Chapter D of the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky

DINSMORE HOMESTEAD. In 1842 James Dinsmore (1790– 1872), a Dartmouth College–educated New Englander, after living in Terrebone Parrish, La., for a time, moved his family... (cont’d on pg. 270)

The Enquirer/Michael Snyder

D

Introduction | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z | Index

Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky in partnership with NKY.com

The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky Contents Introduction, Foreword, Acknowledgments and Guide for Readers Chapters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z Index, Bibliography, Illustration Credits

Edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Republished for the World Wide Web by NKY.com and Enquirer Media

A Project of the Thomas D. Clark Foundation, Inc. Mark A. Neikirk, President Sherry Jelsma, Vice President

Dave Adkisson, Treasurer Melanie J. Kilpatrick, Secretary

Thomas R. Brumley, Immediate Past President Michael J. Hammons, Past President

Dave Adkisson, Frankfort Jane Beshear, Frankfort Thomas R. Brumley, Lexington John S. Carroll, Lexington Sara W. Combs, Stanton

Board of Directors Michael J. Hammons, Park Hills Sherry Jelsma, Shelbyville Martha C. Johnson, Melbourne Mark A. Neikirk, Highland Heights Alice Stevens Sparks, Crescent Springs

Robert Ted Steinbock, Louisville Mrya Leigh Tobin, New York City James M. Wiseman, Erlanger

Editorial Staff Editors in Chief: Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool Associate Editors: David Hatter, John Schlipp, David E. Schroeder, Robert Stevie, Michael R. Sweeney, John W. Thieret (deceased), Thomas S. Ward, Jack Wessling Topical Editors: Agriculture: Lynn David & James Wallace; Art: Rebecca Bilbo; Biography: Michael R. Sweeney; Business & Commerce: John Boh; Counties & Towns: David E. Schroeder; Ethnology: Theodore H. H. Harris; Government, Law, & Politics: John Schlipp; Literature: Danny Miller (Deceased); Medicine: Dennis B. Worthen; Military: James A. Ramage; Music, Media, & Entertainment: John Schlipp; Religion: Thomas S. Ward & Alex Hyrcza; Sports & Recreation: James C. Claypool; Transportation Joseph F. Gastright (Deceased); Women: Karen Mcdaniel.

Maps: Jeff Levy at the Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography & GIS, University of Kentucky.

Copyright © 2009 by The University Press of Kentucky, 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, KY 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com.

Print editions: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Encyclopedia of northern Kentucky / edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool. p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8131-2565-7 (hardcover : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-8131-2585-5 (limited leather edition) 1. Kentucky, Northern— Encyclopedias. 2. Kentucky— Encyclopedias. I. Tenkotte, Paul A. II. Claypool, James C. F451.E55 2009 976.9'3003—dc22 2009027969

DAIRIES. Because Northern Kentucky has a strong agricultural tradition, it is not surprising that an estimated 500 dairies operated in the region before 1920. In addition, individual farms (see Truck Farming), working on a smaller scale, supplied dairies with dairy produce.

The regional daily demand for dairy products to be pasteurized, homogenized, and refrigerated is what sustained such a large number of dairies. As the region’s population grew, and as milk production became more regulated and industrialized, many of the dairies—their names now lost—were bought out or merged with larger ones.

By the 1920s, 54 dairies operated in Northern Kentucky. No documented history indicates which one was the first to become an independent business. However, the Trauth Dairy in Newport can claim to be the only remaining milk plant in Northern Kentucky. It was established in 1920, when Louis Trauth and his wife Clara Stephany Trauth bought one milk route from Fred Schuerman’s Dairy. Schuerman’s farm was located where the Newport Shopping Center is today; and Trauth continues to expand its operations to this day around the intersection of 11th and Monmouth Sts. in Newport, just to the north of the shopping center.

Besides Trauth Dairy, Campbell Co. was home to companies such as Sealtest (Newport) and Clover Leaf Dairy. Clover Leaf, founded by Emmert J. Marschman in about 1915 on Johns Hill Rd. in

Cold Spring, later opened its processing plant in Newport. Beginning with a store in Fort Thomas in 1937, Clover Leaf’s “dairy bars” were precursors to modern convenience stores, selling milk and dairy products as well as deli and grocery items.

Their popularity was evidenced in 1956 when the brand new Newport Shopping Center included a Clover Leaf Dairy Bar. Also in Campbell Co. were George B. Moock’s dairy farm on Moock Rd. in Southgate and the associated processing plant called Hiland Dairy in Newport; Jansing Dairy in Wilder, at Licking Pk. and Three Mile Rd.; Feldmann Dairy on Licking Pk. (Feldmann’s dairy barn later served as the Wilder police station); and Jersey Farms Dairy in Fort Thomas, purchased by Clover Leaf in 1952. The H. Meyer Dairy Company of Cincinnati purchased the Clover Leaf milk processing plant in Newport in the mid-1970s, and in 1984 Trauth Dairy bought Clover Leaf’s ice cream facility.

In Kenton Co., Buttermilk Pk. in Crescent Springs and Villa Hills was lined with dairy farms, and they remained until I-75 was constructed during the 1960s. Local legend has it that Buttermilk Pk. was so named not only because of the large number of dairies but also because transporting milk over the bumpy dirt road on a humid day would churn the milk and turn it into buttermilk.

In the 1880s this area had several dairies, including the Echo Dairy, run by Joseph Cleveland; the Th irs Dairy, operated by Amos Collins; and two dairies owned by Col. J. G. Anderson, one of which was known as the List Dairy.

The city of Edgewood was developed from lands acquired by the sale of dairy farms, including the Edgewood Dairy Farm, owned by the Requardt family. The Summit Hills Golf and Country Club in Edgewood was once the Hartke Dairy, and the country club’s original clubhouse had previously been the dairy’s two-story barn. The Foltz

Theodore Joseph Hanneken of Hanneken Dairy (purchaser of the Steffen Dairy Company), 624 Scott St., Covington. To the right is the Packard automobile dealership of Louie Meyer.

Dairy, located on Dudley Rd. in Edgewood, sold its milk to local producers and stayed in operation until 1987. The Rehkamp Dairy on the Three-L Highway (LLL), which started as a distributor, eventually became a full-service dairy.

The Steenken family owned two dairies in Fort Mitchell. Their dairy on Highland Ave. produced milk that was sold to processing plants. The family also contracted to milk cows for other farms, since there were enough family members to provide the manual labor needed to milk cows twice daily.

A number of dairies were located in Covington. The Trenkamp Dairy operated on W. 11th St. until the 1950s, and the Hanneken Dairy, which bought out the Steffen Dairy, was headquartered at 624 Scott St. The Hanneken family partnered with the Rehkamps and relocated to 533 Pike St. (now 533 Goetta Pl.) in what is now Glier’s Goetta, formerly part of the Bavarian Brewing Company.

Clover Leaf Dairy bought the Hanneken Dairy in July 1964. Also in Covington was the French Bauer Dairy Products Company, a cooperative of farmers.

The Latonia Springs Dairy, named after the defunct Latonia Springs resort and located along the Three-L Highway (LLL) in what is now Fort Wright, was operated by the Ratermann family.

According to Bob Ratermann, the Latonia Springs Dairy farm included as many as 113 head of cattle, which had to be milked twice daily (4:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.). The Ratermanns, along with their cousins the Summes, had a processing plant called Summe and Ratermann Company at 224 E. 20th St. in Covington; it later added the Latonia Springs brand name. Charles Summe, a descendant, recalled that most dairies had two kinds of cows, Holstein cows because they produced volume and Jersey cows because they produced more milk butterfat. Milk was bought based on the amount of butterfat and the weight of the milk. Often milk from the Jersey cows and the Holstein cows would be mixed to get the right percentage of fat. This was most important in the production of ice cream.

Summe stated that the initial step in a purchase was to smell the milk, to make sure it did not smell like the wild onions that the cows often ate. Once it passed the “smell test,” the milk would be tested for fat content and tasted for sweetness. Summe added that before the invention of dry ice and refrigeration, milk could be easily stored beyond daily usage in the winter, but in the summer milk was harder to store; it was often preserved by placing containers of it in the cool water of a well. The Summe and Ratermann Dairy closed in 1965, three years after selling its milk delivery routes to Clover Leaf Dairy.

In the twentieth century, many dairies were not full-service but carried out only a part of the larger production process. For instance, one dairy farm would raise cows and sell the milk to a local processing plant. That plant, after processing was completed, would either label and distribute the milk or sell it to another distributor. Some dairies only shipped milk under their labels, while other dairy farmers sometimes contracted with members of their families to do milking at a neighbor’s dairy farm.

DALY, RICHARD

In 1928 the Carnation Milk Company arrived in Maysville, and for several decades it canned milk there; and in Owenton the Kraft Company ran a cheese factory for several years. Canning milk and making cheese were efficient ways of making use of excess milk production, and the end product could be easily stored.

Historically, dairy farming was an important component of Northern Kentucky’s agriculture, providing milk, cheese, and butter to a growing urban population. Horse-drawn milk wagons, and later mechanized trucks, delivered bottled milk and dairy products door-to-door to residences in cities and suburbs. Metal milk boxes could be seen on porches and stoops throughout the region. Suburbanization, the popularity of automobiles, and the building of grocery supermarkets spelled the end of an era in dairy farming and milk delivery.

One truck farming family evidenced the trends.

John Boh (1881–1975) operated a 49-acre truck farm on Buttermilk Pk. that, in the post–World War II era, was subdivided into one of Villa Hills’s early subdivisions. His son George Boh (1912– 2003), was born on the Bramlage dairy farm on Turkeyfoot Rd., where Thomas More College is now located. After his marriage, George Boh inherited a small farm on Highland Pk. in Fort Wright, which also became a post–World War II subdivision. Having grown up on a labor-intensive farm, he was ambitious to cultivate larger fields— with tractors and without horses. He moved his family to a farm of more than 100 acres on old Price Pk. (now Turfway Rd.) in Boone Co. and engaged in dairy, grain, and tobacco farming. The family milked some 30–40 cows by machine and shipped the milk to the Summe and Ratermann Dairy, originally in 10-gallon cans and later in tanks. Other families who moved from small operations to larger farms in Boone Co. included displaced and ambitious Kenton Co. truck and dairy farmers named Foltz, Brueggeman, Kunkel, and Gripshover. When the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport bought the Boh farm in 1977, the farm had been enlarged to more than 200 acres, much of it used for grazing milk cows.

Finally, the family bought a 500-acre farm along the Ohio River in Boone Co., not far from Rabbit Hash, where they raise soybeans and corn rather than dairy cows.

“As Other Dairies Vanish, Trauth Company Expands,” CP, July 31, 1984, 11B. Boh, John. Interview by Paul Tenkotte, December 26, 2008, Covington, Ky. Campbell Co. Historical Society. Campbell County, Kentucky, 200 Years, 1794–1994. Alexandria, Ky.: Campbell Co. Historical Society, 1994.

Reis, Jim. Pieces of the Past. Vols. 2, 3. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991, 1994.

Summe, Charles. Interview by Gabrielle Summe, May and June 2006, Covington, Ky.

Gabrielle Summe

DALY, RICHARD (dates and places of birth and death unknown). Although Richard Daly’s birth and death dates, like those of many Kentucky slaves, are unknown, he was still alive in 1894 in

Windsor, Canada, when interviewed by a reporter for a Detroit, Mich., newspaper. Daly’s four children were born between 1840 and 1850 in Hunter’s Bottom, Carroll Co., Ky. His oldest daughter, Mary, was listed as being age 17 in the 1860 Detroit census.

In the 1850s Richard Daly, his brother Joe Daly, and Tom Owen were slaves owned by Samuel Fearn Sr. at Hunter’s Bottom. The Fearn family came to Kentucky from Buckingham Co., Va. Samuel Fearn (1766–1828) (the father of Samuel Sr.) and his oldest son, George (1796–1869), arrived in 1803 in Hunter’s Bottom, a 10-mile stretch of Ohio River bottomland between Canip and Locust creeks. Samuel Fearn Sr., the family’s fourth child, was born at Hunter’s Bottom in 1806 and married Elizabeth Owen in 1826. George and Samuel Fearn together owned about 1,000 acres along the banks of the Ohio River, straddling the Carroll and Trimble county line, but Samuel Sr.’s main income came from his gristmill and packet steamship businesses in Milton, on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River opposite Madison, Ind. He also purchased timberland in Jackson Co., Ind., on the White River. George Fearn speculated in land along the wharf area in Madison and along the Indiana shoreline on the east side of Madison. The two Fearn brothers were quite wealthy. Samuel Fearn had three slaves; George, a bachelor, owned four or five slaves. The Fearn family history states that George Fearn had become an ardent Methodist and emancipated all of his slaves in his will.

George was so pro-Union and so openly opposed to slavery that horses were stolen from his farm in a targeted attack by Confederate raiders during the Civil War. In his 1894 interview, Richard Daly referred to Samuel and George Fearn as “kind,” and it appeared that Daly had many advantages over other slaves in the region. He lived in a brick house behind the main Samuel Fearn homestead and was permitted to take produce to market in Madison, Ind., in order to earn money to purchase his freedom. Furthermore, Samuel Fearn had set an extremely low purchase price, $100, for Daly’s freedom, although comparable prices for slaves of his age and ability were well above $800–$900. Daly claimed that by 1856 he had already saved $100 “in his pocket.”

Fearn, like many of the Hunter’s Bottom slave owners, allowed frequent conjugal visits by Richard to his wife, Kitty, a house servant owned by Moses Hoagland (see Hoagland Family), who lived east of the Fearns along the Ohio River toward Carrollton. Richard and Kitty had four living children, who by law and custom were owned by Moses Hoagland.

But the most unusual fact about Richard Daly was that he had worked actively in the Underground Railroad (UGRR) for some years. He stated that he had ferried 30 fugitive slaves across the Ohio River before 1856. He would meet the slaves two miles above Milton and row them across in his small boat. During the 1850s this route through Eagle Hollow in Carroll Co., Ky., was one of the most active crossing points on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Louisville. Daly’s

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method of signaling his friend, a white leader of the UGRR (probably John Carr) was also highly unusual. Daly said that he would row into the middle of the Ohio River and shoot a revolver into the air. The UGRR agent would then shoot his revolver in response. By the time Daly arrived at the Indiana shore, his white friend would be ready and would take charge of the runaways.

It was well known that Samuel Fearn enjoyed hunting and had several hunting dogs always running through the house and farm. But for a slave to have access to a revolver and ammunition was remarkable. Moreover, the sound of gunshots in the middle of the Ohio River at night would have carried to both shores. If the Indiana UGRR agent heard it, the Fearns would have heard it also. Therefore, it has been suggested locally that the Fearn brothers tacitly, if not actively, approved of Daly’s aiding runaway slaves.

Daly said that he was happy in his circumstances and had no plans to escape, but then his wife Kitty unexpectedly died. Richard was concerned about his children and asked Mrs. Hoagland (Sarah Payne of Lexington) to keep them in Hunter’s Bottom, and she agreed. However, a short time later, the Hoagland daughter married a doctor and moved to Louisville. She asked for Mary, the oldest Daly daughter, to go with her permanently.

When Richard Daly learned that his family was to be separated, he went to pick up all four children. They crossed the Ohio River and took the Madison UGRR route north through Indiana.

Daly said that they rode horses northward, accompanied successively by two sets of UGRR agents, one from twilight to midnight and another from midnight to dawn. The family slept in various farm houses until they reached Michigan.

There, they boarded the Michigan Central Railroad to Detroit and crossed over the ferry to Windsor, Canada.

In Canada, Daly worked feeding cattle for a man named Hiram Walker, who exported livestock to Great Britain from a farm located along the Detroit River. Daly said that he had crossed the Atlantic Ocean several times with these shipments. At some point, he married a second time.

In 1894 three of the children who escaped with him were living in Detroit, and one child had died in Windsor.

Apparently Joe Daly and Tom Owen continued to live with Samuel Fearn at Hunter’s Bottom even after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution freed all slaves. When George Fearn died in 1869, he left Fearn Hill, his antebellum home, to his nephew, George Fearn. The emancipation clause was still in George’s will, but it was moot since his slaves were already free by law.

Blassingame, John W., ed. Slave Testimony. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977.

Coon, Diane Perrine. “Southeastern Indiana’s Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” 1999, U.S. Park Ser vice and Indiana DNR, unpublished technical report, Indiana Dept. of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, Indianapolis, Ind. Emma McClaran Fearn family Bible. In possession of Larry Douglas Smith, Louisville, Ky.

256 DANIEL CARTER BEARD BRIDGE Smith, Larry Douglas. “The Fearns of Hunters Bottom, Kentucky,” Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky.

Diane Perrine Coon

DANIEL CARTER BEARD BRIDGE. The twin-span interstate structure known as the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge, which crosses the Ohio River and connects the east side of downtown Cincinnati and Newport, was completed in late 1975 and opened on January 1, 1976. Named for onetime Covington resident Daniel Carter Beard, the founder of the Boy Scouts of America, it is the northernmost section of I-471 (see Expressways) and has become an important means of travel to and from Cincinnati and beyond for commuters.

Sometimes referred to as the “Big Mac” bridge because of its painted golden arches, it provides access to the new entertainment areas of Newport and Bellevue before heading into central Campbell Co. via I-471 southbound. The exit ramp southbound off the bridge onto Ky. Rt. 8 is being redesigned to avoid the dangerous traffic bottlenecks and backups onto the bridge that form there in the early evenings, as a result of the business traffic coming to Newport-on-the-Levee.

Cincinnati-Transit.net. “Daniel Carter Beard ‘Big Mac’ Bridge.” www.cincinnati-transit.net (accessed October 31, 2006).

“I-471 Bridge Named for Daniel Beard,” KP, October 19, 1976, 1.

“To Open I-471 Bridge Jan. 1,” KP, December 15, 1975, 9K.

DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The Kentucky Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) society, orga nized in 1891, has 83 chapters, nine of which are located in the Northern Kentucky region. The local chapters are in Augusta, Erlanger, Florence, Fort Thomas (two chapters), Ghent, Grant Co., Maysville, and Owenton. The DAR’s motto is “God, Home, and Country,” and the society’s goals include historic preservation, the promotion of education, and patriotic ser vice to veterans at home or overseas. The state headquarters are housed at the Duncan Tavern Historic Center in Paris, Ky. The national society was founded in 1890. It has 50 state societies, plus one in the District of Columbia, with more than 2,900 local chapters, and many chapters overseas. The DAR’s headquarters are at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The DAR’s objectives include working together to keep the public aware of educational opportunities for youth through programs in schools and providing many different kinds of scholarships for students. To become a member of the DAR, an applicant must be 18 years of age, and she must prove lineal bloodline descent from an ancestor who aided in achieving America’s independence. Documentation for each ancestor is required, including birth, marriage, and death records. Each application is sent to the National DAR Headquarters to be researched and approved. Affi liated with the DAR are organizations for the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), and the Children of the

American Revolution (CAR). Women under age 30 who join the DAR have junior memberships.

Some chapters are now scheduling, in addition to their regular monthly luncheon meetings, evening or Saturday meetings that generally feature speakers. Some of the chapters in Northern Kentucky assist in the bingo games held for the patients at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fort Thomas, and most chapters participate in the Fourth of July parades in their communities.

Kentucky Society Daughters of the American Revolution. www.kentuckydar.org (accessed January 15, 2006).

Robin Rider Osborne

DAVIS, DAVID (b. David Davies, September 12, 1865, Monmouthshire, Wales, U.K.; d. March 21, 1932, New York City). Architect David Davis was born in Wales to John B. and Mary Davies. When he was age two or three, his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Newport, where Davis graduated from Newport High School. The family name was originally Davies, but David changed his surname to Davis as a young man.

He is reputed to have studied at both the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, although whether he actually matriculated at either institution is unknown at this time. By 1889 David Davis was practicing as a draftsman in the Johnston Building in Cincinnati, where a number of architects’ offices were located. He lived in Newport.

By 1891 Davis had joined noted Cincinnati architect Alfred Oscar Elzner as a draftsman. Elzner had trained at MIT and also in the Boston office of the renowned American architect H. H. Richardson (1838–1886). It is probably through his connection to Elzner that Davis is presumed to have gone to MIT. In 1894 and 1895, Davis was listed as an architect in Newport. By 1899 he was a partner of William R. Brown and Matthew Burton in the architectural practice of Brown, Burton, and Davis in Cincinnati. By 1902 the firm had become Brown and Davis, and by 1906 it listed offices in both Cincinnati and Chicago. In late 1907, Davis set out on his own as an architect, remaining so until his association with Alexander W. Stewart in Cincinnati in 1923. Davis moved to New York City about 1926.

David Davis was a very prominent architect by the early 20th century, especially in ecclesiastical architecture. Bishop Camillus Paul Maes of the Diocese of Covington greatly respected his work and hired him to complete the west facade of Covington’s magnificent Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption (1908–1910); the original plans for the cathedral had been drawn by Leon Coquard.

The diocese also commissioned him to design plans for St. Mark Church in Richmond (1907–1908), St. Philip Catholic Church in Melbourne (1908), Holy Guardian Angels School in Sanfordtown (1909), an addition and new front elevation to the bishop’s home at the northeast corner of 12th and

Madison Ave. in Covington (1912), St. Patrick School in Covington (1913), St. Augustine Catholic Church in Covington (1914), and St. Camillus Academy in Corbin (1914–1915). He was also commissioned by the diocese to design a threestory addition to St. Joseph Orphanage in Cold Spring (1915) and to complete architect Leon Coquard’s plans for St. Patrick Catholic Church in Maysville (1907–1909).

In addition to their work for Covington’s Catholic bishop, in 1906 and 1907 the firm of Brown and Davis had commissions for churches in Ames, Iowa (First Methodist Episcopal [M.E.] ); Kansas City, Mo. (First M.E. Church and also Swope Park Methodist); Auburn, N.Y. (Trinity M.E.); Ithaca, N.Y. (First M.E.); Atertown, N.Y. (M.E.); Williamsport, Pa. (M.E.); and Aberdeen, S.Dak. (First M.E.). Also, Burton and Davis designed administrative and dormitory buildings for Union College (Methodist) at Barbourville, Ky.; a building at Kansas City University (Kans.); a 150-foot tower for Kansas City University (in conjunction with architects Garber and Woodward of Cincinnati); and a two-story addition to the Ruff ner Hotel in Charleston, W.Va. After Burton and Davis dissolved their partnership in late 1907, Davis continued his career with an impressive series of commissions. His later works included a tower for St. Mary’s Church, Auburn, N.Y.; an M.E. church in Greenfield, Ohio; a Chamber of Commerce building in Charleston, W.Va. (with Garber and Woodward); a bank at Charleston, W.Va.; and the Latonia Christian Church, Covington (1923).

David Davis died in New York City in 1932 and was buried in the family lot at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, Ky. He lived most of his life along E. Fourth St. in Newport.

“Add Dormitory for St. Joseph Orphans,” KP, September 30, 1915, 1.

“The Addition to the Bishop’s House,” Christian Year (Covington), November 1, 1912, 1.

Cincinnati city directories, 1889–1925.

Evergreen Cemetery records, Southgate, Ky. Freiberg, Walter A. A Guide to the Cathedral. Covington, Ky.: Messenger, 1947.

Painter, Sue Ann. Architecture in Cincinnati. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2006.

“St. Patrick’s New School,” Christian Year (Covington), May 17, 1913, 7.

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

“Was Architect for Catholic Cathedral: Rites Arranged for Noted New York Resident,” CTS, March 24, 1932, 1.

Western Architect and Builder, 1906–1910.

Paul A. Tenkotte

DAVIS, GEOFFREY C. “GEOFF” (b. October 26, 1958, Montreal, Quebec, Canada). Congressman Geoff rey Clark Davis is the son of Barbara Clark Davis. He is a graduate of Hampton High School, Pittsburgh, Pa. While on active duty in the U.S. Army, Davis successfully obtained a rare ap-

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pointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he graduated in 1981. His activeduty military career extended from 1976 until 1987. He was an assault helicopter flight commander pi lot with the 82nd Airborne Division, an Army Ranger, and a parachutist. In 1992 he started his own business, Capstone Inc., a manufacturing consulting firm. A naturalized U.S. citizen and a strong proponent of smaller government, Davis was first elected to the 109th U.S. Congress as a Republican in 2004, defeating Democrat Nick Clooney. Davis represents Northern Kentucky in the Fourth District. He was reelected in 2006, defeating three-term Democratic congressman Ken Lucas in a rematch, having lost previously to Lucas in 2002. In January 2007, Davis began ser vice as a member of the 110th U.S Congress. Davis and his wife, Pat, and their six children live in Hebron in Boone Co. “Candidate Biographies,” KP, November 1, 2002, T3.

Collins, Michael. “Davis Candidacy Now Official,” KP, October 10, 2001, 2K. “Geoff rey C. Davis.” http://bioguide.congress.gov (accessed November 11, 2006).

DAVIS, “SKEETER” (b. Mary Frances Penick, Glencoe, Ky., December 30, 1931; d. Nashville, Tenn., September 19, 2004). Skeeter’s story resembles those of other famous female country singers and songwriters of her era. Born into a poor farming family faced with challenges of alcoholism, incest, and murder, Skeeter was able to rise above her background and become an internationally renowned country music artist. She was best known for her timeless popu lar recording “The End of the World.”

Mary Frances was born in a two-room clapboard shack on the banks of Ea gle Creek in Glencoe (Owen Co.), the first of seven children of William and Sarah Penick. She spent most of her childhood with her grandparents in rural Dry Ridge. During her early school years, she assumed

Skeeter Davis, 1957.

the name Skeeter because of her energetic and quick-moving nature. Her harmonizing musical talent surfaced at school and at Dry Ridge Christian Church.

The Penick family moved to the outskirts of Covington during Skeeter’s teenage years, and at Dixie Heights High School she befriended Betty Jack Davis (b. 1932, Corbin, Ky.). With the stage name of the Davis Sisters, they began singing duets at local events and on radio. Their unique harmonizing style set them apart from other country and rockabilly artists at the time. Both attended DeCoursey Baptist Church in Covington. They occasionally appeared with bluegrass performers Flatt and Skruggs on the Kentucky Barn Dance, broadcast by WLEX (Lexington). Performances on Cincinnati and Detroit radio led to a recording contract with RCA. There they recorded “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know,” which became a number-one country hit in 1953. The rising star of the Davis Sisters ended in August 1953, when an automobile accident northeast of Cincinnati killed Betty Jack and seriously injured Skeeter.

Davis was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

With the assistance of Betty Jack’s mother, Skeeter performed briefly with Betty Jack’s sister Georgia. The girls toured with other music artists, including Elvis Presley. In 1958 Ernest Tubb persuaded Skeeter to pursue a solo career. At this time she also developed a strong friendship with country singer June Carter. Skeeter’s 1959 recording “Set Him Free” established her as a solo artist on the country charts and earned her the first of five Grammy nominations. Follow-up hits included “I’m Falling Too” (1960) and “My Last Date (with You)” (1961). In 1959 she garnered a contract with the Grand Ole Opry, where she remained a regular performer.

Under the professional guidance of renowned Nashville Sound producer-guitarist Chet Atkins, Skeeter’s 1962 hit “The End of the World” earned her a gold record and brought her longtime international fame. Atkins utilized a “double-track” recording technique to recreate the popular harmony of the Davis Sisters. During this period, Skeeter crossed over to pop music, disappointing some die-hard country music fans. She defended her middle-of-the-road pop music style by anchoring her roots in country music as an ongoing Grand Ole Opry performer, while expanding her pop audience base in appearances with Duke Ellington, the Rolling Stones, and the contemporary rock band NRBQ. Subsequently she produced country gold and platinum records and performed with country music artists Bobby Bare, George Hamilton IV, and Porter Wagoner.

Known as a religious rebel and a social activist, Skeeter was suspended for a year by the Grand Ole Opry in December 1973 because she criticized the Nashville Police for its arrest of a young Christian demonstration group at a local shopping mall during the holidays. Skeeter was married three times. Most notable was her heartbreaking second marriage to Ralph Emery, host of the Nashville Now cable television show.

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In addition to frequently appearing at the Grand Ole Opry, Skeeter was a guest star several times on television’s American Bandstand and Hee Haw. She entertained loyal fans around the world, most notably in Austria, Barbados, Indonesia, Jamaica, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and many countries in Africa. During her career, she recorded more than 60 singles and 30 long-play albums for RCA. In 1998 Dry Ridge literally placed Skeeter on the map by naming a section of Ky. Rt. 22, between I-75 and the Dixie Highway (U.S. 25), the Skeeter Davis Highway.

She was buried in Williams Memorial Gardens at Franklin, Tenn.

Davis, Skeeter. Bus Fare to Kentucky: The Autobiography of Skeeter Davis. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993.

Kingsbury, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of Country Music. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998.

Kreimer, Peggy. “Skeeter Davis Is Dead at 72,” KP, September 20, 2004, 1K. Wolf, Charles K. Kentucky Country. Lexington: Univ.

Press of Kentucky, 1996.

John Schlipp

DAYTON. Long before the first Europeans set foot on what later became Dayton, Ky., American Indians from north of the Ohio River were known to frequent the site. Proof can be seen in the large numbers of arrowheads, relics, and pottery fragments that have been found there. Several Indian mounds were also located in the eastern part of the city, the most significant one being near Fourth and Benham Sts. None of the mounds were ever excavated, and they are no longer visible. The first Europeans known to have visited the site were the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier La Salle and two Jesuit priests, who came in 1669. The men landed on the sandbar at Dayton, where they met a group of friendly Miami and Iroquois Indians who were returning to Ohio from a hunting trip into Central Kentucky. The next significant event occurring at Dayton was the Revolutionary War battle known as Rogers’ Defeat, which took place on that same sandbar in 1779.

The fi rst owner of the land that is now Dayton was George Muse, a British Army officer during the French and Indian War. He gave the 1,000acre site to his daughters Katy and Carolyn Muse, who later sold it to Washington Berry, a brother-in-law of James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. Berry’s son James eventually acquired the eastern portion of the farm and, in partnership with James McArthur and Henry Walker, founded the city of Jamestown in 1848. The city apparently was named for James T. Berry. In 1849 two riverboat builders from Fulton, Ohio, Burton and Lewis Hazen, started a city called Brooklyn on the western part of the farm. Then in 1867 the two cities merged to form the present city of Dayton. The name Dayton is believed to have been taken from the Ohio city by that name, which was founded in 1803. The most popu lar lodging place in Dayton was the Jamestown Hotel, at the foot of Clay St., owned and operated by James T. Berry.

258 DAYTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS The shipbuilding industry across the Ohio River at Fulton dominated the early days of Dayton. Several wharfs were built along the riverfront to accommodate visitors to the region and to transport area workers to and from the shipyards. One of the first ferries, named the John Hastings, began operating in 1853 at the foot of Dayton St. In the mid-1800s, Dayton had nine rope-making companies, called ropewalks, which sold their products to area businesses, including the Fulton shipyards. In those early years, there were also several sawmills and brick-making companies (brickyards) in the city. In later years some of the city’s largest employers were the Wadsworth Watch Case Company, Speers Memorial Hospital, the Harvard Piano Company, Perry and Derrick Paints, and the Mastercraft Metals Company. The Wadsworth Watch Case Company began in Newport but in 1900 moved to Fift h and Clay Sts. in Dayton. It was Dayton’s largest employer by far, at its peak providing about 1,350 jobs.

Well-known businesses in Dayton in subsequent years were the Dayton Chili Parlor, the F&N Steak house, Harmeyer Paint Company, Klingenberg’s Hardware, Rifk in Shoes, and Wing’s Delicatessen.

Early transportation to the area was mostly by water, but in 1873 a bridge was built across Newport’s Taylor’s Creek, which provided Bellevue and Dayton residents with convenient access to Newport. That bridge led to travel by horse-drawn carriages and, in 1893, by electric streetcars. Later on, the No. 12 Dayton Green Line became a popu lar route. In 1888 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad began ser vice to Dayton and Bellevue.

Public transportation contributed greatly to the rapid development of both cities, of their famous Ohio River beaches, and of Dayton’s Tacoma Park.

Some of Dayton’s more famous residents have been Dr. James Barnsfather, discoverer of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis and scarlet fever, and sports figures such as UCLA college basketball coach John Wooden and football players Bob “Twenty Grand” Davis, Bob DeMoss, and Johnnie “Deep” Wing. Professional baseball players include Lloyd “Dutch” Dietz, Bill Kissinger, Chick Smith, and Jesse and Lee Tannehill (see Tannehill Brothers).

Over the years, numerous floods have ravaged the city, the Ohio River flood of 1937 being the worst; it put two-thirds of Dayton under water. To solve the flooding problem, a 1.5-milelong floodwall was built in 1981, which led to revitalization of the once vulnerable city. Since then, several new businesses, such as the Radac Corporation and the Rivertown Marina, have located in Dayton. A new high school, singlefamily public housing, and a senior citizens complex have replaced many of the substandard buildings that were once located near the river, and recently a large condominium development has also been built on Prigge’s Hill. Dayton was incorporated as a fourth-class city; its population peaked at 9,050 in 1960 but fell to 5,966 by 2000.

Dayton Centennial Committee, Centennial, Dayton, Kentucky, 1849–1949: Keepsake Program.

Newport, Ky.: Michaels, 1949.

Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Northern Kentucky Views. “The City of Dayton, Kentucky.” www.nkyviews.com (accessed September 23, 2006).

Reis, Jim. “Union Gave Birth to Today’s Dayton,” KP, March 23, 1992, 4K. U.S. Census Bureau, “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed September 29, 2006).

Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County, Kentucky. Alexandria, Ky.: Privately published, 1997.

Jack Wessling

DAYTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The Dayton (Ky.) Public Schools had their beginning in the town of Jamestown, before Jamestown and Brooklyn merged in 1867 to form the city of Dayton. One of the first acts of the Jamestown trustees was the establishment (ca. 1848) of the town’s first public school, in a frame house that was erected at the head of Main St. at a cost of $324. George W. Legge became the first superintendent of Dayton schools in 1869 and served until 1872. A board of education was first organized in May 1871, with members Adelbert E. Doisy, William Hasson, Pleasant Stamper, Henry C. Tibbetts, and William Tiemann. The clerk was H. P. Brazee Jr. A former pretzel factory, built on Sixth St. about 1850, became the city’s Sixth St. School. During the late 1920s, when the school system had no further use for this building, it was offered to the city, and in 1932 the city offices and the jail were moved into the building.

High school classes were added to the already existing Lincoln School in Dayton in 1888, and the school celebrated its first high school graduating class in 1891. The Lincoln School served as the town’s high school until a new high school was built on W. Eighth St. in 1904. By 1923 plans had been formulated to build a new 15-room school at a cost of $75,000 that would serve as a combined elementary and high school. Those plans became important when fire broke out at the Eighth St. High School on the morning of January 21, 1924.

The building was destroyed, all the school records inside were lost, and damage was estimated at $75,000. Some 193 high school students and 450 grade school students were displaced by this calamity, which was caused by an overheated furnace.

Dayton school officials announced that students would attend school for half-day sessions. The high school students were to share the Junior High School building on Sixth St. Grade school students shared a grade school building on Fift h Ave. Several fraternal lodges in the city offered their meeting rooms for use as temporary school rooms. The plans for the new Dayton High School building were updated to include a three-story concrete and brick building to be built on the location of the burned high school. Groundbreaking for the new building occurred on June 2, 1924, and work pro-

gressed quickly, allowing the new high school to be dedicated on May 10, 1925.

In September 1932, John Wooden, a recent graduate of Purdue University at Lafayette, Ind., was hired to be athletic director, coach, and an English teacher at Dayton High School. Coach Wooden’s basketball team had a losing season his first year, and he moved on to another job after his second season, eventually becoming head basketball coach at UCLA in Los Angeles, where his teams won a record 10 NCAA Championships.

The football program at Dayton High School was aided in the 1930s as the federal government fought the Great Depression by funding building projects. The NRA (National Recovery Administration) and the Works Progress Administration came to Dayton to construct a stadium and football field, which were dedicated on October 26, 1934. The students voted to name the new stadium for Olin W. Davis, in honor of his ser vice as superintendent of Dayton Schools.

The Lincoln School continued to serve as an elementary school, and additions to the building were completed in 1949. On February 7, 1952, a fire occurred at that school while approximately 300 students were in the building. All students escaped without injury, but the building was gutted and the loss was estimated at $100,000. Students attended classes in local churches for the next two years while a new school building was erected and opened in fall 1954.

The high school on Eighth St. in Dayton continued in use until a new school was built and dedicated in August 1983. The new school, on Jackson St., was dedicated to Dayton school superintendent Jack Moreland for his work to obtain financing for the new school. A fire broke out in the west wing of the vacated old high school building on December 12, 1983. Arson was suspected in the blaze, and damage was estimated at $25,000, but there was no damage to the building’s exterior. Developers purchased this property and spent more than $1 million renovating; the property was reopened in January 1986 as an apartment complex.

Campbell Co. Historical Society. Campbell County, Kentucky, 200 Years, 1794–1994. Alexandria, Ky.: Campbell Co. Historical Society, 1994.

Dayton Centennial Committee. Dayton Kentucky Centennial, 1849–1949. Dayton, Ky.: Dayton Centennial Committee, n.d. [ca. 1949].

Dayton Kentucky Centennial Jubilee, 1849–1974.

Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Microfi lm.

“Dayton to Get New School,” KP, February 28, 1923, 1.

“Dayton Will Get New School,” KP, November 5, 1919, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Famous Fires of ’50s,” KP, January 28, 2002, 4K. ———. “Two Schools, Two Fires on Frozen Day in 1924,” KP, November 16, 2000, 4K. Remlinger, Connie. “School Dedicated to the Man Who Came Up with the Millions,” KP, August 15, 1983, 1K. “Time Capsule Lifting Marks End of Era,” KP, November 23, 1985, 3K.

Daryl Polley

DEAF AND HEARING IMPAIRED

DEAF AND HEARING-IMPAIRED. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the counties of Boone, Campbell, Grant, Kenton, and Pendleton had 36,284 persons classified as deaf or hard of hearing. The Kentucky Revised Statutes 163.500 (2004) defines this special population as “persons who have hearing disorders [such that they] cannot hear and understand speech clearly through the ear alone, with or without hearing aids.” The Northern Kentucky–Greater Cincinnati area offers significant ser vices for the deaf and hearingimpaired.

Originally established as the Cincinnati League for the Hard of Hearing in 1925, the Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center of Greater Cincinnati celebrated its 80th year in 2005 as a nonprofit organization providing state-of-the-art hearing aids, speech therapy, audiology management, and other ser vices. Through its community ser vices, the center also provides interpreter referral, lip-reading and sign-language classes, advocacy, and technology assistance. Dr. Jean W. Rothenberg, who became severely hearing-impaired during the 1937 flu epidemic and wore hearing aids thereafter, expanded the organization in the 1950s to become the Cincinnati Speech & Hearing Center. In 2000 the University of Cincinnati honored Rothenberg for a half century of ser vice.

The Northern Kentucky Ser vices for the Deaf, located at Florence, provides state-qualified sign-language interpreters for deaf clients in a variety of situations and offers sign-language classes and other information to employers who have deaf or hearing-impaired employees. The organization’s Hearing Impaired and Audiology Clinics serve children diagnosed with significant sensorineural hearing losses at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, also in Cincinnati, provides innovative rehabilitation and vocational skill programs for the blind, including those who are deaf and blind.

The St. Rita School for the Deaf in Cincinnati is the region’s only residential school for the deaf.

Henry J. Waldhaus, a Catholic priest whose responsibility was the deaf parishioners of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, raised funds to purchase the 237 acres that became the St. Rita School for the Deaf in 1915. Among St. Rita’s recent graduates is Kevin Hall, the valedictorian of his class and the first deaf golfer competing in tournaments with the Professional Golf Association. As a toddler, Hall lost his hearing following a bout with meningitis. His parents enrolled him in the St. Rita School at age three. While there, Hall played golf at the nearby Winton Woods High School, where he became a four-year letter winner in the sport. After he graduated from the St. Rita School in 2000, Hall also became the first African American to receive a golf scholarship at Ohio State University in Columbus.

The first state-supported school for the deaf in the United States, the Kentucky School for the Deaf, provides outreach ser vices in Northern Kentucky. Located at Danville, this school has a residential school on its campus and offers outreach

consultation, curriculum evaluation, and program planning for deaf and hearing-impaired students in public schools. The Northern Kentucky/Kentucky School for the Deaf Regional Program, located at the River Ridge Elementary School in Villa Hills, serves the public schools in the counties of Boone, Campbell, Grant, Kenton, and Pendleton. The Kentucky School for the Deaf also administers an early childhood program in which hearingimpaired preschoolers and their families are locally served by home visits and classes.

Colleges and universities in Northern Kentucky are committed to educating their students who have hearing impairments. Northern Kentucky University (NKU), Thomas More College, and Gateway Community and Technical College provide interpreting and support ser vices to such students. A Modern Language Association survey notes that the percentage of college students enrolling in American Sign Language courses increased 18 percent between 1998 and 2002. Cincinnati State Technical and Community College Xavier University in Cincinnati, and NKU embrace this trend, offering American Sign Language in their curriculums. Cincinnati State Technical and Community College also has an interpreter training program, through which students can become qualified sign-language interpreters. High schools in the region also offer American Sign Language as a foreign language.

Counseling ser vices are available for persons with hearing losses in Northern Kentucky. In Erlanger, the Catholic Center of the Covington Diocese provides counseling ser vices for hearingimpaired parishioners. Assistive or interpretive devices are available for religious ser vices in certain churches, such as the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Office for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Erlanger and the Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington. The Erlanger Baptist Church offers American Sign Language interpretation as part of its regular ser vices.

Cecil L. Bennett, who became an advocate for the deaf following the diagnosis of deafness in his two-year old daughter in 1968, founded a spiritual outreach ministry, the Deaf Institute, in Cincinnati. In Bellevue, Ky., Betty Timon, who lost her hearing as an adult, recently served as a commissioner for the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. She founded the Greater Cincinnati Co alition for Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Cincinnati group of the Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH). Timon was among a group of women selected in 2005 as the Outstanding Women of Northern Kentucky by the Kentucky Post in conjunction with NKU and Thomas More College. The former Independence police chief, Charles T. Donaldson, learned American Sign Language in order to communicate with deaf persons in his community. The nonprofit orga ni zation 4 Paws for Ability, based in Xenia, Ohio, has placed service dogs in Northern Kentucky homes of persons with disabilities, including those with hearing losses. The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport has volunteer ambassadors

259

who are trained to assist travelers with disabilities, including the deaf.

Technological advances have expanded the cultural and social life of the deaf. Alerting devices that use visual and motion techniques of flashing lights and vibrations make it possible for persons with hearing loss to become aware of wake-up times, fire or smoke alarms, doorbells, intercoms, and ringing telephones. Kentucky Educational Tele vi sion and the local tele vi sion stations incorporate closed captioning for the hearingimpaired into their regular programming. Beyond Hearing Aids Inc. of Florence and the Deaf Communications of Cincinnati have telecommunication devices available. The Resource Center of the Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company lists 30 area locations with deaf telecommunication devices on-site, such as the Cincinnati Zoo, the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitor Center, the I-75 Rest Areas in Boone Co., the Steely Library of NKU, and Remke’s Market in Fort Mitchell.

Within Kentucky, hearing or speech-impaired individuals are eligible to apply to the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing for free specialized telecommunication equipment, allowing equal access to the telecommunication system via the Kentucky Telephone Relay Ser vice or the Internet Relay ser vice.

Bennett, Sara J. “Book Collection Dedicated: School Honors Jean Rothenberg,” CE, May 17, 2000.

“Charles T. Donaldson, Former Police Chief,” KP, October 14, 2002, 6A. Cincinnati Bell. “Public TDD/TTY Telephone Locations.” www.cincinnatibell.com/customerservice/ resource center/specialneeds/tdd _tty_locs.asp (accessed August 28, 2005).

4 Paws for Ability. “Taking the “dis” out of disAbility.” www.4pawsforability.org/ (accessed December 4, 2005).

Howard, Allen. “Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center Turns 80 Innovatively,” CE, July 7, 2005, 3C. Kelly, Morgan. “Putting Is Deaf Hall’s Biggest Worry in Tour Debut,” USA Today, July 21, 2005, 3C. Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Directory of Ser vices for Individuals Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, 2005.

Frankfort, Ky.: KCDHH, 2005.

———. “Statistical Demographics: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals in Kentucky,” issued September 15, 2002, and received by E-mail from KCDHH on October 10, 2005.

Kentucky Educational Television. “Fast Facts.” www .ket.org/about/glance/ (accessed December 4, 2005).

Kranz, Cindy. “Oh, Say Can You Sign?” Help Kids Hear.org. www.helpkidshear.org/news/media/ 2005/06-02-2005-enq.htm (accessed August 28, 2005). Also in CE, June 2, 2005, A1.

Kreimer, Peggy. “They Have Their Community at Heart,” KP, April 16, 2005, 1K. Pilcher, James. “Hearing Impaired Have a New Way of Conversing by Phone,” CE, July 19, 2005, D1.

“Section 163.500 (2004). Defi nitions of ‘Deaf’ and ‘Hard of Hearing,’ ” Kentucky Revised Statutes Annotated. LexisNexis. www.lexisnexis.com/ (accessed October 8, 2005).

Stakauskas, Betsy. “Determination Marked Cecil Bennett’s Life: Advocate for the Deaf Had Ministry and Career,” CE, September 10, 2001, 4B.

260 D E COURSEY, ELBERT, MAJOR GENERAL Wecker, David. “Need Help at the Airport? Hunt Grins,” CP, September 7, 2000, 1B. Wells, Elizabeth B. “Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2002,” ADFL Bulletin 35, nos. 2–3, (Winter–Spring 2004): 8–26.

Margaret Prentice Hecker

DECOURSEY, ELBERT, MAJOR GENERAL (b. April 12, 1902, Ludlow, Ky.; d. December 4, 1994, San Antonio, Tex.). Elbert DeCoursey, a military general and a doctor, was the son of William Bedford and Mary Elizabeth Carter DeCoursey. He graduated from Holmes High School (1919), the University of Kentucky (1924), and the Johns Hopkins Medical School (1928), specializing in pathology. DeCoursey joined the U.S. Army on March 18, 1924, and as World War II began, he was stationed in Hawaii. He became a member of the team investigating the effects of the atomic bomb, first at Nagasaki and later at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. In 1954 he attained his highest military rank, major general.

His research areas, publications, honors, awards, and citations were extensive. DeCoursey retired from the Army on October 1, 1959, after 35 years of ser vice to his country, and moved to San Antonio, Tex., where he died in 1994. He was buried with full military honors at Sam Houston National Cemetery in that city. At the time of his death, he was the only person who had commanded all three of the army’s major medical institutions. He was survived by his wife of many years, Esther.

Reis, Jim. “Holmes Grad Became Doctor, General,” KP, October 2, 2000, 4K. Univ. of Kentucky Alumni Association. “Hall of Distinguished Alumni.” www.uky.edu/Alumni/hoda/ decourseyE .htm.

Michael R. Sweeney

DECOURSEY AND CULBERTSON RAILWAY STATIONS. These two railway stations along the Covington and Lexington Railroad (now the CSX rail system) in southern Kenton Co. were named after early settlers in Northern Kentucky. One of the settlers was a Revolutionary War veteran, William DeCoursey Sr. (1756–1841), who arrived from Maryland about 1794. He lived near the site that became the former DeCoursey railroad yard of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. DeCoursey was instrumental in the formation of the Mouth of the Licking Baptist Church in Northern Kentucky. The station that bears his name was nearly four miles south of the Ohio River. About 1813, four Culbertson brothers (James, 1781–1834; William, 1787–1871; Allen, 1790–1856; and Robert, 1793–1856) arrived in Northern Kentucky. The station bearing their name was approximately one mile south of the DeCoursey Station.

The Covington and Lexington Railroad began operations in 1853. Trains left Covington and stopped at South Covington, DeCoursey, Culbertson, and other stations, making their way south to Lexington. During the business year ending November 1, 1855, there were 395 passen-

ger arrivals at the DeCoursey Railway Station and 298 departures; and the Culbertson Railway Station had 775 arrivals and 683 departures. The passenger and commuter trains that stopped at these stations are long gone, but freight continues to roll through these former stops along the rail line, often in the form of unit trains for the automotive industry.

An Atlas of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell Counties, Kentucky. Philadelphia: D. J. Lake, 1883.

“Covington and Lexington Railroad Was Opened to the Public as a Regular Daily Train,” CJ, August 27, 1853, 2.

Culbertson, Stephen C., and Carol A. Culbertson.

Culbertson Family— County Tyrone, Ireland, to Campbell/Kenton County, Kentucky, United States of America. Madison, Wis.: Self-published, 2002.

Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1984.

Sixth Annual Report to the Stockholders of the Covington & Lexington Railroad, November 1, 1855.

Covington, Ky.: Covington Journal, 1856.

Steve and Carol Culbertson

DEJACO BROTHERS COMPANY. The DeJaco Brothers painting and decorating fi rm of Newport was noted for its decorative interior designs, including decoration of church interiors; art object restoration; altar works; and fresco painting. The enterprise was founded by Franz DeJaco (1847–1928), a sculptor and artist trained in his homeland of Tyrol, Austria. He came to the United States in 1881 and established an art studio in Milwaukee, Wis. The enterprise, known as F. DeJaco & Company, relocated to Newport about 1887. In Newport Franz “Frank” DeJaco and his wife Antonia “Anna” Thoeny raised a family of eight sons and a daughter. Frank introduced to the decorating trade sons Fred F. DeJaco (1884–1962), Francis “Frank” J. DeJaco Jr. (1889–1976), Louis A. DeJaco (1891–1951), Charles A. DeJaco (1893–1956), George E. DeJaco (1895– 1968), John Edward DeJaco (1897–1968), and Anthony E. DeJaco (1901–1943). Carrying on the family decorating tradition, the brothers formed the DeJaco Brothers Company in 1918. Two of the DeJaco brothers, Frank Jr. and Louis, became Roman Catholic priests of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). Fred and Anthony DeJaco were talented artists specializing in religious themes.

About 1956 the DeJaco brothers Fred, Charles, George, and Edward retired, after completing their last major interior decorating project at St. Mary Catholic Church in Alexandria. Their brother Rev. Francis “Frank” DeJaco had been pastor of that parish since 1932, and the church was preparing to celebrate its centennial in 1960. The DeJaco Brothers also operated paint and hardware stores at 103 Sixth St. in Dayton, Ky., and at 908 Monmouth St. in Newport. They advertised as painters and decorators, skilled in interior decorating, graining, glazing, hardwood finishing, enameling, and gilding.

The firm decorated churches in Northern Kentucky and neighboring states. Some Northern

Kentucky churches decorated by DeJaco Brothers Company artists include the following: Alexandria: St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church (1917, 1934, and 1956) Brooksville: St. James Catholic Church (1926) Camp Springs: St. Joseph Catholic Church Cold Spring: St. Joseph Catholic Church (1939) St. Joseph Orphanage Chapel Dayton: St. Bernard Catholic Church Falmouth: St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church Florence: Hopeful Lutheran Church (1937) Fort Mitchell: Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church Fort Thomas: Highland (United) Methodist Church (1938) St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (1928) Melbourne: St. Philip Catholic Church Mount Sterling: St. Patrick Catholic Church Newport: Corpus Christi Catholic Church Immaculate Conception Catholic Church Newport Baptist Church Newport Methodist Church Presbyterian Church (1937) St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church St. Mark Lutheran Church York Street Congregational Church Stepstone: Immaculate Conception Catholic Church (1935) Taylor Mill: St. Anthony Catholic Church (1941) Twelve Mile: Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church (1938) Wilder: St. John the Baptist Catholic Church Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

“Sculptor Dies,” KP, July 20, 1928, 1.

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Norbert F. DeJaco

DELANEY, ELIZABETH B. (b. September 13, 1882, Fayette Co., Ky.; d. February 17, 1964, Cincinnati, Ohio). Elizabeth Berry Delaney, a funeral home owner and operator and an organization leader and clubwoman, was born in Fayette Co. on September 13, 1882. Orphaned at a young age, Elizabeth was raised by her grandmother in an environment that promoted self-reliance, religion, education, and community ser vice. She attended public schools in Lexington and completed the normal course at Berea College in Berea. On April 28, 1898, she married John W. Delaney. They made their home in Covington, where John operated the Delaney Funeral Home. John W. Delaney Jr., their only child, was born in 1912. Elizabeth acquired a mortician’s license in 1919 and joined her husband in operating the family’s funeral business. Following John Delaney’s death eight years later, she

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became the sole owner of the establishment and continued its operation for nearly 40 years. When her son later joined in the business, the firm was renamed E. B. Delaney and Son Funeral Home and expanded to include a second funeral establishment in Cincinnati. As a businesswoman, Elizabeth was one of the first women to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Negro Business League, founded in 1900 by Booker T. Washington. Also, she was an active member of the National Association of Black Funeral Home Directors.

She was an active member of the First Baptist Church (African American) in Covington and served in many roles, including 12 years as the church’s treasurer. Another area of commitment for Delaney was the State and Local Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. She was elected president of the Ladies Improvement Club in Covington and in 1926 became the 11th president of the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in Kentucky. Delaney’s interest in youths led her to promote the establishment of junior clubs for young girls in affi liation with the federation.

Delaney’s executive ability and eloquence in public speaking, coupled with her interest in civic affairs and women’s suff rage, positioned her for numerous leadership roles. She was the first African American Chairwoman of the Colored Women Voters of Kenton Co. and used her influence to stake a claim for African American women voters within the Republican Party. Moreover, she became a member of the Kentucky Commission on Interracial Cooperation and attended the first Southern Women and Race Cooperation Conference held in 1920 in Memphis, Tenn.

Delaney was instrumental in establishing several chapters of the Order of Eastern Star and other civic organizations throughout Northern Kentucky. She was an active member and served in multiple roles with each organization. Following a brief illness, Delaney died at age 82 in 1964 and was buried at the Mary E. Smith Cemetery in Elsmere.

“Colored Notes and News,” Lexington Leader, February 18, 1964, 14.

“Elizabeth Delaney,” KP, February 20, 1964, 14K. “Our President,” Kentucky Club Woman 8, no. 3 (July 1926), in the John and Elizabeth Delaney Collection, Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African Americans, Kentucky State Univ.

Anne S. Butler

DELANEY, JOHN W., JR., “JACK” (b. September 5, 1912, Latonia; Ky.; d. May 17, 1991, Cincinnati, Ohio). Judge and businessman Jack Delaney was the only child of John W. and Elizabeth B. Delaney. He attended Covington’s LincolnGrant School, commonly known as the Seventh St. School, and graduated from William Grant High School in 1929. He was a classmate of World War II hero Maj. Melvin W. Walker. Delaney became active in his mother’s funeral business, Elizabeth B. Delaney & Son Funeral Home in Covington. Later he earned a bachelor’s degree at the

University of Cincinnati; he also graduated from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law in Cincinnati, from the Cincinnati College of Embalming, and from Cincinnati’s Cosmopolitan School of Music.

In 1966 Delaney was named the fi rst African American judge pro tem in Kenton Co. Seventeen years later, the job title was changed to deputy judge executive, making Delaney Kenton Co.’s second-highest-ranking official. He wrote the articles of incorporation of the Northern Kentucky Community Council, which evolved into the Northern Kentucky Community Center. In conjunction with the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church and the St. James A.M.E. Church, both in Covington, he helped to develop the Geisler Garden apartments as low-income housing units.

Delaney was the historian of his Masonic Order lodge and later became a 33rd degree Mason, at which level he served as a member of the Supreme Council. He was a Grand Master of Prince Hall Masonic Grand Lodge, president of the National Funeral Directors Association, and eastern vice president of Epsilon Nu Delta Mortuary fraternity. He was a member of the First Baptist Church (African American) of Covington, where he served on the board of trustees as treasurer for many years and as organist for the senior choir. In 1991 Delaney died in Cincinnati and was buried in Mary E. Smith Cemetery, in Elsmere.

“John Delaney, Funeral Director, Public Servant,” CP, May 18, 1991, 9A. Neikirk, Mark. “Kenton County’s No. 2 Man Shuns the Limelight,” KP, February 7, 1983, 1K. “New Attorneys,” KTS, April 24, 1958, 15A. “Pass Bar Examination,” KTS, April 17, 1958, 1A.

Theodore H. H. Harris

DELIA. Delia was located in Grant Co. on Clark’s Creek at the junction of Baton Rouge Rd. and the Dry Ridge–Owenton Rd., better known today as Ky. Rt. 22. An early road long since abandoned, known as the Withers (Weathers) Mill Rd., paralleled Clark’s Creek past Delia to the mouth of Clark’s Creek at Eagle Creek. A water-powered gristmill, first known as Ruddle’s Mill, was located a few hundred feet upstream from Delia. An outline of the mill sluice on the west side of Clark’s Creek may still be found. By 1832 the mill was called the Baton Rouge Mill. John A. D. Barrows and James C. Hall, the last-known operators of the mill, acquired the operation in 1840.

In 1868 the boundaries of the Smokey Road School, District 49, included white children at Delia on the east side of Clark’s Creek. A post office was established at Delia in 1890 but discontinued in 1905. Will “Red Brush” Carter operated a smithy, and Frank and Lowe operated a general store in the community. John W. Gardner purchased and ran the store until he sold out in 1913.

Bud and Harold Maines, brothers, operated the store until it was closed in 1930. By the 1950s, there were no longer any businesses or residences at Delia.

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Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

John B. Conrad

DELTA AIR LINES. Delta Air Lines was the first provider of jet air ser vice to Northern Kentucky. If the boll weevil had not spread from Mexico in the early 1890s to devastate the cotton fields of the southern United States, Delta Air Lines might never have come to exist. Because the weevil’s relentless destruction posed a serious economic threat to the southern economy, C. E. Woolman, an agricultural agent associated with Louisiana State University, sought to use a new technology—the airplane—as an effective way to eradicate this pesky insect.

Thus began the story of Delta Air Lines. Started as a crop-dusting operation, Delta began passenger ser vice in 1929, and by the end of that year, its route system extended from Alabama to Texas.

By 1941 new destinations had been added to Delta’s growing network. Delta moved its corporate headquarters from Monroe, La. (MON), its birthplace, to Atlanta (ATL) that year. Cincinnati was a factor in the decision to move. The Civil Aeronautics Board had recently granted Delta the authority to fly from ATL north to Knoxville (TYS) and Cincinnati Lunken Airport (LUK) and south to Savannah (SAV). This made Atlanta a more desirable central location, a hub, for a general office and maintenance base.

Delta began serving Cincinnati on April 15, 1941, with twice-daily ser vice to the city’s eastside Lunken Airport (LUK), using twin-engine Douglas DC-3s. The fl ight to Atlanta took two hours and 45 minutes and cost $19.50 each way. With the completion of the Greater Cincinnati Airport (CVG) in Northern Kentucky in 1947 (see Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport), Delta offered ser vice on the new and “fast” four-engine Douglas DC-4 equipment, which reduced flight time to ATL to less than two hours. Interchange agreements with other airlines at CVG connected Delta passengers with other parts of the country. In 1947 63,542 passengers flew Delta from CVG. Delta brought Northern Kentucky its first jet ser vice in 1960, with nonstop Convair 880 ser vice to Miami (MIA) at a cruising speed of more than 600 miles per hour. CVG’s first “night coach” service began in 1961, with Douglas DC-8 ser vice to Miami (MIA) and Detroit (DTW). In 1969 Delta became the leading airline at CVG. Ser vice continued to grow at a steady rate during the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of deregulation of the airline industry in 1977 during the Jimmy Carter administration. In 1984 Comair, a regional commuter airline headquartered at CVG, joined with Delta as one of its Delta Connection carriers. Comair became part of Delta’s reservation system and shared fl ight numbers (codes) and terminal facilities at CVG. Passengers could conveniently and seamlessly connect between Delta and Comair fl ights. Later, Delta bought Comair.

On December 15, 1986, the “largest single-day expansion” in the company’s 57-year history, Delta

262 DEMING, OSMER SAGE expanded its flight schedule at CVG to 104 daily departures and increased ser vice to 15 new markets in the Northeast, Florida, the West Coast, and the Pacific Northwest. The merger with Western Airlines in 1987 opened up additional markets, including Alaska and Canada through Western’s Salt Lake City hub (SLC). Delta created an international gateway at CVG on June 15, 1987, with the introduction of nonstop ser vice to London’s Gatwick Airport (LGW).

On May 1, 1995, Delta made CVG its secondlargest hub. Its dramatic growth to 203 daily flights was made possible by the 1994 completion of Delta’s $375 million expansion, which nearly doubled its facilities. Since then, Delta’s Northern Kentucky hub has continued to expand its domestic and international flights. In February 2005 Delta, with its Delta Connection partners, operated more than 600 daily flights to 138 domestic and international destinations from CVG. Today, more than 8,500 persons work for Delta in the region, making it the region’s largest employer. In 2008 Delta merged with Northwest Airlines.

“History Takes Flight,” KP, September 21, 2000, 1K. Lewis, W. David, and Wesley Phillips Newton. Delta: The History of an Airline. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1979.

Eric Summe

DEMING, OSMER SAGE (b. December 22, 1837, Otsego Co., N.Y.; d. July 10, 1917, Warren, Ohio). Osmer Sage Deming, the son of David W. and Almina Sage Deming, became a Robertson Co. attorney and judge. He came from Pennsylvania as a young man, after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. He arrived in Mount Olivet, Ky., with a law degree from what is today Pennsylvania State University at University Park and was one of the driving forces in the formation of Robertson Co. in 1867. On October 27, 1868, Deming married Leona C. Rigg. Deming, who became the first county attorney in Robertson Co. in 1867, also planned and supervised the construction of the county’s first courthouse, which is still in use. He took an active role in politics and was elected county judge, serving from 1872 to 1876. A staunch Republican, he unsuccessfully ran for the office of lieutenant governor of Kentucky with Judge Walter Evans in 1879. O. S. Deming, as he was commonly known, represented the Commonwealth of Kentucky at the Chicago World Fair in 1890, where he made the principal address on behalf of Kentucky. Deming continued to practice law in Robertson Co. through 1910. He was a Freemason and a strong supporter of the Grand Army of the Republic. Deming died in 1917 at Warren, Ohio, and was first buried at the Oak Lawn Mausoleum in that city, then re-interred at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Robertson Co. One of Deming’s sons, William C. Deming, was the president of the Civil Ser vice Commission in Washington, D.C., during World War I. During the summer of 1915, the Deming family’s house in Mount Olivet was remodeled as a school and served as the county high school until 1928, when

the structure was razed for a new school that had been built next door. William Deming and his brother Thomas contributed substantially to the funding of the proposed new county high school.

The school was officially named Deming High School (see Robertson Co. Public Schools), as a memorial to their father.

Moore, T. Ross, ed. Echoes from the Century, 1867– 1967. Mount Olivet, Ky.: Robertson Co. Historical Society, 2000.

Ohio Death Certificate No. 48695, for the year 1917.

Karl Lietzenmayer

DEMOCRATIC PARTY. From the early days of statehood in 1792 until the fairly recent past, Kentucky, including Northern Kentucky, has been predominantly a Democratic state. The commonwealth’s population was rural until the 1970 census, and its rural citizens normally followed the agrarian political principles espoused by Thomas Jefferson: an emphasis on states’ rights, a proslavery stance, and fear of big federal government. Initially named the Republican Party, Jefferson’s party was later called the Democratic-Republican Party (with no relationship to the later Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln), and then at the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson, it became simply the Democratic Party. As in the rest of the “solid Democratic South,” the planter class greatly influenced Kentucky politics, and for most of Northern Kentucky’s history there have been more voters registered as Democrats than as Republicans.

Early prominent Democrats in Northern Kentucky included Col. John G. Carlisle from Covington, William DeCoursey, John Leathers, James O’Hara, George C. Tarvin, and Robert Wallace. During the Civil War, Democrats were labeled as rebel sympathizers. Newport’s Thomas Laurens Jones overcame that stigma to win a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1871. Albert Seaton Berry, the “tall Sycamore of the Licking,” later a mayor of Newport, fought for the South and was also elected to Congress. Other Democrats in the late 19th century were William L. Grant, a Covington city councilman who assisted in the development of schools in that city for African Americans; Walter Cleary, a Kenton Co. judge who helped to develop the Latonia Racecourse in the early 1880s; H. C. Hallam, an attorney, a former Kenton Co. Circuit Court clerk, and a foe of William Goebel; and John C. Droege, a rolling mill owner and another Goebel rival at century’s end.

Drug merchant Daniel Linn Gooch served two terms in the U.S. Congress in the early 1900s, competing with fellow Democrat Joseph L. Rhinock for that seat. By 1904 Brent Spence had begun his long political career in Campbell Co. and the U.S. Congress. His contemporaries were Dr. Shaler Berry and Robert W. Nelson, both successful Democrats in Campbell Co. Orie Ware appeared on the scene in 1912 and was named the Sixth District Democratic chairman. From 1908 until 1940, Theodore Kluemper served Covington as a councilman and city manager. Arthur Blythe

Rouse was a Democratic U.S. congressman from Boone Co. for 16 years, beginning in 1910. In 1931 Judge James W. Cammack Sr. of Owen Co.; James A. Diskin, a well-connected Irish powerbroker in Campbell Co.; and Ulie Howard of Kenton Co. were active in the party. C. L. Cropper of Boone Co., a banker, represented his county in the state legislature during the 1930s as a Democrat; during the 1940s Edward C. Kelley, a well-known Covington plumber, helped run Democratic politics in Covington.

Two U.S. Senate Democrats who visited the region during the 1940s were Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the man most responsible for putting the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Northern Kentucky, and J. Strom Thurman of South Carolina, who came to Covington with his wife in October 1948 for a grand Democratic rally.

Covington has had a number of Irish Roman Catholic Democratic mayors: Thomas F. Donnelly (1920–1924 and 1928–1932); Daniel A. O’Donovan (1924–1928); Thomas P. Fitzpatrick, a former boxer (1944–1946) who went on to become Speaker of the House in Frankfort and served as mayor in the 1950s; John J. Maloney (1952–1956 and 1960–1964); and Thomas Beehan (1984–1987).

The 1950s witnessed the emergence of Democrats Gus Sheehan in Kenton Co. at the state level and A. J. Jolly of Campbell Co. on the local scene.

In 1970 Democrat Charles W. Webster failed to unseat the district’s Republican U.S. congressman, Gene Snyder; in 1991 Democrat Dr. Floyd Poore, of Boone Co., failed in his attempt to unseat Jim Bunning, Snyder’s protégé and successor. In 1992 local attorney Eric Deters, who had been a GOP leader, defected to the Democratic Party, ironically at a time when Republican voter registration almost equaled that of the Democrats.

In 1995 the local Democratic Party, like local Republicans, proclaimed itself a prolife party. Also at about that time, Ruth Bauman, a loyal 30-year party worker for the Democrats from Bellevue, used her political influence to name the replacement of the Shortway Bridge (between Covington and Newport) the Licking Valley Girl Scout Bridge. In 1996 Joseph U. “Joe” Meyer, a Covington attorney, who as a state legislator played a leadership role in the passage of KERA (the Kentucky Education Reform Act), was considering a run for state senate, as was Michael E. Plummer, who later switched to the GOP. African American Arnold Simpson ran unopposed for the state house that year. John Stephenson, a Kenton Co. Democrat who campaigned statewide in a “Down Home” populist style in 1991, became the last elected Kentucky Education commissioner but was prevented from serving his term after the enactment of KERA abolished the office. Fort Thomas native Mark Guilfoyle, another Covington attorney, gained a position on the staff of Democratic governor Paul Patton (1995–2003) as his appointment secretary; Northern Kentuckian Mike Hammons, also a Covington attorney, had held a similar posi-

D E MOSSVILLE

tion with Governor Breton Jones (1991–1995). At that time the local Democrats were stepping back from any connections with President Bill Clinton (1993–2001), whose popularity in Northern Kentucky had fallen amid scandal. The district’s U.S. congressman, moderate Democrat Ken Lucas, did not even attend the 1997 Democratic National Convention that renominated Clinton for president. Simultaneously, in Kenton Co., long a Democratic Party stronghold, the county’s party chairman, Terry Mann, was stressing his party’s centrist theme, hoping to offset rising Republican strength.

A few years later, in 2006, and for the only time in the modern era, Kenton Co. briefly had more voters registered Republican than Democrat, a political condition that already existed in Northern Kentucky’s two other heavily populated counties, Boone and Campbell. Two bright spots for Democrats at the time were Jack Snodgrass in Campbell Co. and Bill Aylor in Kenton; each had been reelected as county clerk. By 2002 there were even rumors that lifelong Democrat Lucas, who had announced his retirement after completing his congressional term in 2000, was considering a switch to the GOP; Nick Clooney agreed to run in 2004 as the Democratic candidate for the 4th District seat in Congress, but he was soundly defeated by a well-financed Republican incumbent, Geoff Davis, who had replaced Lucas.

In 2005 Jerry Stricker, a Democrat from the West End of Newport, won a seat on the Covington city commission in a nonpartisan race, as Democrats worked hard to hold onto control of Kenton Co. Campbell Co. has traditionally supported Republicans, while Boone Co., which has experienced significant demographic changes based on population growth and the flight to suburban living, has shifted from political balance between the two parties into a second Republican county stronghold. The eight other Northern Kentucky counties, Bracken, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Mason, Owen, Pendleton, and Robertson, usually favor Democrats, especially in local elections. In national elections, most of these counties tend to vote for the candidate rather than along straight party lines. Currently, Boone and Campbell counties are likely to vote Republican on the national level, while Kenton Co. might vote Democratic. In 2006, when Democrat Ken Lucas returned to challenge Republican incumbent Geoff Davis for the district’s congressional seat, Davis won handily and carried Lucas’s home county of Boone, as well as Campbell and Kenton counties. Republican president George W. Bush, both times he ran, also won in all three of those counties.

Several Northern Kentuckians have plied their political trade elsewhere as Democrats. Three former residents of Northern Kentucky have ascended to the mayoral position in Cincinnati: Theodore M. Berry, from Maysville, the first African American to be elected Cincinnati mayor (1972–1975); David Mann, from Fort Wright (1980–1982 and 1991); and Roxanne Qualls, from Erlanger (1993–1999). Other examples include progressive, anticapitalist Democrat William Goebel, a late19th-century Kentucky state senator and reformer

from Covington, the only governor ever to be assassinated in U.S. history. Stanley F. Reed, from Maysville, served as U.S. Supreme Court justice (1938–1954). Kentucky governor John White Stevenson (1867–1871), a Kenton Co. native, was the second Northern Kentuckian to serve as governor (Joseph Desha [1824–1828] of Mason Co. was the first). Another Democrat who become famous in politics elsewhere is Campbell Co.’s John H. Whallen. Whallen left Newport in the early 1870s for Louisville and built a group of theaters, the Empire Burlesque circuit, with his brother John. From 1880 or so until his death in 1913, he also orga nized Irish and German Catholics in Louisville into a strong voting block and functioned as the boss of that city’s politics. He did not hold office, for there was no need; he picked the candidates he wanted and then orchestrated their election. Isabella Greenway, born at the Dinsmore Homestead in Boone Co., who was a Democrat, became the first woman U.S. representative from Arizona in the 1930s. She was a strong supporter of her close friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A number of Democrats from the outlying and traditionally Democratic counties of Northern Kentucky played influential political roles during the first half of the 20th century. Among these were Benjamin F. Beall, one-time postmaster of Warsaw in Gallatin Co., and, in Carroll Co., capitalist Frank B. Adcock; educator Paul B. Boyd; county clerk C. S. Griffith; J. Lyter Donaldson, an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1943; and attorney James Houston Newman. Robert Humphreys, a dentist in Maysville in Mason Co.; automobile dealer R. Larue Case and banker Chambers Perry from Mount Olivet in Robertson Co.; Edward Duvall, the county attorney in Owen Co.; and Elizabeth C. Bainum, once the postmaster of Germantown in Bracken Co., are also remembered as leaders within the Democratic Party.

Two other Democrats with significant local connections, Steve Henry and Bruce Lundsford, were unsuccessful candidates for Kentucky governor in the November 2007 election. Henry, who was Patton’s two-term lieutenant governor, is married to Heather French Henry, a former Miss America from Mason Co. The Henrys reside in Louisville but own and have restored Rosemary Clooney’s former residence as a museum in Augusta (see Rosemary Clooney House) and visit there often. Lunsford, a Louisville businessman who was raised on a farm just outside Independence, spent millions in the 2003 Democratic primary for governor, then dropped out late in the race; he returned for a second try in 2007.

Horowitz, David. The Shadow Party. Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Current, 2006.

Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Lewin, H., ed. The Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky. Chicago: Lewis, 1897.

Willis, George Lee, Sr. Kentucky Democracy: A History of the Party and Its Representative Members—Past and Present. 3 vols. Louisville, Ky.: Democratic Historical Society, 1935.

263

DEMOSS, MARY HISSEM “MAMIE” (b. July 27, 1871, California, Ky.; d. August 22, 1960, Montclair, N.J.). This concert soprano soloist was the daughter of Captain Martin L. Hissem, owner and captain of the Tacoma, an Ohio River packet, and Rachel Galloway Hissem. Mary’s brother, W. T. Hissem, was also a steamboat captain, and her uncle was the former Campbell Co. judge and state senator W. J. Hissem. Mary Hissem married Lacy M. DeMoss on March 29, 1894, at Grace United Methodist Church in Newport, the city each called home at that time. Mary, who had become a celebrated vocal soloist, often performed at important events, such as the dedication on July 29, 1900, of the Highland United Methodist Church in Mount Pleasant (Fort Thomas, Ky.). She had studied voice at the Cincinnati College of Music under Lino Mattioli. The conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Frank van der Stucken, encouraged the gifted soprano to take her vocal talents to New York City. Reluctantly, she did so, only to find herself later in the year 1900 making her professional singing debut under the direction of Frank Damrosch at Carnegie Hall. Performing as Madame DeMoss, she was featured in performances at the Worcester (Mass.) Musical Festival, the Cincinnati May Festival, and the Boston, Mass., Handel and Haydn Society. She sang on the same stage with Mme. Schumann-Heinck and under the baton of Max Fiedler, Leopold Stowkowski, Victor Herbert, and Walter Damrosch. DeMoss was also associated with several mainline Protestant churches along the East Coast (New York City’s Fift h Avenue Presbyterian, Washington Square Methodist, and East Orange Calvary Methodist in New Jersey), where she was a soprano soloist on Sunday mornings. She retired from the concert stage in 1933. After her husband, Lacy, who had graciously supported and encouraged her postgraduate vocal studies, died in 1936, she married singer Frederick D. Lyon. The couple lived at 274 Linden Ave. in Verona, N.J., where Frederick died in 1952. Mary Hissem DeMoss Lyon continued to give private voice lessons until a year before her death. She died in 1960, at age 89, in the Montclair Nursing Home and was buried next to Frederick Lyon at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y. She was a member of the Methodist Church.

“Capt. W.T. Hissem Died in Newport,” KP, August 10, 1900, 5.

Cronin, John P. “Brilliant Career Recalled,” CE, March 14, 1954, sec. 3, p. 1.

“Madame De Moss Dies,” NYT, August 24, 1960, 29.

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

Vol. 14. New York: James T. White, 1910.

Obituary. Verona–Cedar Grove (N.J.) Times, August 25, 1960.

“Successful Singer Is from Newport,” KP, March 14, 1904, 5.

Michael R. Sweeney

DEMOSSVILLE. DeMossville, in northwestern Pendleton Co., was incorporated by the Kentucky legislature in 1860. It lay along the Covington and Lexington Railroad. Its boundary lines were established as follows: “beginning at the Licking

264 DENHAM, MITCHEL B. River and the mouth of Grassy Creek, up said creek to Wolf Pen branch; thence up said branch to the north side of same to include the Gardner farm . . . ; thence to the Licking River and same to include the Willett farm; thence to the said river to the beginning.” The town trustees appointed were William Clark, B. F. Cummins, H. Hightower, Eli Mullins, and Aaron Thracher.

Early on, DeMossville had ser viceable roads and highways, an assortment of businesses, farms nearby raising tobacco, a post office, schools, civic and fraternal organizations, churches, and even a band of counterfeiters who once operated nearby.

During the 1890s the Louisville and Nashville Railroad ran a scheduled train through DeMossville, from Butler to Cincinnati, which returned the same day. DeMossville had two saloons that dated from the period 1850–1871; the proprietors were Pat Collins and James Oldhouse. A law was enacted in 1871 prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquor or malt beverages within two miles of DeMossville. Richard Mullins, who died in 1860, owned 6,000 acres adjacent to the waters of Grassy Creek.

During the early 1800s, he built a large brick house on land located at the junction of Ky. Rt. 17 and the DeMossville Rd. When the Grassy Creek political precinct was established in 1835, its meetings were held in the Mullins’s home; this house played a role in much of the early history of the community. The Mullins house was later torn down and replaced by another, smaller brick structure, which still stands.

Bricks for these houses were made on Mullins’s farm with slaves doing most of the labor.

The town’s Masonic Lodge was chartered in 1851 as DeMoss Lodge No. 220, at Grassy Creek.

The lodge’s minutes of August 20, 1853, are the first time the name DeMossville appears in the Masonic records. It is believed, therefore, that the lodge and the town of DeMossville were both named to honor one of the lodge’s founding fathers, Thomas DeMoss.

Early settlers in the area of DeMossville often operated mills; the rapid flow of the waters of Grassy Creek made a perfect setting for their gristmills. One of the better known of these mills was about 300 yards north of Grassy Creek Christian Church and 125 yards from the creek. (The church was at that time located a few feet from the junction of the middle, east, and north forks of Grassy Creek.) The millrace (the canal through which the water flowed to furnish power for the mill) started at the east fork and the middle fork of Grassy Creek. This once-noted gristmill had a large wooden dam to channel the water into the millrace, and the deep channel on the south side of the church was the starting point of the millrace. From there, the channel flowed through the flat land to the mill. A mill built by a man named Kanapke was located on the east prong of Grassy Creek. Hampton Knight was operating this mill in 1864. James Mullins operated a mill on the middle fork of Grassy Creek about three-fourths of a mile from the Grassy Creek Church. In 1867 the Kentucky legislature established two governmental stations in Pendleton Co. to inspect tobacco and flour. One station was on Lot 8 in Falmouth, and the other

was on the north fork of the Wolf Pen branch. Because of the threat from flood waters and because more modern mills were being constructed elsewhere, the station on the Wolf Pen branch was discontinued and razed about 1905.

The two tobacco warehouses in DeMossville were located at the railroad station and on a lot now owned by Ray Reid. The one at the railway station, operated by George Otzel, was full of tobacco when it was destroyed by fire in about 1925. In 1884 the population of DeMossville was 141; in 1900 it was 113; and in 1961 it had decreased to 88.

Belew, Mildred Boden. The First 200 Years of Pendleton County. Falmouth, Ky.: M. B. Belew, n.d. [ca.

1994].

Mildred Belew

DENHAM, MITCHEL B. (b. November 12, 1912, Lewis Co., Ky.; d. July 12, 1983, Maysville, Ky.). Mitchel Denham, a physician and a Kentucky legislator, was the son of Harvey and Elizabeth Bertram Denham. At the age of 11, he was inspired to become a doctor by observing his mother’s illness and death. After attending school at Vanceburg, he went to Berea College at Berea and Eastern State Teachers College at Richmond (now Eastern Kentucky University), where he received his BA. He returned to Lewis Co. and taught at a rural school and at the school at Garrison, saving money for a medical education. He completed his medical degree in 1940 at the University of Louisville Medical College. Afterward, he served an internship at the St. Louis (Mo.) City Hospital and was employed as a company doctor for the U.S. Coal and Coke Company at Lynch in Eastern Kentucky. In spring 1943 he was invited to join the practice of Dr. A. O. Taylor in Maysville, who died of a heart attack right after Denham arrived; Denham then took over the practice. In June of that year, he was appointed local physician and surgeon for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. In November he was commissioned a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps; he was the fourth doctor taken from Mason Co. After distinguished ser vice during World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters, Denham returned to his practice and his family in Maysville. He had married Harriet Smith of Maceo on August 28, 1941, in Harlan, and they became the parents of eight children. In 1948 Denham provided the leadership that resulted in the establishment of the local health department, and he served on the county health board for many years. In 1955, with Dr. George Estill and his own brother Dr. Harry Denham, Mitchel Denham purchased the property on Forest Ave. where the Denham Clinic was established. In 1960 the two brothers provided half the cost of a health department building to be built in Lewis Co., dedicating it to their parents.

While seeing patients in the clinic, making house calls, and raising his children, Mitchel Denham joined several community organizations and ventured into business. He became a co-owner of the E. A. Robinson Company, formerly a cigar

manufacturer that became a wholesaler of tobacco and related products. His concern for medical care and education led him to run for the state legislature as a Democrat from the 70th district. He was elected in 1959 and served from 1960 to 1970, then again from 1974 to 1978. In 1962 he was a leader in the effort to require immunizations for infants for polio, tetanus, whooping cough, and diphtheria.

That successful effort led to his receipt of a distinguished ser vice medal from the Kentucky Academy of General Practice. He had previously been honored, in 1958 and 1964, as Doctor of the Year by the same organization. He was the first doctor to be given that award twice.

Denham was recruited by Kentucky governor Edward T. “Ned” Breathitt Jr. (1963–1967) to be the Democratic house majority leader in 1964. During one session, Denham served on 11 house committees. When house members replaced Denham in 1966, the special post of speaker pro tem was created, and Denham was placed in it. Breathitt’s support was also evident when the statewide University of Kentucky Community College System was created and debates were held regarding where to locate the colleges. Mitchel Denham went to Breathitt for his support, and Harry Denham, who was serving on the Board of Trustees of the University of Kentucky at Lexington, also worked for a Maysville site for a community college. The Denham brothers’ efforts were successful, and the brothers were present at the dedication of Maysville Community and Technical College on September 12, 1969. Classes had started the year before, using downtown Maysville buildings. The first addition to the college was named the Denham Building, in honor of Mitchel Denham, when it was dedicated in 1983.

Mitchel Denham belonged to many ser vice organizations and boards and received many honors.

He was active in the Rotary Club, and that organization gave him its first Community Ser vice Award in 1966 and later sponsored a Paul Harris Fellowship in his name. Eastern Kentucky University honored him twice, in 1947 with the Centennial Alumni Award and in 1964 as an outstanding alumnus. He was president of Hayswood Hospital and an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Maysville, where his funeral was held following his death. He was buried at the Valley Cemetery, at Charters in Lewis Co. Denham fi le, Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, Ky. “Maysvillan Named Doctor of Year,” KTS, April 23, 1958, 2A. “Maysville Physician Ran Clinic,” KP, July 13, 1983, 3B.

John Klee

DEPARTMENT STORES. As small towns grew during the 19th century, itinerant peddlers settled in them and opened general stores, the forerunners of today’s department stores. In the more populated areas of Northern Kentucky, such as Covington, Newport, and Maysville, there were enough potential customers for one such general store to carry a wide range of merchandise under

DESHA, JOSEPH

one roof. The first use of the term department store occurred in 1887 when a New York City establishment advertised itself as H. H. Heyn’s Department Store. The concept of individual departments within stores can be found in print at least 40 years earlier, however. The first large successful store of this type was Stewart’s Department Store in New York City.

The city in Northern Kentucky with the most substantial department stores was Covington (see Covington, Downtown). There Coppin’s Department Store, the largest department store in the region, occupied the tallest structure in Covington. John R. Coppin’s store operated from 1873 to December 1977 in the city, moving into its new large building, at the northeast corner of Seventh St. and Madison Ave., in December 1909. After the store closed, the building was remodeled and became the Covington Municipal Building.

The second department store to appear in Covington was owned by Montgomery Ward, a department store chain founded in Chicago in 1871.

The Montgomery Ward store opened in Covington in 1929 at 727–741 Madison Ave. The store was remodeled in 1935 and expanded in 1940 but had closed by the early 1960s. Toward the end, Montgomery Ward ran a cata log store in Covington; Montgomery Ward himself had started in Chicago as the founder of the mail-order industry in the United States.

The third department store in Covington was Sears, Roebuck & Company, another Chicagobased enterprise. Sears built a one-story facility at 13 W. Seventh St. that opened in February 1935 and generated such a brisk business that a second floor was needed the following year. The building had been planned to allow for as many as four floors. Sears sold clothes, tools, appliances, rugs, farm equipment, and tires and did auto repairs.

The company’s store in Covington closed in 1976, just two days before the company opened the present Sears store in the Florence Mall at Florence.

In 1941, the JCPenney Company opened a department store in Covington in the former Dan Cohen Shoe Store building at 18–22 Pike St. (see Cohen Shoe Stores). That store closed in January 1984. JCPenney also has had a store at the Florence Mall since 1978. The W. T. Grant Company had an Expressway Plaza (Fort Mitchell) store that closed as the company fi led bankruptcy in the 1970s.

In Campbell Co., a JCPenney department store was a tenant of the Newport Shopping Center from the day that center was dedicated in 1956 until 1999. The company opened a smaller department store at the Village Green Shopping Center in Alexandria in March 1993 and closed it in 2002.

Sears has never operated a department store in Campbell Co.; it did, however, open a Sears Hardware Store in the lower level of the Newport Shopping Center during the mid-1990s, which remains in operation. The Montgomery Ward department store chain has not had an outlet in Campbell Co. In Maysville, a few locally owned dry goods stores grew into full-service department stores. In

1901 the Merz brothers, Arthur L., Millard, and Eugene, purchased the Bee Hive, a 25-year-old dry goods store, from the Rossenau brothers. Within 10 years, the new operation grew to occupy a three-story building and was marketing both wholesale and retail merchandise. The Kline Stores chain purchased the Merz Department Store in 1973 but maintained the family name. Because of reduced retail traffic into downtown Maysville, the store closed in 1991. Maysville also had a department store known as the New York Store, originally founded in 1898 by Simon Straus.

Straus sold it in about 1929 to the Litwack brothers, who retained the local store’s name; the Litwack family owned a small chain of stores that included two stores in Hamilton, Ohio, one in Connersville, Ind., and another in Georgia.

United Department Stores, a company with holdings in small and medium-sized towns (similar to the Kline department store chain), also operated in Maysville, from 1929 through 1983. Montgomery Ward’s Maysville store, designed by the Weber Brothers architectural firm, operated from 1929 until 1972. JCPenney had a downtown store in Maysville from at least 1923 but much later relocated to a suburban shopping center, where it still operates. Dawahare’s, with corporate offices in Lexington, opened a store in 2001 in the Maysville Bluegrass Center. Dawahare’s attempted a branch store in the Florence Mall for a short time during the 1990s.

Because consumers demand easy parking and because of the growth of “big box” stores, the department stores in Northern Kentucky’s inner cities have moved to the suburbs, along with their market.

Hendrickson, Robert. Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America’s Great Department Stores. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.

Leitzenmayer, Karl. “John R. Coppin Company: Then and Now Photographs,” NKH 9, no.1 (Fall–Winter 2001): 47–49.

———. “John Robert Coppin: The Family and the Company,” NKH 5, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 1998): 1–15.

“Montgomery Ward Is 83 Years of Age,” KP, September 14, 1935, 5.

Public Ledger, Maysville, Ky., Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, Ky. “Sears Store in Covington to Open Doors on Thursday,” KP, February 13, 1935, 1.

Karl Lietzenmayer

DESHA, JOSEPH (b. December 9, 1768, Monroe Co., Pa.; d. October 12, 1842, Harrison Co., Ky.). Joseph Desha, a Kentucky governor, was the son of Robert and Eleanor Wheeler Desha. He married Margaret Bledsoe on December 31, 1789, in Sumner, Tenn., and they moved to Mason Co. in 1792. In Mason Co. he farmed and was a slave owner. In 1794 he served with William Henry Harrison and Anthony Wayne in the wars with the American Indians. His growing public reputation led to election to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1797 and 1799 and to the Kentucky Senate, where he served from 1803 through 1807. Po-

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litically, Desha was a Jeffersonian, elected on the Democratic-Republican ticket. He was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives and served there from 1807 to 1819, becoming chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditures in the 15th U.S. Congress. While serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, Desha fought in the Battle of the Thames (1813) during the War of 1812, along with Richard Johnson, also a U.S. Representative from Kentucky, and Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby (1792–1796 and 1812–1816). After failing in an 1820 bid for the Kentucky governorship, Desha won election to the office in 1824 by promising economic relief for the state’s debtors. He served until 1828.

An economic boom in Kentucky during the first two decades of the 19th century and an expansion of banks, currency, and credit in the state had been followed, in 1819, by depression. A law passed in Kentucky during the early 1820s to relieve debtors from foreclosure by the banks was declared unconstitutional by the Kentucky Court of Appeals (later called the “Old Court”). Quickly, at Desha’s urging, the state courts were reorganized. The “New Court” could not enact business, however, because the “Old Court” maintained its legitimacy and would not relinquish its records to the new body. This struggle continued into 1825 and 1826 until newly elected conservative majorities in the Kentucky legislature abolished the “New Court” over Desha’s opposition.

Education was another issue in which Desha became involved as governor with a largely negative effect. In 1825 Desha categorized Transylvania University in Lexington as a “hotbed of aristocracy.” Two forces were at work. Desha wanted to divert state funds that were supporting Transylvania University to turnpike construction, using a proposed common school system as a pretext. Also Desha, and various conservative religious and political figures, disliked Horace Holley, a Progressive, who had been the Transylvania president since 1818. Holley had transformed the institution with the addition of new medical and law colleges and increased enrollment and prestige for the school. Desha’s opposition led to Holley’s departure and the diversion of educational funds to turnpikes. Future dividends from the turnpikes were to benefit the common schools of the state, but no such dividends accrued.

A final personal crisis faced Desha in office.

His son Isaac was tried and convicted of the murder in Fleming Co. of Francis Baker, a traveler who, in September 1824, was on a journey to be married in New Jersey. Young Desha cut his own throat after his conviction, and Governor Desha, believing his son close to death, pardoned him. This pardon was widely criticized. Desha retired to a farm in Harrison Co., died in 1842, and was buried in the Georgetown Cemetery in Georgetown.

Clark, Thomas D. A History of Kentucky. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937.

Kentucky Gateway Museum Center Collections, Maysville, Ky.

John Klee

266 DETERS, CLEMENS BERNARD “BUD” DETERS, CLEMENS BERNARD “BUD” (b. March 21, 1907, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. July 30, 1991, Edgewood, Ky.). Bud Deters was active in Northern Kentucky’s political, business, and civic matters for his entire adult life. The Deters family immigrated from Oldenberg, Germany, in 1848 and settled in the German neighborhood of Overthe-Rhine in Cincinnati. Bud’s grandfather, Heinrich Clemens, owned and operated a bar on Plum St. across from Cincinnati’s City Hall. Deters began a news career as a newspaper boy for the Kentucky Times-Star and ended his news career as its editor.

The Times-Star played a critical role in the cleanup of the prostitution and gambling syndicate operating out of Newport in the 1950s. When the TimesStar merged with the Kentucky Post, Deters received a telegram discharging him from his employment. He responded by starting a real estate and insurance business under the name C. B. Deters. In 1963 Judge James Dressman Jr. of the Kenton Co. Fiscal Court appointed Deters to the county-owned Airport Board that today operates the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Deters was on the board for 28 years and served as its chairman six times. He was active as a member of boards for his parish church, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, in Covington; the Redwood School (see Redwood Rehabilitation Center); the Northern Kentucky Goodwill Industries; and other civic organizations. Goodwill named its apartments on Russell St. in Covington in his honor. His marriage to Cedora Braunstein lasted 64 years and produced five children, Gerald, Charles, James, Joan, and Kathleen. Their son Gerald Deters followed in his father’s civic footsteps by serving on countless boards; for example, he was one of the founders of the Northern Kentucky Homebuilders (see Building, Residential) and the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau. In 1970 Gerald built the popular Drawbridge Inn and Convention Center, and it remains a center for meetings, weddings, conventions, and parties to this day. Another son, Charles Deters, also became involved in civic endeavors of the community. His law firm, Deters, Benzinger & LaVelle, grew to become the largest Northern Kentucky–based law firm. Thomas More College and St. Elizabeth Medical Center are two of the boards Charles served on for many years. When Bud Deters died in 1991at the St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Edgewood at age 84, he was still the active chairman of the airport board.

In his honor, the flags at the airport were flown at half-mast. He was buried at the Deters Family Cemetery along Green Rd. in southern Kenton Co. Long, Paul A. “ ‘Bud’ Deters Leaves a Legacy of Service,” KP, July 31, 1991, 1K. Roberts, Alice Kennelly. “Goodwill Renames Apartments to Honor Bud Deters,” KP, October 30, 1991, 2KK. Stein, Tim. “Airport’s on Move Again,” KP, October 20, 1990, 1K.

Eric Deters

DEVOU, WILLIAM P., JR. (b. July 15, 1855, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. December 8, 1937, Cincinnati,

Ohio). William P. Devou Jr., a noted owner and donor of property in Northern Kentucky, was the son of William and Sarah Ogden Devou. He was born in a home at Ninth and Race Sts. in Cincinnati. In 1860 the family moved to Northern Kentucky and took up residence in the Hillcrest House in Covington. The verdant grounds around the Hillcrest House provided ample opportunities for young William to acquire a great love of horses and nature. At age 15 William was sent away to a Moravian school near Heidelberg, Germany, for high school and college, having completed his elementary training at the Second Intermediate School on Ninth St. in Covington. When he returned home after college, he worked in his father’s Cincinnati millinery shop, where he kept the firm’s books. However, this work was not enough for him.

In conjunction with his elder brother Charles, William Jr. started to amass tenement properties shortly after he returned from Germany, and later he donated to the City of Covington property that became Devou Park. Regarding this early period of land acquisition, one account of his life stated, “It seems as if Covington’s benefactor had only one obsession in life: that of owning property and making money.” He eventually owned more than 250 properties and became the stereotypical miser landlord, renting his tenements out to all sorts of people, yet barely keeping the properties in livable condition. Devou was notorious for carry ing around eviction notices with a receipt for rent payment stamped on the back. If individuals paid, they received the receipt, and if they did not pay, they received the eviction notice.

Over time, Devou became wealthy, from the will of his father and also at the expense of his tenants. The properties he managed were rundown, unsanitary, and some of them even unlivable. Devou, who did not believe in hiring people to do his work for him, would travel on one of his horses to make repairs in the Greater Cincinnati area. His personal efforts were obviously insufficient: in the 1920s the State of Ohio brought a lawsuit against him for violating state housing codes.

In 1912 Devou had been arrested and fined for failure to maintain the property where he lived, on George St. in Cincinnati. Because he refused to pay the fine, he was thrown into prison, where he stayed for approximately four hours and then paid the $50 fine. He purchased clothing a few sizes too large in order to be able to wear layers underneath during the winter. The single room that he stayed in in Cincinnati on George St. was both his office and his living space, packed with all of the equipment needed to make repairs in his tenements.

His stinginess was merely one of the facets of the man, though. During the Great Depression, a softer side of Devou emerged, when he collected no rent from any of his tenants throughout the depression.

In 1937 Devou was found ill in his George St. room; he had pneumonia, yet he refused any care.

Early in December, he was admitted to the St. Mary’s Hospital in Cincinnati’s West End, where he died of bronchial pneumonia. In April 1938, an

appraisal of Devou’s estate listed 240 pieces of property, valued at $963,630. He also had personal wealth of $105,961. His fortune went to the continuous upkeep and development of Devou Park in Covington.

Behringer-Crawford Museum, vertical fi les, Covington, Ky. “Devou Tells Why He Gave Park to Covington,” KP, August 29, 1910, 8.

“Find W.P. Devou Ill in Home and Alone,” KP, November 17, 1937, 1.

Reis, Jim. “A Gruff, Grubby Old Man Left Us the Devou Park Land,” KP, June 7, 1982, 4K. Spoor, P. Andrew. “Devou Park,” NKH 13, no. 1 (Fall– Winter 2005): 24–39.

Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Bridget Kaiser

DEVOU PARK. The establishment of Devou Park, in the northwestern portion of the city of Covington, can be traced back to the year 1910. In that year William P. and Charles P. Devou donated 500 acres to the City of Covington for park purposes in memory of the brothers’ parents, William P. and Sarah Ogden Devou. On November 28, 1910, the deed for the Devou property was officially transferred to the Covington Park Board. In 1911 the board hired engineer J. J. Weaver of Ludlow to create a topographical survey of the property and lay out the roads in the park. Weaver planned for two major roads, one to connect Amsterdam Pk. to Main St. in West Covington, and another to connect Western Ave. in Covington to Ludlow. The roads were completed in 1912. Devou Park became a favorite place for recreation among Covington residents and citizens from throughout Northern Kentucky. By 1913 use of the park had increased so much that a police officer became necessary. George Brady, hired by the city to fi ll this position, patrolled the park on horseback.

The City Commission of Covington passed a resolution in 1916 to establish a quarry in the park.

City prisoners were to do most of the work at the quarry. On April 17, 1916, the first prisoners from the Covington jail were transported to the quarry in the park and put to work crushing stones, but the operation was not initially successful. Prisoners were typically escorted to the quarry by a single guard, and in the first few years of operation, a number of prisoners found working at the quarry to be a convenient opportunity to escape. Eventually, the quarry provided crushed rock that was used to construct streets in the city. Around 1920 the quarry was closed and a lake was formed on the site. Area residents christened the lake Prisoners Lake.

In 1922 Park Board officials began discussing the creation of a municipal golf course in the park.

The City Commission hired John Brophy, a golf professional at the Fort Mitchell Country Club, to design a new course. In fall 1922 a committee was appointed by the Covington City Commission to raise the necessary funds to construct a ninehole golf course and to set guidelines for its use. In about 1936 the original course was redesigned and

DEVOU PARK BAND SHELL

graded for better play. Area residents established the Covington Tennis Club in 1923; its 75 members hoped to build five tennis courts in the park.

The club rented the former Montague home and remodeled the building into a clubhouse. Plans to construct a new clubhouse near the golf course and tennis facility took shape in 1929, and architect Leslie S. Deglow designed the Colonial style structure to include locker rooms, shower facilities, bowling alleys, a billiards room, and a small lunch counter. A fi re destroyed the building in 1933, and it quickly was replaced by a more modern structure.

The Covington Rotary Club began an effort to beautify the park in 1932. Rotarians started planting trees in memory of their deceased members, in an area that became known as Rotary Grove; it was dedicated on June 7, 1932. Additional trees were planted over the next decades, and by 1963, 50 trees had been planted in the grove.

Devou Park benefited greatly from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. In 1938 the WPA presented Covington with a $97,251 grant for park improvements.

The three major projects planned for Devou Park were the construction of a shelter house, two swimming pools, and a large band shell (the Devou Park Band Shell). The shelter house, constructed of native fieldstone and containing a large fireplace, was ready for use by spring 1939. The band shell was completed in summer 1939, and in August of that year, a crowd of 40,000 attended a concert at the new band shell.

The post–World War II era brought additional activity to the park. In 1950 the BehringerCrawford Museum was established in the old Devou homestead and placed under the direction of area archaeologist Ellis Cummins Crawford.

The initial displays included many items from Crawford’s own collection. The taxidermy collection of West Covington resident William Behringer also added much-needed color. Among Behringer’s most unusual specimens was a twoheaded calf, which in time became a veritable symbol of the museum. In 1979 the museum became an entity independent from the city, and the first official board of directors was appointed.

The 1950s also witnessed the construction of the park’s Memorial Building. In October 1956 workers began demolishing the shelter house at the overlook on the eastern side of the park, a site that offered spectacular views of both Covington and Cincinnati. The new building was designed by the firm of Pepinsky, Grau & Schrand and featured an auditorium and a kitchen. Dedication ceremonies for the Memorial Building took place on August 10, 1958. The Memorial Building served the community well for many years as a gathering place for weddings, political rallies, and parties of all kinds.

By the year 2000, the building was showing signs of age, so it was demolished and replaced in 2003 by the Drees Pavilion (see Ralph Drees), a large reception facility with sweeping views of the Ohio River Valley and Cincinnati.

In 1956, when the Kentucky legislature passed a bill that eliminated park boards in second-class

cities, the Covington Park Board disbanded and the park facilities were placed under the jurisdiction of the City Commission. During the following year, a 44-acre portion of the park was turned over to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, as a site for the Northern Kentucky Extension Center (now Northern Kentucky University). At the same time, a 19-acre portion of park was given to the state for use as a site for a vocational school.

The recession of the 1970s hit the city of Covington hard. The city’s population declined sharply, and few tax dollars were available for park upkeep. To help meet the need, the Friends of Devou was established in May 1977. This group dedicated itself to maintaining the park and promoting its use and improvement. Despite these efforts, the necessary funds for the proper upkeep of the park remained elusive. In 1978 a proposal was made to share the responsibility for the park between the City of Covington and Kenton Co., but city officials decided not relinquish any authority over the park to the county. Another proposal, which called for the park to be turned over to the Commonwealth of Kentucky for use as a state facility, was also rejected.

By the 1980s Covington city officials began discussing possible revenue-enhancement plans for the park. But hindering any such plans were the restrictions placed on the park by the Devou family when the property was transferred. When the city requested that the restrictions be struck down, the Kenton Co. Circuit Court ruled, in 1987, that the deed restrictions were burdensome and were no longer enforceable. Not everyone was pleased with the court’s decision, however. The Devou heirs claimed that the park property should return to the family because the city was not following the requirements of original gift. The family acquired the ser vices of a local attorney and in 1991 brought their case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which ruled that the 23 original restrictions placed on the deed were indeed valid. Covington officials would have to follow the restrictions unless it could be proved that they were unreasonable. The court also ruled that the Devou heirs were not entitled to reclaim the property.

In 1989 golf enthusiasts began discussing the expansion of the Devou Park golf course. Early plans, however, were not acceptable to city officials.

In 1992 Covington hired the Gene Bates Gold Design Company of Palm Beach Garden, Fla., to prepare plans for a nine-hole expansion of the Devou Park course. Opposition to the proposed golf course expansion emerged quickly, and more than 6,000 area residents signed a petition against any golf course expansion. The Devou Park Advisory Board, the Hillside Trust, and many individual residents of nearby Park Hills formally opposed the plans. On July 2, 1993, these two groups fi led suit against the City of Covington to halt any expansion activity, arguing, along with other individuals, that the expansion would destroy 100 acres of wooded land in the park. They also claimed that the expansion was in violation of the original 1910 deed restrictions placed on the park by the Devou family. When the lawsuit eventually reached

267

the Kentucky Court of Appeals, the court ruled, in December 1994, that the expansion was legal.

Construction on the nine-hole course proceeded rapidly, and it opened on May 1, 1995. In recent years, the formation of the Devou Park Rangers has enhanced the safety of the park. In addition, the City of Covington and the Devou Trust have invested heavily in aesthetic improvements.

“The Board of Park Commissions, 1902–1957,” Local History File, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Commission Named to Establish Devou Park Public Golf Links,” KP, September 14, 1922, 1.

“Covington Concerts,” Newsweek, September 8, 1941, 73–74.

“Devou Memorial Dedicated,” KTS, August 11, 1958, 1.

“Golf Course Is Surveyed,” KP, September 12, 1922, 1.

Houck, Jeanne. “City Must Abide by Devou Deed,” KP, April 20, 1991, 1K. ———. “Decision Strengthens Hold of City, Deed on Devou Park,” KP, October 19, 1991, 7K. “Prisoners Will Quarry City’s Rock,” KP, March 7, 1916, 1.

“Public Golf Links Urged for Devou Park,” KP, September 1, 1922, 1.

“Rotary Grove Is Dedicated,” KP, June 8, 1932, 1.

“Sea of Humanity Greets Photographer at Concert in Devou Park,” KP, August 18, 1939, 1. “$300,000 Land Tract Given to Covington for Beautiful Park,” KP, August 27, 1910, 1.

Whitehead, Shelly. “Devou Park Future Sitting in Limbo,” News Enterprise, June 13, 1990. 1.

David E. Schroeder

DEVOU PARK BAND SHELL. Devou Park was established in Covington in 1910. From its inception, residents recognized the potential of a natural bowl-shaped slope near the center of the park for theatrical and other per for mances.

Beginning in 1935, summer concerts began to be held there. The concerts included music and comedy acts and usually ended with an audience sing-a-long. Tens of thousands of spectators from Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati, and beyond attended each of the concerts.

The Devou summer concerts became so popular that the City of Covington began planning for the construction of a permanent bowl with a stage at the base of the slope. The project was advanced greatly in 1938 when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) agreed to provide $97,251 to the building fund. In order to accept the grant, the city was required to provide additional funds amounting to $43,000. The William P. Devou Trust provided $15,000 of this amount. Construction began immediately, and the bowl was ready for the 1939 summer concert series. The first concert in the bowl was held on June 28, 1939.

In August 1939 a crowd of 40,000, the largest ever recorded at a performance in the park, experienced a concert at the new band shell. John R. Walsh organized the concerts. Many of the acts that performed at the bowl were already in the area working at the Lookout House in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright) or at the Beverly Hills

268 DEYE, ANTHONY H. Supper Club in Southgate. A number of these entertainers were nationally known, including Ruth Best, Sophie Tucker, and Jimmy Durante.

Gas rationing during World War II brought the summer concerts to a temporary halt. Since that time, the bowl has been used for theatrical per formances and other entertainments. More recently, the bowl has again hosted summer concerts, presented by the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra.

“Covington Concerts,” Newsweek, September 8, 1941, 73–74.

Local History File: Park–Devou, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Outstanding Program Prepared for Devou Park Concert Tonight,” KP, August 9, 1939, 1.

“Work Pushed to Have New Band Shell Ready,” KP, June 24, 1939, 1.

David E. Schroeder

DEYE, ANTHONY H. (b. August 28, 1912, John’s Hill (Wilder), Ky.; d. January 21, 1988, Fort Thomas, Ky.). Anthony Henry Deye, a staunch advocate of racial equality, was the son of Anthony and Elizabeth Nieman Deye. He attended St. John the Baptist School in Wilder and Covington Catholic High School in Covington. After being accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics), Deye studied at St. Gregory Seminary in Cincinnati and at the Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. He was ordained a priest there in 1937. He later did postgraduate work to obtain a PhD in history and taught history at Villa Madonna College (later Thomas More College) and at the Seminary of St. Pius X in Covington. He was academic dean at the college from 1956 to 1963.

As a seminarian in Rome, Deye observed the evil effects that Nazism had on Eu rope, and he later attributed to that experience his strong commitment to racial equality. He would even speak out against actions by the Catholic Church that he thought unjust and was often referred to by his fellow priests as the “conscience of the Diocese.”

Deye served as an assistant pastor in several inner-city parishes. In the early 1940s, he began a camping program for underprivileged boys, including boys from Our Savior Catholic Church, an African American parish in Covington. He was upset that black children were not allowed to attend some of the camps that the diocese utilized in Kentucky. Therefore, he sought a location for a camp that the Diocese of Covington itself might sponsor. Bishop William T. Mulloy, who had recently arrived, solved the problem by purchasing the Williamsdale farm in Erlanger in 1946. The bishop appointed Deye to start a diocesan camping program, which became Camp Marydale. Deye’s plan was to put groups of boys and girls together from all the parishes of the diocese. When some white Catholic parents complained about having their children camp with black children, Deye insisted that the diocese not give in to demands for segregation at Camp Marydale. Bishop Mulloy agreed completely, and Camp Marydale conducted inte-

grated camping programs from its beginning in 1947.

Deye carried his crusade for justice onto the national stage as well. He met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was very well impressed by his oratorical skills and commitment to the nonviolent struggle against segregation and for the equality of the races (see Civil Rights). Deye joined in the second march for voting rights in 1965 that King led from Selma, Ala., to that state’s capitol in Montgomery.

As pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport, Deye took a leading role as head of the Newport Ministerial Association in helping to close down an adult bookstore and movie theater in Newport during the early 1980s. He also made efforts to assist the poor and tried to keep a separate Corpus Christi church and school open for the benefit of Newport’s West End, though both eventually merged with the city’s other parishes and schools.

Deye died of congestive heart failure on January 21, 1998, and was buried in the priests’ cemetery on the grounds of the former St. Pius X Seminary in Erlanger.

Canal, then for the Internal Revenue Ser vice, and afterward as an artist at the Donaldson Lithographing Company in Newport. Dibowski married Henrietta Connell, and they became the parents of six children. Charles Dibowski lived in Covington for many years, and he was an active member of the Colonel Clay Masonic Order in Covington; however, at the time of his death, he was living at 6700 E. Ledge St. in the Cincinnati suburb of Madisonville. He died suddenly at age 49 from an intestinal obstruction. Funeral services were held at the George Rohde Funeral Home in Madisonville, and burial was in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Cummins, Virginia Raymond. Rookwood Pottery Potpourri. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Galleries, 1991.

“Dibowski, Charles J.” KP, November 2, 1923, 29.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 1749, for the year 1923.

“Lithographic Artist Was Taken by Death,” KTS, November 2, 1923, 29.

Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati.

DICKEN, ABSOLOM COLUMBUS “LUM” “Father Deye, Former Academic Dean, Dies at 85,” Archivia (Thomas More College Archives) 8, no. 2 (January 1988): 1.

“Father Tony Deye: Led life as ‘a Humble, Genuine Servant of Jesus,’ ” Messenger, January 30, 1998, 3.

Fisher, John C. K. “Priest Carried Civil Rights Torch High: Rev. Anthony Deye, Now 80, Has Fought the Good Fight for 50 Years,” KP, January 18, 1993, 1K. Fisher, John C. K., and Peggy Kreimer, “Civil Rights Champion Deye Dies: Priest Was Activist for Over 50 years,” KP, January 23, 1998, 1K. Horstman, Barry M. 100 Who Made a Difference.

Cincinnati: Cincinnati Post, 1999.

“Obituary of Reverend Anthony Henry Deye,” Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Workum, Bert. “Priest Tells Newport It’s City Cleanup Time,” KP, March 6, 1980, 1K.

Thomas S. Ward

DIBOWSKI, CHARLES J. (b. January 2, 1875, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. November 1, 1923, Cincinnati, Ohio). Charles John Dibowski, a noted ceramic tile artist and lithographer, was the son of Charles and Sophia Langlow Dibowski and a brother of Richard J. Dibowski, a Covington saloonkeeper and local Boy Scout leader, of the Wallace Woods neighborhood of Covington.

The family moved from Cincinnati to Covington when Charles was a young boy. He studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and worked for several regional companies, including the Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati, Weller Pottery in Zanesville, Ohio, and Lonhuda Pottery in Steubenville, Ohio.

He also worked as chief timekeeper for the Central Division during the construction of the Panama

(b. January 3, 1835, Campbell Co., Ky.; d. March 20, 1918, Campbell Co., Ky.). Absolom Columbus Dicken, a soldier and a meticulous diarist, was the son of Simeon and Elizabeth Herndon Dicken.

During the Civil War, he joined the 4th Kentucky Cavalry of the Confederate Army. Over the next few years, he kept a detailed diary while seeing action in some 43 engagements against Union forces.

Much of his time was spent cutting telegraph lines, destroying bridges, and ripping up railroad tracks to disrupt the flow of Union supplies. Many of his diary entries deal with visits to local homes, where he attempted to obtain needed supplies for his fellow soldiers. Although most supplies were purchased, some were acquired by fear or intimidation. The diary was written with homemade ink, using goose quill pens. At war’s end, Dicken was stranded in Rich Valley, Va., 250 miles from home.

He and his friend Bob Ellis, with whom he had joined the Confederate Army, began the long trek home after first having their shoes half-soled by a local cobbler. They walked to Paris, Ky., and from there they rode the train to Covington. Along the way, local citizens, who were glad to see the war end, gave them food and shelter. From Covington they crossed the Ohio River to Cincinnati, where they caught the New Richmond Packet to go upriver. Leaving the boat at California, Ky., they walked the final few miles home. When news of their return spread, friends and well-wishers came from far and wide to welcome them home. After the war Dicken returned to his life as a farmer; in later life he became a teacher in rural Campbell Co. He married Mary Lancaster on October 7, 1867, and they had five children. Dicken died in 1918, at age 83, and was buried in the Flagg Springs Baptist Church cemetery. His original diary is in the National Archives, but typewritten copies can be found at the Kenton Co. Public Library in Covington and at the Campbell Co. Historical Society office in Alexandria.

DINSMORE, JULIA STOCKTON Dicken, Absolom Columbus. “Civil War Diary of Absolom Columbus Dicken, 1862–1865,” Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical Society, Alexandria, Ky. Also available at the National Archives, Washington, D.C. Kentucky Death Certificate No. 25361, for the year 1918.

Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County.

Alexandria, Ky.: Self-published, 1997.

Jack Wessling

DICKERSON, WILLIAM W. (b. November 29, 1851, Sherman, Grant Co., Ky.; d. January 31, 1923, Cincinnati, Ohio). Legislator William Worth Dickerson attended the local public schools and the private academy of N. M. Lloyd in Crittenden; after studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1872 and opened a law practice in Williamstown.

He served as a prosecuting attorney in Grant Co. from 1872 until 1876, in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1885 to 1887, and in the Kentucky Senate from 1887 until 1890. Dickerson replaced John G. Carlisle in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from June 21, 1890, until March 3, 1893. Unsuccessful at reelection, he resumed his law practice in Williamstown and then moved to Cincinnati in 1902, where he was a practicing attorney until his death. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at the Williamstown Cemetery. He was survived by his widow, Cora Tunis Dickerson.

“Dickerson, W. W.” http://bioguide.congress.gov (accessed December 4, 2005).

“Dickerson, Worth W.” CE, February 2, 1923, 6.

“Tribute Paid to Memory of Congressman,” KTS, March 5, 1923, 16.

DILLON, GEORGE HILL (b. November 12, 1906, Jacksonville, Fla.; d. May 9, 1968, Charleston, S.C.). At the age of five, poet and editor George Dillon moved to Covington with his father and mother, William S. Dillon and Adah Hill Dillon.

His mother was a Kentucky native. George attended schools in Kentucky and in Cincinnati. After 1920 the family relocated from Covington to Chicago, where George initially worked with his father selling electrical equipment.

In 1923 Dillon began attending the University of Chicago. It was there that he began to pursue his interest in poetry. He joined the Poetry Club, and several magazines published poems of his. He and a group of students started a series of poets’ readings and used the proceeds from this endeavor to publish a literary magazine, The Forge. While still an undergraduate, Dillon caught the attention of Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry Magazine, and she offered him a position as her associate editor. He accepted and spent his final two years in college working part-time with the magazine.

His fi rst book of poems, Boy in the Wind, was published the year he graduated, 1927. For the next three years he also worked writing advertising copy, until the agency that employed him dissolved. His second poetry collection, The Flowering Stone, published in 1931, won Dillon the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He also re-

ceived a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to travel and study at length in Eu rope.

Dillon is also known not only for his own poetry but also for his work with the well-known poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who also won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1936 the pair translated the French poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. Although Millay was 14 years Dillon’s senior and married, the two had a passionate love affair. She had a reputation for being a seductive woman who attracted many lovers, both male and female, but her relationship with Dillon lasted longer than her previous affairs. Millay even produced a book of 52 love sonnets, most of them addressed to Dillon, titled Fatal Interview.

After the death of Harriet Monroe in 1936, Dillon accepted an invitation to be the editor of Poetry Magazine. He spent a total of 24 years with the magazine before retiring in 1949. Dillon was a veteran of World War II, having served with the Army Signal Corps in Africa and Europe between 1942 and 1945. In addition to his degree from the University of Chicago, he received a BA from Yale and an MA and a PhD from the University of California at Berkley. He was married to Judith D. Dillon. He died in May 1968 and was buried in Jacksonville, Fla. Brennand, Elizabeth A., and Elizabeth C. Clarase.

Who’s Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 1999.

Case Western Reserve University. “Edna St. Vincent Millay: Poetry Collections and Plays.” www.cwru .edu (accessed July 14, 2006).

“Funeral Rites for Dillon Will Be Today,” Charleston (S.C.) News and Courier, May 11, 1968, 9A. “George H. Dillon, Poet-Editor, Dies,” NYT, May 12, 1968, 85.

Susan Patterson

DINSMORE, JULIA STOCKTON (b. March 6, 1833, Terrebonne Parrish, La.; d. April 19, 1926, Santa Barbara, Calif.). Poet Julia Dinsmore was born on Bayou Black plantation in southern Louisiana to James Dinsmore (1790–1872), a lawyer educated at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., and Martha Macomb Dinsmore (1797–1859), daughter of Alexander Macomb, a land speculator from New York. Julia had an older sister, Isabella (1830–1867), and a younger sister, Susan (1835–1851). Julia loved to walk along the bayou listening to the birds and animals and fi nding wildflowers, and her interest in nature endured throughout her life. When Julia was six, her mother took the girls to Lexington, Ky., to attend school, but occasionally they returned to their home in Louisiana. Their friends the Gibson family also had homes in both Kentucky and Louisiana. When James’s uncle Silas Dinsmore encouraged him to buy land in Northern Kentucky to grow grapes, James took his advice. In 1842 the Dinsmore family moved into a home James had built on the 371-acre family farm in Boone Co. Just one mile from the Ohio River, the farm offered ponds, woods, and hills to explore; Julia’s love of nature continued to be nurtured. Her father’s sister was the mother of B. F. Goodrich,

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and the Goodrich cousins often visited the Dinsmores.

Julia and her sisters were tutored at home by Eugenia Wadsworth, and at age 16 Isabella, then Julia, entered the Young Ladies’ Seminary in Cincinnati. There Julia met Julia Resor, who became a lifelong friend. Julia Dinsmore, who was gifted in languages, later read books in French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin. She also displayed considerable talent in singing and playing the piano.

Julia’s younger sister Susan never went to the seminary, because she and one of the Goodrich cousins were drowned in 1851 in a boating accident on Lake Erie; this was the first of many tragic losses for Julia.

After finishing her studies in Cincinnati, Julia returned to the Boone Co. farm to help her mother and continue her reading. Although the farm was not a large plantation, James Dinsmore owned 7 to 15 African American slaves between 1842 and 1865 and had white tenant farmers to help raise sheep, grapes, and willows for basket weaving. Julia came to believe that this was the proper order for society, that some people were destined to be in charge of others. But she also felt responsible for taking care of those in need, including the children of slaves and tenants, several of whom she personally educated. The farm became a retreat for friends and relatives and a forum for continuing education.

Julia’s sister Isabella married her first cousin Charles Flandrau in 1859, and seven days later, Julia’s mother died. During the Civil War, Julia often visited the Gibson family in Lexington and Woodford Co., and there were letters from two different men who were interested in Julia, but she never married. Just after the birth of Isabella’s second daughter in 1867, Isabella died. Charles sent the daughters, Martha “Patty” and Sarah “Sally,” to live with Aunt Julia. In 1872 James died, leaving Julia the farm, a large debt, and two nieces to educate. Her journal details her dealings with the tenants and the daily workings of the farm. It reveals the drudgery of all her responsibilities, tempered with occasional joy.

An inheritance of $10,000 left to Julia by a cousin in 1888 eased Julia’s burdens, so that she was able to travel with her nieces and enjoy an easier life. She had begun to write poetry, and at Sally’s encouragement, she submitted poems to the New Orleans Times-Democrat; they appeared with the pseudonym F.V. In 1910 a collection of her poetry, Verses and Sonnets, was published. It contained 83 poems describing the sights, smells, and memories of her life—the bayou, the farm, the Civil War, and her family and friends. It was believed that one of them, “Louisiana Buttons,” was about a young soldier whom she had loved and who was killed in the war. Among the many letters of praise and thanks Julia received was one from Theodore Roosevelt, who had met her through her niece Patty Flandrau (1861–1923). Patty by this time was the wife of Tilden Selmes and the neighbor of the future U.S. president in Mandan, N.Dak. Sally Flandrau (1867–1947) married Frank Cutcheon and lived in New York City. Patty and her daughter

270 DINSMORE HOMESTEAD Isabella Dinsmore Selmes (1886–1953) also lived in New York City while Isabella attended finishing school. Julia visited her nieces in New York City, and there she met many of the friends of the Cutcheons and the Selmeses. She traveled to Europe several times with Sally, to Louisiana with Sarah Gibson Humphreys, and to West Palm Beach, Fla., with Julia Resor Foster. She was visiting Sally in Santa Barbara, Calif., when she fell and broke her hip. She died in 1926 of complications from the hip fracture. According to her request, she was cremated and her ashes were returned to the cemetery on the Dinsmore farm in Boone Co., where many of her family were buried. The Dinsmore Homestead properties are now held as a trust and operated as a museum.

Collopy, Catherine T. “Julia Stockton Dinsmore,” on fi le at the Dinsmore Homestead, Burlington, Ky. Dinsmore, Julia Stockton. Verses and Sonnets. New York: Doubleday, 1910.

Dinsmore Family Papers, Dinsmore Homestead, Burlington, Ky. Miller, Kristie. Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2004.

Sharon Claypool

DINSMORE HOMESTEAD. In 1842 James Dinsmore (1790–1872), a Dartmouth College– educated New Englander, after living in Terrebone Parrish, La., for a time, moved his family into a newly constructed house in northwestern Boone Co., Ky. This home where Dinsmore and his wife brought up their three daughters is now known as the Dinsmore Homestead. It displays documents and artifacts giving the history of the family over several generations and recounting family members’ close associations with an array of individuals prominent on the national scene.

James Dinsmore had moved to Boone Co. at the urging of his uncle Silas Dinsmoor (Dinsmore) (1766–1847), who had told him that western Boone Co. at the head of the Belleview Bottoms was a good place to grow grapes. Th is was the same Silas Dinsmoor who, in 1812 while serving as a Choctow Indian agent in Alabama, attempted to enforce the rules against transporting slaves without papers across Indian Territory, thereby incurring the wrath of U.S. general Andrew Jackson. Silas also had previously been a Cherokee Indian agent. He was the fi rst person buried in the family cemetery on James Dinsmore’s Kentucky farm.

James Dinsmore’s wife, Martha (1797–1859), was the daughter of merchant and land speculator Alexander Macomb (1748–1831). Macomb was a friend of Gen. George Washington and had rented a house that he owned in New York City to Washington during the general’s term as president of the United States (1789–1797). In 1792 Macomb purchased about one-fourth of the state of New York from the federal government at a cost of about eight cents per acre. The transaction was known as Macomb’s Purchase; unfortunately for Macomb, he was not able to make the payments scheduled.

Dinsmore’s sister was the mother of B. F. Goodrich, the famous U.S. industrialist. The Dinsmore children and their Goodrich cousins often visited.

Only one of Dinsmore’s three daughters married. Susan Bell (1835–1851) drowned in Lake Erie, along with a Goodrich cousin. Julia (1833–1926) remained on the farm unmarried until her death at age 93. Isabella (1830–1867) married Charles Flandrau (1828–1903), who was from Minnesota. Flandrau was an Indian agent, lawyer, judge, and politician who once ran for governor in Minnesota and also wrote a history of Minnesota. On August 23, 1862, Flandrau helped to repel an Indian attack at New Ulm, Minn. Shortly after the untimely death of his wife Isabella, Judge Flandrau sent his two daughters, Martha “Patty” and Sarah “Sally,” to Boone Co. to be raised by their aunt, Julia Dinsmore. It was through those two girls that Julia Dinsmore traveled and saw the world outside of Boone Co. Patty Flandrau (1861–1923) married a lawyer, Tilden Selmes (1853–1898), and the couple took up ranching near Mandan, N.Dak. A neighbor on an adjoining ranch was a young New Yorker who had come west to mourn the death of his wife. That neighbor, Theodore (“Teddy’) Roosevelt (later U.S. president from 1901 to 1909), developed a long and fast friendship with the Selmeses and through them got to know Julia Dinsmore. Sally Flandrau married a young corporate lawyer, Frank Cutcheon (1864–1936), and spent much of her life in New York City.

Patty Selmes’s only child, Isabella Dinsmore Selmes (1886–1953), was born at the Dinsmore farm. After Tilden Selmes’s death, Patty and Isabella Selmes divided their time between Boone Co. and New York City, where they lived with Sally Cutcheon while Isabella attended finishing school.

It was there that Isabella met Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a classmate of hers. Isabella Selmes and Eleanor Roosevelt began what became a lifelong friendship, and Isabella was a bridesmaid when Eleanor married Teddy’s Roosevelt’s cousin, future U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945).

Isabella Selmes married Robert M. Ferguson (1868–1922), a Scotsman 18 years her senior. Robert “Bob” Ferguson was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and one of Roosevelt’s famed Rough Riders.

Ferguson was also one of the financial advisers to John Jacob Astor, who died when the Titanic sank in 1912. The Fergusons moved to the dry climate of the New Mexico territory after Bob developed tuberculosis. The Roosevelts, Franklin and Eleanor, visited the Fergusons in their tent home in the West. Following Bob Ferguson’s death, Isabella married another former Rough Rider and friend of Teddy Roosevelt, the Arizona copper developer John Greenway (1872–1926). A few years after their marriage, John Greenway died of complications from gall bladder surgery.

Isabella F. Greenway, active in civic affairs, was the first congresswoman from Arizona who served two terms (1933–1936). She gave one of the nominating speeches in 1933 for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first bid for the presidency, but when FDR ran for a third term, she did not support him. Isa-

bella eventually established a hotel in Tucson, Ariz., the Arizona Inn. Isabella had three children. Both of her sons, Robert Ferguson (1908–1984) and Jack Greenway (1924–1995), became lawyers. Her daughter, Martha Ferguson (1906–1994), married Charles Breasted, whose father was the famed University of Chicago Egyptologist James Henry Breasted.

The Dinsmore family, even with all of its contacts away from Boone Co., kept close ties to their home in Kentucky and returned to visit whenever possible. Julia Dinsmore managed the farm following her father’s death in 1876 until her death in 1926. The Dinsmore heirs maintained the house and farm from 1926 through 1988 when the Dinsmore Homestead Foundation purchased the property. The story of the Dinsmore family is detailed in more than 90,000 documents (letters, day books, and slave records) that were preserved by the family and are now available on microfi lm at the homestead. The little family cemetery on the hill overlooking the farm is the resting place of most of the Dinsmore family members.

A group of volunteers founded the Dinsmore Homestead Foundation as a nonprofit institution in 1986, with the intention of purchasing the historic home with its surrounding 30.7 acres of land, the furnishings, and the documents of the Dinsmore family and of opening a museum. Martha Ferguson Breasted and her half-brother John Selmes Greenway deeded the property and the home and its contents to the Dinsmore Homestead Foundation in June 1988; Martha Breasted donated her half of the estate and the foundation purchased Greenway’s share. Volunteers who were instrumental at this early stage included John F. Caldwell, Hannah Baird, Dr. William Bryant, and Judy Clabes. Clabes chaired a $1 million capital campaign that exceeded its goal by September 1990. William “Sandy” Kreuger served as the first director of the museum, which opened in 1989.

The following year the Dinsmore Homestead inaugurated its first educational programs for schoolchildren.

Baird, H. H. “Julia Dinsmore.” In Kentucky Women, ed. E. K. Potter. Louisville, Ky.: Big Tree Press, 1997.

Chastang, Gail. “The Dinsmore Homestead, Boone County Treasure,” NKH 5, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 1997): 15–31.

“Historic Homestead to Be Open,” KP, August 5, 1989, 5K. Miller, Kristie. Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2004.

William S. Bryant

DIOCESAN CATHOLIC CHILDREN’S HOME. The Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home began in the mid-1800s with the involvement of August M. Toebbe, second bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington. Bishop Toebbe, concerned for the care and education of orphan children, labored to establish institutions in Northern Kentucky that would afford suitable housing, physical support, and education for these children. From the various parishes of the

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

diocese, he urged the formation of branch orphan societies.

On June 4, 1848, the St. John’s Orphan Society of Kenton Co. held its first meeting to organize a home for Catholic orphan girls. With an initial capital of $63, the society founded St. John’s Orphanage. A property on Madison Ave. near 15th St. in Covington was the original site. In January 1868 the society purchased for $17,000 the 55-acre St. Aloysius Seminary property in Fort Mitchell, which was used for the orphanage and today is the site of the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home.

In 1866 Rev. Conrad Rotter, pastor of St. Stephen Parish, Newport, organized the St. Boniface Orphan Society of Campbell Co. for the purpose of founding an orphanage for boys within the Covington diocese. Three years later, on May 12, 1869, Bishop Toebbe opened the St. Joseph Orphanage Campbell Co. on the 125-acre former Walsh farm in Cold Spring. The orphanage consisted of an eight-room residence along with barns and other buildings. In 1871 a large building was erected at a cost of $15,000. Although the general contractor had been paid in full, he failed to settle with his subcontractors, and a court ordered the sale of the institution on December 13, 1875, to settle the claims. In 1876 the St. Joseph Orphanage became the property of the St. Boniface Orphan Society when three of its members (unnamed) purchased it in the name of the society.

Both orphanages encountered disastrous fires during their existence. On June 30, 1884, fire completely destroyed the St. Joseph Orphanage. Two months later, a new cornerstone was laid, and by December of that same year, the orphans moved into their newly built home. Four years later, fire again completely destroyed the orphanage. At this time the diocese and the societies governing both orphanages, at the instruction of Bishop Camillus Maes, investigated the possibility of combining the two orphanages, with St. John’s Orphanage slated to survive. After the proposed terms of unification were rejected by the Committee of Directors of St. John’s Orphanage, the St. Boniface Orphan Society resolved, on August 19, 1888, to rebuild its institution. The orphans had returned fully to the St. Joseph Orphanage by May 1, 1889.

As for St. John’s Orphanage, fire completely consumed the school and several other buildings in February 1926. A nonsectarian drive in Kenton Co. raised $100,000. By May 1927 construction of new buildings, including “one of the most imposing structures in Northern Kentucky,” was under way. Included in the new construction were a school building and a central plant; in addition, baths were installed and a water line was scheduled to be brought in from Dixie Highway (U.S. 25).

A fire in March 1935 damaged the chapel, the dining room, and the kitchen at St. John’s Orphanage, and repairs to the facilities were completed by Thanksgiving.

For the fi rst eight years of its existence, responsibility for the operation of the St. Joseph Orphanage fell to the Franciscan Brothers of Mount Alverno Protectory in Cincinnati. In 1877 the original agreement between the Franciscan

Brothers and the St. Boniface Orphan Society was revised, so that the Brothers relinquished their responsibilities at the orphanage. The Sisters of Notre Dame immediately assumed charge. The St. John’s Orphan Society of Kenton Co. initially operated St. John’s Orphanage. In 1871 the Sisters of St. Benedict from St. Walburg Convent assumed the daily operational duties. Later, in 1957, the Sisters of Notre Dame assumed full authority over the institution. Today Jean Marie Hoff man, S.N.D., heads the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home as executive director.

At their peak, each overcrowded orphanage housed more than 100 children. Most children came to the orphanages as a result of illness in their families, marital separation, divorce, or a parent’s lack of employment. Over time, particularly following World War II, improvements in the economy and advances in medicine brought about societal changes, so that very few traditional orphans were being served by either orphanage by the 1950s. A 1957 study on the needs of dependent children in the Diocese of Covington concluded that two institutions were no longer needed. In 1961 the governing boards of the two institutions voted to merge into one entity, with the surviving facility located on the property occupied by St. John’s Orphanage. Shortly thereafter, the bishop of the Diocese of Covington, Richard H. Ackerman, announced the merger of the two institutions into a single home to be known as the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home.

Since the 1960s the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home has focused on the treatment of all children with serious emotional and behavioral problems. The home was the first institution of its kind in Northern Kentucky to receive state accreditation, and it is the only children’s home in Northern Kentucky with an on-site educational facility, Guardian Angel School. This school helps to meet children’s emotional and academic needs while preparing them to return to a less restricted, community-oriented educational setting. Today the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home serves children through a variety of ser vices, including its Assessment/Crisis Stabilization/Treatment (ACT) Unit, which is a short-term placement for children with emotional and behavioral needs, and the Therapeutic Foster Care Program, which assists children in a home-based environment.

Children’s Home. “Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home.” www.dcchome.org/ (accessed April 3, 2007).

“New Orphanage Is Planned; $100,000 Planned,” KP, February 14, 1927, 1.

Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Paul A. Carl Jr.

DISABILITIES. See New Perceptions Inc.; Point/Arc of Northern Kentucky; NorthKey

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Community Care; Redwood Rehabilitation Center; Riverside– Good Counsel School.

DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS (DAV). The DAV, now headquartered in Cold Spring, was organized in 1920 at Cincinnati as the Disabled American Veterans of the World War (DAVWW), under the leadership of Judge Robert S. Marx. In 1932 the DAVWW was chartered by the U.S. Congress as a nonprofit orga ni zation meant to champion disabled veterans’ rights. It was open to veterans who had been permanently injured, physically or mentally, during World War I and had received an honorable discharge.

The U.S. government at the time did not have programs to assist disabled veterans once they were discharged. No matter how crippled veterans were as a result of a service-connected injury, once discharged they were left to fend for themselves or to be cared for by their family or community. The DAVWW lobbied the U.S. Congress during the 1920s and 1930s to fund training programs and benefits for disabled vets.

In 1941, at the outbreak of World War II, the DAVWW shortened its name to DAV and continued its programs of support for disabled veterans.

It was a sponsor of the GI Bill of Rights. During World War II, the DAV broadened its scope to include all U.S. citizens who had become physically or mentally disabled as a result of a serviceconnected incident, within either the U.S. or Allied armed ser vice, and had received an honorable discharge. Today the DAV continues to work with government and private organizations to ensure equal rights for the present 2.1 million U.S. veterans suffering from service-connected disabilities.

In 1966, as a result of a property tax issue with Ohio, the DAV moved its national headquarters from Cincinnati to a new building along U.S. 27 in Cold Spring, Ky., the site of the former St. Joseph Orphanage (see Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home). In 2004 DAV membership stood at 1 million and there were three chapters in the Northern Kentucky region: Chapter 19 in Cold Spring, Chapter 26 in Falmouth, and Chapter 148 in Alexandria.

Disabled American Veterans. Wars and Scars— Compassion and Ser vice. Cold Spring, Ky.: DAV, 1995.

Charles H. Bogart

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), strongly represented in Northern Kentucky, is a Protestant denomination that began in the Bourbon Co. community of Cane Ridge during the early 19th century. Today it is national in scope with some 3,800 congregations. Unlike the denominations from which its founders came, its churches are self-governing and call their own pastors; they worship both formally and informally and include lay women and men in leadership; open discussion of issues is encouraged, and diversity of opinion is common; and in recent years, the church has been growing in its racial and ethnic diversity. The plan was and is to

272 DISKIN, JOHN A. build a united church organization of Jesus Christ modeled on the New Testament.

The Christian Church was founded by Maryland-born Barton W. Stone (1772–1844). A Presbyterian minister and schoolteacher by training, he hosted the historic Cane Ridge Revival in 1801 that was attended by as many as 25,000 during its five-or-six-day duration and from which the Christian Church (Disciples) ultimately arose. Other founders included Thomas and Alexander Campbell. Irish-born Thomas Campbell (1763–1854) attempted to reform the Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania. He first aligned with the Baptists, but by 1830 that association was severed.

Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), Thomas’s son, who spent much time in the Maysville area, was a renowned public speaker, debater, author, and educator. It was said that he and his father were united in the attempt to reform the Presbyterians of their day, but by 1832 Barton W. Stone joined the Campbells to form the Campbell-Stone movement with a formal handshake in Lexington, creating a new American denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

In the years since, although in some ways the church has evolved, it has always adhered to its core beliefs. In the 20th century, American Asian, Hispanic, and African American Disciples congregations have multiplied. In 2005 the General Assembly of the church, meeting in Portland, Ore., voted Sharon Watkins in as the first woman general minister and president.

In Northern Kentucky there are at least 37 Disciples churches. From the Mayslick Christian Church and the First Christian Church in Mason Co. to the influential Madison Ave. Christian Church in Covington and the Florence Christian Church in Boone Co., they have provided religious and community leadership for many years as a Kentucky-bred church. Today these congregations are part of the Kentucky region of the church, with ministerial offices along Red Mile Rd. in Lexington.

“Christian Church Assembly to Emphasize Spirit of Unity,” KP, March 8, 1986, 7K. “Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).” www.disci ples.org (accessed June 6, 2007).

Harrison, Richard, Jr. From Camp Meeting to Church: A History of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Kentucky. Lexington, Ky.: Richard Harrison Jr., 1992.

“Relevant Issues of Today Will Concern Disciples of Christ in Annual Assembly,” KE, April 18, 1971, 6A.

DISKIN, JOHN A. (b. August 19, 1925, Newport, Ky.; d. March 28, 1994, Fort Thomas, Ky.).

Judge John Diskin was born in Newport’s West End to Thomas M. and Rosemary Tierney Diskin.

The family moved to Fort Thomas, where John attended public schools, graduating from Highlands High School in 1943. His father died when John was 14 years old. Diskin received his law degree from the University of Kentucky in the early 1950s and was asked by Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler (1935–1939, 1955–1959) to direct the

Kentucky Commission of Aeronautics, where he served with distinction during a period of statewide airport expansion. Diskin later practiced law in Owensboro and served in the commonwealth attorney’s office there. In the early 1960s he returned to his Northern Kentucky home and joined the law firm of Blakely, Moore & O’Hara in Covington. Later he practiced by himself and became an assistant commonwealth attorney in Campbell Co. under Frank Benton. Diskin was appointed to the Campbell Circuit Court bench in 1975 to replace the retiring judge, Fred Warren Jr. Later that year he was elected to a full term as circuit judge. An activist judge, Diskin was known for his professionalism and attention to detail in presiding over the massive and complicated civil litigation arising from the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977. In 1982 Judge Diskin suffered a stroke while presiding at the bench in a medical malpractice case. The physicians in the courtroom attended and supported him until he could be rushed to a hospital. He then retired from the bench, but he recuperated from his stroke with vigor and humor.

After a two-year convalescence, some of which was spent with his brother Tom in Las Vegas, he returned home.

Diskin came from an illustrious political family. His father was post office inspector for Kentucky; an uncle, Lawrence Diskin, was Campbell Co. commonwealth attorney; and another uncle, James Diskin, was Kentucky Democratic Party chairman. John Diskin was a lifelong student of history and politics, bringing to them the same intellectual vigor and attention to detail that he dedicated to the bench. A lively and witty conversationalist, he could be counted on to contribute humor and energy to any gathering. He died at St. Luke Hospital and was buried at New St. Joseph Cemetery in Cincinnati.

“Diskin Resigns State Aero Post,” KTS, February 11, 1956, 2A. “Kentucky Deaths,” KP, April 1, 1994, 10A. “Those Who Died Touched Lives for Generations,” KP, December 31, 1994, 1–3K.

Patrick M. Flannery

DISKIN, LAWRENCE J. (b. April 1876, Newport, Ky.; d. August 15, 1942, Cincinnati, Ohio).

Attorney Lawrence J. Diskin, a well-known Campbell Co. commonwealth attorney, was a son of Thomas W. and Mary Mullaney Diskin. His father was the janitor at the Campbell Co. Courthouse in Newport, where the family lived on the third floor.

Lawrence’s early education was at Immaculate Conception School in Newport (see Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Newport). He apprenticed under judges John T. Hodge and Otto Wolff Sr. and later graduated from the YMCA Law School (see Chase College of Law) in Cincinnati. Diskin was appointed Newport city clerk in 1912 and served for two years. In 1914 he was elected Campbell Co. commonwealth attorney, a position he held for the remainder of his life.

Shortly after his election, he married Charlotte

“Lottie” Williamson; they had one child, a daughter Elizabeth. Charlotte was the granddaughter of Captain John Williamson, the well-known steamboat operator and builder of the Central Bridge.

Diskin and his family moved to 114 Mayo Ave. in Fort Thomas, where he became an active member of the St. Thomas Catholic Church. He was also a member of many other religious and civic organizations, including the Catholic Order of Foresters, the Holy Name Society, the Knights of St. John, the St. Boniface Orphans Society, the Knights of Columbus, the Eagles, the Elks (see Civic Associations), and the Newport Moose Club.

Diskin suffered from leukemia for about the last two years of his life. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Good Samaritan Hospital, Cincinnati, at age 66. Funeral ser vices were held at the Immaculate Conception Church in Newport. More than 3,000 people attended his funeral; this was the largest group ever to attend a funeral in Newport.

Many state and local politicians were present, including J. Lyter Donaldson, Arthur B. Rouse, and Brent Spence. Diskin was buried at the New St. Joseph Cemetery, Price Hill, Cincinnati. His wife Charlotte preceded him in death in March 1931.

“Death Comes to Larry Diskin,” KE, August 16, 1942, 18.

“Kentucky’s Governor and Federal Officials to Attend Rites for Lawrence J. Diskin,” KTS, August 17, 1942, 1.

“Respect Paid by Hundreds,” KE, August 18, 1942, 1.

DISTILLERIES. In February 1935 the New England Distillery of Covington celebrated its 50th anniversary of continuous production, having operated throughout Prohibition by making rum to flavor cigarettes and for medicinal purposes. Previously, the firm was nationally known for its Red Star Straight Rum brand. The New England Distillery fared better than most liquor manufacturers in that it was one of the few remaining makers in Northern Kentucky, surviving into the 1960s at its 115 Pike St. location, next to an important Louisville and Nashville Railroad siding. Successful distilleries needed an adjacent railhead to on-load shipments of corn and off-load their products for distribution in distant markets. The fragrance of distilled spirits from the New England Distillery permeated downtown Covington until the company’s last days of business; the distillery’s buildings remain today.

For many years the Pogue family distilled spirits in the Maysville area. Later they had an interest in the New England Distillery’s operation in Covington. From the 1880s to 1911, the MaddoxHobart, Thorne, and Hazel Gap distilleries were located, successively, in Campbell Co. at the site that later became Tacoma Park in Dayton. In Finchtown, south of Newport along the Licking River, George Robson Sr.’s Old 76 Distillery made spirits from early in the 1900s until 1946, when Schenley Distillers Inc., took over and changed the name to the Pebbleford Distillery; in December of the same year, the plant burned in a whiskey-fueled

DIUGUID, NANCY

conflagration. However, the company’s $18 million stand of stored whiskey was saved. That was the third fire in the Finchtown operation’s history, in addition to the explosion that took place there in 1888. After the fire of 1946, there was no further whiskey production on that site.

Between 1888 and 1913, Covington had at least 13 distilleries: Crigler and Crigler, 517 Scott St.; New England Distillery, Pike St.; Old Dexter, 27 Park Pl.; Sheldon Distillery, 14 E. Pike St.; Sunnyside Distillery, 61 Pike St.; Walsh Distillery, Front St.; Hanlon Distillery, 22 W. Seventh St.; Elk Horn Distillery, 12 E. Pike St.; Neal and Hoff man, Third and Main Sts.; Old Kentucky Distillery, Fourth and Court Sts.; Latonia Distillery, Milldale; Licking Valley Distilling Company, 67 Pike St.; and the Millbrook Distillery, Front and Scott Sts. The Walsh operation endured several major fires, much to the dismay of some Covington city officials who opposed whiskey-making. By 1910 Walsh had packed up and moved to Lawrenceburg, Ind., where it eventually became part of the Schenley Distillers Inc. empire.

Ancillary distillery businesses in Covington included both barrelhouses and whiskey wholesalers: Orene Parker, 12 Pike St.; Meyer and Company, Th ird and Scott Sts.; Henry Brinker, 640 Scott St.; J. H. Reinke, 64 Pike St.; Joseph Von Handorf, 609 Main St.; Chas. J. Wigger, Patton and Mary Sts.; Thomas Carr, Wallace St. and Madison Ave.; Tom Conry, 34 Pike St.; Tom Ruh, 509 Scott St.; Patty Carroll, Wallace and Madison Ave. John Boske, 11th and Greenup Sts.; William Bechtold, Fifth and Johnson Sts.; William Kranz, Pike and Russell Sts.; and Gus Staggenborg, 1922 Madison Ave. In Boone Co. at Petersburg, from roughly 1836 to 1910, the Petersburg Distillery (Boone County Distilling Company) operated. It was founded by William T. Snyder but later went through many different owners.

Wars, Prohibition, the Great Depression, reform movements, the diminishing demand for bourbon beginning in the 1960s, and industry consolidation have contributed to the disappearance of distilleries in Northern Kentucky. There were several proposals for building new distilling plants during the mid-1930s, including one in Ludlow on the site of the former Pintscher Gas Company; another in Mentor, by Seagram-Distillers of New York; and a third in Wilder, by the Cave Springs Distilling Company. None of them developed further. The overall number of distillers in Kentucky has declined in recent years.

Becher, Matthew E. “The Distillery at Petersburg, Kentucky, Part 1: Snyder’s Old Rye Whiskey,” NKH 9, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2002): 49–55.

———. “The Distillery at Petersburg, Kentucky, Part 2: A Kentucky Giant,” NKH 10, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 2003): 35–47.

“Distilling Company Here 50 Years Old,” KP, February 15, 1935, 2.

Geaslen, Chester. “There Ran a Distillery or Two in Covington,” KE, December 15, 1966, 2.

“Old Whiskey to Be Made Here Again,” KP, December 9, 1933, 1.

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Covington City Building and Kenton Co. Courthouse, Third and Court Sts. Designed by Dittoe and Wisenall, it was completed in 1901 and demolished in 1970.

“Two Sites in Northern Kentucky Considered by Distilling Interests,” KP, April 9, 1935, 1.

DITTOE AND WISENALL. This architectural firm and the two individuals who formed it made their mark on Northern Kentucky by designing many buildings in the region. Louis G. Dittoe was born in Covington in 1867, the son of real estate agent George M. Dittoe. The family moved to Newport, where George Dittoe took a position as editor of the Kentucky State Journal newspaper.

Louis was educated in Newport public schools but left school at an early age to work for the Cincinnati architectural firm of Samuel Hannaford and Sons. He also began the formal study of architecture at the night school of the Ohio Mechanics Institute. He showed such aptitude in the field that he became a teacher of architectural courses at the school. Bernard T. Wisenall was born in Maysville on September 4, 1869, the son of John Bernard and Jane Eckmann Campbell Wisenall.

In April 1893 Dittoe and Wisenall formed a partnership, creating the architectural firm that bore their names. The firm designed a number of buildings in Northern Kentucky, including the old Covington City Hall (northeast corner of Third and Court Sts., demolished), the Kentucky Post Building, the First Christian Church, and an addition to the Citizens National Bank Building. It also designed the Pugh Building (later called the Polk Building) in Cincinnati. The partnership of Dittoe and Wisenall was dissolved in 1910, and Dittoe returned to private practice. The only Northern Kentucky buildings Louis Dittoe is known to have designed in later life are the Alma Apartments in Fort Mitchell and a private residence in Fort Thomas. After the dissolution of the partnership, Wisenall continued to design buildings in the region. With architect Chester Disque, he drew the plans for the John G. Carlisle Junior High School and the Third District School in Covington. In

1924 he designed the Ben Adams Insurance Building located on the northwest corner of Fift h and Madison in Covington. Three years later, he designed the Girls Friendly building for the Trinity Episcopal Church in Covington. Wisenall died at his home on July 16, 1942 in Covington and was buried at Highland Cemetery, Fort Mitchell; Dittoe died at his home in Cincinnati on January 24, 1947, and was cremated.

“Covington Architect,” KP, January 2, 1917, 1.

Goss, Charles Frederick, ed. Cincinnati: The Queen City, 1788–1912. Vol. 3. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912.

“New Building on Way,” KP, May 15, 1924, 1.

Tenkotte, Paul A. A Heritage of Art and Faith: Downtown Covington Churches. Covington, Ky.: Kenton Co. Historical Society, 1986.

DIUGUID, NANCY (b. October 18, 1948, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. May 21, 2003, Johannesburg, South Africa). Nancy Elizabeth Diuguid, a pioneering theater director in England and South Africa, was the daughter of prominent Carroll Co. tobacco farmer Gex Diuguid and Elizabeth Lineback Diuguid. She attended schools in Ghent and Carrollton, Ky., and Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., before moving to London, England, to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Openly homosexual, she broke new ground with gay and feminist themes (see Gays and Gay Rights) in her early efforts. She did street theater with alternative groups such as the Gay Sweatshop and then moved into more mainstream work, holding director’s positions in a number of respected London theaters. She won awards in London; Munich, Germany; and Edinburgh, Scotland for her productions and garnered acclaim as a visionary in a staid English theater culture where gays, feminists, and Americans were considered suspect. In search of new challenges, she directed short fi lms and operas, serving as staff director for

274 DIVIDING RIDGE the English National Opera. A believer in the arts as an agent for healing and social justice, she launched arts projects working with prisoners, traumatized children, and victims of illness, rape, and abuse.

In 1999 Diuguid moved to South Africa and was diagnosed with breast cancer the following year. She continued working until shortly before her death in 2003. Her companion of 17 years, South African fi lmmaker Melanie Chait, and their foster son, Desmond, survived her. She left instruction to spread her cremated remains in England, South Africa, and Kentucky. Diuguid was memorialized by a plaque in St. Michael’s Church, Guiting Power, Gloucestershire, England, and with a cenotaph at the Ghent Cemetery in Carroll Co. Woddis, Carole. “Nancy Diuguid—Visionary Actor and Director Who Used the Creative Arts, and Her Own Gay Identity, in a Lifelong Campaign for Justice and Healing,” Guardian (England), May 28, 2003, 23.

Bill Davis

DIVIDING RIDGE. A small community in Pendleton Co., Dividing Ridge was located within the Grassy Creek Precinct and was the location of a U.S. Post Office from 1862 until 1896. Simpson School, a one-room schoolhouse, was located near there. The community is currently home to the historic St. John Catholic Church.

Belew, Mildred Bowen, comp. The First 200 Years of Pendleton County. Falmouth, Ky.: M. B. Belew, n.d. [ca. 1994].

Mildred Belew

DIXIE CHILI. Dixie Chili represents a young Greek immigrant’s business dream come true in a regionally successful and lasting restaurant chain that began in Northern Kentucky. Papa Nick, Nicholas D. Sarakatsannis (1900–1984), arrived in the United States in 1915, and after working for years in several other ventures, including Cincinnati’s Empress Chili, he founded Dixie Chili in 1929. He began ladling his famous chili recipe in Newport at 733 Monmouth St., in an 8-by-30-foot front room. He did everything from cooking to serving, often working 18-hour days. This was the first chili parlor in Northern Kentucky. On his first day of business, he made 9 gallons of chili, and today some 150 gallons are prepared daily at that same location in an expanded commissary. Dixie Chili remains family-owned and is now run by two of Nicholas’s sons, Spiros and Panny. Especially popu lar with chili connoisseurs is the Dixie Chili coney, a hot dog in a bun with mustard, smothered in chili and perhaps enhanced by Bermuda onions or shredded cheddar cheese. Customers can also order one of the variations of chili served over spaghetti—with cheese, onions, beans, chopped garlic, or any combination of those ingredients. At one time the chain had a Cincinnati store in Clifton, one in Independence, and one on Mall Rd. in Florence. Currently there are three Dixie Chili locations in operation: in Newport, Covington, and Erlanger. In recent years the firm has

begun canning and shipping its products throughout the world. Papa Nick died October 29, 1984, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

Dixie Chili and Deli. “History of Dixie Chili.” www .dixiechili.com (accessed June 20, 2007).

Hicks, Jack. “Escape from Turks the First Ingredient for Chili,” KE, June 12, 1979, A1.

“Nicholas Sarakatsannis,” KP, October 30, 1984, 12C

Michael R. Sweeney

DIXIE HEIGHTS HIGH SCHOOL. The fall 1937 opening of Dixie Heights High School, located at 3010 Dixie Highway in Edgewood, provided northern Kenton Co. with a public high school facility comparable to the best in the region.

Construction of the Dixie Heights High School and its companion school, the Simon Kenton High School, stemmed from a 1935 state review aimed at modernizing the Kenton Co. school system. At the time, Kenton Co. high schools suffered when compared to high schools with better facilities in Covington and South Fort Mitchell (Fort Mitchell). Dissatisfied Kenton Co. residents often enrolled their children out-of-district. The state’s findings generated a plan that recommended, among other things, the construction of two high schools, one in southern Kenton Co. to replace the antiquated Independence High School and Piner High School buildings, and the other in northern Kenton Co. to relieve the overcrowded Crescent Springs High School. For the northern high school, the Kenton Co. School Board acquired 12 acres on the Dixie Highway opposite Dudley Pike. The two proposed high schools received federal funding through the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency. The Dixie Highway school’s original name was Franklin D. Roosevelt High School; however, objections were raised to naming a school after a living person. Instead, the county school board chose the name Dixie Heights, a reference to the school’s location on a rise overlooking the Dixie Highway. The school was completed at a cost of approximately $178,000; architect Howard McClorey’s Art Deco–inspired design featured 18 classrooms, a cafeteria, and a gymnasium. James A. Caywood served as the school’s first principal. Students at the school voted to name its athletic teams the Colonels. The enrollment of almost 1,000 students at the new Dixie Heights and Simon Kenton High Schools in 1937 represented a nearly 50 percent increase in high school enrollment in the Kenton Co. school system.

Since its opening, the Dixie Heights High School campus has undergone many expansions and renovations. During the 1950s and 1960s, more classrooms, a new cafeteria, and a football stadium were added. A 1980 renovation resulted in expanded gymnasium, music, and industrial education facilities. A multiphase $14 million major upgrade was commenced in 2001 that will result in essentially a new school building that preserves the facade of the original 1937 structure. Scheduled for completion in 2008, the project, designed by architects Piaskowy and Cooper, will feature a media center, expanded science and computer labs, an

auditorium with stadium seating, central heating and air conditioning, and a new formal entrance.

The removal of the Caywood Elementary and the Kenton Co. Board of Education offices from the Dixie Heights campus will permit new and expanded athletic facilities for the high school.

Over the years, Dixie Heights High School students, marching bands, and athletic teams have won several honors. Notable Dixie Heights High School alumni include Ron Ziegler, former press secretary for President Richard M. Nixon; former Cincinnati mayor David Mann; Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson; and Mark Pike, an NFL athlete.

Caywood, James A. “A Brief Sketch of the Development of the Kenton County School System.” Address delivered to the Filson Society, Louisville, Ky., January 14, 1958.

“Tight Deadlines to Meet—As Summer of Construction Winds Down, Schools Rush to Opening Day,” KP, July 24, 2003, 1K.

Greg Perkins

DIXIE HIGHWAY. The Dixie Highway was a system of roads that stretched more than 5,000 miles and encompassed two major routes and several spurs. Both divisions ended at Miami, Fla.; the eastern section started at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., and the western part at Chicago. The highway was the brainchild of Carl G. Fisher, the creator of the Lincoln Highway, which connected San Francisco with New York City, and of the Indianapolis 500 motor race. One of Fisher’s projects was a new resort on a sandbar that he had just purchased, called Miami Beach. Fisher used his political connections to push the idea of the Dixie Highway at a convention of governors in 1915. Construction started quickly thereafter, and many parts of the highway were operational by the end of 1916, including much in the Midwest and Florida. Delays hindered the process, especially in rough or swampy terrain, but the highway was rounding into shape by spring 1917.

Unlike interstate highways, which were built entirely new in almost all cases, the Dixie Highway was much more like the U.S. highway system that began in the 1920s as a series of previously connected roads, with some small construction connecting and upgrading the largely rural roadbeds.

Because the Dixie Highway was primarily composed of previously existing routes, cities and towns anywhere near the proposed route petitioned the Dixie Highway Association to have their par ticu lar Main Street given the designation of Dixie Highway. While some people in Northern Kentucky lobbied for the Three-L Highway or Alexandria Pk. to receive the designation, the obvious choice was the Covington and Lexington Turnpike. Much of the roadway had to be reconstructed and paved with concrete to meet the standards of the Dixie Highway Association.

The Covington and Lexington Turnpike was rechristened the Dixie Highway in October 1915, after the association accepted the local bid. It was then up to local officials to raise the necessary funds to upgrade the old turnpike. The section from Covington to Erlanger was completed in July

DIXIE TERMINAL

Intersection of the Dixie Highway and U.S. 42 in Florence, with the Caintuckee Grill, in the 1960s.

1916 and celebrated with the planting of 400 trees along the route and plans for a statue of Simon Kenton to greet travelers after they crossed the John A. Roebling Bridge. The route from Erlanger to Florence, Ky., was completed in August 1921. It was celebrated by a parade and dance in Erlanger, which drew hundreds. The highway was opened to Williamstown in September 1924. The entire highway was not completed through Kentucky until a bridge spanning the Rockcastle River in Laurel Co. was finished in 1925.

Seeing the success of the highway and its impact on towns, boosters along the Three-L Highway wanted their road to be designated part of the highway as well. Pendleton Co. officials submitted petitions to the Dixie Highway Association in 1923 to have the Three-L Highway designated the Licking Valley Branch of the Dixie Highway. Although some began to call the Three-L Highway “Dixie Highway,” the association never recognized any stretch of the Three-L Highway as part of its official highway system.

The net effect of the Dixie Highway was to place Northern Kentucky along one of the major northsouth corridors connecting the industrial North with the rapidly growing Florida playgrounds.

Tourist stops such the Halfway House in Williamstown that provided food, gasoline, and accommodations thrived on the tourist trade of families going to and from vacation spots in Florida.

Clark, Thomas D. A History of Laurel County. London, Ky.: Laurel Co. Historical Society, 1989.

“Covington Good Willers Celebrate Opening of Pike to Williamstown,” KP, September 25, 1924, 1.

“Covington Plan Draws Praise from Forester,” KP, January 24, 1917, 1.

“Double Track Highway,” KP, May 29, 1923, 1.

“Erlanger Celebrates,” KP, August 15, 1921, 1.

Foster, Mark S. Castles in the Sand: The Life and Times of Carl Graham Fisher. Tallahassee: Univ. of Florida Press, 2000.

Preston, Howard L. Dirt Roads to Dixie: Accessibility and Modernization in the South, 1885–1935.

Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1991.

“State Will Not Give Pike Trees,” KP, March 8, 1917, 2.

Chris Mieman

DIXIE TERMINAL. The Dixie Terminal in Cincinnati was used by Northern Kentucky streetcars and buses from 1921 until 1996.

In the second decade of the 1900s, area civic leaders Frank J. Jones, A. Clifford Shinkle, and Charles P. Taft formed a company to build, on the southwest corner of Fourth and Walnut, a commercial complex that became Cincinnati’s largest indoor shopping arcade and office building. The first two floors of the building were to be devoted primarily to retail shopping, and the remaining eight floors were to be leased as commercial office space.

Shinkle, who was the president and one of the primary stockholders of the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company (see John A. Roebling Bridge), suggested to Taft that an annex to the south of the proposed Fourth & Walnut Building would be an ideal terminal location for the Green Line Company’s streetcars arriving from Northern Kentucky. Taft, who was a major stockholder in the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company, a business owned by the Green Line’s parent, the Columbia Gas & Electric Company, agreed.

Taft had plans drawn for a four-story annex to the Fourth & Walnut Building, with the lower two floors for use as the transit company’s streetcar terminal and the top two floors designed for additional office space.

The Green Line signed a long-term lease on the annex in 1917. Cincinnati’s Planning Commission was delighted that as many as 70 Covington Division Green Line streetcars per hour would no longer run on Cincinnati city streets; they could go directly from the Suspension Bridge to the Dixie Terminal’s

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proposed upper streetcar loop. Although Newport Division cars would travel on Cincinnati’s Third St., they would avoid the very congested areas of Fourth and Fifth Sts. and would unload and load in a Dixie Terminal ground-level loop.

Since the Suspension Bridge linked Cincinnati to the South via Kentucky, the bridge company’s president, Clifford Shinkle, proposed naming the whole project, including the annex, the Dixie Terminal, and his proposal was accepted. Shinkle was also responsible for getting the Dixie Highway project (U.S. 25) from Michigan to Florida routed over the Suspension Bridge from Cincinnati to Covington through Kenton Co., along the route of the Lexington Pike.

Construction on the Dixie Terminal was delayed by World War I and did not begin until 1919. The terminal was completed in 1921, at a cost of $3.5 million. The shopping arcade was designed in the Italian Renaissance architectural style, with a sky-blue vaulted ceiling over the main shopping area. Low-relief medallions decorating the ceiling were colored alternately brown and cream and blue and cream, with touches of gold. The arcade was furnished with warm cream–colored marble walls, and shops in it were framed with pilasters rising to the vaulted ceiling. The Cincinnati Enquirer labeled the Dixie Terminal the brightest jewel in Cincinnati’s crown.

On Sunday, October 23, 1921, the Green Line’s Covington Division cars began running directly into the upper terminal level through a viaduct from the Suspension Bridge above Second and Third Sts. A month later, on November 27, the Newport Division streetcars started using the Dixie Terminal’s lower level via Third St. With the opening of the lower level of the Dixie Terminal, the Green Line discontinued its use of the L&N Bridge, and all of the Newport Division cars used the Central Bridge to and from Cincinnati.

The two levels within the Dixie Terminal were arranged similarly. The tracks in each level formed a horseshoe-shaped loop. The streetcars entered

Dixie Terminal, Cincinnati.

276 DIXIE TRACTION COMPANY the eastern side of the horseshoe, discharged their passengers, and proceeded around to the western side to pick up passengers bound for Northern Kentucky. Each loop was 355 feet long, and four small or three large streetcars could be simultaneously unloaded on one side of the horseshoe curve, while up to five small or four large streetcars could board passengers at the same time on the other side.

When inbound passengers disembarked from streetcars at the Dixie Terminal, they left the terminal area via an exit-only passageway. Passengers bound for Northern Kentucky dropped their nickels or tokens into mechanical turnstiles or, if they needed change, went to a cashier’s booth and then proceeded through the cashier-controlled barrier.

Because streetcar conductors were not required to handle money at the Dixie Terminal, they could attend solely to the task of rapidly loading or unloading passengers.

The economic benefits of the Dixie Terminal to the Green Line were considerable. The Covington Division’s streetcars saved an average of 10 minutes per round trip by avoiding Cincinnati’s street traffic. Even the Newport Division’s trips saved an average of 5 minutes simply by being able to unload and load off-street. These factors meant that the company could run fewer streetcars per route while maintaining the same ser vice levels.

Even when the Green Line changed over from streetcars to buses, between 1935 and 1950, the Dixie Terminal continued to serve as the off-street terminal until the company ceased transit business in November 1972. The publicly owned successor to the Green Line, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK), continued to use the Dixie Terminal for another 24 years. However, in September 1996, TANK was notified that its lease at the Dixie Terminal would be terminated on October 18. At 12:45 a.m., October 18, 1996, the No. 1 Erlanger-Florence bus pulled out of Dixie Terminal; this was the last bus to make a ser vice run emanating from the Dixie Terminal. Henceforth, buses with ser vice routes to Northern Kentucky picked up their passengers on downtown streets in Cincinnati.

Lehmann, Terry W., and Earl W. Clark. The Green Line. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 2000.

Terry W. Lehmann

DIXIE TRACTION COMPANY. The predecessor of the Dixie Traction Company was J. W. Bentler’s motorbus operation in Northern Kentucky, which began in 1915. Bentler operated one 30-passenger bus from the end of the Green Line streetcar line in Fort Mitchell south along the Covington and Lexington Turnpike (later the Dixie Highway) to the adjoining communities of Erlanger and Elsmere. The combination of hard rubber tires, uncomfortable benchlike seats for passengers, and the crushed-gravel washboardlike surface of the pike, coupled with rising fuel prices and parts shortages, caused Bentler’s operation to fold before the end of World War I.

When Bentler’s operation ended, the residents of Erlanger and Elsmere were left without public transportation between their cities and the Fort Mitchell streetcar line, with its access to downtown Covington and Cincinnati. After the Dixie Highway was paved in August 1921, public bus ser vices from Florence, Erlanger, and Elsmere to Covington and Cincinnati became feasible.

In 1922 a group of businessmen, led by Kenton Co. attorney Stephens Blakely, established the Dixie Traction Company, a corporation with an initial capitalization of $10,000. Beginning operations on August 15, 1922, the company used three buses and linked its roundtrip ser vices from Florence, Elsmere, and Erlanger along the Dixie Highway to the streetcar line’s termination point in Fort Mitchell. On August 18, 1925, the company extended its route further north along the Dixie Highway through downtown Covington to Cincinnati. The initial investors sold the company in 1927 to Erlanger businessmen F. Walton Dempsey and Arthur Rouse. In November 1929 the Dixie Traction Company established two additional routes, from Fort Thomas to Cincinnati. By 1930 the company had become a serious competitor of the Green Line Company wherever its routes closely paralleled the rival company’s existing streetcar tracks. To house the Dixie Traction Company’s growing fleet of 15 buses, a new garage with a 30-bus capacity was built on the southeast corner of Dixie and May in Elsmere in 1929. It was located just feet away from Erlanger’s city boundary line and was always called the Erlanger Garage. By the end of 1937, the company owned 25 buses. It made 62 round trips daily, except on Sundays, between Florence and Cincinnati and 26 round trips daily, except on Sundays, on its two routes between Fort Thomas and Cincinnati. Sunday buses ran between Florence and Cincinnati at 30-minute intervals; no ser vice was maintained on Sunday between Fort Thomas and Cincinnati.

In June 1939 news reports revealed that the Green Line Company had reached an agreement to purchase the Dixie Traction Company for the sum of $200,000. In October 1939 it was announced that the Dixie Traction Company had entered into side agreements to purchase the Cold Spring Bus Company and the Alexandria Bus Company at a cost of $25,000. In 1940 the Green Line Company was given clearance by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to complete its purchase of the Dixie Traction Company, but included was a mandate that the suburban routes to Erlanger, Cold Spring, and Alexandria be operated under the banner of the Dixie Traction Company as a separate operating subsidiary of the CN&C (the Green Line).

Beginning in 1943, the Dixie Traction Company ran a roundtrip bus shuttle ser vice for construction workers from its Erlanger-Florence route at Commonwealth Ave. and the Dixie Highway to where the Greater Cincinnati Airport (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport) was being built in Boone Co. The bus company was surprised to discover that many riders were using this ser vice merely to view the ongoing

progress of the airport’s development. In September 1946 David L. Ringo, the assistant general manager of both the Dixie Traction Company and the CN&C, confirmed that the Dixie Traction Company had contracted with three major airlines and the Airport Board to carry passengers in a scheduled motor-coach ser vice between downtown Cincinnati hotels and the new airport. In addition, the company had obtained exclusive rights from the Airport Board to provide incoming passengers with taxi-for-hire ser vice to all points within a 20-mile radius of the airport. However, its taxi-for-hire authority to return to the airport was limited to picking up customers at the Gibson, Terrace Plaza, Netherland Plaza, and Sinton hotels in downtown Cincinnati. The company marketed the scheduled motor-coach ser vice as Airporter Services and its taxi-for-hire ser vice as Red Top Limousines (the company never referred to its limousines as cabs). The agreements were consummated following the move of American, Delta, and Trans World airlines from Lunken Airport in Cincinnati to the new Greater Cincinnati Airport in January 1947. The Dixie Traction Company, or its parent the Green Line, operated both scheduled motorcoach ser vice and nonscheduled taxi ser vice to and from the airport until 1973.

On March 16, 1950, the ICC approved the abandonment of CN&C’s No. 1 Fort Mitchell streetcar ser vice. Furthermore, the Dixie Traction Company was given permission to serve certain points of the old streetcar line with a new ErlangerFlorence bus route that commenced on July 3, 1950. The Dixie Traction Company’s lines in Campbell Co. were merged with the parent Green Line Company’s bus ser vices as the No. 21 N. Fort Thomas and the No. 24 Cold Spring–Alexandria routes. In 1955 the Dixie Traction Company was given permission by the ICC to merge with the Cincinnati, Newport, and Covington Railway Company (CN&C). On March 15 Stephens Blakely, general counsel for both the CN&C (Green Line Company) and the Dixie Traction Company and one of the original bus company’s founders, had the sorrowful duty of fi ling the Dixie Traction Company’s dissolution papers with the Kentucky secretary of state. On June 27, 1955, the former Dixie Traction garage in Elsmere was destroyed by fire. The fire, which broke out during the late afternoon, quickly spread through the building, destroying three buses. One employee suffered a minor injury. Along with the building and the buses, valuable tools, company records, and fare boxes were destroyed. The total loss from this fire exceeded $100,000.

Lehmann, Terry W., and Earl W. Clark. The Green Line. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 2000.

Terry W. Lehmann

DONAGHY, MARK F. (b. January 5, 1956, Philadelphia, Pa.). Mark F. Donaghy, the innovative general manager of the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) for almost 15 years (1990–2003), is the fift h of seven children born to

DONALDSON LITHOGRAPHIC COMPANY

James W. and Justine Evans Donaghy. His father’s employment with the parent company of the Green Line transit company caused the family to move often during Mark’s childhood. Mark’s father, James, received his initial managerial training in Newport and later managed transit companies in such diverse locations as Chester, Pa.; Youngstown, Ohio; Omaha and Lincoln, Neb.; and Worcester, Mass. James W. Donaghy was inducted into the American Public Transportation’s Hall of Fame in 1993.

In 1979 Mark Donaghy married Dora Lee Booth; the couple raised three children.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Donaghy accepted a management position in 1980 with First Transit Inc., a predecessor of his present employer.

His first management position with a transit company was in Manchester, N.H., as director of operations. In 1981 First Transit Inc. assigned Mark to TANK to serve as assistant general manager and planning and grants administrator. Donaghy served the transit authority for six years and was the person responsible for researching, making applications for, and administering federal grants and for implementing TANK’s equal opportunity and minority business enterprise programs. Most significantly, Donaghy served as project manager during the planning and construction of TANK’s general offices, maintenance, and storage garage on Madison Pk. in Fort Wright, which opened on November 20, 1982. While assistant general manager at TANK, he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Thomas More College in December 1985, having previously garnered credits toward his degree from the University of Nebraska and Youngstown State University in Ohio.

In 1986 Donaghy was promoted to general manager of the Missoula Urban Transit District in Montana. There he was responsible for all the operational, maintenance, and administrative functions of that system. He was brought back to Newport by First Transit Inc. in 1990, to serve as the general manager of TANK. During the early years of Donaghy’s second term at TANK, he recognized the needs of the underserved, but growing, southern portions of the three-county region (Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties) that the transit system served. The decade saw expanded ser vice to Northern Kentucky University and to the Cold Spring–Alexandria area of Campbell Co. as well as new ser vices to the Boone Co. area centered on Empire Dr. Also, a new No. 2–Airport Express route was instituted between downtown Cincinnati and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, with the schedule primarily aimed at shift-change times at the airport.

Also included in TANK expansion plans was ser vice to the newly developing business districts (and new condominium construction) along the Northern Kentucky riverfront. On May 6, 1998, the Southbank Shuttle began; it was a new bus route developed by Donaghy to link the downtown business districts of Cincinnati, Covington, Newport, and Bellevue. The shuttle was designed to

connect the downtown Cincinnati sports complexes and Cincinnati’s retail and restaurant district with the rapidly expanding Newport, Bellevue, and Covington entertainment districts along the Ohio River and with Covington’s Main Strasse Village. The shuttle was a complete success, so much so that TANK found it necessary to order new, larger buses in 2001.

Through Donaghy’s leadership, TANK developed an alternative indoor transfer location after it was notified in September 1996 that its lease for the Dixie Terminal, its downtown Cincinnati terminal, would not be renewed. That development gave impetus to implementing TANK’s long-range plan to operate a primary transfer facility in downtown Covington. A new indoor facility, located on the ground floor of the Kenton Co. parking garage on Madison Ave. between Second and Th ird streets in Covington, was opened on July 25, 1998. Named the Riverfront Transit Center, the facility was designed to serve as TANK’s major transfer point in order to speed up operations, to replace the former main transfer locations in congested downtown Cincinnati (and at Th ird and Madison in Covington), and to provide TANK’s transferring passengers a place to make connections under shelter.

Further initiatives by TANK under Donaghy’s leadership included assisting employers and social ser vice agencies by the institution of commuting ser vice to outlying areas where abundant employment opportunities exist. Also during the 1990s TANK greatly expanded its Regional Area Mobility Program known as RAMP. By 2003 RAMP’s door-to-door ser vice for the mobility impaired assisted almost 4,000 individuals each month.

TANK received a Spirit of the ADA Award from the Kentucky Disabilities Coalition in 2001.

Donaghy’s leadership skills at TANK were also recognized by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet when it named TANK the Outstanding Transit Operation in the Commonwealth in 1993.

On the national level, Donaghy received the American Public Transportation Association’s national award for the Advancement of Minorities and Women in the Workplace in 1997.

In September 2003 First Transit Inc. promoted Donaghy to vice president of its transit management ser vices. In his new position, he assumed oversight responsibility for the further development of First Transit Inc.’s consulting business in North America. He also became the supervisor of all the managers of First Transit Inc.’s transit operations in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky, including TANK. Donaghy, Mark F. Interview by Terry W. Lehmann, April 20, 2005, Cincinnati.

Lehmann, Terry W., and Earl W. Clark. The Green Line. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 2000.

Terry W. Lehmann

DONALDSON, J. LYTER (b. April 10, 1891, Carrollton, Ky.; d. March 27, 1960, Louisville, Ky.).

Lawyer and politician J. Lyter Donaldson was the son of Joseph A. and Susie Giltner Donaldson. He

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graduated from Carrollton High School and entered Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., then transferred to Centre College in Danville, Ky., where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He received his law degree from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn., in 1913. He returned to Carrollton and began his law practice. Friends described Donaldson as straight-spoken, honest, and sincere, reminding them of Abraham Lincoln. In December 1913 he married Jessie Rose Hill of Carrollton. He entered politics in 1921 and was elected Carroll Co. attorney, a position he held until 1930. His father died on August 1, 1930, and J. Lyter was chosen to succeed him as president of the First National Bank of Carrollton. In April 1935, Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon (1931–1935) named Donaldson chairman of the Highway Commission; he served until 1939. In that same year, he managed Keen Johnson’s campaign for governor and, after Johnson’s victory (Johnson served from 1939 to 1943), was appointed state highway commissioner. In his new position, Donaldson became a major promoter of many Northern Kentucky highway projects, which contributed greatly to the growth of the area. Those projects included the widening of U.S. 27 from Fort Thomas to Cold Spring, the widening of the Dixie Highway from south Covington through Fort Mitchell, and the construction of U.S. 42 in the direction of Louisville. He was also instrumental in the construction of Donaldson Rd., named in his honor, which became the main artery leading to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. He resigned as Kentucky Highway Commission chairman in 1944 to run for governor on the Democratic ticket.

In one of the closest elections in state history, Republican Simeon Willis defeated him. Donaldson served as chairman of the state Democratic Executive Committee from 1944 to 1948 and afterward returned to his legal practice in Carrollton. He died of a heart attack at age 68 in 1960 while visiting friends in Louisville. His body was returned to Carrollton for burial in the Odd Fellows Cemetery. At the time of his death, he was living in the same house in which he had been born. His wife had preceded him in death in June 1951. His only surviving close relative was a brother, Giltner A. Donaldson, who was executive secretary to U.S. Representative Brent Spence.

Kleber, John, ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Reis, Jim. “J. L. Donaldson Put Area on Fast Track for Growth,” KP, March 27, 1960, 4K.

DONALDSON LITHOGRAPHIC COMPANY. By the turn of the 20th century, the Newport-based Donaldson Lithographic Company had become known internationally for its high-quality colorful circus posters. It operated out of a four-story building at the southeast corner of Sixth and Washington Sts., across from the site of the modern-day Pompilio’s Restaurant, employing as many as 300 workers. Donaldson’s art department provided jobs for many graduates of the Cincinnati Art Institute.

278 DONIPHAN, ALEXANDER WILLIAM, BRIGADIER GENERAL The company was founded by Cincinnati-born William Mills Donaldson (1840–1931), who lived most of his life in Campbell Co. He attended the Fourth St. Elementary School in Newport and Woodward High School in Cincinnati. He started a lithographic firm in Cincinnati in 1863. In 1890 the company was located at 11 W. Eighth St., and as it expanded, it moved to Newport in 1898 to a building once occupied by the Dueber Watch Case Company. By the time of the relocation, most of the firm’s business consisted of circus posters for clients such as the Ringling Brothers, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Tom Mix Circus, and Annie Oakley. Donaldson became so deeply involved with the Gentry Brothers Circus, attempting to keep it operating, that he ultimately owned that organization. The lithographic firm also produced large posters for outdoor advertising billboards. In 1905 the Donaldson concern was merged with six other lithographic companies to form the Consolidated Lightographing Company, with William Donaldson remaining at the helm of the Newport operation. In addition to its circus accounts, the company printed theater marquee posters and advertising posters for florists, hardware associations, Plymouth automobiles, Florsheim Shoes, and Kuppenheimer Clothes.

In Covington, at the site of the former Central Covington Stock Yards (see Meatpacking) along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and 22nd St., William Donaldson built the forerunner of the Donaldson Art Sign Company in 1914. It was a separate operation specializing in “tin ornamentation” for powder cans and the like. One of Donaldson’s sons, also named William, became the founder of Billboard magazine, which continues to be the bible of the music business. William Mills Donaldson died at his home in Fort Thomas in 1931. The Newport company closed in 1936, and Hyde Park Clothes later occupied the building it had used. The Covington company operated until 1988 before it closed; its fire-damaged building was demolished in 2002.

“Newport Firm Goes into Merger,” KP, May 27, 1905, 5.

Reis, Jim. “Posters Painted Company’s Success,” KP, September 22, 1987, 4K.

Michael R. Sweeney

DONIPHAN, ALEXANDER WILLIAM, BRIGADIER GENERAL (b. July 9, 1808, Mason Co., Ky.; d. August 8, 1887, Liberty, Mo.). Alexander Doniphan, a Mexican War commander, was the son of Joseph Doniphan of Virginia, who died early in Alexander’s life. When Alexander was age nine, his elder brother was named as his guardian, and young Alexander joined him in Augusta in Bracken Co. Shortly after graduating from Augusta College at age 19, Doniphan began the study of law under the tutelage of Martin Marshall.

He passed the bar in 1829 and subsequently decided to move to Missouri, first settling in Lexington and then in Liberty, Mo. Doniphan served three terms as a Missouri state legislator. As a brigadier general in the Missouri militia, in 1838 he was credited with bloodlessly quelling a threatened uprising by the Mormons.

When fighting commenced between the United States and Mexico in 1846, Doniphan organized a regiment of Missouri volunteers for military ser vice. Elected as their commander, he led this contingent of troops during Gen. Stephen Kearny’s invasion of New Mexico. After the seizure of the town of Santa Fe, Kearny left Doniphan in command, whereupon Doniphan forced peace upon a hostile Navajo people. Later ordered to join Gen. Zachary Taylor’s army in northern Mexico, Doniphan led his men on one of the longest marches in U.S. military history. By the time the volunteers from Missouri reached Taylor’s encampment at Saltillo, Mexico, they had covered more than 3,600 miles, a feat for which their commander, Doniphan, was lauded and hailed as an American “Xenophon.”

After the Mexican War ended, Doniphan returned to Liberty, Mo., resuming his law practice and championing the cause of education. When secession threatened to tear the country apart in 1861, Doniphan, a slave-owning Unionist, sought to fi nd compromise. He attended the 1861 Washington Peace Conference, but that meeting’s effort to avert the war and strike a compromise failed. Afterward, Doniphan declined an offer of a command in the Union Army, preferring to continue working as a lawyer and assisting refugees displaced from western Missouri. He remained in Liberty as a prominent lawyer and respected member of his community until his death in 1887. He was buried at the Fairview Cemetery, Liberty, Mo. Find A Grave. www.fi ndagrave.com (accessed November 30, 2005).

Hughes, John T. Doniphan’s Expedition, Containing an Account of the Conquest of New Mexico. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

Tim Herrmann

DONIPHAN, JOSEPH (b. August 19, 1823, Augusta, Ky.; d. May 2, 1873, Augusta, Ky.). Joseph Doniphan, a Bracken Co. lawyer, judge, and politician, was the son of local businessman George Doniphan, who ran grocery, tobacco, and leathertanning businesses in Augusta. Joseph attended local schools and entered Augusta College, but he left during his senior year without graduating.

From 1839 to 1842, Joseph worked as a clerk in his father’s businesses. In 1844 he began the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1848. Doniphan entered politics in 1849 and was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing Bracken Co. He married E. A. Ward on December 16, 1856, and they had three children. He served three terms as mayor of Augusta, 1852–1854, 1860–1862, and 1869–1871. In August 1862 he was elected circuit judge of the Kentucky Ninth Judicial District Court and served a term of six years.

Doniphan was elected chancellor of the courts in Bracken, Campbell, Kenton, and Pendleton counties in May 1871 and held that position for the remainder of his life. He was 49 years old when he died in 1873 at his residence. He was buried at the Augusta Hillside Cemetery; his wife and three children survived him.

Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky. Cincinnati: J. M. Armstrong, 1878.

DONNELLY, THOMAS FRANCIS (b. October 27, 1870, Covington, Ky.; d. April 1, 1955, Covington, Ky.). Thomas F. Donnelly, Covington mayor, was the son of Irish parents, Lawrence and Mary Tierney Colleron Donnelly. His father died when he was six years old. He attended both the public and the parochial schools of Covington. At age 14 Thomas began work as a bookbinder in Cincinnati; later, in 1902, he became a car conductor with the Pullman Company. In 1915, at the age of 45, his political career began: he was elected to the Covington City Commission and reelected in 1917. In 1920 Donnelly became the mayor of Covington, serving until 1924. He promoted the citymanager form of government as a means to lessen corruption. In 1924 Donnelly returned to the City Commission for another term before becoming mayor a second time from 1928 to 1932. After his political career, he worked as a ticket-taker on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Bridge. He was a popu lar stereotypical Irish Catholic Democratic politician of his era and a member of the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption parish and several local fraternal benefit organizations. He never married. He spent the last 10 years of his life living in a boardinghouse at 1810 Greenup St., a structure that he had inherited from his brother.

Donnelly died at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington and was buried at St. Mary Cemetery. Politics had provided the means of upward mobility for this second-generation Covington man, and until recent times, he was Covington’s only two-term mayor.

Sacramental Records of St. Mary Cathedral Parish, Covington, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Tom Donnelly, Former Covington Mayor, Dead,” KTS, April 1, 1955, 1.

“Two-Time Mayor of Covington Dies,” KP, April 1, 1955, 1.

DONNERMEYER, WILLIAM I. (b. September 19, 1924, Dayton, Ky.). William Irwin “Bill” Donnermeyer, a former Kentucky legislator, is the son of Frank John and Bertha Schlereth Donnermeyer. Bill was the youngest of eight children. He played football at Dayton High School in Dayton, Ky., but left before graduating and joined the U.S. Navy on December 11, 1942. He served as a radioman aboard the USS Weber, a destroyer escort in the Atlantic Ocean. After the Allied victory in Europe, he was being trained in multicommunications for the Army, the Navy, and the Marines in preparation for the invasion of Tokyo, when the war ended. He then served as part of the occupational forces in Japan for six months. After returning from Japan in February 1946, he completed his high school education, graduating from Dayton High School that same year.

After attending Villa Madonna College (Thomas More College) for a period of time, Donnermeyer joined the Pipe Fitters Union No. 392 in 1947. From 1958 to 1964 he served on the

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Pipe Fitter’s executive board. In 1964 he became a member of the Bellevue City Council and served until 1969. He won a close election for Kentucky state representative for the 68th District as a Democrat and remained in that office until he retired in 1994 (see Democratic Party). During his term in the Kentucky legislature, he was a member of the Labor and Industry Committee and, in 1972, the vice chairman of the Business, Organizations, and Professions Committee. In 1974 he became the chairman of that committee. From 1976 to 1986 he was majority caucus chairman. In this position he was able to place people on various committees. In 1990 he became the chairman of the Cities Committee and in 1992 the chairman of the Open Meetings and Open Records Committee; that same year he also served as chairman of the Statewide Information Committee, in which position he pushed for the greater use of computers in state government.

More than 200 bills were enacted into law in Kentucky that Bill Donnermeyer sponsored or cosponsored. He was the primary sponsor of 98 of them. The legislation that he sponsored or cosponsored is the subject of a 128-page booklet from the Kentucky Information Systems Commission.

Among the bills was legislation concerning the automated registration and titling of automobiles, the state lottery, and the abolition of bail bondsmen. Donnermeyer was also involved in the establishment of the Community Action Agencies, funding for training of local firefighters and police, the adoption of a legislative code of ethics, and bills to legalize bingo and harness racing.

He has remained a steadfast member of the Democratic Party and has supported many Democrats in their campaigns for office. In 1972 he served as the Campbell Co. chairman for Walter Dee Huddleston’s successful campaign as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate. Donnermeyer has always taken the position of those who needed help, including the homeless and the unborn, and is well known for his strong right-to-life advocacy.

In 1948 he married Shirley Snyder, who died in 1967. They had three boys, William, James, and Thomas. In 1970 he married Mary Ruth Hill, and they had one daughter, Teresa. Bill Donnermeyer resides with his family in Bellevue. Donnermeyer Blvd. in Bellevue is named after him. He is an honorary lifetime member of the Pipe Fitters Union and a member of the Bellevue Vets, the American Legion, and the VFW. “Abortion Heats Up Primaries,” KP, May 25, 1996, 1K. Armstrong, Bryan. “A Man of the People,” KP, January 3, 1995, 1K.

Robert W. Stevie

DOREMUS, ELIZABETH (b. May 22, 1853, Newport, Ky.; d. April 15, 1934, New York City).

Elizabeth Johnson Ward Doremus, playwright and genealogist, was the daughter of George W. and Josephine Harris Ward. She was a granddaughter of James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport, on her mother’s side. Her father owned several plantations throughout the South. Educated

in France, Germany, and Italy, she married noted chemist Charles Doremus in Washington, D.C., in 1880 and spent the remainder of her life in New York City. She was a respected social leader and genealogist, who traced the lineage of members of high society; she wrote three plays for the Broadway stage: The Circus Rider (1888), The Fortunes of the King (1890s), and By Right of the Sword (1905). Doremus was a friend of Lionel and John Barrymore. In the 1880s and 1890s she appeared in amateur performances. In 1934 she died from a stroke and was buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, N.Y. Births Campbell County 1850–1910, available at Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Mrs. C.A. Doremus, Playwright, Dead,” NYT, April 17, 1934, 21.

DOUGHERTY, WILLIAM AND ELIZABETH. In 1779 Elizabeth Conway and William Dougherty, accompanied by her father and mother, one child, brothers and sisters, and several other families, moved from Virginia to Kentucky. The families settled in Bourbon Co. about 10 miles north of Paris, in the neighborhood of what was then called Ruddell’s Station. In 1780 British captain Henry Bird (see Bird’s (Byrd’s) War Road) attacked that settlement, and William and Elizabeth were captured with the rest of her family and taken to Detroit, Mich. After their release, William and Elizabeth Dougherty lived in Bourbon Co. for a few years before moving north to Pendleton Co. They settled on Grassy Creek, not far from the present town of Falmouth, and remained there until William died.

Belew, Mildred Boden. The First 200 Years of Pendleton County. Falmouth, Ky.: M. B. Belew, n.d. [ca.

1994].

Edward E. Barton Papers. Pendleton Co. Library, Falmouth, Ky.

Mildred Belew

DOVER. The town of Dover is situated on the Ohio River in Mason Co., about eight and a half miles northwest of Maysville, along Ky. Rt. 8, the Mary Ingles Highway. The area that is now Dover was in prehistoric times an abode of the American Indian mound-building Adena people (see Mound Builders), who erected a large mound there. With the arrival of white settlers, a town eventually emerged and thrived for a time. In 1786 Jeremiah Washburn and his family built the first house in Dover. Arthur Fox Jr. laid out the town in 1818, and they named it Dover for the town in England from which his father had immigrated. A post office was established in Dover in 1823, and the town was incorporated in 1836.

Dover had seen significant growth by the mid-19th century and became important as a shipping center. Several early businesses prepared the way. Gen. Anderson Lyon and Langhorn Tabb Sr. formed the Tabb and Lyon Company, which purchased tobacco for shipping to ports as far away as New Orleans and Boston. African American builder John Patty operated a coal- and brick-

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yard that furnished bricks for many of the houses built around Dover. Several banks, factories, and newspapers provided an environment of prosperity and optimism. The town expanded after the Civil War to include nearby Frenchtown in 1874 and extended its boundaries further in the following decade. During the late 1880s, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad ran a ser vice line through Dover, giving it better access to markets.

The town managed to recoup after the great flood of 1937, and the Mary Ingles Highway was completed in the 1950s. But by that time, the population of Dover was in decline and some businesses had closed. In 1968 a devastating tornado was a calamity that the residents of Dover found difficult to overcome. The community remained, but its once-bright potential as a commercial center was gone. During the 1990s the completion of the AA Highway served to isolate Dover further. In the year 2000, the city of Dover had a population of 316.

Calvert, Jean, and John Klee. The Towns of Mason County: Their Past in Pictures. Maysville, Ky.: Maysville and Mason Co. Library Historical and Scientific Association, 1986.

Clift, G. Glenn. History of Maysville and Mason County, Kentucky. Lexington, Ky.: Transylvania, 1936.

Rennick, Robert. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1984.

U.S. Census Bureau. “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed April 3, 2007).

Thomas S. Ward

DOVER COVERED BRIDGE. The Dover Covered Bridge in northwestern Mason Co., the oldest surviving covered bridge in Kentucky, was first built in 1835 as a toll bridge to replace a bridge that burned. Only 13 covered bridges remained standing in Kentucky in 2007, of which only Dover Covered Bridge and three others continue to carry auto traffic. There were once hundreds of covered bridges in the state, but their numbers have been whittled down by many causes. Some were burned during the Civil War; the vehicles crossing them became heavier over the years; new bridges have been built to replace them; and floods, storms, neglect, arson, and vandalism have damaged them as well.

Covered bridges were built as an attempt to protect the wooden floor of a bridge from the ravages of weather. The sloped roof of the bridge protected the deck and main truss of the bridge from rain, snow, and the heat of the sun. Water remaining on the floor or on a truss of a wooden bridge hastens rot, while prolonged heat causes wood to shrink and warp. The long-term effects of both rain and sun will cause the eventual deterioration of a wooden bridge.

The Dover Bridge carries Ky. Rt. 3113 across Lee Creek, just south of Ky. Rt. 8 (the Mary Ingles Highway) and the city of Dover. The bridge, built of treated wood, is 63 feet long. It was rebuilt in 1928, 1966, and 2000. During the 2000 rebuilding,

280 DOW DRUG STORES steel I-beams were inserted into the floor to help carry the heavier weight of vehicles. The original bridge construction used a double set of queenpost trusses on each side, much in the manner of barns built in that day. Each covered bridge, when built, expressed a unique construction method, based upon local building material and construction knowledge, to solve the problems relating to a stream’s width and the height of its banks. Ky. Rt. 3113 has recently been routed around the covered bridge, although motorists can still drive over the bridge on a short bypass road. The Dover Covered Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Brandenburg, Phyllis, and David Brandenburg. Kentucky’s Covered Bridges. Cincinnati: Harvest Press, 1968.

Powell, Robert A. Kentucky’s Covered Wooden Bridges. Lexington: Kentucky Images, 1984.

White, Vernon. Covered Bridges. Berea: Kentucky Imprints, 1985.

Charles H. Bogart

DOW DRUG STORES. Cora Dow (1868–1915) graduated from the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy in 1888 and took over her father’s small store on Fift h St. in Cincinnati. By 1915 Dow owned 11 drugstores, the second-largest pharmacy chain in the United States, larger than Walgreens at the time. In July 1916 Dow Drugs announced the purchase of the Gilmore Drug Company at the corner of Seventh and Madison Sts. in Covington, claiming that although Dow’s home was in Cincinnati, once the bridge was crossed, a Dow Drug Store became Kentuckian in feeling and spirit. In December the company announced that it would soon open a store in Newport at Eighth and Monmouth Sts. The Dow stores were cut raters, selling at below the normal retail price, an uncommon retail practice of the day. Some manufacturers refused to sell to Dow, but she challenged their pricing practices in court and won. Her firm was an early Rexall agency, an important pharmacy cooperative until the mid-1900s. Dow recognized the importance of women to her trade and furnished her stores so that they would be a welcoming place for them. She also hired women pharmacists and sales clerks.

Cora Dow’s only interests outside the business were animals and music. She campaigned nationally for the idea that horses should have a two-week annual vacation. She loved music and wanted to be a musician, but there is no evidence that she ever received any formal training.

Before her death in 1915, Dow sold her drugstores to an investment group. She designated the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as her major beneficiary, leaving it more than $700,000 (the equivalent of $13 million in 2004).

The original staff at the Covington store included pharmacists Charles H. Wagner and Charles Bock, as well as Hildreth Green, Marie Herget, and Bessie Ferguson. The Newport store opened on March 24, 1917, with much fanfare. The first pharmacist there was H. S. Kendrick. The 21st store in the chain opened at Pike and Madison in

Covington on April 13, 1918, with pharmacist Albert C. Wells in charge.

Henderson, M. L., and Dennis B. Worthen. “Cora Dow (1868–1915)—Pharmacist, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist,” Pharmacy in History 46 (2004): 91– 105.

Dennis B. Worthen

DOWNINGSVILLE. A milling and trade-route community, Downingsville, once existed in westcentral Grant Co. where Ky. Rt. 36 crosses Eagle Creek. Downingsville was situated in a wide valley of fertile bottomland not far from Eagle Creek’s Horseshoe Bend. The precise date of the village’s founding is not known, but a post office was opened there in 1843 or 1844. This village may have been named for pioneer John Downing, who founded the Democratic election precinct of Downingsville. In the 1840s the village was reported to be 10 miles west of Williamstown and described as containing one tavern, one doctor, one lawyer, one store, a few mechanics, and 30 inhabitants.

Spanning Eagle Creek at Downingsville was an iron bridge, one of four built in the county by the King Iron Bridge Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It was the county’s only double- span bridge, indicating a wider crossing at Downingsville.

Completed around 1891, the bridge connected the turnpikes that linked the towns of Dry Ridge and Jonesville.

In 1901 Downingsville occupied both sides of Eagle Creek and had two stores, a blacksmith shop, and one saloon. New and improved roads bypassed the village, and the post office closed in the early 20th century. In 1956 a new road and a concrete bridge replaced the old iron bridge, which was torn down, leaving empty piers to mark its location.

Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol. 1.

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

Westover, John H. Iron Bridges of Grant County.

Williamstown, Ky.: Williamstown Courier, 1901.

Barbara Loomis Brown

DRAKE, DANIEL (b. October 20, 1785, near Bound Brook, N.J.; d. November 5, 1852, Cincinnati, Ohio). Daniel Drake, a physician, a professor, an author, and a founder of medical institutions, was the son of Isaac and Elizabeth Shotwell Drake.

In 1788 his family moved to Mayslick in Mason Co. In 1800 Daniel’s father apprenticed him to Dr. William Goforth, a Cincinnati physician. Drake continued his studies in medicine at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1805–1806, studying under the noted physician Benjamin Rush. He returned to Northern Kentucky in 1806 and practiced medicine for one year in Mayslick, then moved to Cincinnati in 1807, where he assumed the practice of Dr. Goforth and married Harriet Sisson; they eventually had five children, three of whom survived past infancy. In 1810 he opened a general store and pharmacy with his brother Benjamin. Daniel sold the store to

complete his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1815–1816.

Drake was one of the most influential men of his day: he founded the Medical College of Ohio (now the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine) in 1819–1820, the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum in Cincinnati (now University Hospital, Cincinnati) in 1820–1821, and the Western Medical and Physical Journal in 1827. He held medical professorships at Transylvania University in Lexington (1817–1818 and 1823–1827); Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia (1830– 1831); Cincinnati College (1835–1839); Louisville Medical Institute, later called the University of Louisville (1839–1849 and 1850–1852); and the Medical College of Ohio (1819–1822, 1831–1832, 1849–1850, and 1852).

A prolific author, Drake published, among other works, Notices concerning Cincinnati (1810–1811); Natural and Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country (1815); A Practical Treatise on the History, Prevention, and Treatment of Epidemic Cholera, Designed for both the Profession and the People (1832); and A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, as They Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux Varieties of Its Population (vol. 1, 1850; vol. 2, 1854 [published posthumously]). Drake’s Pioneer Life in Kentucky (1870 [published posthumously]) is a source of much information about early Kentucky.

He was also editor of the Western Journal of Medicine and Physical Sciences (1828–1838) and of the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery (1840– 1849).

Drake was also a civic activist, serving as an elected trustee of the City of Cincinnati. A strong supporter of building a railroad from Cincinnati to Charleston, S.C., he published a tract entitled Rail-road from the Banks of the Ohio River to the Tide Waters of the Carolinas and Georgia in 1835 (see Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad). Drake died in 1852 and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Horine, Emmet Field. Daniel Drake (1785–1852): Pioneer Physician of the Midwest. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1961.

Shapiro, Henry D., and Zane L. Miller, eds. Physician to the West: Selected Writings of Daniel Drake on Science and Society. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1970.

Paul A. Tenkotte

DRAKE, MRS. ALEXANDER (“MRS. DRAKE”) (b. Frances Ann Denny, November 6, 1797, Schenectady, N.Y.; d. September 1, 1875, Oldham Co., Ky.). Frances Ann Denny grew up in Albany, N.Y., and made her theatrical debut at age 14 in Midnight Hour at a small theater owned by Noble Luke Usher in nearby Cherry Valley. A respected East Coast thespian, Usher had built the first theater in Kentucky at Lexington in 1808.

Because he was unable to persuade professional companies to travel to the west, he used amateur actors in his productions for several years. In 1814,

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though, he persuaded English-born stage manager Samuel Drake to organize a professional theater company in Albany to perform at Kentucky playhouses. Veteran actors rejected Drake’s proposal, so he relied upon his children: Samuel, Alexander, James, Martha, and Julia. Frances Ann Denny was one of the five novices who joined them. By the time the Drake Theater Company reached Lexington in 1815, Denny was an experienced and proficient actress. In late 1819 Denny left the Drakes to make a North American stage tour to Quebec, Montreal, Boston, and New York City, where she was spectacular when she appeared at the Park Theater on April 17, 1820, in Man and Wife.

She reunited with the Drakes in 1823, marrying Alexander Drake and assuming the name Mrs. Drake, by which she is still remembered. The couple built an elegant home in Covington, where they raised their daughter Julia, but Frances, known as “America’s finest tragedienne,” “First American Lady of Stage,” “Sarah Siddons of the West,” and “Star of the West,” often performed in the East.

Then, on February 10, 1830, Alexander Drake died unexpectedly on a stage in Cincinnati, leaving Frances to raise Julia. On January 23, 1840, Frances wed lawyer George W. Cutter, an Indiana state legislator and an accomplished poet. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Indianapolis. After a brief residency in Terre Haute, Ind., the couple moved to the Drake estate (the Daniel Carter Beard home) in Covington, Ky., where Cutter published poetry, headed a Kentucky military company during the Mexican War, and was active in Whig politics. When Zachary Taylor (1849–1850) was elected president in 1848, Cutter expected to be named U.S. ambassador to Morocco. However, Taylor died before making the appointment, and President Millard Fillmore (1850–1853) gave the sometimesintemperate Cutter a job in the U.S. Treasury Department. The Cutters’ marriage dissolved when Frances refused to relocate to Washington, D.C. After the divorce, Mrs. Drake appeared at theaters in Cincinnati and in St. Louis, Mo., and managed another venue, the Histrionic Temple, at the site of the old Louisville Theatre in Louisville. She eventually retired to Harmony Landing, the Drake farm along the Ohio River in Oldham Co., where she died on September 1, 1875. She was probably buried first on the farm next to her father, who had died in 1854; both were re-interred on the same day at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville in 1893.

Ford, George D. These Were Actors: The Story of the Chapmans and the Drakes. New York: Library, 1955.

Hill, West T., Jr. The Theatre in Early Kentucky, 1790–1820. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1971.

Odell, George C. D. Annals of the New York Stage.

Vol. 3. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1927.

Mike McCormick

DREES, RALPH A. (b. April 7, 1934, Covington, Ky.). Ralph A. Drees, a humanitarian and the president of the Drees Company, was the second of

three sons born to German immigrant Theodore Drees and Elizabeth Feldmann Drees. Growing up in Wilder in Campbell Co., Drees attended Newport Central Catholic High School and graduated with the class of 1952. He was then hired to work on the construction crew for his father’s company, Theodore Drees Builder. In 1956 Ralph Drees was drafted into the U.S. military and served in the Army Corps of Engineers in Alexandria, Va. On June 22, 1957, he married Irma Schultz. After Drees was discharged in September 1958, he created a partnership with his father and his brother called Drees Builders and Developers. In the first subdivision the firm developed, Fairwood Hills, Drees moved into the second home he built, bought a van, and drove the subdivision’s school bus for three years. On December 31, 1967, Drees and his brother dissolved their partnership (their father had retired earlier), and by August 27, 1968, Drees had formed a new corporation, Drees Builders and Developers Inc. He brought many innovations to the housing market. In 1974 he established the first planned unit development in Northern Kentucky— Prospect Point in Villa Hills. By the 1980s Drees Builders and Developers Inc. had moved into its first office building, on Royal Dr. in Fort Mitchell.

As the firm became part of the larger national market, it was renamed the Drees Company. Drees built his organization into the largest privately held company in the Greater Cincinnati Area and one of the top 25 homebuilders in the United States. In 1994 Drees stepped down as president of the company but remained chairman of the board of directors. On January 14, 2004, he was sworn in as judge executive of Kenton Co. after being appointed by Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher (2003–2007).

Over the years, Drees became involved in local government and business organizations, including the Home Builder’s Association of Northern Kentucky (HBANK), for which he was secretary in 1963, vice president in 1964, and president in 1965. He served a second term as president of the HBANK in 1978 and was instrumental in establishing the HBANK’s scholarship fund. Elected to the Erlanger City Council in November 1965, Drees was appointed by the mayor to the Erlanger Planning and Zoning Commission and the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission (NKAPC). Drees served on the NKAPC for 11 years. He was elected to the national board of directors for the Home Builders Association in 1973 and was appointed by Kentucky governor John Y. Brown (1979–1983) to a task force to analyze and prescribe solutions for Kentucky’s depressed real estate economy. Drees’s devotion to the housing industry earned him a position as president of the Home Builders Association of Kentucky in 1985.

As a businessman and community leader, Drees has received many awards, among them the Martin Conrad Memorial Award in 1987 and the 1990 Kentucky Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Real Estate/Construction category. He was named Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year in 1990, the National Builder of the Year (by Professional

281

Builder Magazine) in 1991, and the Northern Kentuckian of the Year (by Covington Catholic High School) in 1993. He has served in various community organizations, including the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, where he was chairman of the board in 1991; for 13 years he was a member of the Kenton Co. Airport Board (see Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport). He was inducted into the Greater Cincinnati Business Hall of Fame in 2000.

In honor of his company’s 75th anniversary in 2003, Drees donated the Drees Pavilion in Covington’s Devou Park to the community. In 2006 Drees was honored with National Hearthstone/ Builder Humanitarian Award for all his giving to charities, civic organizations, museums, schools, and social ser vice groups. Drees and his wife have five children, and together they created a charitable trust with the Northern Kentucky Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation.

“Celebrating Generosity,” KP, April 30, 2004, A14.

Drees, Ralph. Interview by Gabrielle Summe, March 2005, Covington, Ky. Drees Homes. www.dreeshomes.com (accessed April 2, 2006).

“High School to Honor Homebuilder Drees,” KP, May 12, 1903, 2K. Steinberg, Janice Burke, and Anne L. Mitchell. A Solid Foundation: The History of the Drees Company. Fort Mitchell, Ky.: Drees Homes, 2002.

Wilson, Dennis. “Ralph Drees Wins Honor for His Charity Work,” KP, December 19, 2005, 2K.

Gabrielle Summe

DRIVE-INS. Drive-in movie theaters and restaurants, where customers stayed in their cars to eat a meal or watch a movie, operated in Northern Kentucky from the mid-20th century until 1992.

The flourishing of such establishments was directly related to the post–World War II “car culture.”

At a drive-in movie theater, customers simply purchased a ticket at the gate, pulled the car into an open spot, and attached the speaker inside a window on the car’s left side. Having a meal at a drivein restaurant was a bit more complex. Upon entering the parking lot, the driver would find a parking spot and study the menu, which was displayed either on one large sign or on a small sign next to each parking spot. Once a decision was made, the driver would turn on the car’s headlights to attract a carhop. After taking the order, the carhop would deliver the food on a tray designed to fit onto the driver’s-side window. Once the food was consumed, the driver would signal with the headlights again, and a carhop would come and remove the tray. Later drive-in restaurants were equipped with two-way speaker systems for communication between the driver and the carhop.

Drive-in restaurants in Northern Kentucky all took their cues from one franchise, Frisch’s. The Greater Cincinnati area’s first drive-in restaurant was the Frisch’s Mainliner, which opened in 1939 in Fairfax, Ohio, along Wooster Pk. The first drivein in Northern Kentucky, a Frisch’s, was established in Newport in 1949, at 19th and Monmouth Sts. (U.S. 27). Eventually four more Frisch’s drive-in

282 DROEGE, IGNATIUS J. restaurants opened in Northern Kentucky, in Covington, Erlanger, Fort Thomas, and Fort Mitchell.

The last remaining drive-in restaurant in the region was the Erlanger Frisch’s. An era ended when on April 1, 1988, carhops took their customers’ final orders at the Frisch’s in Erlanger at Dixie Highway and Forest Ave. The company was converting all of its drive-in restaurants to the use of drive-through windows instead.

Of course, other drive-in restaurants made their names known in Northern Kentucky. One of the most famous was Schilling’s Drive-In in Fort Wright. Owned by the Schilling family who also owned the Lookout House and the Beverly Hills Supper Club, Schilling’s Drive-In was a successful entry into the drive-in market. The establishment earned some publicity when it appeared in a 1955 Popular Science article that described its new audio system featuring walkietalkies. The other drive-in chain in the region was Jerry’s, a company based in Lexington that had outlets in front of the entrance to the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater and in Florence at Turfway Rd. and the Dixie Highway. Jerry’s Restaurants, now the corporation Jerrico Inc., also established the successful Long John Silver’s chain of restaurants.

Drive-In theaters were established in Northern Kentucky during the late 1940s. The first one, the Florence Drive-In, opened on the Dixie Highway near Main St. in Florence on May 22, 1947, at a cost of $143,000; it could accommodate 800 cars. Just a few weeks later, on July 3, 1947, Willis Vance opened the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater, which had a 700-car capacity, along the Dixie Highway in Lookout Heights (Fort Wright). Vance had also started the Strand Theater in Covington and theaters in Newport and Latonia. On the site of Tacoma Park’s failed dog track and speedway in Dayton, the Riverview Drive-In Theater opened on September 5, 1948. Southern Campbell Co. received its own drive-in when the Pike 27 AutoTheater opened in October 1954. It was customary for the drive-ins to show two fi lms per night; starting times varied with the time of sunset.

By 1960 both the Dixie Gardens and the Florence Drive-In theaters were owned by Redland Theaters, which also owned the Madison Theater and the Liberty Theater in Covington. Often the Madison Theater and the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater would show the same fi lm; another fi lm would be shown at both the Liberty Theater and the Florence Drive-In Theater. The Florence DriveIn Theater was open year-round, through the use of “in-car warmers.” The Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater had an accompanying building with a skating rink for winter amusement. Both of these drive-in theaters were sold to National Amusements in August 1969. While the heyday of the drive-in theaters was the 1950s and 1960s, both theaters survived into the 1970s, showing largely a combination of B-grade horror movies, oddities fi lms, and soft-core pornography.

In December 1970 Kenton Co. commonwealth attorney John J. O’Hara began targeting the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater as what he called a pub-

lic nuisance. O’Hara cited fi lms such as Love Object and The Seducers, both rated X, and the R-rated Barbarella as examples of movies that should not be shown. Although he conceded that he could not shut down the theater on the content of the fi lms, he did get a permanent injunction on the basis of a public nuisance, because its screen was visible to travelers on I-75.

The demise of drive-in theaters in Northern Kentucky in the 1980s occurred mostly because of two factors, rising land prices and competition from multiscreen cinemas. As development pushed farther and farther south, land values increased, making land-intensive businesses like drive-in theaters more expensive. At the same time, interstate highways made traveling to multiscreen cinemas a much more attractive option even for the reluctant driver. Cinemas in Florence and Erlanger claimed the clientele that drive-in theaters had retained.

The Riverview Drive-In Theater was severely damaged in the flood of 1964 and never regained its earlier success. The theater limped on until it closed in 1982, to be replaced by the Watertown Yacht Club. The Florence Drive-In Theater closed in 1988 and was soon replaced by condominiums and retail business in the fast-developing area. The screen of the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater was destroyed by a fire in 1990; the site has been purchased and is being developed into luxury-car dealerships. Even the Pike 27 Auto-Theater in Cold Spring, threatened by no nearby multiscreen cinemas and ser viced by no nearby interstate highways, closed in 1992, leaving the Boone-Kenton-Campbell Co. area without a drive-in theater. Other drive-in theaters in the outlying areas included the Riverview Drive-In Theater in Carrollton in Carroll Co., the Judy Drive-In Theater in Dry Ridge in Grant Co., and the Park Drive-In Theater in Maysville in Mason Co. Most recently, the availability of movies that can be viewed at home, via purchase or rent or cable access, has made the trip to the drive-in theater seem even more a quaint fi xture of the past.

Reis, Jim. “Big Screen Entertainment,” KP, February 11, 2002, 4K. Theoret, Nanci. “Curb Ser vice Returns for This Weekend at Erlanger Landmark,” Dixie News, July 30, 1992, 1.

Chris Meiman

DROEGE, IGNATIUS J. (b. January 30, 1828, Velmede, Germany; d. June 12, 1910, Covington, Ky.). Ignatius Joseph Droege, a Covington industrialist, was the seventh of 10 children of Frederick and Maria Franciscius Huecker Droege. In 1849 he immigrated to America in pursuit of financial opportunity. Trained as a blacksmith, he found employment in steel manufacturing at the Bush & Jordan Rolling Mill along the Licking River in Covington. He became a lifelong member of the German Pioneer Society (see German Americans) shortly after arriving. Five years later, on April 19, 1853, he married Maria Anna Schmidt, the stepdaughter of a German immigrant carpenter, and the couple had four sons and one daughter.

They lived first on the north side of 12th St. between Greenup and Scott; then in 1863 the family moved to a larger home at 1217 Greenup. Ignatius handcrafted the cherry mantelpieces in the new home and the iron fencing surrounding it. Soon after their move, Maria Anna died of cholera, and her half sister, Antoinette Koran, moved into the Droege house to care for the five young children.

Antoinette and Ignatius were married May 16, 1865, at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Covington. Antoinette gave birth to nine children.

In 1867 Droege joined Charles Bogenschutz as a partner in the Droege & Bogenschutz Stove Foundry Company, manufacturers of stoves, hollowware, and castings. In 1877 Droege secured a bank loan, enabling him to purchase the Phillips & Jordan Rolling Mill (formerly the Bush & Jordan Rolling Mill). His partnership in the Droege & Bogenschutz Foundry was dissolved that same year, and Bogenschutz retained the foundry.

Droege changed the name of his company to the Licking Rolling Mill. Its output was 25,000 tons of bar iron annually, mainly for industrial use. At that time the mill was the largest employer in Covington, with 350 workers. Droege continued to be identified with the Licking Rolling Mill until his retirement in 1897, when he turned its management over to his sons. His wealth was estimated at $1 million. In 1899, when the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) was having fi nancial difficulty funding the completion of its Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Droege presented Bishop Camillus Paul Maes with a check for $10,000. In 1910, at the age of 82, Droege died of a stroke at his home and was buried at St. Mary Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. He was preceded in death by three sons and three daughters. The Droege homestead, with the I. Droege brass nameplate on the front door, still stands. It remained in the family until Emily, his last surviving child, died in 1964.

“Fine Gift: Bishop Maes Gets Ten Thousand Dollars,” KP, November 18, 1899, 1.

“The German Pioneer Society of Covington and Newport: History, Minutes, and Papers, 1877–ca.

1902,” trans. Sr. Mary Romilda Bertsch, S.N.D., and Sr. Mary Edwin Paetzold, S.N.D., 1988, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Ignatz Droege Dies,” KP, June 6, 1910, 2.

Johnson, E. Polk. History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. New York: Lewis, 1912.

“Notice—Co-Partnership Dissolves,” Covington Ticket, August 3, 1877, 2.

Reis, Jim. “Smoke Stacks Once a Familiar Sight,” KP, July 14, 1986, 4K. St. Mary Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell, Ky. Schroeder, David E. “Building a Celestial City,” Messenger, December 14, 2001, 20A–29A.

Barbara Droege and Joyce Edmondson

DRUG ABUSE. See Substance Abuse Treatment; Transitions Inc.

DRURY CHAPEL METHODIST CHURCH. Th is lovely old southwestern Gallatin Co. church is located in a small community once known as

DRY RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL

Hoggins. The church is on Drury Chapel Rd. about one mile off Walnut Valley Rd. It sits atop a hill next to a former one-room school, where there is a spectacular view of the valley. A circuit-riding Methodist preacher from Flemingsburg was the first pastor of the church. Early meetings were held in the homes of members, in the old log schoolhouse, or on the Fothergill farm at Campground Springs in Gallatin Co. The Civil War delayed the construction of the first church’s building, which was dedicated on October 10, 1867. Members of the congregation provided building materials and the labor. The pastor at that time was Rev. E. L. Southgate of Newport. The Drury Chapel Methodist Church continues to function today in the community.

Bogardus, Carl R., Sr. The Story of Gallatin County.

Ed. James C. Claypool. Cincinnati: John S. Swift, 2003.

Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1984.

Darrell Maines

DRY RIDGE. The community established in Kentucky on the north-south Dry Ridge Trace, at its intersection with the northwest-southeast buffalo trail (see Buffalo Traces) between Big Bone Lick and the Blue Licks, became known as Dry Ridge. Early members of the Old Baptist Church on the Dry Ridge, organized in 1791 at Campbell’s Block house, settled in the vicinity.

Another early resident was James Theobald, who served as justice of the peace in 1799 while the area was a part of Pendleton Co. As time passed, the Dry Ridge community grew and spread north of Campbell’s Block house.

The post office established in 1815 at Dry Ridge was the first in the area that became Grant Co. The first postmaster was G. P. Koulat, who was succeeded by William Hopkins in 1816, then by Griffin Theobald in 1818. In 1820, when Grant Co. was formed, some of the county’s residents included the families of Lawrence Buskirk, Henry Childers, Joseph Childers, G. Childers, Major Childers, Thomas Childers, William Conrad, Jesse Conyers, Acklin DeHart, Martin Draper, Richard Landrum, John Lawless, Simon Nichols, Charles Norton, John Norton, Absolam Skirvin, Asa Tungate, and George F. Wheeler.

The community of Dry Ridge developed around two population centers, The largest of these was between the Big Bone Lick–Blue Licks Buffalo Trail (today’s Warsaw Ave., Ky. Rt. 467) and Big Bone Lick, joined by the Dry Ridge Trace (today’s U.S. 25). The second center, south of the fi rst, was where the buffalo trail (Knoxville or Broadridge Rd.) to Blue Licks joined the Dry Ridge Trace.

These two centers are still known by long-time residents as the Upper Ridge (Knoxville Rd.) and the Lower Ridge (Warsaw Rd.). The terms are in keeping with “up to Lexington” (higher elevation) and “down to Covington or Cincinnati” (lower elevation) but are confusing to visitors and new residents, who usually think of south as down and north as up.

Dry Ridge developed as a trading center for the surrounding farming area. Landowners established taverns or general stores to serve travelers as well as nearby residents. The first record of a sale of land in building-lot size (rather than by acres) was a piece of property acquired in April 1848 by trustees of the James Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church South in the Lower Ridge. Soon afterward, in September 1848, the trustees of the Dry Ridge Baptist Church on Broadway purchased a building site in the Upper Ridge. The Presbyterian Church in Dry Ridge, whose congregation traces its history to the Old Baptist Church on the Dry Ridge, occupies an 1892 meetinghouse on Warsaw Ave. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in town, organized in 1896, built its church on School St. in 1900 and has added many improvements since. The Dry Ridge Colored Baptist Church, as it was first named, was organized in 1915 with 50 members. In 1918 it acquired a lot adjoining the Black School in the Upper Ridge from Arthur Thompson and his wife, and the church changed its name to the Second Baptist Church of Dry Ridge. It has been in continuous use over the years and is now named Zion Baptist Church.

Dry Ridge was incorporated in 1909, the last of the four towns in Grant Co. to incorporate. Also in 1909 a creamery company, drilling for fresh water, instead found mineral water believed to include medicinal qualities beneficial in treating arthritis and similar conditions. A hotel was built and named the Carlsbad Springs Hotel, after the famous health hotel in Carlsbad, Germany. The hotel in Dry Ridge was destroyed by fire in 1927, along with many other businesses in the area. Although later rebuilt, the hotel never regained its earlier prominence.

In 1937 Dry Ridge completed a waterdistribution system supplied with water from Williamstown’s municipal lake and water purification plant. Later, Dry Ridge signed a contract with the Bullock Pen Water District for supplemental water.

By 1980 a sewage-collection system was completed

by Dry Ridge. A contract with Williamstown was entered into for the processing and disposal of sewage through the Williamstown plant.

Today, with an increasing population; active retail and wholesale distributors, including an outlet center, modern restaurants, and motels for travelers and tourists; and a recently enlarged and expanded interchange with I-75, continued growth and development is to be expected for Dry Ridge.

Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

John B. Conrad

DRY RIDGE, OLD BAPTIST CHURCH ON THE. See Old Baptist Church on the Dry Ridge.

DRY RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH. The Dry Ridge Baptist Church was the fourth church to be organized in the part of Kentucky that became Grant Co. in 1820. Initially, to distinguish it from the congregation known as the Old Baptist

283

Church on the Dry Ridge, the Dry Ridge Baptist Church was known as the Baptist Church at the Dry Ridge, Free Will. Elders Benjamin Lambert and Alexander Monroe founded this church on July 12, 1817, with 11 original members. The 12th member, and the first minister, was Elder Christian Tomlin, a native of Virginia who moved to the Dry Ridge from Ohio in 1817. Ser vices were held in the meetinghouse that was built in 1799 and shared with the Old Baptist Church on the Dry Ridge, under an agreement reached in 1818. The latter church moved to Williamstown in 1826, leaving this meetinghouse to the Free Will Baptists, who had improved it with the purchase of a stove.

In 1843 the church’s trustees reported that a building site had been obtained at the intersection of the Covington and Lexington Turnpike (U.S. 25) and the Broadridge (Knoxville) Rd. The meetinghouse that was built there was of frame construction, 50 feet by 30 feet. A deed for this property was not recorded until 1848; it is reported that church records for the period 1846 to 1877 were lost. In August 1875 the church’s trustees purchased a building site on Warsaw Rd. (now Warsaw Ave. in Dry Ridge), and a new church was built.

It was used until 1895, when it was found to be inadequate for the church’s rapidly growing needs; a larger building was completed on the same site and dedicated July 28, 1901.

In 1924 the church constructed a new parsonage on Broadway in Dry Ridge, which was occupied by Rev. J. W. Black and his family. In August 1928 a lot was purchased on which to erect a new house of worship on the southwest corner of Broadway and Church Sts. On September 29, 1929, this church was dedicated; it remains the church building in use today. To support the church’s needs, an annex was built in 1957. A new parsonage was constructed on Broadway near the church in 1960, and the old parsonage at 44 Broadway was sold. In 1988 the church refurbished the sanctuary.

In 1992 this large and growing congregation celebrated its 175th anniversary.

Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

John B. Conrad

DRY RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. The Dry Ridge High School was one of four high schools established by the Grant Co. Board of Education during the early part of the 20th century. The school began in 1909 in one room of the existing four-room school building of the Dry Ridge Graded Free School. The school’s principal (and its only teacher) was Bruce Franks. He was succeeded by Robert Sheriff for the school year 1910–1911, who had four students for whom he offered extra teaching time and classes after regular hours so that they might complete the regular four-year curriculum in three years. Orie P. Gruelle followed Sheriff at the school in the fall of 1911. The students’ accelerated course of studies was completed, and the first class of four students graduated in the spring of 1912.

A new brick building was constructed, with four classrooms on the first floor for the first eight

284 DRY RIDGE TRACE grades and three classrooms and an assembly room on the second floor for the high school. That building was destroyed by fire in 1914 and was replaced by another brick building that served as the school for many years.

Eighteen students graduated in the last class at Dry Ridge High School in the spring of 1953. The new consolidated Grant Co. High School, built on the south side of Dry Ridge, replaced the four county high schools. The new Grant Co. Middle School was built on the same property. Classes for the Dry Ridge Elementary School, grades one through six, were held in the building that had housed Dry Ridge High School until that building was destroyed by fire in 1973. A new building for the Dry Ridge Elementary School was built near the Grant Co. Middle School to replace the building that had burned.

Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

John B. Conrad

DRY RIDGE TRACE. The Dry Ridge Trace, a north-south path between modern Lexington and the mouth of the Licking River, was an early animal and American Indian trail (see Buffalo Traces) used for decades before the European settlers arrived. The trace followed the crest of the dry ridge, the great drainage divide between the tributaries of the Licking River on the east and those of the Kentucky River on the west. For some 60 miles, from Georgetown in Scott. Co. north to the floodplains of the Ohio River, there are no streams to cross, so travel on foot or horseback is easy.

Col. John Bowman used this route in 1779, and again in 1780, to lead his pioneers to punish the Shawnee Indians north of the Ohio River for their interference with Kentucky settlers. In 1788 John Filson and two partners surveyed the Dry Ridge Trace on their way to the north side of the Ohio River, where they were going to develop a settlement for settlers who would move from Lexington.

Originally called Losantiville, the settlement was later named Cincinnati. In 1790, when the area was a part of Woodford Co., Va., the county court adopted the Filson Survey of the Dry Ridge Trace, describing the path as “a tolerable good wagon road.” As county formations took place in Kentucky, each succeeding county, Scott in 1792, Campbell in 1794, and Pendleton in 1798, adopted the road as a county road. These counties required landowners to maintain the portion of the road abutting their property; however, this requirement was not always enforced for absentee owners with large tracts of unsettled land.

In 1819 the Kentucky legislature made the Dry Ridge Trace a state turnpike, leading from Georgetown north, and established a commission to maintain the road with toll collections from tollgates (see Covington and Lexington Turnpike). After the Civil War, the Kentucky and Tennessee, legislatures chartered the Cincinnati Southern Railroad (now Norfolk Southern), granting it the power to acquire the necessary rights-of-way through both states. In the open

country between built-up communities, the crest of the dry ridge from Erlanger to Georgetown was taken by the railroad for its tracks; with no streams to cross, the railroad had no bridges to build. The turnpike was rebuilt alongside the tracks and is now identified as the Dixie Highway (U.S. 25).

Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

Jillson, Willard Rouse. Pioneer Kentucky. Frankfort, Ky.: State Journal, 1934.

“Your Town—Dry Ridge, Ancient Buffalo Trace Rides Crest of Kentucky Progress,” KTS, March 5, 1957, 15.

John B. Conrad

DUEBER WATCH CASE COMPANY. In about 1863, in association with Francis Doll, John C. Dueber established an office and workshop to make watches in one room on the third floor of the Carlisle Building in Cincinnati. A year later, Dueber struck out on his own and established the Dueber Watch Case Company, utilizing various locations in Cincinnati and Newport. Around 1874, he moved the company into a new building at Washington and Jefferson (now Sixth St.) in Newport. He hired the best artisans available and began the manufacture of high-quality watchcases.

To this day, Dueber watchcases rival those made anywhere else in the world, commanding prices in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. The firm’s early cases were made of solid gold or coin-quality silver, but later gold-fi lled and -plated cases were also made. The company sold its product to many large companies, including Waltham and Elgin.

Dueber soon became one of the largest manufacturers of watchcases in the United States. By 1880 its business had increased enough that it built a second factory, one block north, at Washington and Madison (now Fift h) Sts. A tunnel was dug under Sixth St., connecting the two buildings. One of Dueber’s customers was the Mozart Watch Company of Providence, R.I., which also had begun business in 1864. Over the years, Mozart had several name changes and was eventually known as the Hampden Watch Company and was located in Springfield, Mass. About that time, the American Watch Trust was formed by some competing watchmakers, which led to a boycott of Duebermade cases. To protect his company’s interest, John Dueber purchased controlling interest in the Hampden Company in 1886. He named his new company the Dueber-Hampden Watch Company and began to manufacture complete watches. He found that operating two widely separated plants was impractical, so he built two new buildings on a site in Canton, Ohio, and closed the other factories, including the two in Newport.

The company’s success was at its pinnacle about the time of John C. Dueber’s death, in 1907.

Dueber-Hampden had about 3,000 employees at that time. John’s son Albert took over as president of the company and tried to continue his father’s business practices. However, business conditions were changing and watch sales fell so much that the company was no longer profitable. In September 1925 Albert sold his interest in the company to

a group of Cleveland businessmen for $1,551,000.

The new owners had no experience in watchmaking, which led to further deterioration in sales, and eventually the company was forced into receivership. The Dueber-Hampden Watch Company ceased operations in 1930 and the following year sold its equipment to Armand Hammer, the wellknown head of Occidental Petroleum Corp., who sent the equipment to Moscow, Russia. The company there was called the Amtorg Watch Company and became Russia’s first watchmaker. That company later ceased operations, and the equipment was sold to a Swiss watchmaker.

Gibbs, James. W. The Dueber-Hampden Story. Philadelphia: National Association of Watch Case Companies, 1954.

Oldwatch.com. “Hampden Pocket Watches.” www .oldwatch.com (accessed April 3, 2007).

The Watch Guy. “Hampden Watch Co. aka Dueber Watch Co.” www.thewatchguy.homestead.com (accessed April 3, 2007).

DUELS. The two most famous duels that took place in Northern Kentucky were between future governor William Goebel (1890) and John L. Sandford in April 1895 in Covington and between Leonidas Metcalfe and William Casto in Maysville in May 1862, when Metcalfe killed Casto (see Casto-Metcalfe Duel). Some well-known duels involving Kentuckians from other parts of the state pitted future U.S. President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) against Charles Dickinson in 1806, Henry Clay against political antagonist Humphrey Marshall in 1809, and aggrieved newspaperman George Trotter against Charles Wickliffe in 1829.

Kentuckians inherited the practice of dueling from their European forebears. In this elite societal ritual, only wealthy and middle-class gentlemen engaged in formal duels, and men challenged only other men of the same social rank. If a gentleman was insulted by a man of lower rank, the gentlemen would cane or beat the offending person.

Among peers, a prescribed ritual guided the behavior of both the accuser and the aggrieved. It began when an accuser insulted the honor of another. Insults could take a variety of forms, but they were often derogatory statements regarding a man’s character or that of his family. The aggrieved party returned the insult with a challenge, thereby questioning the honor of the accuser and necessitating that the honor of both principals be defended. The accuser established the place of the duel, the date and time, the distance, and the instruments (often pistols) to be used. Word of mouth or public notice then made the community aware of the impending event. Men called “seconds” were on hand to guarantee that neither principal violated the established rules. After firing, the men— dead or alive—were viewed as having restored or confirmed their honor, and the issue was resolved.

The ritual of dueling revolved around complex systems of honor. Although men typically described honor as a personal attribute, it was more accurately defined as a community consensus about a man’s social status, based upon a set of ethical rules. Thus, the community, not the individual, determined

DURO BAG MANUFACTURING COMPANY

honor. As a standard by which men judged other men, honor was considered important both on a personal level and in business relationships. For slave owners, honor and mastery were seen also as important tools needed to control their slaves. The duel sought to mollify tensions through a ritualistic bloodletting designed to purify the social status of both the accuser and the aggrieved party by demonstrating their courage and manhood in the face of fire.

By the beginning of the 19th century, several forces in Kentucky chafed against the ideals that had bolstered the tradition of dueling. Geographic and social mobility destabilized communities and disrupted clear class hierarchies. Important opposition came from religious leaders, as well as from members of the middle class who viewed dueling, death, and injury as threatening to business partnerships and contracts. Businessmen found an alternate arena in which to restore besmirched honor—the courtroom. Lawyers, not arms and bullets, became the preferred tool to fight slander and libel, a choice reflected in the law. In 1799 the Kentucky legislature prohibited dueling and established substantial fi nes for each offense. Later, it added jail terms to the list of punishments. By 1811 Kentucky law mandated that government officeholders take a nondueling oath. Finally, lawmakers added a provision to the 1849 state constitution that forbade anyone who participated in a duel to hold public office. By the last third of the 19th century, dueling had become anachronistic.

Coleman, J. Winston, Jr. Famous Kentucky Duels.

Lexington, Ky.: Henry Clay Press, 1969.

“Tragedy, John L. Sandford, Director and Cashier, Killed by Senator Goebel,” KP, April 11, 1895, 3.

Williams, Jack K. Dueling in the Old South: Vignettes of Social History. College Station: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 1980.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.

William H. Bergmann

DUKE, BASIL (b. 1766, Calvert Co., Md.; d. June 11, 1828, Washington, Ky.). Born to James and Mary Wilson Duke, Dr. Basil Duke studied medicine in Baltimore, Md. After briefly practicing medicine in his home state, he moved to Kentucky in 1791, locating initially in Lexington. In 1794 he married Charlotte Marshall, daughter of Revolutionary War veteran Col. Thomas Marshall and sister of U.S. Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall. The couple settled in Washington, Ky., in 1798, where Duke again established a medical practice and served residents of Mason Co. as well as surrounding areas. The two-story brick structure that once served as the Duke family residence still stands along Green St. in historic Washington, although it is now abandoned and dilapidated.

Remembered as being one of Mason Co.’s pioneer doctors, Duke died in 1828; his burial place is unknown.

“Basil Duke House May Be Demolished: Building Was Once a Schoolhouse,” KP, February 8, 2003, 7K.

Best, Edna Hunter. The Historic Past of Washington, Mason County, Kentucky. Cynthiana, Ky.: Hobson Book Press, 1944.

Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol. 1.

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

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Dawson, Albert F. Columbia System: A History.

New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1937.

“Light Company Organized,” KP, April 30, 1901, 1.

“Utility Seeks Control of ULH&P,” KP, March 16, 1994, 8A.

Judy L. Neff

DUKE ENERGY. In April 2006 Charlotte, N.C.– based Duke Energy, which now serves Northern Kentucky, merged with CINergy Inc. in a $9 billion deal, in which the Duke name was retained.

This merger created a mega power-generation organization with 5.4 million customers, including 3.7 million electric consumers and 1.7 million gas users—one of the nation’s largest utilities. Duke Energy has $27 billion in annual revenues, with 54,000 megawatts of electric generation capacity both domestically and internationally. CINergy was formed by the 1994 merger of the 157-year-old Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company (CG&E) with PSI Resources of Plainfield, Ind., in a $3.3 billion transaction.

Since 1945 Northern Kentucky’s Union Light, Heat & Power Company (ULH&P) had been a wholly owned subsidiary of CG&E, serving some 145,000 residential customers in five counties: Boone, Campbell, Kenton, Grant, and Pendleton.

For state-regulatory reasons, CG&E in Northern Kentucky was conducted as a separate corporation. Before 1945, the Columbia Gas System, the same holding company that held CG&E until September 1946, also owned ULH&P. Columbia had purchased ULH&P in 1907, operating CG&E and ULH&P as affi liated but separate entities until October 1945, when ULH&P became a subsidiary of CG&E. The Columbia group also owned the Cincinnati, Newport, and Covington Railway (the Green Line) from February 1907 until October 1944. A 1935 federal law required that gas and electric energy producers such as Columbia divest themselves of nonrelated business subsidiaries. It was Columbia that had brought the first natural gas transmission lines to Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati from the West Virginia gas fields via a 183-mile, 20-inch pipeline into and through Covington in 1909, replacing the locally produced artificial gas diff used from coal.

By 1902 the six or so gas and electric companies in Northern Kentucky had consolidated into the ULH&P organization. Two of the last survivors were the Suburban Electric Company and the old Covington Gas Light Company. Covington native James C. Ernst was the company’s president and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1914.

Another Northern Kentuckian who later was heavily involved in both ULH&P and the Green Line was Polk Laffoon.

Beckjord, Walter C. The Queen City of the West— during 110 Years. New York: Newcomen Society, 1951.

Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company. The CG&E Story. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Gas & Electric, 1959.

“Cinergy, Duke Merger Gets OK,” KP, November 30, 2005, 3K. “Columbia Corporation Closes Deal,” KP, February 5, 1907, 1.

DURBIN, JOHN PRICE (b. October 10, 1800, Bourbon Co., Ky.; d. October 18, 1876, New York City). John P. Durbin was an accomplished cabinetmaker when at age 18 he experienced a religious conversion and decided to become a minister. In 1821 he began preaching in Hamilton, Ohio, and also attending nearby Miami University at Oxford.

Later, he resumed his studies at Cincinnati College, where he was awarded both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in 1825. From 1825 to 1831, he was a professor of languages at Augusta College in Bracken Co., when that school was a flourishing center of learning. In 1831 he was named chaplain of the U.S. Senate. From 1833 to 1844 he was the president of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and after that he traveled abroad. He was a preacher and an author. His two most famous travel works are Observations in Europe, Principally in France and Great Britain (1844) and Observations in the East, Chiefly in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor (1845). In 1849 he moved to Philadelphia, where he preached and was elected secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Missionary Society, a position he held until 1872.

In 1876 Durbin died in New York City and was buried in Philadelphia.

Chronicles. http://chronicles.dickinson.edu (accessed March 31, 2007).

Rankins, Walter H. Augusta College. Frankfort, Ky.: Roberts, 1955.

DURO BAG MANUFACTURING COMPANY. S. David Shor started the Duro Bag Manufacturing Company in 1953 in Ludlow. At this first location, it manufactured only paper grocery and shopping bags. During the 1970s the company expanded by opening new plants in Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and Mexico. The company’s Ludlow warehouse caught fire on May 28, 1977, the night of the horrific Beverly Hills Supper Club fire.

The warehouse was rebuilt and full operations resumed. Duro added a plastic bag and designer division in the 1980s, and it acquired the S&G Packaging Company, which increased sales and allowed product line expansions. The Duro Bag Manufacturing Company now has 12 plants and employs more than 2,500 persons. Duro products are sold directly to customers or through distributors and brokers. The company, which remains privately held and family-owned and -operated, is now the largest bag manufacturer in North America. It operates plants at three Northern Kentucky locations, Covington, Florence, and Richwood. The corporate offices are in Ludlow. The current president and CEO of the Duro Bag Manufacturing Company is Charles Shor.

“Duro Bag Acquires Richmond Paper Plant,” KP, January 24, 1995, 3K. Duro Bag Mfg. Co. www.durobag.com (accessed April 3, 2007).

286 DURR, R. C. “Duro Bag Unit Plans Merger,” KE, May 23, 1997, 12C. “Duro Bag Warehouse Burns,” KP, May 30, 1977, 15.

DURR, R. C. (b. May 14, 1919, Atwood, Ky.; d. May 21, 2007, Edgewood, Ky.). Construction entrepreneur and philanthropist Robert Charles Durr was the second son born to Steve and Carrie L. Stevens Durr. Durr was a member of the last graduating class of Independence High School at Independence in 1939; but instead of enrolling in college, he bought a car with the $500 his aunt gave him for college tuition and went to work at Newport Steel in Newport, making 50 cents an hour. Over the years, he ran a general store with his brother, drove a supply truck for $12 a week, served in the U.S. Army, sharpened tools at Wright Aeronautical, and worked at General Motors. In 1941 Durr met Katherine Ballinger at a skating rink in Falmouth, Ky., and they married in 1946. Having borrowed money in 1945 to buy three trucks, Durr hauled limestone to farmers and blacktopped driveways until 1949, when he became the successful bidder to build Frogtown Rd. in Boone Co., his first highway project. In 1950 Durr formed the R. C. Durr Company, which focused on grading and draining roads, mining coal, and building railroads. He successfully operated a coal mine for 10 years, and his company built more than 300 miles of road, including large portions of I-75. Durr’s firm was awarded the initial contract for a segment of the Eastern Kentucky Turnpike (Mountain Pkwy.) in 1961. He built one of the first modern gravel pits in Northern Kentucky.

In 1964 he acquired Eaton Asphalt and established it as Northern Kentucky’s largest paving company.

He was president of the Kentucky Association of Highway Contractors, the Kentucky Chapter of the American Road Builders Association, and the Kentucky Highway Division of the Associated General Contractors of America. He served on the board of the Boone Co. Water and Sewer District and the Northern Kentucky University Foundation. He also founded the Northern Kentucky Industrial Foundation in Florence.

Durr’s interest in horses became a business interest by 1970; he bought, sold, and raced thoroughbreds. He served on the Kentucky State Racing Commission from 1980 to 1992. The R. C. Durr Company ceased construction operations in 1987, leaving Durr to pursue his interest in banking. He was a founder of Boone State Bank in Florence, which later was sold and became Fift h Third Bank. In 1990 Durr helped establish the Bank of Boone County, now the Bank of Kentucky, and he served on its board of directors. He also served on the local boards of the Covington Trust and Banking Company and Fifth Third Bank. After his wife Katherine died in 1992, Durr created the R. C. Durr Foundation. His generosity extended to small charities and nonprofit organizations. Self-effacing and modest, Durr shunned recognition, allowing only the YMCA on Burlington Pike in Boone Co., to be named for him. In 2003 he was inducted into the Kentucky Transportation Hall of Fame as one of the construction industry’s visionaries. Durr married his second wife, Deborah Jo, in September

2002, and they lived on a 193-acre farm in Richwood, raising cattle and thoroughbred horses. R. C. Durr died in 2007 of complications related to cancer and was buried in Independence Cemetery.

Kreimer, Peggy. “Durr’s Generosity Shaped the Region,” KP, May 23, 2007, 1A. “Millionaire Counts Blessing, Not Money,” CE, August 10, 2003, B1.

“NKU Foundation Salutes Durr’s Generosity,” KP, November 8, 1991, 8A. Univ. of Kentucky College of Engineering. “A Tribute to R.C. Durr.” www.ktc.uky.edu (accessed March 27, 2006).

Gabrielle Summe

DUVENECK, FRANK (b. Francis Decker, October 9, 1848, Covington, Ky.; d. January 3, 1919, Cincinnati, Ohio). The renowned artist, sculptor, and teacher Frank Duveneck (Francis Decker) was born into the German Catholic working-class family of Bernard and Catherine Siemers Decker.

Both the Decker and the Siemers families were originally from Damme, a small town near Oldenburg, Westphalia, Germany. According to family accounts, Frank’s father died during the cholera epidemic of 1849. On February 27, 1851, Catherine Decker married Joseph Duveneck at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on Green St. in Cincinnati. Joseph Duveneck, an 1847 immigrant from Germany, was a grocer and a justice of the peace in Cincinnati. After the marriage, the family moved to Covington, where Joseph operated a beer garden at 13th and Greenup Sts. (see Duveneck House). As a young boy, Frank earned money by running a sign-painting business. The Duvenecks attended St. Joseph Catholic Church in Covington, and the Benedictine brothers there encouraged Frank to become a serious painter and sculptor. By his teenage years, he was apprenticed at the Covington Altar Stock Building Company to Johann Schmitt and Wilhelm Lamprecht, German painters who were creating murals in Catholic churches throughout the northeastern United States. Early works by Duveneck include 14 paintings of Stations of the Cross for St. Joseph Catholic Church, Covington, Ky. (1866–1867), a few of which survive in private hands; Madonna and Child (1867), in the possession of the Sisters of St. Benedict, Villa Hills; and 2 paintings of angels (ca. 1868) at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, W. Fift h St., Cincinnati (demolished in 1953).

With financial help from his stepfather and the encouragement of the Benedictines, Frank sailed for Germany in 1869, to study art under Wilhelm Von Diez at the Royal Academy of Munich. German critics quickly recognized his exceptional artistic ability, and he was presented with several awards. In 1872, while still in Munich, Duveneck painted what many consider his finest picture, which he called Whistling Boy (now in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum). When an outbreak of cholera hit Germany in 1873, Duveneck returned to Covington. The following year, he began teaching art at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati, where his pupils were often referred to as “Duveneck’s Boys.” He also opened a studio in

Frank Duveneck.

Covington on Greenup St., where he painted portraits. Duveneck portraits often featured a strongly modeled face or figure emerging from a dark, shadowy background. During that period in Covington, he developed a close friendship with artist Henry Farny and sculptor Clement Barnhorn.

Duveneck missed the thrill and excitement of the European artist community, so he returned there in 1875, accompanied by Frank X. Dengler, Farny, and John H. Twachtman. Many of his paintings at that time were of the elderly, the working poor, and street urchins. After short stays in Paris and Venice, Duveneck returned to Munich and began to teach young aspiring artists. One of his students was Elizabeth Boott, the daughter of a socially prominent Boston, Mass., family. Elizabeth spoke fluent Italian and French, was an accomplished pianist, and was also a promising artist who had studied under Greek-born historic painter Giorgio Mignaty. A romance soon developed between Frank and Elizabeth, and they announced their engagement in December 1880.

However, her father was not pleased with her choice of a future husband, a man from the working class who had little formal education. Tensions soon arose over money, manners, and class and eventually led to cancellation of the engagement. After several years of separation, however, the romance was rekindled, and Frank and Elizabeth were married in Paris on March 25, 1886. A magistrate performed the ceremony in the apartment of the bride’s widowed father, and the impoverished groom borrowed the $200 needed to cover wedding expenses. During the ceremony, Elizabeth wore a brown dress, the same one she is seen wearing in a portrait of her that hangs today in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Their only child, Francis Boott Duveneck, was born about a year after the marriage. When the child was about one year old,

DUVENECK HOUSE

41-year-old Elizabeth died of pneumonia in 1888 and was buried in the Cemetery of the Laurels, in Florence, Italy.

Duveneck was devastated by his wife’s death and returned to Covington. There, he renewed his acquaintance with friends and relatives and began teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy. His old friend Clement Barnhorn encouraged Duveneck to create a sculpture in memory of his beloved wife, so Duveneck made a bronze monument of a prostrate Elizabeth. Francis Boott was so impressed with his daughter’s memorial that he asked his sonin-law to create a marble copy. When completed, it was placed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where her son, Francis Boott Duveneck, could easily visit and see it. According to the terms of a prenuptial agreement that Elizabeth’s father had required Duveneck to sign, her half brother and his wife raised young Francis in their home at Waltham, Mass. Duveneck began spending his summers with the art colony at Gloucester, Mass., so he could be near his son. Francis Boott Duveneck’s first visit to his father’s home in Covington occurred after he had become an adult.

Duveneck received a gold medal for his portraits and paintings at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. In later life, painting became less important to Duveneck, and he concentrated on teaching his art to young people at the Cincinnati Art Academy. Three of his local students who gained national fame were Farny, Dixie Selden, and John Henry Twachtman. In 1967 Vance Trimble, editor of the Kentucky Post in Northern Kentucky, headed a drive to raise funds to buy some of Duveneck’s paintings. Sufficient money was collected to purchase 4, and Duveneck descendants donated 6 others; all 10 are on display at the Kenton Co. Public Library in Covington. Other Duveneck paintings can be seen at the Cincinnati Art Museum and at various museums and galleries around the world. In 1919 Frank Duveneck died of cancer at age 71 in Cincinnati’s Good Samaritan Hospital and was buried in Covington’s Mother of God Cemetery.

“Duveneck Masterpeices. Famous Paintings to Perish When Historic Church Razed,” CTS, June 23, 1953, 9.

Frank Duveneck Collection, microfi lm, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Herbert, Jeff rey G. Restored Hamilton County, Ohio Marriages, 1850–1859. Cincinnati: Hamilton Co. Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society, 1998.

Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Mother of God Catholic Church, sacramental records for 1848, microfi lm, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.

Neuhaus, Robert. Unsuspected Genius: The Art and Life of Frank Duveneck. San Francisco: Bedford Press, 1987.

Reis, Jim. “From Sign Painter to Portrait Artist,” KP, November 18, 1992, 4K. Traditional Fine Arts Organization. “Frank Duveneck and Elizabeth Boott Duveneck: An American Romance.” www.tfaoi.com (accessed November 30, 2006).

Jack Wessling

DUVENECK HOUSE. The Frank Duveneck House & Studio, located at 1232 Greenup St. in Covington, was built by Joseph Duveneck (1823– 1883) about 1861. In 1851 Duveneck married the widowed Catherine Siemers Decker (1831–1905) and adopted her young son, Frank Duveneck (b.

Frank Decker [1848–1919]). Joseph Duveneck purchased the 89-by-85-foot property at the southeast corner of 13th and Greenup Sts. in three separate transactions. The first two parcels were purchased in 1855 from Mary Behne of Cincinnati, and the third was purchased in 1858 from the Fairmont Theological Seminary, successor to one-half of the Western Baptist Theological Institute’s holdings. Even though by that time the family had grown to five children, the original house was probably a three room, one-story structure. The front room retains evidence of the original rounded Italianate wood trim, suggesting the room’s importance; the remainder of the first floor has plain, flat wood trim.

By the time Frank Duveneck left to study art in Munich, Germany, in 1869, Joseph Duveneck was operating a beer garden on the premises. This venture may be what prompted the addition of two rooms on the first floor and of a three-room second floor, accessed by an exterior stair, to provide the family with separate living quarters; even with Frank gone, seven children remained. The Italianate front facade, with its distinctive ashlar-cut wood siding, was probably installed at the same time.

The beer garden continued in operation only until Joseph Duveneck’s death in 1883; in 1885 his widow sold a 22-foot parcel on the corner, where a building was soon built enclosing the family garden. Between 1870 and 1900, Frank Duveneck often returned to the house, sometimes remaining for extended periods. In 1899 Catherine Duveneck purchased a 25-by-89-foot parcel east of the property, perhaps at the request of Frank, who had just accepted a permanent teaching position at the Cincinnati Art Academy, to begin in 1900. A onestory board-and-batten addition containing a modern bathroom and an art studio with a skylight was soon built at the rear of the house.

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Frank Duveneck lived in the house until his death in January 1919. During that time he was apparently responsible for other changes to the home, including the installation of electricity and of gas heating stoves. After his death, his family sold the property. The house was eventually converted into a two-family dwelling, and by 1924 a hardware store was built on the south part of the property.

In the mid-1960s, an effort was launched to restore the house and studio; although unsuccessful, that campaign resulted in the formation of the Northern Kentucky Heritage League and the creation of the Duveneck Gallery at the Kenton Co. Public Library. Instead, the building was converted into a frame shop in 1967. At that time several major modifications to both the interior and the exterior were made.

In 2000 Forward Quest, an area planning and development orga ni zation based in Covington, purchased the property, including the former hardware store. With the aid of a Kentucky Heritage Council grant, the exterior restoration of the house and the studio was completed in 2002. This restoration substantially restored the exterior siding, the windows, the shutters, and the doors.

Based on professional analysis, the house and the studio were painted in the colors chosen by Frank Duveneck when he first built the studio in 1900.

In 2006 a Kentucky Preservation Grant was awarded to the Frank Duveneck Arts & Cultural Center to pursue the making of architectural drawings in preparation for the property’s further restoration.

Bricking, Chuck. Covington’s Heritage: A Compilation of the City’s Historical Houses and a Short Biography of the Inhabitants. Covington, Ky.: Privately published, 1980.

Covington City Directory, numerous years.

Deed books, Kenton Co. Court houses, Covington and Independence, Ky. Duveneck, Joseph W. Frank Duveneck: PainterTeacher. San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1970.

Hopkins, G. M. City Atlas of Covington, Kentucky.

Philadelphia: G. M. Hopkins, 1877.

Inventory books, Kenton Co. Court house, Covington, Ky. Sanborn Fire Insurance Company. Map of Covington, Kentucky. New York: Chadwick-Healey, various years.

Thomason, Philip. Covington, Kentucky Eastside Multiple Resource Area National Register Nomination. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomason, 1986.

Will Book 14, Kenton Co. Court house, Covington, Ky., pp. 103–4.

Alexandra K. Weldon