HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN COUNTY KENTUCKY
by
charles
m. meacham
1930
CHAPTER XXXIX
INFORMATION ABOUT HOPKINSVILLE’S FIRST SETTLER
Bartholomew T. Wood. Pioneer Graveyard. Odd Fellows Lodge and Building. A Group of Former Members.
In the year 1796, Bartholomew T. Wood, an immigrant from North Carolina, stopped his “mover’s wagon” at the east fork of Little River, at the point still known as Wood’s Mill, and camped for the night. The place looked inviting, with its background of primeval forest a few miles to the north, its streams of clear water flowing seemingly from every direction, and its stretch of “barrens” to the south and west. Mr. Wood
left his family at the camp and crossing the stream ascended a hill a few hundred yards westward and took in the scene; another stream, a timber-lined crescent, enclosed a beautiful tract of country, undulating and grass-covered. For a mile he walked through this scene of beauty until upon the bank of the second stream he came upon a great spring of pure, cold water, gushing out from an over-hanging ledge of rock. It was the famous “Rock Spring,” now buried under the freight depot of the I. C. R. R., and still, through a miniature tunnel, pouring its stream of fresh water into the sluggish river. This spring settled the location. Mr. Wood staked a claim of 260 acres of land along the west fork of the river and extending eastward to the hill now known as “College Hill.” With much difficulty he got his wagon across the east fork, and proceeded to build a cabin on what is now the southeast corner of Campbell and Fourteenth streets. Subsequently he built a better house and moved nearer to the spring, on the present site of the Odd Fellows’ building.
The year that B. T. Wood moved to Kentucky, the Legislature created Christian County, by dividing Logan County. It embraced a territory as large as Massachusetts, out of which 20 counties have since been formed. On March 21, 1797, a county court having been appointed, the court met at the present site of Shiloh Church, on Sinking Fork, and organized for business. The court met again in August and appointed a committee to consider a place for a permanent county seat. After investigating locations for three months, the Wood site with its big spring among others, the committee reported November 21, 1797, and the court made an order fixing the seat of government at the Rock Spring and the village was named Elizabeth, which was changed seven years later to Hopkinsyule. Nearly 100 years after a flag station on a railroad four miles from Hopkinsville was named Woodville, a name the infant town ought to have been given a century before. Mr. Wood donated four acres of ground to the town. A part was used for the court house, a part for a school house near the present L. & N. depot, and still another lot given at a later day, was set apart for cemetery purposes. Here the first settler lived and saw the little town grow from year to year; he hunted game in the woods, tilled his crops in the valley and reared a large family of children. On one occasion he killed a bear weighing 400 pounds a few miles from town, on the Campbell farm. The growth of the town made him a man of liberal fortune and he was a prominent and progressive citizen during the pioneer period.
SOME OF THOSE BURIED IN PIONEER GRAVEYARD
In the southeastern corner of the old Westside Cemetery, with her headstone
still preserved, lies the body of a young woman who was the first wife
of a brilliant young lawyer who afterwards became Governor of Kentucky.
As a girl she was Miss Amanda Leavy, a daughter of William Leavy, of Lexington,
Ky. She was born in 1804 and died in 1829.
Charles S. Morehead was born in Nelson County, Kentucky, July 7, 1802,
and his education was completed at Transylvania University, Lexington,
Ky., from which he graduated with honors. He came at once to Hopkinsville
and located for the practice of law. In a few years he returned to Lexington
to claim as his bride the young girl who is buried here. He rose rapidly
as a lawyer and politician and was elected to the Legislature in 1828 and
re-elected in 1829, receiving almost the unanimous vote of the county.
His young wife died while he was serving his second term and he did not
return to Hopkinsville, but located in Frank-fort. He was attorney general
in 1832, and in 1838 was again elected to the Legislature from Franklin
County and re-elected several times. He was elected Speaker in 1841 and
served three terms. In 1847 he was elected to Congress and served till
1851. After one more term in the Legislature, he was elected Governor in
1855 on the Know-Nothing ticket, by 4,403 majority over Beverly L. Clark.
In 1859 he moved to Louisville and was a delegate to the “Peace Conference”
in Washington in February, 1861. He was arrested and thrown into prison
for several months on a charge of sedition, but was allowed to return to
Kentucky in January, 1862. Learning that he was to be arrested again, he
fled to Canada and subsequently to Europe. After the close of the war he
located at Greenville, Miss., on a plantation, where he died December 22,
1868. A large fortune was swept away by the war and he died poor.
James H. McLaughlin and his wife, Sarah C. McLaughlin, were buried
near the southern edge of the cemetery. The headstone of the latter still
remains, but that of the pioneer has disappeared. It is said that many
of these slabs have been removed and were put to various uses, during the
forty years that the cemetery was an abandoned brier field.
James H. McLaughlin was the second clerk of the Circuit Court, really
the first one, for his predecessor had served but one year as pro tempore
clerk without a commission as clerk. He was one of the seven lawyers licensed
at the first court held in the county and was a man of liberal education.
Joseph Duncan, his nephew, who was a deputy in his office, afterwards became
Governor of Illinois and a famous soldier and politician.
Mr. McLaughlin served as clerk for many years and was succeeded by
Nathan S. Dallam. The family is no longer represented in this section.
In the extreme western end of the cemetery is the grave of Ephraim Cock, who was born in 1753 and died in 1838. As he was twenty-three years old when the war of the Revolution began, it is almost certain that he was a soldier in that struggle. Reference is made in Perrin’s History to Col. John W. Cocke, of Virginia, who came to this county in 1820 and built a mill on Little River that cost $10,000 and bought 3,000 acres of land. One of the leading roads out oi the city is still called the Cocke’s Mill road. This may be a kinsman of the Colonel, but we can find out nothing definite. There are now no families bearing this name nearer to Hopkinsville than Robertson County, Tennessee.
Near the center of the cemetery, under a towering forest tree, side
by side, are the graves of Benjamin York and his wife Malinda York. They
died the same month, August, 1825, and the date, somewhat effaced, seems
to be the same on both headstones. Benjamin York, Sr., was one of the earliest
settler. He was a blacksmith, in those days an indispensable factor in
the life of every community, for even the nails were made by the blacksmith.
David Saffarans was the tinsmith of the town and both reared families.
When quite young, Benjamin York, Jr., and Ma-linda Saffarans were married,
and two little sons came to bless their humble home—Jim and John. Then
in the summer of 1825, when the one was twenty-five and the other twenty
years of age, both parents sickened and. died. The boys grew up in the
town with their grandparents and are well remembered by some of the older
citizens. Many years ago they left Hopkinsville, and nobody here knows
where their descendants now live.
Nevil Hopson, who died in 1835, was one of the early members of the
Methodist Church. His wife, Susan Hopson, survived her husband fifteen
years. They are buried side by side near the center of the lot.
In his day Benjamin W. Patton was one of the leading lawyers of Western
Kentucky. He was born in Clark County, Kentucky, in 1788 and died in this
city in 1825, one year before Robert P. Henry, another brilliant young
lawyer, whose grave is not thirty feet from his, passed away. He was liberally
educated and a graduate in law when he came to this city, and soon acquired
a brilliant reputation as a strong and successful lawyer. He was an eloquent
orator. David S. Patton, his brother, read law with him and in 1820 started
the Kentucky Republican, the first paper published in Hopkinsville. He
served in the Legislature from 1830 to 1834 and afterwards moved to Paducah,
where he died in 1837.
Mrs. Margaret S. Patton, wife of Benjamin Patton, and Mrs. Ann Patton, wife of William Patton, both of whom died young, are buried in the Patton lot.
THE ODD FELLOWS
Green River Lodge No. 54, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of Hopkinsville,
was organized September 16, 1848, by Grand Master John W. Pruett, of Louisville;
G. S. Fannon, of Paducah; George Wagner, of Clarksville, Tenn., with the
following charter members: James Young, Wailer Sharp, Robert McKee, Langley
Bell and W. S. Henry. Other members soon came in, and the first officers
were: James Young, N. G.; Langley Bell, V. G.; D. J. Hooser, Treasurer,
and Robert McKee, Secretary. As the years passed and the lodge got under
way, the following names figured in its history: D. R. Beard, Jacob G.
Gish, W. S. Talbot, A. D. Rodgers, Albert Pemberton, Daniel White, John
Figeley, Edward Buckner, P. J. Glass, F. Dunnington, P. Dunnavan, Dawson
Buck, H. E. Bacon,
James S. Phelps, Thomas Hord, A. C. Overshiner, W. W. Twyman, W. E.
Warfield, John A. Twyman, John C. Latham, James A. Twyman, H. J. Stites,
W. P. Shryer, C. W. Poindexter, W. H. Hopson, Hunter Wood, W. F. Randel,
Joe Weill, J. S. Chastain, W. T. Bonte, John B. Cheaney, H. P. McQuigg,
George W. Collins, C. W. Ducker, A. W. Bradley, Kirtley Twyman, George
W. Lander, R. L. Boulware, J. J. Mitchell, J. F. Pyle,
A. S. Caidwell, Walter Lawson, D. M. Whittaker, Dr. L. B. Hickman,
M. Lipstine, E. H. Crutchfield, Manuel Hartfield, George W. Long, Horace
Buckner, C. H. Hisgen, Louis Solomon, W. D. Ennis, J. M. Higgins, John
Moayon, R. A. Morris, James Mitchell, L. Shobinsky, Reuben Marsh, Jas.
Holloman, M. Frankel, H. E. Wiley and T. D. Ennis.
A generation passed, and the work of these members was taken up by
L. H. Davis, H. R. Roper, Rev. John W. Venable, the only member who ever
represented the lodge in the Sovereign Grand Lodge; G. H. Champlin, E.
J. Duncan, S. B. Ficken, A. M. Coleman, S. T. Fruit, Ellis Roper, T. H.
Owen, G. G. Reeder, J. T. Edmunds, Dr. F. P. Thomas, T. L. Metcalfe, E.
H. Higgins, D. H. Thomasson, Dr. J. E. Oldham, E. H. Hester, C. S. Jackson,
C. E. Harris, E. A. •Roper, Ed. C. Curtis, R. M. Tunks, R. C. Lawson, Frank
Monroe, C. S. Jackson, George M. Clark, C. R. Clark, E. M. Flack, A. H.
Anderson, J. K. Twyman, L. R. Davis, W. C. Wright, George E. Randle, L.
F. Atkinson, W. A. Long, W. H. Lee and others. These last named were in
charge when the lodge took its great and wise step, and erected its own
building, that soon enhanced in value, paid for itself in rentals, and
has made the lodge the wealthiest lodge of the order in Kentucky. This
step was taken in 1902, and the present three-story block was erected on
the corner of Ninth and Virginia Streets, upon the exact site where the
cabin home of Bartholomew T. Wood, the original settler of Hopkinsville,
stood in the woods, and from the door of which the pioneer and his wife
used to shoot the deer that came to drink from the Rock Spring in front
of the cabin. This three-story brick and stone building, on this historic
spot, is handsome and commodious. The two first floors are rented. The
third floor contains the lodge room, forty by sixty feet, which is not
only used by the Odd Fellows but by other lodges, all of which are provided
with separate property rooms.
The Odd Fellows Order, as is well known, was organized in England more than two hundred years ago. The poet, James Montgomery, once wrote a song for a body of Odd Fellows. Nowhere has the order found a more worthy exemplification than here in Hopkinsville, where for almost a century, the noble purposes of the great order have been carried out, promoting brotherly accord, relieving distress and doing good in many ways. The official personnel of the lodge at the present time is here given: Boyd Reeder, Noble Grand; W. E. Keel, Vice Grand; S. T. Fruit, Recording Secretary; Ellis Roper, Financial Secretary; F. A. Howard, Lodge Treasurer; L. E. Adwell, Building Fund Treasurer; C. W. Keach, District Deputy Grand Master; G. E. Randle, J. R. Fears, H. S. Wade, Trustees.
The Past Grands of the lodge, arranged alphabetically, are: Hubert
Adwell, L. E. Adwell, L. T. Brasher, John T. Beard, D. C. Cary, G. H. Champlin,
Harvey Chewning, George Myers Clark, A. M. Coleman, Ed.
C. Curtis, Sr., Ed. C. Curtis, Jr., J. R. Fears, S. T. Fruit, C. E.
Harris, E. H. Hester, C. E. Hill, C. W. Keach, Dr. J. P. Keith, W. H. Lee,
C. C. Lindsay, Isaac Lyon, W. L. Mayes, E. N. Miller, Fred Morris, G. E.
Randie, Ellis Roper, W. A. Rawiings, Volney B. Seay, Frank B. Smoth, W.
C. Taylor, G. W. Thacker, R. M. Tunks, W. B. Tucker, John W. Twyman, C.
C. Wood and Envoy Henry Valuer.
©2001
Kyseeker.com
All
Rights Reserved