USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Glimpses of historic Madison County, Kentucky > Part 27
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Memories of these far-away homes are filled with aroma of the Calycanthus, the mock orange, and the white and coral honey- suckle, planted to create some fragrant reminder of an ancestral home left behind.
An old house of this type, well loved through the years, is one seven miles from Richmond on the Lexington Pike that was owned and occupied by Samuel B. Phelps far back in 1852. It has a stairway in the hall, a duplicate of one used by Wallace Nutting in his pictures of an old New England house, and a wealth of Colonial furniture. Another such house is one on the Barnes Mill Pike in which five generations of the Arbuckle family have made their home.
AN AGE OF STONE
By 1790 stone began to be used as a building material. Isaac Shelby built the first house of stone in Kentucky in that year. It was located in Lincoln County and was called Traveler's Rest.
Soon in Madison County, houses and offices and picturesque mills of stone began to be built. The Hawkins homestead of dressed stone on Silver Creek is standing today, a beautiful structure. The pioneer ancestor of the Cochran family, higher up the waters of Silver Creek, near the Menelaus Pike, built his home of dressed stone. It was two and one-half stories and was in perfect pres- ervation until 1928, when it was burned. The ruins remained standing.
The office of rough stone, near the Halley house at Boonesborough, has two rooms and is in good repair. Many offices like this were built for the pioneer homes, to accommodate the sons of the family and their gentlemen friends. They were heated by great open fireplaces in chimneys of rough stone, and were furnished with tester beds of cherry, and cherry chests and cupboards.
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An office of rough stone, like the one described, was attached to the home of Samuel Phelps, three miles north of Richmond. The house itself was of log, weather-boarded, with four rooms in front-parlor, family room, nursery, and kitchen. Then there was a "lean-to" at the back which contained the dining room and a bed room. An inclosed stairway led to two large rooms with case- ment windows above. There were many large stone chimneys to this old house. It had been built on a plantation of 2,000 acres. The quarters of the slaves, which numbered more than a hundred, gave the impression in the distance that one was approaching a village. Only a part of the house now stands.
On the grounds at White Hall, home of General Cassius M. Clay, there is a long row of rough stone houses joined together, which looks like a bit of old Scotland. These houses were used for spinning and weaving rooms by the slaves. The shoemakers' rooms were here also.
LEXINGTON PIKE AND TATE'S CREEK
General Cassius M. Clay says in his Memoir that his father, General Green Clay, built the first hewn log house, two stories high, in Madison County. In the 1790's he built a brick residence, and the log house was taken for an office. The brick house contained beautifully paneled rooms. It had three Greek porticos with Corinthian and Doric columns. This house was incorporated in the mansion White Hall, which was erected at the close of the Civil War and is standing today. It has been one of the show places of Kentucky. It is approached by way of the Lexington Pike, on a private road that turns off at Foxtown, six miles out from Rich- mond.
White Hall was inherited from General Green Clay by his youngest son, Cassius M. Clay, who was seventeen years old when his father died. The younger Clay died there at the age of ninety-three years. At the sale following his death it took two days to sell the works of art, bronzes, pictures, china, mirrors, and other furnishings that had been collected at White Hall dur- ing the years of its prestige and glory.
At Foxtown is also Homelands, the large and imposing brick residence built by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bennett in 1862, where handsome entertainment was dispensed through many years. This
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was a family that valued attainments. Two of the sons graduated from Yale. The sons and daughters and grandchildren have traveled around the world. Several are now living in the Orient, in London, and in Rome.
Seen from the Lexington Pike, about eight miles from Richmond, on the right, is a large house in the distance which was built by Edwin Phelps in 1835. It was in this house that many from outside the county took refuge from the great flood at the cele- bration at Boonesborough in 1840. Every piece of furniture in this house was made by a cabinet maker named Brown, a minister of the Christian Church, who stayed in the home for months to make it. The chests of drawers, tables, and secretaries were all made from beautiful designs. Many of them were destroyed by fire years later in a home where they had been stored.
Mrs. William Chenault Sr., the mother of Mrs. Samuel Ben- nett, built in the 1830's the brick house on what was later known as the farm of A. R. Burnam, Jr. on the Lexington Pike facing the dirt road" north of Richmond leading to Boonesborough and Winchester. This land was originally a part of the William Irvine preemption, and a pioneer log house had been built upon it. Samuel Stone later purchased the place and lived there through the troublous times of the Civil War. A grim memento of those days still remains in the form of a bullet hole in one of the doors, the mark of Federal troops who there killed an overseer of the Stone estate. This house was occupied from 1866 to 1885 by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Chenault.
The houses of pioneers Josiah Phelps and George Phelps were double log houses, built on preempted lands on this same dirt road. The Phelps' preemptions included 2,800 acres extending north and west of what is now Westover Terrace in Richmond. The descendants of these pioneer brothers have been among the largest landowners of Madison County, owning many of the handsomest homes in the county today.
Josiah Stone, the pioneer of the Stone family in Madison County, built the pioneer house on an eminence overlooking Tate's Creek just west of Richmond, which for many years has been owned by the DeJarnette family.
It is of log, weather-boarded, with a front line extending about seventy feet. The stairway is inclosed. It has double doors leading
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into the large drawing room. The woodwork is exceptionally hand- some. The two sons of Samuel Stone brought their brides to this delectable old house, and grand dinners to welcome them were served there. One son of this family, Colonel Samuel H. Stone, studied in Heidelberg and other German universities. Another, General James C. Stone, commanded the forces of Madison County in the Mexican War.
The homestead of Turner family was also west of Richmond and later has been known as the Crutcher place.
The home of Peter Taylor was near those of the Turners and the Stones, they all having come out from Culpeper County, Vir- ginia. The original dwelling on the Taylor estate of 2,800 acres was a double log building. After the death of Peter Taylor in 1812, his widow erected a brick house, two and a half stories high, which could be seen for miles around. From this home came one of the first physicians of Richmond, Dr. William G. Taylor.
KIRKSVILLE, SILVER CREEK, AND SOUTH MADISON
The Kirksville vicinity, a principality in itself, has had many notable homes. The house where Thomas J. Curtis lived until re- cent times was the early home of Caleb Stone.
On the pike approaching Kirksville from Paint Lick, on an avenue leading in from the pike, is the Benjamin Smith house, associated in a popular story with the name of James G. Blaine. It is said that this commodius old brick home entertained as guests one Christmas the young Blaine, then a teacher at a military acad- emy at Georgetown, Kentucky, and a young lady who later became his wife and who was at the time also a teacher at Georgetown, in a girls' seminary there.
Adjoining the Smith place was a large plantation of Thompson Burnam, known as Elk Garden. Next to Elk Garden was Hedge- land, the home of Dr. Harrison Miller. This house stands with its side to the main road. A large hall runs through the center, with handsome rooms on either side. Near by, at Paint Lick, is a grand old mansion, with its great Greek portico, built by George Denny of Lancaster, but later owned by John B. Parkes.
At Silver Creek Village was the old Barnett place known as Holly Hill. Later it was owned by W. S. Hume, who tore down
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the Colonial brick house and built the present large brick owned by Thomas E. Baldwin, Jr.
In the southern part of Madison, seven miles from Richmond on the Caleast-Berea Pike, Blythewood, built by Mrs. James Blythe, has stood for many years in the center of an original estate of 2,500 acres. Blythewood is of brick, with a hall through the center and great parlors on either side. It has a long ell and iron verandahs. The grounds are very beautiful. A large spring house of rough stones is situated in a picturesque little valley within the grounds.
Eastward from Blythewood, on Duncan's Lane, was the original pioneer Duncan home. The steps of stone and the outline of the cellar are all that remain of it. Colonel John A. Duncan, the son of the family, built the greater part of the brick house now known as Duncanon. There is an exquisite paper on the parlors of this house, with vignettes of French scenes against a pearl-gray background.
Northwest from Duncanon across Duncan's Lane, standing well back from the main road in the midst of its surrounding acres, is the Watts homestead. This house has a large hall which runs parallel to the front door. There are wings on either side and a Greek portico in front. The woodwork is said to be very beautiful.
The William White place, at White Station, ten miles from Richmond and a few miles farther out than Blythewood, was one of the handsomest in the county in ante-bellum days. One who knew it said that it looked like a castle in the distance. It had twenty rooms of vast size. A colonnade was in front of the house. The hall ran parallel to the front door, and the stairway in the hall was imposing.
The Campbells owned handsome homesteads in the Silver Creek vicinity. Caldwell Campbell replaced his pioneer house two miles southwest of Blythewood with the brick residence, with its iron gallery in front, later owned by Samuel M. Phelps and most ap- propriately called Rolling View.
The pioneer Mason home was of double log and was located on a side road near the Menelaus pike, in the Cochran neighborhood. William Mason, the pioneer, was related to George Mason of "Gun- ston Hall," who wrote the famous Bill of Rights for Virginia. Both originally came from Pennsylvania. The home of John C. Mason, on Duncan's Lane, built on the land of the pioneer of the Cornelison family, is one of the ornaments of that vicinity.
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BIG HILL AND SPEEDWELL
Early in 1864, U. S. Grant was made Lieutenant General of the Union Armies. At that time he was in Eastern Tennessee, from which section he had recently driven the Confederates. In going to Washington to confer with President Lincoln, he rode with his staff through Cumberland Gap to Lexington, Kentucky, where he took the train to the Capital. Night overtook him, however, before he arrived at Lexington, and he sought and obtained lodging at a farmhouse in Madison County. This house, then known as "Jones Tavern," was a Confederate soldier's home and still stands on what is now Big Hill Pike. It is the property of Berea College. The room in which the General slept is at the extreme right and rear of the house and is now used as a museum.
Just off the Big Hill Pike approaching Kingston was the homestead of John W. Parkes. The rooms of this house were large and spacious, with tall ceilings; and the furnishings were exquisite, if one may judge from the pieces that were later taken to Elmwood by Mrs. W. W. Watts, a daughter of the Parkes family.
Four miles from Richmond on the Big Hill Pike is Cumberland View, erected by Alexander Tribble in the 1850's. It rises above the highway facing southeastward, with a commanding view of the distant blue line of encircling Cumberland foothills. Alexander Tribble, Colonel John A. Duncan, and Mayor John D. Harris were the three great landowners of Madison County south of Richmond for many years before 1887.
The houses erected in Madison County from the early 1800's until 1840 had hand-carved woodwork and tall Adams mantels of many beautiful designs. It is not known who was the architect for the houses of this period, but it is thought that they were planned by Shryock of Lexington. After 1810, plain heavy woodwork, chiefly walnut, became common.
The woodwork of Cumberland View and that of the Malcom Miller place at Duncanon is of heavy walnut. The Estill houses all have hand-carved woodwork painted white.
Near Cumberland View, on the opposite side of the Big Hill Pike, Castlewood was erected in 1825 by James Estill, Jr., the nephew of Capt. James Estill, who was killed at Little Mountain March 22, 1782. It was the largest and handsomest house of its day in Madison County. A Cincinnati architect said in 1919 that he
In
"Castlewood," built by James Estill in 1825. (From a painting by Miss Adelaide Everharte, of Decatur, Georgia.) Removed by the Blue Grass Ordnance in the 1940's.
Cumberland View, built in 1854 by Alex Tribble. Nearly opposite Castlewood on U.S. 25, south of Richmond. ( Photo by Ru Bee)
Woodlawn, built about 1822.
The Solomon Smith House, built more than 100 years ago. Many Union soldiers captured in the Battle of Richmond were paroled here.
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had never seen more beautiful walls or construction. Castlewood was built on the site of a pioneer double log house with inclosed stairways leading to the second floor. Near Castlewood was Woodstock, owned by Archibald Woods, Jr. It was of brick con- struction with two fronts facing east and west. It was built in the 1790's, with the exception of the large parlor next to the pike. (Both Castlewood and Woodstock were torn down in the 1940's when their area became a part of the Blue Grass Ordnance Depot. )
Other houses in this vicinity are Castle Union and Clifton on the Speedwell Pike. Castle Union was erected by Colonel and Mrs. J. Speed Smith, who at an earlier date lived at the beautiful brick mansion, now known as the Speed Smith house, on North Street in Richmond.
Woodlawn, on the right of the Big Hill Pike, immediately beyond the city limits of Richmond, was erected in 1822 by Colonel William Rodes. It has perhaps the most beautifully carved woodwork of any house in Madison County. The length of the house in front is seventy feet. It has a hall in the center, two rooms on either side, and two wings beyond. There are two rooms and a hall on the second floor. The portico is of stone, with monolithic Doric columns. The cupboards are also very beautiful and the palladian windows. Colonel and Mrs. Rodes, a daughter of General Clay, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary there in 1872.
Both Union and Confederate soldiers encamped on the grounds of Woodlawn during the Civil War. It is said that Bragg's army watered at the great spring at Woodlawn and that the water was not exhausted. John Fox, Jr., describes minutely the house of Woodlawn in one of his novels.
It is to Colonel Rodes that Richmond is indebted for her court- house of fine architectural lines and for the cemetery with beauti- fully planned driveways. He insisted that an excellent architect be employed for the one and a landscape gardener for the other.
Among the valuable portraits which hung at Woodlawn while Colonel Rodes resided there was one, life size, of the Marquis de Lafayette, painted by Matthew T. Jouett while Lafayette was on his visit to the United States in 1824. It was sold in New York City in 1900 for $3,000.
The scenic wallpaper on the front parlor at Woodlawn was sold in 1923 for $6,000. It was restored to its original beauty by New
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York artists, and is now on the walls of a private home in New York. It will eventually go to a museum. (Photographs of this paper before its removal are in the Memorial Museum at Eastern State College. )
RED HOUSE AND VICINITY
On the left of the Winchester and Boonesborough Pike coming into Richmond are three houses of interest. One of these belonged in the 1820's to Robert Tevis, and in later years to William O. Chenault, lawyer, dean of a law school, and one of the founders of the Filson Club of Louisville.
The other two homes referred to on this pike were those of Anderson Chenault, one of the three pioneer Chenault brothers, a widower at that time, and a widow named Mrs. Harris, who later became Mrs. Chenault. A human interest story of some piquancy centers around these two. The story goes that after their marriage, the new Mrs. Chenault declared with some asperity that she could not think of leaving her establishment with all its activities-her servants, slaves, spinning, weaving, and the like. Her husband was equally stubborn. The result was that they both continued to live just as before, with dignity and contentment in their respective homes.
On the Red House Pike, just north of Richmond, is the home of Judge Curtis Field. It has for almost sixty years belonged to the Dr. Thomas S. Moberly estate, and was in its day a beautiful house, built of brick, with deep windowseats.
A mile farther out is Dreaming Creek Heights, built on the Colonel Richard Calloway preemption. The northern end of the house was constructed in 1800. In 1861 there were added to the original house an ell, the large parlor and room above, and the north porch and Greek portico. Dreaming Creek Heights is of brick construction, two stories high, with attics. It has two large rooms and a hall in front. The Greek portico has Ionic columns. Terraces filled with shrubbery lead down to the Louisville and Nashville railroad, which encircles the hill, the Red House Pike, and Dreaming Creek below.
Notable guests were entertained at Dreaming Creek Heights from many states. The letter files of the owners bear witness to the delightful hospitality dispensed there. Many colorful and impressive
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weddings were celebrated within its elegant parlors. One of the stories handed down is that on one of these occasions the afternoon train running north from Richmond received special orders to stop at Dreaming Creek Heights to receive aboard a bridal party, in- cluding guests from many parts of Kentucky and from other states.
James B. McCreary, a major in the Confederate army, a Congress- man and United States Senator, and twice Governor of Kentucky, was born in 1838 on the Red House Pike two and one-half miles from Richmond. The mansion of Dr. and Mrs. E. R. McCreary, parents of the Governor, was a two-story brick, with a square portico. A hall ran back of the two front rooms, making an entrance also from the side. Inclosed stairways led up from both the front rooms. There was also a stairway in the hall. The house was originally built by a Methodist minister, a Mr. Pace, for whom Pace's Chapel, near Red House, is named. Dr. and Mrs. McCreary lived there until 1858.
On the Four-Mile road stands the home of the grandparents of Governor McCreary, Moses and Rebecca Bennett, who built the house in 1813. It has a hall and two rooms in front and an inclosed stairway in the hall. The ell has three chimneys.
On the Irvine Pike is Ravenswood, built by Judge William C. Goodloe and his wife, the daughter of Governor Owsley. The house is of brick, the hall runs parallel to the front porch, and the floors of the two large parlors are on springs for dancing. The home has been occupied for many years by the family of C. F. Chenault.
In northern Madison County, over-looking Otter Creek and the Kentucky River, is the David McCord homestcad, ancestral home of the McCord family of Madison County. Near the McCord place is the Hawkins house built by the pioneer, John Hawkins. The fifth generation of the Hawkins family are now living there.
William Harris Miller, historian, was born at the home of his father, Christopher Irvine Miller, on Muddy Creek, several miles east of Richmond. There were many homes of the Miller, Harris, Oldham, Dillingham, Park, Hocker, Hume, and Embry families in this section of Madison County, remotely removed from Richmond but a proud community within themselves. The homesteads were for the most part double log houses of the pioneer period, and were filled with hand-made furniture, often of exquisite design. An old citizen of this community has said that if a house of this period
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had a fine cellar it was considered finer than one that had none, and that the distinctions of the homes of the vicinity were made in this way.
MAIN STREET AND TRIBUTARIES
On North Street in Richmond is a picturesque old residence which General Green Clay built in 1818 for his daughter, Betsy, the wife of Colonel John Speed Smith, who later built Castle Union near Speedwell. The grounds of the North Street house originally extended to Main Street. They were inclosed by a stone wall and were approached through iron gates at the entrance.
The Solomon Smith House, built more than a century ago, stands on a knoll in a grove near the site of Madison Female Institute, now Madison High School Hill. It witnessed the parole of Union soldiers captured by General E. Kirby Smith in the Battle of Richmond in 1862. This old house has a semicircular wall in the hall to accom- modate the stairway, which has a round rail and delicate spirals. A duplicate of this wall and stairway was installed at Dreaming Creek Heights in 1861.
The Madison Female Institute, mentioned above, was originally a home built by Major McClanahan, a Richmond merchant, and was converted into a school for girls in 1853. This great building was used as a hospital after the Battle of Richmond.
The First Methodist Church on Main Street in Richmond is built on the site of a brick residence where Owen Walker, a prominent merchant, was living in 1858. In 1887 there was celebrated in the Walker home the wedding of a daughter, Coralie, to Leonard Hanna of Cleveland. Among the guests at the wedding was a brother of the groom, the Honorable Marcus Hanna from Ohio, United States Senator, and later a prominent figure behind the Mckinley ad- ministration.
James B. Walker, another member of the Walker family, and his wife, a former Miss Helm of Woodford County, occupied at one time the Speed Smith house on North Street. One of their daugh- ters married General Benet of the United States Army and became the mother of Stephen Vincent Benet, poet and prose writer, whose epic poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body, won the Pulitzer prize for literature in 1929.
The Jason Walker house, one of the largest in Madison County,
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stands at the end of Broadway. It is built of brick, and in its day was the center of much elegant entertaining.
Elmwood, on Lancaster Avenue, opposite Eastern Kentucky State College, is one of the show places of Richmond, with its mansion, its grounds set with magnificent trees, its valleys and bridges, and its garden. Elmwood was built in 1887 and was designed by the architect des Jardins of Cincinnati. It is elegantly furnished with rare antiques from England. One can not easily recall having seen in England or elsewhere a more beautiful garden than that of Elmwood.
Blair Park, on the western approaches to Richmond, stands, as so many of the great old houses have stood, on the site of an earlier double log house. It is a brick residence, built by S. P. Walters, banker and financier, in 1869. Mrs. W. R. Letcher, a daughter of the family, added a large ell in 1887, making in all a house of twenty rooms and halls. The windows of the house open on glorious sunsets and far horizons. On the walls hung portraits in oil of five genera- tions, and on the book shelves were volumes going back to the 1700's. The grounds surrounding the residence had thirteen acres, with graceful drives and avenues of trees.
On Lancaster Avenue, near the State College, the great old gray brick residence of Irvinton stands in the midst of its spacious grounds. It was built in the early 1820's by Dr. Anthony Wayne Rollins, who sold it in 1829 to David Irvine, who in turn gave it to his daughter, Elizabeth Susan, soon after her marriage to her cousin, William McClanahan Irvine. Irvinton became one of the finest old homes in Madison County, where the Irvines, the McDowells, the Burnams, the Clays, the Shelbys, and many other names prominent in the annals of Kentucky were often associated with its hospitality.
In the 1870's Mrs. Irvine added the bay windows to Irvinton and painted it gray giving it the air of venerable dignity that it wears today. The first greenhouse in Richmond was located on the Irvinton grounds.
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