods 1905. 9. The generations may be confused here because there were both William Sr. and William Jr. 10. Another stone house of the McConnell extended family was the two-story, three-room house (now an archaeological site) of William McConnell of Bourbon County. This William McConnell came from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Rosannah Kennedy, about 1781 (Day and Clay 2002). His relationship to the McConnells of Fayette County is unknown, as is the connection, if any, between his wife and the Kennedy family of nearby Bourbon County. 11. For detailed information on the events of 1774 and 1775 and the naming of Lexington, see Wooley 1975. 12. Bourbon County was formed in 1786 from Fayette County, but a search for more information about the widow McDowell in will and deed books in Fayette County from the time of James McDowell’s death in 1771 to 1786 is not possible because the land records of Fayette County were destroyed when irate settlers burned the county clerk’s office. 13. The connections among the branches of the McGee family and between John McGee of Mercer County and John McGee of Nelson County are probable but unknown. 14. Describing this house as a center-passage plan is imprecise because originally there was no doorway between the passage and the two rooms on the right, which were used as McKee’s office and storeroom. There were doorways from the street into the front right-hand room and from the back porch into the back room on the right, and a connecting door between the two. The street door was later converted to a window, and an interior door was cut into the stone wall between the passage and the room on the right. If the office and storeroom are not considered as part of the residence, then the residence is a double-pile, side-passage house. 15. The present owner speculates that the overmantel

was originally a painting on plaster (like the one on the wall over the mantel in the chamber above this room) that was painted over and the space filled with the flat vase carving, which does not have the three-dimensionality of the other carvings in the room. 16. Another John McKee, also of Bourbon County, Kentucky, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. His father (also John) came from County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1775 and was killed in the Battle of King’s Mountain in 1780, one month before his son was born. Before the father died, he asked his friend Thomas Shaw to take care of his wife and baby. The baby, John, was brought by his mother (Polly McCoy McKee Shaw) and stepfather (Thomas Shaw) to Ruddles Mills, Bourbon County. John McKee married Elizabeth McClintock. Descendants do not think he is the same John McKee as the John McKee of Rockbridge County, Virginia, nor close kin to James McKee of Millersburg (Anna Myles McKee to author, July 9, 1987). 17. Edna Talbot Whitley’s deed research does not corroborate the “circa 1790” plaque on the corner of McKee’s house. 18. David Sawyer built a stone house for Rev. James McGready that exhibits the same high-quality workmanship. 19. David Sawyer is the only known Kentucky stone house owner who came from North Carolina. The Sawyers were among the many Kentucky settlers from the Carolinas who

acquired land in western Kentucky somewhat later than those who claimed land in the Bluegrass Region. 20. For the story of the great revivals in early-nineteenthcentury Kentucky in which Balch and McGready were leaders, see Eslinger 1999. 21. Any connection between John Smith of Harrison County and General John Smith of Frederick County, Virginia, is unknown. 22. The house of Colonel John Smith of Harrison County should not be confused with another well-known Kentucky stone house, built on Elkhorn Creek in Franklin County by a different Colonel John Smith, whose ancestry is unknown. Colonel John Smith of Franklin County was the brotherin-law of governors Isaac Shelby and George Madison and married a daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Hart. He, too, was a Kentucky legislator, owned a gristmill, and was a man “of considerable wealth” (Coleman 1967, 189). His house was a single-pile, two-story, center-passage plan on a full cellar, with an ell on the rear (see Lancaster 1991, 53–55). 23. Additional sources for this branch of the Taylors in Virginia are Chalkley 1965, Peyton 1882, Kegley 1938, and Isaac Taylor, will, 1781, Montgomery County, Virginia, Will Book 1. 24. Edna Talbot Whitley identified the kitchen masonry on the Henry Thompson Sr. house as the work of Thomas Metcalf, half-brother to John Metcalf (see chapter 3).

notes [ 205

glossary

architrave. Flat trim and molding surrounding window and door openings. ashlar. 1. Squared and finished stones laid in uniform courses. 2. Short upright stud between the sloping rafter and flooring in an attic that forms the knee wall. batten. A plank or board fastened vertically, horizontally, or diagonally to reinforce backs of doors and shutters; also, a wide board placed in a series, creating a wall or partition. bay. A division of a house facade with a single opening (door or window). The bay comprises the opening and its surrounding wall space. bed molding. Small trim piece covering a vertical and horizontal joint. center-passage plan. Floor plan having a center hallway between the halves of the house, opposing doorways (front and rear), and usually an open stair. It may be single- or doublepile; if single-pile, it is an I house. chamfered. Beveled; describes the edge of a framing member (post, joist, or beam). chimney stack. Masonry mass from base to cap, containing one or more flues from a fireplace. closed stringer. Diagonal board (stringboard) covering ends of steps in a stairway. collar tie, collar beam. Horizontal beam of a roof truss that ties rafter pairs together.

[ 207

cornice. 1. Exterior enclosure of wall and roof framing members at roofline. 2. Interior trim covering wall and ceiling junction. cyma. S-shaped molding with widest part at bottom. dentil. A small, rectangular block set closely in a row, decorating a cornice or mantelpiece. dogleg stair. Two flights (runs) of stairs reversing direction with a landing. dogtrot plan. Floor plan with two separate rooms, having an open passageway (dogtrot) between them. The dogtrot is covered with a roof of the same height as the rest of the house. double-cell plan. Floor plan having two rooms, side by side, each having a front doorway. double-pile plan. Floor plan that is two rooms deep, front to back of house. dry-laid, drystone. Masonry laid without mortar. fascia. Plain horizontal band in a cornice. fenestration. Arrangement of window and door openings in a wall or facade. flue. Passage in a chimney stack to carry off smoke from hearth. flurkuchenhaus. A three- or four-room German house plan arranged around a central chimney containing a cooking fireplace in the kuche and flues for heating stoves in the other rooms. girder beam. A large, horizontal beam providing additional strength to the frame, often mortised into a summer beam. half-lapped joint. Ends of two rafters notched halfway through to overlap. hall-parlor plan. Floor plan of two rooms side by side, one room deep. The larger main room, with opposing exterior doors, is the hall, used as the main living space. The smaller room, entered from the hall, is the parlor, used as a formal sitting room or bedchamber. house-byre. A house in which the family dwelling is combined with the stable for cattle under the same roof.

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A vernacular house formerly common in rural Ireland, Ulster, and Scotland. joist. Horizontal framing member supporting floorboards above. keystone. Center stone in an arch, having sloping sides to help wedge voussoirs tightly in place. knee brace. Short stud in an attic to help support rafter; if boarded or plastered, forms a knee wall. light. A pane of glass in a window. lookout. A short wooden piece of joist material at the gable end of an eave to support a cornice. modillion. Ornamental bracket on the underside of a cornice. mortised. A hole cut into a timber to receive a projection (tenon) of another timber. nine-over-six sash. A double-hung window with top sash having nine panes of glass and bottom sash having six panes. ogee. S-curve molding with widest part at top. open treads. Exposed ends of risers and treads on a stair. outshot. A projection outside the rectangular plan of a northern or western Irish traditional house. ovolo. Quarter-round molding. plan. Horizontal layout of a house. press. A cupboard for clothes, with shelves and doors, usually built in. random coursing. Coursed masonry of various heights. reveal. Side of a door or window opening between a window frame and wall face. scantling. Structural framing wood of various sizes. shoulder. Projecting stone course (drip) at the bottom of the diagonal slope of a chimney stack. side-passage plan. Floor plan with an unheated stair hall on one side of the house opening into the living hall. It may be single- or double-pile; if double-pile, the stair hall also opens into the rear chamber. six-over-six sash. Double-hung window with both sash having six panes of glass.

skewback. A stone with a slanted edge that voussoirs of a segmental arch abut. soffit. The board covering the bottoms of the protruding ends of the ceiling joists, forming part of the cornice. summer beam. Large bearing beam running end to end of a house, supporting joists. toe-joint notch. A rafter base with a square notch on the outer point: the horizontal face of the notch rests on the top plate and the vertical face pushes against the plate. voussoir. A wedge-shaped stone in a masonry arch.

glossary [ 209

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index

Adams, Richard, acreage granted, 200n6 Alexander slave quarters, 27 Allen, Hugh, military grant, 200n6 Allen, John family, 66 house, 66–67 military grant, 200n6 Anderson, George, merchant, 16 Anglican Church. See Protestant Episcopal Church apprenticeships, 34, 202n2 Arnold, John, house, 190, 191 assimilation. See under settlers, northern Irish Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, 2, 14, 166 Ball, Frederick, stonemason, 40 Ball, Robert, stonemason, 40 Bell family, acreage granted, 12

Bell, John acreage granted, 200n6 family, 68 house, 68–69 Black, Robert, witness, 37 Boggs, Robert family, 70 house, 22, 30, 70–71, 178, 183 plantation, 22–25, 71 preemption certificate, 200n5 site plan, 21 (map) Branham, Richard family, 72 house, 29–30, 72–73 Breckinridge, Alexander, land speculator, 11 Breckinridge, John, land speculator, 11 Breckinridge, Robert, tax assessor, 198n9 brick, 29, 30, 180 Brown family, 29, 74 [ 219

Brown, Oliver, contractor, 33–34 Brown, Peter family, 75 house, 62, 75 Brown, Rev. John, 29, 74 Brown, Sen. John family, 74 house, 29, 74 Buchanan, John, surveyor, 199n4 builders. See contractors building materials, 4 building traditions, 4 Bullock, Waller, contractor, 40 Calvinists, 101 Campbell, Arthur, surveyor, 199n4 Cane, John, apprentice, 202n2 Cape, Captain John (or “Cope”), contractor, 39 Carlisle [Pennsylvania] Carpenters’ Society, building costs, 39, 203n7 Carpenter’s Companies and Carlisle Architecture, 203n7 carpentry, 52–63 cornice, 52–54, 61 doors, 55, 57, 61 framing, 58 floor joists, 58 summer beams, 58, 168 hearth cradle and trim, 61–62 mantels, 60, 61–62, 71, 95, 119, 159 presses, cupboards, 62, 169 prices, 39 purlin roof framing, 172–73 rafters, 52 roofs, 52 shingles, 54 shutters, 54–55 specifications, 39 stairs, 64 trim, 59–61 walls, 61 windows, 54–55 cellar, 55, 56 shutters, 54–55

220 [ index

woodwork, 57, 59–63, 169 hand carved, 62–63 See also specific elements ceilings, finish and height, 58 cellars, 26 Chenoweth, William, stonemason, 33 chimney stacks, 46, 49 Christian, William, surveyor, 199n4 Church of England. See Protestant Episcopal Church Clark, George family, 76 house 76–77 Clay, Henry, house addition, 40 Collings, Benjamin family, 78 house, 78–79 colonial boundaries, xii (map) construction, 33–64 contractors, 33–40 method of payment, 39 work of individual, 201n10 contracts, 34–40 Cooper, William family, 80 house, 80–81 settlement certificate, 200n5 cornices, 52–54, 61 costs, 37, 39, 40 covenanters, 14 Craddock, Robert, house, 181–82 Craig, Lewis, stonemason, 33 Crawford, John, settlement certificate, 199n5 Crawford, Josiah family, 82 house, 62, 82–83 Crist, Henry, house, 193–94 Crow, John acreage granted, 200n6 house, 30 settlement certificate, 199n5 stonemason, 33 Crow, William acreage granted, 200n6

family, 84–85 house, 30, 84 preemption certificate, 199n5 stonemason, 33 Crow, William, of Augusta (now Botetourt) County, 204n3 Crump, Armistead, apprentice, 202n2 cultural carryovers. See under settlers, northern Irish Cunningham, W. A., witness, 37 date and initial stones, 46, 49, 107, 155, 160–61 David, William, assimilation, 200n9 Dawson, Thomas, house, 181–82 dependencies (outbuildings), 21, 119, 201n1 Devore, David, stonemason, 48, 70, 203n1 dimensions, 26, 36, 58 doors, 55, 57, 61 Duncan, John, 16 Dunlap, Alexander family, 86–87 house, 28, 87 Dunlap, Jonathan, acreage granted, 12 DuPuy, Joel, house, 188–89 Dutch, 188 Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, 14, 97 education, 14 emigrants, northern Irish. colonial residences, 13 numbers from Ulster, 9 places of settlement, 9, 185–86 status, 9 See also settlers, northern Irish English, 191 English-Irish, 14 ethnic origins, 6, 198n7 debate, 198n6 farm/plantation buildings, 23–25 layout, 23 Federal Direct Tax Assessment of 1798, 198n9 fenestration, 25

Ferguson, Henry H. family, 88 house, 88–89 fireplace arches, 62 Fisher, John, stonemason, 40 Fisher, Maddox, stonemason, 39 Fleming, William, surveyor, 199n4 flooring material, 58 floor plans, 4, 25, 38 center-passage, 26, 29, 37–38, 188, 190 changes, 28–31 double cell, 26, 193 German, 191, 193–94 in Pennsylvania, 201n5 hall-parlor, 25, 188 in Pennsylvania, 201n2, 201n3 longhouse, 28, 194 one-room, 27 of other national origins, 187–95 side-passage, 26, 193 “2/c Georgian” development, 201n5 three-room, 26, 170, 191, 193 development, 201n5 Penn or Quaker plan, in Pennsylvania, 201n4 footings, 48–49, 203n11, 203n12 Frazier, Joel family, 90 house, 90–91 military grant, 200n6 Freemason, 124, 200n8 French, 188, 190 Frost, Ebenezer, preemption certificate, 200n5 Gains, John W., tenant, 38 Garrard, Gov. James, house, 190 Garrett, William, 30 acreage granted, 200n6 family, 93 house, 30, 31, 92–95 Georgian style, 29, 36 Germans, 136, 191 Gibson, Thomas, quarrier, 38 Graddy, Jesse, stonemason, 33

index [ 221

222 [ index

Graddy, William Lee house, 29, 31, 118 purchased Long house, 118 “great revivals,” 205n20 Greek revival style, 29, 30, 149, 151 Green County courthouse, 17 coursing pattern, 203n8 Grimes, Charles, house, 34, 36, 191 Guyn, Robert Jr. contract, 34–37, 202n2 family, 96–97 house, 96–97

house plans. See floor plans Houston, Joseph, land explorer, 1 Huguenots, 14, 100 Hunter, Jacob, store, 27 Huston, Nathan family, 104–5 house, 104–7

Haggin, John land explorer, 200n5 settlement certificate, 200n7 Haggin, Terah T., house, 30 Hampton, John, acreage granted, 200n6 Harlan, James acreage granted, 200n6 family, 98–99 house, 98–99 Harlan, Silas acreage granted, 200n6 settlement certificate, 199n5 Harlin, Elijah, preemption certificate, 199n5 Harrison, George, house, 191, 192 Henderson, Isham, house, 194 Henry, William acreage granted, 200n6 family, 100–101 house, 100–101 military grant, 200n6 mill, 100 preemption certificate, 200n5 Hinkson, John acreage granted, 200n6 family, 102 house, 30, 102 mill, 102 settlement certificate, 200n5 Hogan, Thomas, contractor, 34–37 House, Joseph, apprentice, 202n2

jack arches, 42–46, 47–48 Jackson, John, 16 Jenkins, Matthew, apprentice, 202n2

Indian attacks, captives, 200n8 Irvin (Irvine), Abraham family, 108 house, 108–9

Kauffman, Christopher, joiner, 39 Kennedy, John, at Boonesborough, 200n5 Kennedy, Thomas, of Bourbon Co. acreage granted, 200n6 family, 110–11 house, 110–11 stonemason, 33 Kennedy, Thomas, of Kenton Co. acreage granted, 200n6 family, 112–13 house, 112–13, 202n6 Kentucky Academy, 14, 15 Kentucky settlers, source of, 13 kitchens, 28, 70, 72, 104, 142, 164, 170 land claiming, 1–2, 10, 199n3 disputes, 199n1, 199n3 fertility, 11 (map) grants, 199n1, 199n5 locations, 11 (map) number of acres, 12, 200n6 laws, 199n1 military warrants, 11 policies in Kentucky, 199n1

in the lower Valley of Virginia, 199n2 in the upper Valley of Virginia, 199n2 settlement claims, 11 (map) speculation, 10 surveys, 5 See also surveyors value in Kentucky, 11 warrants, 11, 199n1 Leavy, William F., historian, 198n4 Lee, Thomas L., land in Kentucky, 88 Leity, Mr., mortarer, 38 Lewis, Andrew, surveyor, 11 Lewis, Thomas house, 202n8 land survey administrator, 11 Lexington, naming of, 204n11 Liberty Hall, 29 lime mortar 49–51 lime, 49 lime kiln, 50, 51 mortar mix, 49–51, 203n13 Lindsay, James family, 114 house, 114–15 Lindsay, Joseph, preemption certificate, 200n5 Linn, Andrew (Lynn), at Boonesborough, 200n5 Linn, Captain William, at Boonesborough, 200n5 location of stone houses, 11 (map), 20 Logan, Benjamin (brother of John), settlement certificate, 200n5 Logan, John acreage granted, 200n6 family, 116–17 house, 116–17 Long, John family, 118 house, 118–19 Lord Fairfax (Thomas), 199n2 Lynn, Andrew, preemption certificate, 200n5 Lynn, William, preemption certificate, 200n5 mantels, 60, 61–62, 71, 95, 119, 159 manufacturing, 16, 162

masonry. See stone masonry McAfee, George, settlement certificate, 200n5 McAfee, James acreage granted, 200n6 family, 120–23 house, 30, 120–23 journal, 204n8 settlement certificate, 200n5 McBrayer, William acreage granted, 200n6 family, 124 house, 124–25, 181 McCaffrey, Will, apprentice, 202n2 McCaughan, John family, 126 house, 126–27 McClintock, William, land explorer, 1 house, 26 McConnell, Francis acreage granted, 200n6 land explorer, 200n5 McConnell, James acreage granted, 200n6 family, 128–29 house, 128–29 McConnell, William acreage granted, 200n6 land explorer, 200n5 preemption certificate, 200n5 McConnell, William, of Bourbon County, 204n10 McConnell, William Jr., preemption certificate, 200n5 McConnico, Christopher, acreage granted, 12 McCrackin, Cyrus land explorer, 200n5 slave quarters, 27 McCulloh, John, 11, 37–38 McDowell, James acreage granted, 200n6 military grant, 200n6 McDowell, Samuel acreage granted, 200n6 family, 132 house, 202n8

index [ 223

McDowell, Samuel (continued) military grant, 200n6 slave quarters, 132–33 McDowell, Thomas, land explorer, 200n5 McDowell, widow family 130–31 house, 130 search for information, 204n12 McGee, David, settlement certificate, 200n5 McGee, John, of Mercer County acreage granted, 200n6 family, 134–35 house, 134–35 preemption certificate, 200n5 McGee, John, of Nelson County family, 136 house, 136–37 McGee, Patrick Jr., stonemason, 33 McGready, Rev. James, 205n18 McKee, James acreage granted, 200n6 date, 205n17 family, 138–40 house, 20, 35, 138–41, 204n14, 205n17 woodwork, 63, 138–41, 140–41, 204n15 McKee, John, of Ruddles Mills, 205n16 McKee, William, acreage granted, 200n6 McMillan, Samuel acreage granted, 200n6 family, 142–44 house, 142–45, 180 McMurtry, James, 20 McMurtry, Jonathan, 20 family, 146 house, 146–47 measured drawings, 65–174 merchandise/merchants, 16, 201n11 Metcalf family, 34 Metcalf, John Jr., contractor, 33, 34, 35 Metcalf, Thomas, contractor, 2, 33, 34 built Henry Thompson’s kitchen, 3, 35 masonry, 34, 35 statesman, 202n1

224 [ index

migration routes to Kentucky, 12, 13 (map), 200n7 Miller, Andrew, settlement certificate, 200n5 Miller, John, land explorer, 1 Miller, John Andrew, house family, 148 house, 29, 30, 148–49 mill plan, 201n12 Mitchell, Joseph, land explorer, 1 Montgomery, William, acreage granted, 200n6 mortar. See lime mortar mortar pointing and shapes, 50, 51 Murray-Wooley Collection, 198n5 Nelson County courthouse, 39 Nesbit, William, land explorer, 1 Nicholas, George, 14 Nigeria, 3 orientation of stone houses, 21 outbuildings/dependencies, 21, 119, 201n1 outshot, 152 owners of stone houses identities, origins, offices, status, 13 non-Ulster owners, 5 of other nationalities, 187–95 Patteson, Charles, acreage granted, 200n6 Patterson, Robert, 16 house, 198n4 land explorer, 200n5 Patterson, Samuel, carpenter, 38 Patton, James, surveyor, 11 Paul, Peter, contractor, 33, 34, 36 payment to builders, 39 Penn, Benjamin, quarrier, 37 Pisgah Presbyterian Church, 15, 29, 66, 74, 86, 92, 118 plantation/farm layout, 21–23, 21 (map) locations, 19, 20 plaster, 50–51, 59, 61 Poague, John, surveyor, 11 Poague (Pogue, Pollok, Polk), Robert family, 150–51

house, 150–51 land explorer, 200n5 population origins, Kentucky, 6, 13 porches, 63–64 Portland cement, 49–50 Presbyterian churches 14, 200n10 in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 201n10 Presbyterians, 13, 14, 200n9 Preston, William, surveyor, 11, 199n4 Preston’s cave spring, 20 Princeton University, 202n7 Protestant Episcopal Church, 14, 200n10 Quakers, 14, 82, 98 rafters, 52 rendering (stucco, whitewash), 52 research deed, 5 field, 4–5 genealogy, 5 sources, 5–6 Reynolds, James, acreage granted, 12 Rice, David, 14, 15 Robinson, David, 14 Robinson, James, 38 Robinson, William, preemption certificate, 200n5 roofs, 52 Ross, David, acreage granted, 12 routes, migration to Kentucky, 12, 13 (map), 200n7 Ruddell, Isaac, prisoner of Indians, 200n8 Russell, William, surveyor, 199n4 preemption certificate, 200n5 Sawyer, David, stonemason, builder, 33 family, 154, 205n19 house, 152–54 masonry work, 48 schools, 14 subjects taught, 14 Scott, John family, 156 house, 156–57

Scottish, 194 seceders, 14 segmental arches, 42 separation of church and state, 14 settlement pattern, 4, 19–20, 183 settlers, northern Irish. See also emigrants, northern Irish assimilation, 200n9 capture by Indians, 200n8 cultural carryovers, 179–80 economic status, 13 life in forts, 13 Presbyterians, 13 routes to Kentucky, 12, 13 (map), 200n9 sources of, 13, 185–86 status of, 4, 10 Shane, Rev. John D., historian, 198n5 Sharpe, Thomas, house, 30 Shawhan, Joseph family, 158–59 house, 27, 158–59 Shelby, Isaac, stone house, 40 Shipp, Laban, 190 Shryock, Frederick, house, 193 sites of stone houses, 21 slave housing, 27–28, 95, 202n6 slavery, 15 opposition to, 15, 126 proportion of population, 15 Smith, Colonel John, of Franklin County, 205n22 Smith, Colonel John, of Harrison County family, 160–61 house, 160–61 land explorer, 200n5 preemption certificate, 200n5 Smith, General John, of Frederick County, Virginia, 203n21 soil fertility, 10 (map) Spears, Jacob, house, 190 specifications for stone houses, 36, 37, 38 stairs, 25, 64 Steel, Andrew, preemption certificate, 200n5 Steele, David, house, 190 Steele, William Jr., assisting surveyors, 1–2 Steele, William Sr., land explorations, 1, 2

index [ 225

Stewart, Joseph, apprentice, 202n2 stone costs, 37, 38 quarries, 40–41 quarrying contract, 37 types, 40 stone buildings, 5, 16, 17 stone houses in historic records, 198n4 loss of, 180–81, 197n3 numbers of, 197n3 survival of, 181, 183 value of, 181 stone masonry coursing, 41–42, 46, 203n9, 203n10 dry-laid, 46 patterns, 41–46 tools, 41 voussoirs, 42–46, 47–48 wall construction, 46, 49, 50 stonemasons. See contractors stonework, 40–50 cost, 40 coursing, 35 specifications, 40 tooling, 35, 41, 42, 45, 46 stories, 25 Stroube, Nicholas, house, 193–94 surveyors, 11–12, 199n4 Taylor, William acreage granted, 200n6 family, 162, 205n23 house, 161–63 Thompson, Henry, Jr., 2 Thompson, Henry, Sr., 1–4 family, 166 house, 2, 30, 35, 164–65, 205n24 land explorations, 1–2, 197n1 preemption certificate, 200n5 Thompson, John Henry family, 168 house, 31, 168–69

226 [ index

Thompson, Mary, 2 Thompson, William acreage granted, 200n6 at Boonesborough, 200n5 family, 170 house, 170–71 preemption certificate, 200n5 Todd, Dr. Andrew, 37 contracts, 37–39 family, 200n2 house plan, 38 Todd family, 11, 20 Transylvania University, 14 Trigg, Stephen, surveyor, 199n4 Trimble, James, surveyor, 11 Turner, Samuel, contractor, 37 Virginia territory, xii (map) voussoirs, 42–46, 47–48 Walker, John, surveyor, 199n4 Wallace, Caleb, minister, 14 Wallace, Michael family, 172 house, 172–73 walls cavities, 49 construction, 46, 49, 50 thickness, 49 water sources, 20, 22, 123, plates 1–3 Welsh, 191 Welsh, Robert family, 174 house, 174–75 whiskey distilling, 158–59 legislation, 158 Whitaker, Charles, house, 191 Wilson, James acreage granted, 200n6 family, 176 house, 176–77 preemption certificate, 200n5

stonemason, 33 Wilson, John, preemption certificate, 199n5 Wilson, William, at Boonesborough, 200n5 windows, 54–55 woodwork, 57, 59–63, 169 hand carved, 62–63 Yantis, Jacob, house, 188–89 Young, Richard, house, 31

index [ 227

early stone houses of kentucky Design and composition by Kristina Kachele Design, llc Set in Stone Cycles with Stone Bodoni Ornaments Printed in China on 128gsm Chinese matte art paper by Asia Pacific Offset