Chapter J of the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky

Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky in partnership with NKY.com 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

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The Enquirer/Michael E. Keating

JOHN A. ROEBLING BRIDGE. On June 27, 1983, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) designated this historic bridge the John A. Roebling Bridge... (cont’d on pg. 491)

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

JACKSON, CECIL (b. October 5, 1929, Owen Co., Ky.). Cecil Elmore Jackson Sr. of Dry Ridge in Grant Co., the son of Alvie and Dolly Webster Jackson, worked for the Cincinnati Zoo for more than 50 years, mostly as an animal trainer. He had no idea in 1951, when he went to the zoo to visit his brother, that his career had just begun. From first driving the zoo’s passenger train, he gravitated to training horses and ponies and then to training chimpanzees and elephants. Jackson found that he was a natural animal trainer. He has taught chimps to ride bicycles and elephants to stand on two feet. The elephants My-Thai and Ganesh were two of his protégés. He was also present at the birth of many of these animals. Jackson often brought trained zoo animals to parades in the region, to former Cincinnati Reds Baseball Team owner Marge Schott’s home, and occasionally even to local marriage ceremonies. Two strokes have partiality disabled Jackson, but his son Cecil Jackson Jr. (b. 1961) has been trained to replace his father, and the animals at the Cincinnati Zoo currently remain under his good handling.

“Pachyderm to Lead Party to the Altar,” KP, August 9, 1985, 5K. Roberts, Alice Kennelly. “Zoo Trainer Marks 40 Years with the Elephants,” KP, January 8, 1992, 2KK. Whitehead, Shelly. “Half a Century of Zoo Memories: The Elephant Man Remembers,” KP, April 18, 2000, 1C.

JACKSON, JOHN P. (b. March 7, 1833, Cleveland, Ohio; d. September 25, 1900, San Francisco, Calif.). One-time Newport resident John Putnam Jackson was a Republican Party leader in Kentucky and later an influential journalist in California.

Jackson came to Cincinnati as a teenager. After graduating from Cincinnati’s Central High School, he studied law in the office of Judge Bellamy Storer, where he began a lifelong friendship with future president Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893). Jackson was admitted to the bar and formed a law partnership with George Hoadly, who later became governor of Ohio. For more than a decade, Jackson lived in Newport with his wife, the former Anna Hooper, with whom he raised nine children. He pioneered team sports in the Ohio River Valley as a member of the Kentucky Town Ball Club (see Townball). During the Civil War, Jackson supported the Union as a lieutenant colonel in the 23rd Kentucky Infantry Regiment and later served under generals Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Halleck. Jackson’s eloquent speeches on behalf of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant during the 1864 and 1868 presidential elections brought him to the forefront of Kentucky Republicans. In 1868

the Republican Party nominated him for governor of Kentucky, but he declined in favor of fellow Campbell Co. attorney Richard Tarvin Baker.

Jackson also refused the Republican nomination to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress from Kentucky’s sixth district.

Jackson’s reluctance to seek elected office stemmed in part from his busy legal practice. He went to Europe in 1867 to negotiate bonds for the California Pacific Railroad. He became president of that railroad and moved to San Francisco to supervise its construction. By 1875 Jackson had left his lucrative career in the railroad business and had turned his attention to journalism. As publisher and managing editor, Jackson built the San Francisco Daily Evening Post into one of California’s leading Republican newspapers. He later became publisher of the Wasp, a prominent political satire magazine. In addition to his journalistic pursuits, Jackson was proprietor of the Napa Soda Springs, a popular northern California resort. He finally answered the call of public ser vice when President Benjamin Harrison appointed him assistant secretary of the treasury. At the time of his death in 1900, Jackson was serving as collector for the Port of San Francisco under President William McKinley (1897–1901). Jackson’s burial location is unknown.

James occasionally leads singing of the national anthem for the Cincinnati Reds baseball home games. She has performed regionally for commercials, narrated industrial fi lms, and hosted trade shows, pageants, benefits, travel tours, and award shows, as well as moderating discussions and debates. She has been a vocalist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, the Pete Wagner Big Band, and other local orchestras and music groups.

In the late 1990s, Nancy hosted an afternoon show of popu lar standards, offering informative commentary, on Cincinnati’s WSAI radio. In 2005 she returned to television as the host of the local live talk show Northern Kentucky Magazine on ICN6, Insight cable television.

Nancy is married to Bill Phelan and lives in Western Hills in Cincinnati. She has lived in Cincinnati since her early days attending CCM in 1971. The Phelans have a daughter, Amy, and a son, Billy.

The Bay of San Francisco: The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast and Its Suburban Cities, a History.

Vol. 2. Chicago: Lewis, 1892.

“Jackson,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 26, 1900, 10. Funeral notice.

“Radical State Convention,” CJ, February 29, 1868, 2.

West, Richard Samuel. The San Francisco Wasp: An Illustrated History. Easthampton, Mass.: Periodyssey Press, 2004.

John Schlipp

Greg Perkins

JAMES, NANCY POLMAN (b. August 3, 1953, South Bend, Ind.). Singer and television host Nancy James is the oldest daughter of Louis and Becky Polman’s four children. Nancy is a professionally trained vocalist, specializing in the popu lar standards. She attended the College Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati in 1971–1973, where she concentrated on musical theater. Nancy sang professionally at nightclubs, and during that time her agent suggested that she choose a stage name; she selected James, which was her father’s middle name. At age 21 she was invited to become a regular cast member and singer in Cincinnati on the live television show Bob Braun’s 50-50 Club. There, through 1983, she learned the broadcast business, gaining confidence as an onair personality by interviewing guests and presenting commercials. In 1981 she received a regional Emmy award for On-Air Performer of the Year.

Over the years, James sang with full orchestras and jazz trios at the once famous Sutmiller’s supper club in Dayton, Ohio, and at Maggie’s Opera House and the Playboy Club, both in Cincinnati.

She often participated in Bob Braun Show reunions at local venues with other Braun cast members such as Rob Reider, Colleen Sharp, and Mary Ellen Tanner, singing favorites from the legendary, locally produced AVCO television programs.

Knippenberg, Jim. “Star Enjoyed Helping Others Build Careers,” CE, January 16, 2001, A4.

Nancy James.net. “Nancy James.” www.nancyjames .net (accessed May 3, 2007).

Wood, Mary. “Nancy Giving Up Romance,” CP (TV Plus Magazine), April 17, 1976, 2.

JAMES, OLLIE M. (b. October 16, 1908, Kuttawa, Ky.; d. January 26, 1972, Cincinnati, Ohio).

Ollie Murray James, a newspaper columnist and humorist, was born in the small Western Kentucky town of Kuttawa, in Lyon Co. In 1959 Kuttawa had to be moved to higher ground when Barkley Lake was created. Ollie was a nephew of U.S. vice president Alben W. Barkley, for whom the lake and dam are named. The James family moved to Louisville when Ollie was four years old. He was educated in Louisville public schools and at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. After graduating, James took a job as political writer and Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Louisville Herald Post. In the mid-1930s, the newspaper fi led for bankruptcy, and James became an editorial writer and assistant managing editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He was promoted to chief editorial writer in 1944.

While working for the Enquirer, he lived in Kentucky, first in Fort Thomas and later for many years at 1885 Dixie Highway, in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright). The latter home had a swamplike backyard fi lled with frogs, causing James to refer to his home affectionately as Bullfrog Holler. The house was easily recognized for the many antennae attached to it—he was a ham radio operator as well as a writer.

Ollie James married Elizabeth Hazelrigg, and they had no children. He remained with the Enquirer for 35 years and, along with other duties, wrote a daily column called Innocent Bystander.

His humorous articles made him a local celebrity, and his sayings were widely quoted by an adoring public. He also became a popu lar after-dinner speaker at social functions. In 1969 Ohio governor James Rhodes presented to James the Governor’s

JANUARY AND WOOD

Award, the state’s highest honor given for outstanding public ser vice. Owing to ill health, Ollie retired from the newspaper business in July 1971.

He died at age 63, in Holmes Hospital, Cincinnati.

Funeral ser vices were held at the Allison and Rose Funeral Home in Covington, and he was cremated.

“Everyone Called Him Ollie,” CE, January 27, 1972, 20.

“Name, Ollie M. James,” CE, October 9, 1988, suppl., 44.

“Ollie M. James, 63, Columnist,” KE, January 27, 1972, 24K. Univ. of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications. “Ollie M. James.” www.uky.edu (accessed March 23, 2006).

Jack Wessling

JAMES A. RAMAGE CIVIL WAR MUSEUM. The James A. Ramage Civil War Museum is located in Fort Wright, at the site of Civil War Battery Hooper. The museum opened on June 30, 2005, and a formal dedication was held on August 20, 2005. The mission of the museum is to inform visitors about the defense of Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati during the Civil War, especially how the community came together to defend the area during the 1862 Confederate invasion, the region’s greatest military crisis. Exhibit topics include the history of Fort Wright and the career of Fern Storer, who was food editor for the Cincinnati Post from 1951 to 1976.

The museum is housed in the former home of Sheldon and Fern Storer. The couple donated generously to Northern Kentucky University (NKU) in Highland Heights, and when Fern died on May 28, 2002, their home and property were left to the NKU Foundation. At that time, Dr. James A. Ramage, history professor at NKU; Larry Klein, city administrator of the City of Fort Wright; Jeannine Kreinbrink, adjunct archaeology professor at NKU; the Storers’ neighbor Kathy Romero; and others formed a committee to save the battery. The NKU Foundation sold the land to the City of Fort Wright in 2003, with the understanding that the battery would be preserved and a park created for students, researchers, and the general public to conduct historical and archaeological research.

Ramage received an NKU UniversityCommunity Partnership Grant to work with the City of Fort Wright to involve students and the community in research. Fort Wright mayor Gene Weaver and the City Council named the museum in honor of Ramage’s work in the project. Ramage, a native of Paducah, earned a PhD in history from the University of Kentucky in Lexington and began his career at NKU on January 2, 1972. He received the Kentucky Governor’s Volunteer Activist Award in 1978 for his work in developing a parks and recreation program for the City of Highland Heights. Ramage has published numerous articles and book reviews in addition to three books: John Wesley Hunt: Pioneer Merchant, Manufacturer, and Financier (1974), Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan (1986), and Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby (1999).

At NKU, Ramage won the Outstanding Professor of the Year Award in 1988 and was awarded the NKU

Board of Regents’s highest honor, the Regents Professorship, in 1994.

“Battery Hooper Days,” KP, August 16, 2006, A2.

Cotton, Megan. “Dedication Set for War Museum— Honors Banker Named for Prof,” KP, August 19, 2005, 2K. “Fort Wright Dig,” KP, May 8, 2006, A4.

Andrea Watkins

JAMES TAYLOR MANSION. In about 1814 Gen. James Taylor Jr. built his mansion, which still stands at 335 E. Third St. in Newport. The building site was a portion of a 1,500-acre parcel that his father, Col. James Taylor Sr., had purchased from a friend, George Muse.

James Taylor Jr. came to Northern Kentucky in spring 1793 to live and to develop his father’s land that became Newport; James Taylor Sr. gave his son 500 acres and retained ownership of the remaining 1,000 acres. James Jr. and his slaves built several small log cabins, including one on the site where the mansion later was built. He set aside 180 acres for his personal estate and began the sale of building lots. In about 1817–1819 he replaced his small log cabin with a large masonry house. That building was destroyed in an 1842 fire set by a disgruntled slave. An 1817 letter reveals that the nationally renowned architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe was working with the Taylor family on house plans; further, Latrobe’s son, John H. B. Latrobe, asserted in an 1876 biographical essay that he believed his father designed the Taylor estate in Newport called Bellevue (meaning “beautiful view”). In the mid1840s, following the 1842 fire, the mansion was rebuilt, perhaps using the original foundation, as well as some of the former home’s materials. Greek Revival in style, the 1840s Bellevue featured an entrance front of three bays facing north (toward the Ohio River), a one-story portico with Ionic columns, and quoins on the corners of the house.

An unusual feature of the estate was a servant tunnel that led from the mansion’s basement northward to the Ohio River. Some have said that it was later used as part of the Underground Railroad. The Ohio River flood of 1937 destroyed much of the tunnel, and the owners demolished the remainder. When the city of Bellevue later developed adjacent to the mansion, it took its name from the mansion.

The house originally had an unobstructed view of the estate grounds, all the way to the Ohio River.

However, over the years, the Taylor family sold off much of their land, and factories and homes were built between the mansion and the river. Because of the diminished view, the front and back of the building were reversed in the 1890s, making the house face Third St. At that time the north portico and both the east and west wings were removed, and the materials were probably used to build a new addition to the north side. A two-story Palladian portico was added to the new front, along with an entry door that featured crystal beveled glass and a window above, displaying the Taylor coat of arms.

In the front hall a cantilevered spiral staircase was constructed.

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Upon the death of Gen. James Taylor Jr., the house passed to his son Col. James Taylor III, then to his grandson John B. Taylor, and finally to John’s widow, Betty Washington Taylor. After she died, the estate was unable to pay the real estate taxes, so the property was sold at public auction in 1919. Ben Vonderhaar and George Stetter were the highest bidders, and they began operating the Vonderhaar-Stetter Funeral Home in the mansion.

One spectacular funeral that occurred there was for Madam Lena, a Newport palmist. Her body was conveyed from the funeral home to the cemetery in a vintage white carriage, pulled by a team of white horses (see Gypsies). In 2003 David Gerner, an attorney-at-law, purchased the Taylor Mansion for law offices. He and his wife Maureen have faithfully restored the mansion to its original elegance, and today it is a signature property in Newport’s East Row Historic District.

Fazio, Michael W. and Patrick A. Snadon. The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006.

Reis, Jim. “Four Buildings Preserve a Portion of History That Will Stir Fond Recollections for Many Residents,” KP, November 9, 1992, 4K. Tenkotte, Paul A. “Rival Cities to Suburbs: Covington and Newport, Kentucky, 1790–1890,” PhD diss., Univ. of Cincinnati, 1989.

JAMES TAYLOR NARRATIVE. James Taylor Jr., Hubbard Taylor, Robert Taylor, Richard Taylor, and Gen. Thomas S. Jesup each played a part in the writing of this historic narrative consisting of 69 typewritten pages. The first James Taylor came to America from Carlisle, England, in 1682 and settled in King George Co., Va. The Taylor authors, descendants of the original James, tell of their experiences in America. For example, General Jessup provides details about financial assistance given to the U.S. Army by James Taylor Jr. during the War of 1812. In addition to details about the lives of Taylor family members, the authors give important genealogical facts about them, tracing their heritage back to its English roots. The document also contains valuable information about U.S. presidents James Madison (1809–1817) and Zachary Taylor (1849–1850).

“The James Taylor Narrative,” 1840, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society, Alexandria, Ky.

JANUARY AND WOOD. The January and Wood Company’s cotton mill in Maysville was one of the oldest businesses in Northern Kentucky when it closed sometime after 2006. Cotton grown in the Deep South was shipped to Maysville by steamboat from markets in New Orleans and in Memphis, Tenn. William Shotwell built the cotton mill in Maysville in 1834, and shortly afterward William Goslin bought it. Richard Henry Lee acquired the mill in 1844 and built a four-story building in town on Second St. Lee (a son of Gen. Henry Lee) was a surveyor from Virginia who made his home in Washington, Ky. On February 4, 1848, Lee sold the mill to Andrew M. January, Thomas Mannen, Christian Shultz, and William

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Stillwell. Henry Cutter purchased Stillwell’s share of the mill on January 12, 1849. During 1851 Andrew January and Benjamin W. Wood bought out the other investors and the company assumed the name of January and Wood. Charles Bromley was hired by the January and Wood Company to serve as superintendent and was succeeded eventually by his son Frank Bromley. The January and Wood partnership existed until Andrew January died in 1877. Then January’s daughter, Harriet F. January Cochran, and her sister Sarah’s son, A. January Grundy, purchased the interests of other January heirs. The surviving founding partner of the company, Benjamin W. Wood, became president after January’s death. In August 1896 B. W. Wood sold his half interest in the mill to Harriet Cochran and her five sons. This acquisition brought the cotton mill under complete ownership

by January’s descendants. Robert Cochran Jr. managed the mill until his retirement in 1926.

Little information is available about the management of the mill between 1926 and 1965.

Sometime after 1926, the management shifted from the Cochran family to the Adair family. A Mr. Adair served as company president sometime before 1965. His son William C. Adair, a January descendant, succeeded him in 1965 and served in this capacity until his death in 2001. William C. Adair Jr. assumed leadership of the company after his father died. The 1998 Kentucky Directory of Manufacturers listed W. C. Adair as president, but by 2002 Belinda Breslin had become president.

The Kentucky secretary of state’s online business database listed an annual report for the company as late as June 2006, which showed Brenda A. Breslin as president, vice president, secretary, and director.

The cotton mill experienced a number of improvements and losses over time. The mill’s first structure was completed in 1834, and a four-story structure was added on Second St. in 1844. During the 1870s, new equipment, including some acquired from England, was installed. The September 6, 1884, issue of Maysville’s Daily Commonwealth reported that a fire had destroyed one of the January and Wood Company’s cotton mill structures, resulting in a $1,000 uninsured loss. Another fire in May 1915 destroyed the cotton sheds and another building. In early 1916, a three-story addition was added to the mill complex. Two years later in 1918, the dye house was demolished and a brick structure erected in its place. Other changes during 1918 included improvements to the older structures and the installation of electric motors within the mill complex. By 1935, a new addition expanded the facilities. The July 1940 edition of the Kentucky Post reported that the company had a new warehouse.

The mill produced the Maysville brand of cordage and carpet warp, and it was sold wholesale, with most of the product going to markets in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago. The Centennial Souvenir Book for Maysville reported that the cotton mill was producing carpet warp, twine, rope, clothesline, batting, and mop yarn wick as well as staging and trout line. The Kentucky In-

dustrial Directory for various years provides information on the products of the January and Wood Company. In 1949 it was producing cotton twine, cotton cordage for home weaving, and crocheting yarns. In 1951–1952, the company was making cotton carpet warp, cotton and rayon knitting and crocheting yarns, cotton twine, and small cordage including seine twine and cable cords. By 1955 the company appeared to be focusing on carpet yarn, cordage, and twine. Charles Thompson in his 2003 book Going on 200 reported that the company only spun and twisted the cotton and had not proceeded to the next stage of weaving or knitting. In the late 1980s, cotton and rayon yarns were manufactured by the January and Wood Company. During 2003 the company was spinning yarns and making twines. The yarns were both pure cotton and a mixture of cotton and polyester. Their products included various types of tying twines and carpet warp that were sold to wholesale distributors. Another family-owned company, the Edgemont Yarn Ser vice, sold January and Wood Company products.

The census of manufacturing for 1870 indicated that the January and Wood cotton mill employed 31 males over 16 years and 25 females over 15 years as well as 70 children and youth. The firm paid $30,000 in annual wages in 1870. During 1922 the company had 150 employees. For 1929 it employed 95 men and 89 women. During 1933, 375 people worked for the company. The Kentucky Industrial Directory provides the following employment figures for the second half of the 20th century: 1955–1956, 307; 1957–1958, 350; 1959–1960, 260; 1964, 323; 1969, 250 men and 17 women; 1987, 104 men and 50 women; 1989, 135; 1992, 100; 1994, 100; 1996, 70; 1998, 60; and 2002, 45. The January and Wood Company ceased operations in 2004.

Bodley, Temple. History of Kentucky: The Blue Grass State. Vol. 4. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1928.

Comer, Mrs. P. W., ed. As We Look Back: Maysville, 1883–1933. Centennial Souvenir Book. Maysville, Ky.: Daily Independent, 1933.

Connelley, William Elsey, and E. M. Coulter. History of Kentucky. 5 vols. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1922.

Harris Kentucky Manufacturers Directory. Twinsburg, Ohio: Harris Infosource, 1987–2006.

Johnson, E. Polk. A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. Chicago: Lewis, 1912.

Kentucky Industrial Directory. Frankfort, Ky.: Kentucky Department of Economic Development, 1949–1961.

Perrin, William Henry, J. H. Battle, and G. C. Kniffi n.

Kentucky: A History of the State. Louisville, Ky.: F. A. Battey, 1888.

Seiller, Edward F. Kentucky Natural Resources, Industrial Statistics, Industrial Directory Descriptions by Counties. Kentucky Bureau of Agriculture, Labor, and Statistics, Bulletin 34. Frankfort, Ky.: State Journal, 1929.

The Spirit of a Greater Maysville and Mason County. Maysville, Ky.: Daily Independent, 1935.

Thompson, Charles. Going on 200: Century- Old Businesses in Kentucky. Prospect, Ky.: Harmony House, 2003.

Charles D. Hockensmith

JAYCEES. The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees), established in 1920, has been represented in Northern Kentucky by many chapters, which have a long history of developing young leaders.

The chapters were founded to give young people between the ages of 18 and 40 the tools to build the bridges of success for themselves in the areas of business development, management skills, individual training, community service, and international connections. Although the Jaycees originally admitted only young men, the organization later expanded to include women, reflecting the growing influence and leadership of women in the nation.

In existence today in Northern Kentucky are the Boone Co. Jaycees, founded in 1957; the Campbell Co. Jaycees, founded in 1934; and the Covington–Kenton Co. Jaycees, founded in 1940.

Other places in Northern Kentucky that have or have had Jaycees chapters include Bellevue, Carrollton, Fort Thomas, Grant Co., Ludlow, Maysville, and Taylor Mill.

Clark, John W. A Legacy of Leadership: The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce Celebrates 75 Years.

Commerce, Okla.: U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1995.

Covington–Kenton County Jaycees. “Chapter History of the Covington–Kenton County Jaycees.” www. ckcjaycees.org (accessed August 31, 2006).

“Jaycees Opening to Women; Other Groups Aren’t,” KP, August 4, 1984, 5K. “Junior Chamber Gets Its Charter,” KP, March 16, 1940, 3.

NetworkSolutions. “About Jaycees.” www.kyjaycees. org (accessed August 31, 2006).

The United States Junior Chamber Jaycees. “USJC History.” www.usjaycees.org (accessed August 31, 2006).

Donna M. Bloemer

JAZZ. Jazz is an original American musical art form that began at the start of the 20th century in the southern United States near New Orleans and moved into Northern Kentucky about 20 years later. It is rooted in an amalgamation of African folk music and European musical technique and theory.

Jazz utilizes blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, strong emotional expression, and improvisation. Ragtime and blues, as antecedents of jazz, developed unique styles distinctive to the tri-state region. Many scholars imply that jazz could only have developed in the United States, with its rich cultural melting pot. According to legendary jazz singer Tony Bennett, “Jazz is America’s greatest contribution to the world—it is our ‘classical’ music.”

Southern migrants and jazz artists passed through Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky via the Ohio River and the railroads in the 1920s.

Phonograph recordings, radio broadcasts, movies, dance halls, nightclubs, speakeasies, and jazz bands all developed as part of the post–World War I popu lar culture known as the jazz age. From the 1920s through the 1940s, jazz bands (later known as big bands) were regular attractions in the region at nightspots such as Newport’s Columbia St. clubs, the Lookout House in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright), and Cincinnati’s Cotton Club.

JEFFERSON COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE, CARROLLTON CAMPUS

Artie Mathews, a ragtime pianist and composer, founded the Cosmopolitan School of Music in 1921 in Cincinnati. The first black-owned and operated conservatory in the United States, it inspired regional jazz talent. Mathews’s “Pastime Rags” featured rhythmic patterns and methods unique to ragtime, which later influenced jazz piano styles. His most famous composition was “Weary Blues”; it became a major hit of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the 1940s. Famous jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton made many stops in Cincinnati with the Fate Marable riverboat band. In the 1920s the Vocalstyle Piano Roll Company of Cincinnati issued rolls of Morton’s performances.

Cincinnati’s WLW radio broadcasts of jazz and big band were popu lar and, with the station’s 500,000-watt reach in the 1930s, drew major musicians to the region, musicians such as renowned pianist Thomas “Fats” Waller, who performed on WLW from 1932 to 1934. His WLW shows included Fats Waller’s Rhythm Club and Moon River, a highly popu lar late-night poetry program for which he played the organ. Waller performed in person at venues such as the Horseshoe Gardens in Bellevue. According to Covington-born jazz legend Nelson Burton, Waller also played honkytonk-style piano in Covington’s nightclubs late into the morning after his WLW broadcasts. The Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, both groups native to the larger region, were also part of WLW radio’s roster of local jazz talent in the 1930s. The Mills Brothers played at the Horsehoe Gardens, in par ticu lar.

Local venues such as Cincinnati’s Cotton Club, at the Sterling Hotel at Sixth and Mound Sts. in that city’s west end, hosted nationally famous jazz musicians on tour, such as Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and Fletcher Henderson. Nelson Burton also remembers that the bands of Erskine Hawkins and Nobble Sissle visited and performed at Covington clubs during the early jazz years.

While national headliners stopped by, there were many local performing artists. Three of the most notable names residing in Cincinnati were jazz pianist Charles Alexander, who later toured with Louis Armstrong; tenor saxophonist Edgar “Spider” Courance; and Bill Coleman, born in Paris, Ky., who moved to Cincinnati in 1911 and played jazz trumpet with other local stars, such as Edgar Hayes, Clarence Paige, and Zack Whyte.

Coleman also made recordings with Fats Waller on numerous occasions. Coleman noted that the prominent black musical culture was originally tied to the needs of social dances at the area clubs.

Not until the birth of the big band era in the 1930s did the traditional Cincinnati region as a whole embrace jazz.

Andy Kirk, born in Newport, moved to Denver, Colo., during his youth. Later, in Kansas City, Mo., he became nationally known in the period of the 1920s through the 1940s with the popular Clouds of Joy big band. That band featured the Kansas City Swing style, which utilized southern blues rich with riffs, rhythmic drive, and improvisation.

Territorial bands were popu lar during the 1920s through 1945. For example, Justin Huber,

born in Covington, formed a jazz dance orchestra in the 1920s that played at locations all around the tri-state region, including the Horseshoe Gardens in Bellevue. Huber’s orchestra also played for WLW radio remote broadcasts from local venues.

George Russell, born in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills, was an important figure of the jazz scene. He published the scholarly book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation, considered by many as the defi nitive theory for jazz musicians. It elaborated on techniques performed by jazz legends such as Miles Davis. Russell built the jazz program at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He grew up in Walnut Hills next to Cincinnati-born arranger and saxophonist Jimmy Mundy, who worked for Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw.

Russell has acknowledged that the diverse jazz talent of the region influenced him to become a composer.

Nelson Burton played in many jazz bands in the region. He was a house musician for Cincinnati’s Cotton Club in the 1940s and 1950s and studio musician at Cincinnati’s legendary King Records. He told his story in Nelson Burton: My Life in Jazz, a memoir of his jazz experiences. Although King Records recorded many country music and rhythm and blues artists, it also preserved the works of many jazz performers of the 1950s. Burton worked at King backing famous artists such as Wynonie Harris, Lonnie Johnson, and Maybelle Smith.

Covington-born trumpeter Christopher Wallace Perkins was nicknamed “Granddaddy of the Cotton Club” by Burton. From the mid-1930s on, Perkins backed internationally famous entertainers such as Josephine Baker, Nat King Cole, and Tony Bennett. After the local Cotton Club closed, he performed with the Frank Payne Quartet.

Among the later recognized jazz artists, Rosemary Clooney, born in Maysville, has become the most widely known from Northern Kentucky. Although jazz singing was not her initial claim to fame, it became associated with Clooney during her career renaissance beginning in the late 1970s, and she provided a lasting legacy on a series of jazz-inspired recordings by Concord Records. Clooney’s sultry alto sound had been showcased more than 20 years earlier on her Columbia long-play album Blue Rose (1956), a collaboration with Duke Ellington’s Orchestra (and Billy Strayhorn’s arrangements). It is considered by many music critics to be one of the finest examples of classic jazz singing ever recorded.

Newport’s WNOP-AM radio station not only played jazz; it was known as the “Jazz Ark,” because it broadcasted from a floating barge on the Ohio River. Oscar Treadwell (real name, Art Pedersen), was a WNOP radio personality between 1965 and 1973. Locally known as the “Godfather of Jazz” because of his vast knowledge of jazz music and artists, he continued to educate generations of tri-state-area radio listeners, playing jazz on other Cincinnati public radio stations such as WGUCFM and WVXU-FM. The nationally recognized Ohio Valley Jazz Festival was launched in the early 1960s at the Carthage Fairgrounds and later was held at Cros-

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ley Field in Cincinnati. In the 1970s the festival was renamed the Kool Jazz Festival and moved to Riverfront Stadium, across the Ohio River from Covington and Newport. Since the late 1980s, the festival has had many name changes and sponsors, has featured more rhythm and blues and hip-hop music, and is currently presented at the Paul Brown Stadium along the Ohio River.

During the 1990s and after, only a few clubs specializing in jazz remained in the region, including downtown Cincinnati’s Blue Wisp (founded and operated by Covington native Marjean Wisby) and Chez Nora and Dee Felice, both in Covington’s Main Strasse. Covington residents Mary Ellen Tanner and John Von Ohlen perform at jazz clubs in the region. Patsy Meyer, a graduate of Holmes High School and a smooth jazz vocalist and percussionist, has been nominated for three national Emmy awards. Meyer has also recorded jazz albums.

While jazz music is no longer mainstream, FM radio station WMKV in Cincinnati continues to play jazz and big band as its primary musical format. Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights includes a scholarly degree concentration in jazz studies and presents community programs such as jazz and R&B combo performances on a regular basis. NKU also offers a summer jazz camp for children and youth specializing in jazz combo techniques and improvisation.

Burton, Nelson. Nelson Burton: My Life in Jazz.

Cincinnati: Clifton Hills Press, 2000.

Floyd, Samuel A., Jr., ed. International Dictionary of Black Composers. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999.

Gelfand, Janelle. “Cotton Club Led City Jazz Spots,” CE, February 26, 2006, 5D. ———. “A Faded Jazz Scene,” CE, February 26, 2006, 1D. Hasse, John Edward, ed. Jazz: The First Century.

New York: Harper Collins, 2000.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley, and Stanley Sadie, eds. The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Kenney, William Howland. Jazz on the River. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005.

Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. New York: Macmillan, 2002.

Sadie, Stanley, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Macmillan, 2001.

Southern, Eileen, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Yanow, Scott. Jazz: A Regional Exploration. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005.

John Schlipp

JEFFERSON COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGE, CARROLLTON CAMPUS. In 1990 Jefferson Community College in Louisville opened a branch campus in a shopping center in Carrollton (JCTC, Carrollton). Later, with help from an $800,000 grant from the Carrollton College Education Foundation, a three-story building was purchased in Carrollton at Fourth and Main Sts. For some time professionals and civic leaders in Carroll Co. had recognized that an advanced educa-

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tion facility emphasizing practical vocational skills and general education was vital to continue to attract business and industry to the region and to provide good jobs and retain young people in the workforce. It was with the support of these leaders that the campus was developed.

Jefferson Community College, which became Jefferson Community and Technical College in 2005 following consolidation with Jefferson Technical College, had campuses in downtown Louisville and in southwestern Jefferson Co. before it expanded to Carrollton. The college opened a fourth campus in Shelby Co. in 2002 and now has a Jefferson Technical Campus, also located in downtown Louisville.

The JCTC, Carrollton, campus initially offered two-year associate degrees, diploma and certificate programs such as practical nursing, industrial engineering, and business administration, and general education courses that transferred into fouryear baccalaureate programs. The student body started out small in numbers and built to about 250–300 students within a couple of years. In 2001 new programs were offered in electrical, maintenance, and industrial chemical technology, all programs helpful to the nearby local chemical and plastics corporations.

Through the years, the campus expanded its course offerings and widened its geographical range.

Through a reciprocity agreement, JCTC, Carrollton, serves Dearborn, Franklin, Jefferson, Ohio, Ripley, and Switzerland counties in Indiana as well as Gallatin, Henry, Owen, and Trimble counties in Kentucky. Continuing adult education eventually became a major offering and now surpasses the regular college programs of JCTC, Carrollton. In 2005 the college enrolled more than 600 students in general education and technical studies; adult education served 800 students.

The teaching staff is highly qualified. Instructors in most areas must hold at least a MA degree.

Instructors in certain technical concentrations, moreover, have many years of hands-on experience. JCTC, Carrollton, works closely with area business and industry to ensure that programs being offered meet the businesses’ training needs. The college has agreements with four-year colleges and universities throughout Kentucky for seamless transfer of credits. Also JCTC, Carrollton, has emphasized dual-credit courses, which allow high school students to earn both high school and college credit simultaneously. Working with Carroll Co. High School’s administration, JCTC, Carrollton, developed a system whereby high school students with a 3.0 grade point average or above and with a recommendation from officials of the high school, can elect to take certain college courses.

The enormous growth in students attending the JCTC at Carrollton has led to parking and space problems. Classrooms on the first floor had to be subdivided. Campus director Susan Carlisle also said that there was no space for a campus bookstore or student life activities. That growth prompted the college in 2006 to ask the Kentucky legislature for funding for a new, much-expanded campus. This effort drew support from more than

500 local area civic and business leaders. In April 2006 the Kentucky General Assembly appropriated $12 million for a new community and technical college campus at Carrollton. While the location remains undecided, serious discussions have been held among the college’s administrators, Carroll Co. officials, and Camp KYSOC, the camp for disabled children run by the Kentucky Easter Seals Society and Cardinal Hill Healthcare and Rehabilitation Ser vices. This camp on 124 acres adjacent to General Butler State Resort Park, advantageously located on U.S. 227 between I-71 and U.S. 42, is currently the leading choice as the site for the school’s new campus. Overall, the Jefferson Community and Technical College’s total student enrollment, for its five campuses, dualcredit, and online programs reached a record high of 14,240 in 2006.

Diane Perrine Coon

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES (INTERNATIONAL BIBLE SOCIETY). Today there are eight Jehovah’s Witnesses churches (Kingdom Halls) in Northern Kentucky: in Butler (Pendleton Co.), Florence, Owenton, Williamstown, Fort Mitchell, Taylor Mill, Fort Thomas, and Maysville. Because members of the group believe that the end of the world is near, they are referred to theologically as “end timers.” They are also known for their door-todoor evangelism. The religion comes from the teachings of the Millerites of the 1840s. William Miller taught that on October 22, 1844, Christ would return to the earth. In Cincinnati, for instance, in preparation for Christ’s arrival, Miller’s followers sold or gave away their property and went up to the higher elevations of Mount Auburn and Clifton to meet the Lord. Twenty years later, Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who is generally considered the founder of the International Bible Society, revised the date.

Russell later proclaimed 1914 as the year ushering in Armageddon and the beginnings of Christ’s “thousand year rule on earth.” He believed that the “end time” had begun in 1799 and that Christ had returned to the earth in 1874. After 1914 passed and Russell died in 1916, he was replaced by Joseph “Judge” Rutherford. Rutherford revised Russell’s date to 1918, and although World War I was brutal, it was not what he predicted, and the date was recast again to 1955. The Watch Tower group built a house in San Diego, called Beth Sarim (House of Princes) to shelter the coming “princes on earth”—King David, Samson, and Joseph. Rutherford was the father of the publishing arm of the organization, and under him the name Jehovah’s Witnesses was accepted in 1931. The third president was Nathan H. Knorr, who assumed office in 1942 and oversaw the completion of The New World Translation of the Bible. In 1977 Northern Kentucky native Frederick W. Franz became president. Franz’s 1966 book Life Everlasting in the Freedom of the Sons of God prompted many members to sell their homes and property in anticipation of the 1975 event he predicted. Amid the subsequent disillusionment, an intense “purging of apostates” inside the organization’s Brooklyn’s headquarters transpired. Franz

survived the turmoil, and the membership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses continues to grow. The organization’s monthly magazine, The Watchtower, has a circulation of almost 14 million. The church is prospering in Latin America, Africa, and eastern Europe. Over the years, it has held several national and international conferences near the Northern Kentucky region, in both Cincinnati and Louisville.

“Frederick W. Franz, a Religious Leader, Dies in Office at 99,” NYT, December 24, 1992, B6.

Kreimer, Peggy. “Church Leader’s Roots in N. KY.,” KP, December 25, 1992, 1K.

JENKINS, JOSEPH CARTER “J. C.” (b. 1818, Orange Co., Va.; d. Boone Co., Ky., 1889). Joseph Carter Jenkins, a noted farmer, was the son of William and Nancy Carter Jenkins. The Jenkins family was descended from Welsh royalty; the Carters were of English descent and among the first immigrants to the colony of Virginia. In 1833 Joseph moved with his family to Boone Co. Ky., and in 1841 he married Elizabeth Berkshire, daughter of William Berkshire.

J. C. Jenkins was renowned as a farmer and grower of champion livestock. Along with William Snyder, owner of the Petersburg Distillery in Petersburg, he raised hogs for nearly 30 years. Leftover mash from the distillery became feed for the hogs. Jenkins later became widely known as a breeder of Jersey cattle, Cotswold sheep, and Chester hogs. At one time he owned 1,200 acres south and west of Petersburg. In 1860 he built a spectacular residence on the hilltop overlooking Petersburg.

Known as Prospect Farm, the J. C. Jenkins house is Boone Co.’s only representative of the Italian Villa architectural style and has been described as “an artful composition of Italianate, Gothic, Greek Revival and Moorish elements.” Prospect Farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

In addition to farming, Jenkins was one of the owners of the Petersburg Distillery, acquiring half interest in the concern in 1861. Together with minority partners William Appleton and James Gaff, Jenkins operated the distillery through the Civil War before selling his part in the business to Freiburg & Workum in 1869. Jenkins died in Boone Co. in 1889 and was buried in the family lot at the Petersburg Cemetery.

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

Boone Co. Historic Preservation Review Board. Historic Structures of Boone County, Kentucky.

Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Historic Preservation Review Board, 2002.

Perrin, W. H., J. H. Battle, and G. C. Kniffi n. “Boone County.” In Kentucky: A History of the State. 7th ed. Louisville, Ky.: F. A. Battey, 1887.

Warner, Jennifer S. Boone County: From Mastodons to the Millennium. Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Bicentennial Book Committee, 1998.

Matthew E. Becher

JESSUP, MYRTLE STICKRATH (b. February 6, 1896, Ludlow, Ky.; d. April 29, 1990, Xenia, Ohio).

JEWS

The daughter of David C. and Emma Stickrath of Ludlow, poet Myrtle Isabella Stickrath was born in Ludlow and lived there just a few years before she and her family moved to Dayton, Ohio. Her father was a bartender. Myrtle worked in a bookbindery and in factories around Dayton until 1941 or so, when she married Richard C. Jessup. Although she continued to work full-time, even the day after her wedding, Myrtle still found time to write poems.

She enjoyed reciting her compositions at various local clubs and organizations. In 1981 she published Gems of Truth, a short book of her poems that tells the story of a woman who loved life, regardless of what it brought—laughter, tears, family problems, or joys. Myrtle Jessup died at age 94 in 1990 in a Greene Co., Ohio, nursing home and was buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio. Her husband preceded her in death. She was one of numerous minor poets who were born or raised in Northern Kentucky at the turn of the 20th century.

Dayton, Ohio, City Directories, 1900–1990.

“Jessup, Myrtle,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, May 2, 1990, D2.

Jessup, Myrtle Strickrath. Gems of Truth. Smithtown, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1981.

Ohio Death Certificate No. 036094, for the year 1990.

JESUP, THOMAS SIDNEY, MAJOR GENERAL (b. December 16, 1788, Berkeley Co., Va. [today W.Va.]; d. June 10, 1860, Washington, D.C.).

Thomas Jesup (also spelled Jessup), of Scotch-Irish descent, was the son of a distinguished Revolutionary War officer. His family settled on a farm in Mason Co., Ky., near Washington in the early years of the 1800s. As a youth, Jesup was a voracious reader, always trying to better himself. He worked hard as a clerk in a Maysville store for a few years, exhibiting talents in an area in which he later excelled. In May 1808 he entered the U.S. Army as a 2nd lieutenant. By 1818 he was the quartermaster general, with the rank of brigadier general. His military career spanned from the War of 1812 almost to the Civil War. He fought the British in the War of 1812 and the Seminole Indians under Chief Osceola in Florida, and he was in charge of supplies during the Mexican War. He was wounded twice in his military career: at the battle of Niagara during the War of 1812, and during the Seminole War. He was a friend of Henry Clay and was well respected and popu lar in Washington, D.C. Jesup served as quartermaster general for 42 years and is recognized as the father of the modern Quartermaster Corps. Within the corps, he instituted an improved system of property accountability and experimented with new forms of transportation— canal boats in the East, camel caravans in the desert Southwest, and railroads. He developed the first set of quartermaster regulations, procedures, and forms, while instilling professionalism and ethical standards within the corps. In 1860, while still on active duty at age 71 in Washington, D.C., he became paralyzed on June 8, died on June 10, and was buried at the Congressional Cemetery on June 13. Attending his Episcopalian funeral were President James Buchanan (1857–1861), John J. Crittenden, John White Stevenson, Cave John-

son, and Gen. Winfield Scott. The War Department closed for the day to allow its staff to attend the funeral. On April 1, 1862, Jesup’s remains were removed to the Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown section of the nation’s capital. Military historians have called Maj. Gen. Thomas Sidney Jesup the most colorful and remarkable character ever to hold the position of quartermaster general.

Brigadier General Thomas S. Jesup. www.qmfound .com/BG _Thomas _Jesup.htm (accessed January 8, 2008).

Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol.2. Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

JEWELL, SUE HAMILTON (b. April 6, 1878, Uniontown, Ky.; d. July 1964, Silver Spring, Md.).

Author Susan Steele Hamilton was the fourth of 12 children born to James C. and Ella Hamilton. Educated at Potter College, a finishing school for young ladies in Bowling Green, Ky., Jewell recalled her life in the “horse and buggy days of the gay nineties” in a book entitled The Sun Shines Bright. This book “contains family history, biography, autobiography, traditions, mixed metaphors, and just happenings.”

On April 28, 1897, Sue Steele Hamilton married Edward Walter Jewell of Louisville. (In 1947, at her golden wedding anniversary, she posed for a photo in her bridal gown, and the photo was reproduced in her book.) After their marriage, the couple lived in Vincennes, Ind., and then near Covington, before settling in Troy, Ohio, in 1900. Sue Jewell became a member of Eastern Star and the Troy Music Club, which she organized in about 1917.

She traveled extensively in England, Scotland, and other parts of Europe and in Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines. Travel letters that she wrote based on her experiences were published in newspapers of the Midwest. A prolific collector, she amassed collections of art objects, china, silver, and dolls. Her doll collection was built particularly from her world travels and included dolls from 23 countries. The collection was described in an article in the 1950 edition of the American Journal of Antiques. After a brief illness, Sue Jewell died in 1964 at age 86 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., and was buried at the Riverside Cemetery, Troy, Ohio.

Jewell, Sue Hamilton. The Sun Shines Bright. New York: Pageant Press, 1952.

“Susan Jewell,” Troy (Ohio) Daily News, July 13, 1964, 12.

Kathryn Witt

JEWS. There has not been a strong Jewish presence in most of the heavily rural counties of Northern Kentucky, since Jews in America have always resided primarily in urban centers. The cities of Covington and Newport, however, did become home to small Jewish enclaves with organized Jewish institutions around the beginning of the 20th century.

As early as the middle of the 19th century, a few Jews made their homes in Northern Kentucky. For example, a German-born Jewish peddler named

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Felix Moses (1827–1886) settled in Florence, Boone Co., in the 1850s and became a well-known personality there. During the Civil War he served in the Confederate Army, first with General Buckner’s Guards and then, after a period of captivity in a Union prison, with Morgan’s Raiders (see John Hunt Morgan). When Morgan’s Raiders briefly held the city of Frankfort, Moses was the man who hoisted the Confederate flag over the capitol building. The story of “Old Mose,” as he was called, is told in great detail in John Uri Lloyd’s book Felix Moses, the Beloved Jew of Stringtown on the Pike (1930). When the first systematic census of Jews in the United States was conducted in the late 1870s, 20 Jews were identified in Northern Kentucky: 18 at Maysville in Mason Co. and 2 at Augusta in Bracken Co. Like most Jews in America at the time, these were almost certainly individuals of central European background, and they probably had come to the river towns of Maysville and Augusta to engage in trade.

In Owen Co. the name of the small town of Gratz on the Kentucky River is connected with the Gratz family of Philadelphia, one of the most prominent Jewish kin groups of colonial America.

This family was represented in Kentucky by Benjamin Gratz, who came to Lexington in 1819, the first Jew to settle there. Bernard Postal and Lionel Koppman’s A Jewish Tourist’s Guide to the U.S. (1954) asserts that the town of Gratz was established as a mercantile shipping point by the Gratzes of Philadelphia themselves. More likely, however, is the contention that when the town of Gratz was laid out in 1847 by the heirs of John Brown, Kentucky’s first U.S. senator, it was named for his grandson Benjamin Gratz Brown (1826–1885), who had been named in honor of his mother’s uncle through marriage, Benjamin Gratz of Lexington, in whose house he was born. It seems that the town of Gratz never had Jewish residents.

The years just before and after 1900 witnessed a massive migration of east European Jews to America, as they fled persecution and economic hardship in places such as Poland and Russia. The Jewish population of the United States rose from about 250,000 in 1880 to more than 4 million by the 1920s. It was during this period that Jews first arrived in substantial numbers in Northern Kentucky, many coming by way of Cincinnati, which had been an important center of Jewish life since early in the 19th century. The Jews who came to Northern Kentucky settled mainly in Newport and Covington and created organized Jewish communities with synagogues in those two cities.

The United Hebrew Congregation of Newport established a synagogue in 1897, which moved into a former church building at 117 E. Fift h St. in 1905. In later years one or more alternative prayer groups were established in Newport, but none of these survived for long; the United Hebrew Congregation remained the central institution of Newport Jewry. Because the culture of most east European Jews was heavily influenced by traditional religious norms, the United Hebrew Congregation was Orthodox, even if not all its members adhered to Orthodox practices such as strictly observing

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the Jewish dietary laws and refraining from work on the Sabbath.

In Covington the Temple of Israel was founded in 1906. Also Orthodox, this congregation built a synagogue on Seventh St. near Greenup in 1915 and remained in that facility until 1937, when the federal government took over the land where the synagogue stood for the construction of a new post office and courthouse. In 1939 the Temple of Israel congregation moved into its second building, a newly constructed synagogue at 1040 Scott St. The Jews of Covington and Newport, like most Jews of east European background in early20th-century America, possessed a strong ethnic and cultural identity. Thus their cohesiveness as a community was based on much more than synagogue affi liation. They tended to live near one another, and they supported communal institutions besides congregations. In Newport the Jewish community had organized a Free Hebrew School with 129 supporting members as early as 1907. The school, whose classes met initially in a building on Patterson St., offered educational programs for both children and adults, including English language classes in the evening for Jewish immigrants, most of whom spoke Yiddish. By 1907 Newport’s Jews also were supporting a branch of the socialist Zionist society Poale Zion. Many east European Jewish immigrants brought with them to America a certain sympathy for socialism and a strong commitment to the goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Another institution supported by Newport’s Jews during the same period was the Jewish Protective League, created in 1906 with Isaac Hauer, owner of a tailor shop, as its president. Boasting some 200 members, the League was formed to demand better police protection from “hoodlums” preying on Newport’s Jews. In 1906 at least two individuals were convicted of attacks motivated by anti-Semitism, although several members of the Jewish Protective League petitioned to have one of them pardoned after he wrote a letter of apology for his actions.

The Jewish Protective League seems to have been disbanded after some success in securing additional attention from the Newport city government, but Newport’s Jewish community remained well organized. During the second decade of the 20th century, Newport Jews were supporting a charitable society called the Hebrew Emergency Association, incorporated in 1913; a mutual benefit society called Hebrew Mutual Aid; and the Hebrew Young Men’s Association (or Young Men’s Hebrew Association), a club that had its own rooms at Fift h and York Sts., at least for a time. An active Zionist society was still maintained in town as well, and during World War I the Jews of Newport organized an effort to raise money for Jewish victims of the hostilities in Europe. The Jewish population of Newport was reported to be 600 in 1927; that of Covington, 500.

Like the heads of Jewish households in smaller cities and towns all over the country, those in Newport and Covington made their living primarily in mercantile activities or in skilled trades

such as tailoring or shoemaking, with only a few holding factory jobs or involved in professions. Of the 12 men who were officers of the Temple of Israel or members of that congregation’s executive committee in 1915, for example, 5 owned clothing stores, 1 was a dry-goods merchant, and 1 had a shoe store. Also among the 12 were a furniture store owner, a restaurateur, a junk dealer, and a “collector” who later owned a store selling secondhand goods. The only professional in the group was the insurance agent Maurice Chase. Similarly, city directories reveal the occupations practiced in the late 1920s by 47 of the 61 men whose names appear on a memorial tablet from the United Hebrew Congregation’s synagogue in Newport. Of these 47 men, about 60 percent were in business for themselves, and nearly all the rest were skilled tradesmen. Stores owned by Newport Jews in the late 1920s included Morris Cohn’s Newport Furniture Company, the Spector Furniture House, Jacob Jurin’s Monmouth Jewelry Company, and the Rosen Auto Supply Company (all on Monmouth St.); others were the K and K Drug Company on Washington Ave., the Rodner Cap Company on York St., and at least six groceries.

The 1920s seem to have been the peak period for Northern Kentucky Jewry, for by the 1930s there were signs of a population decline. The violence that accompanied a steelworkers’ strike in the 1920s in Newport’s West End, where most of the city’s Jews lived, may have frightened some of them; and the great flood of 1937, which ravaged low-lying communities all along the Ohio River may also have motivated some Jews to leave. By the 1930s it was evident that few new Jewish families were moving into the area and that a fair number of Newport and Covington Jews were relocating to Cincinnati to find a wider range of Jewish social, cultural, and religious activities for themselves and greater educational opportunities for their children. Automobile ownership made it possible even for those Jews who kept their businesses in Northern Kentucky to make their homes in the suburbs of Cincinnati. In 1937 the Jewish population of Newport was down to 475 and that of Covington down to 350. Elsewhere in Campbell Co., there were 15 Jews living in Bellevue, 15 in Dayton, 20 in South Newport, and 25 in Fort Thomas. A few Jews were scattered in other Northern Kentucky towns in 1937, as well: 12 in Falmouth, 13 in Owenton, and 28 in Maysville, for example.

World War II was a difficult time for Northern Kentucky’s Jews; they experienced the trauma of the period both as Americans engaged in the war effort and as Jews following events in Nazidominated Europe. After the war the population decline evident in the 1930s continued as Northern Kentucky Jewish families’ children who had gone off to military ser vice or to college generally chose not to return to their hometowns. Because Jews left Newport and Covington and no significant number of new Jewish families moved into the area, the Jewish community’s congregations went into decline and its other institutions were disbanded. The Temple of Israel in Covington ceased functioning completely around 1960, and

its synagogue building was sold to the Church of God in 1973. The United Hebrew Congregation closed down permanently around 1966, and its building was sold to the Apostolic Temple of Newport in 1969.

The last president of the United Hebrew Congregation was the Newport-born attorney Morris Weintraub (1909–1996), who was perhaps the most prominent individual to emerge from the Northern Kentucky Jewish community. Not only was Weintraub active in Jewish affairs, first in Kentucky and later in Cincinnati, but he was also an important Democratic political figure representing Campbell Co. He served in the Kentucky Senate from 1940 to 1942 and in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1946 to 1958, rising to the position of Speaker of the House during the administration of Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler in the mid-1950s. Another famous Jewish son of the region was Ben Lucien Burman (1895–1984), author of 22 novels and many articles. Burman was born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Covington and lived on E. Eighth St., not far from the synagogue, before leaving town and moving eventually to New York City.

Although organized Jewish life in Newport and Covington had lasted for only six or seven decades, a small number of Jews continued to reside in Northern Kentucky. For a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of Jewish professionals transplanted to the area tried to reestablish the Temple of Israel congregation and even investigated rehabilitating its building. In the mid-1980s, yet another small group attempted to organize communal activities under the auspices of an organization calling itself the Jewish Community of Northern Kentucky. Both of these efforts were short-lived, however, and since the final years of the 20th century, Northern Kentucky Jews seeking religious and cultural connections have looked to Cincinnati. Nevertheless, those Jewish families whose roots were in Newport and Covington continued to maintain a connection with each other and with their past, even holding a reunion in Cincinnati as recently as 1994.

Lapides, Leslie. “Judaism Then and Now,” KP, March 19, 1983, 1K. Lassetter, Leslie A. “Covington’s Schule, the Temple of Israel,” 1976, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Lloyd, John Uri. Felix Moses, the Beloved Jew of Stringtown on the Pike. Cincinnati: Caxton Press, 1930.

Postal, Bernard, and Lionel Koppman, A Jewish Tourist’s Guide to the U.S. Philadelphia, Pa.: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1954.

Reis, James. “Remnant of Jewish Community Remains,” KP, August 17, 1987, 4K. Weissbach, Lee Shai. The Synagogues of Kentucky: Architecture and History. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1995.

Lee Shai Weissbach

JOHN A. ROEBLING BRIDGE. On June 27, 1983, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) designated this historic bridge the John A. Roebling Bridge. Over the years, the span over the

JOHN A. ROEBLING BRIDGE

John A. Roebling Bridge, Covington approach, ca. 1920.

Ohio River connecting Cincinnati to Covington had been known by several names—most commonly “the Suspension Bridge”—before it was named for the engineer who designed and built it.

John Roebling himself called it “the Ohio Bridge,” but for many years it was referred to simply as “the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge.”

Discussion of a bridge at Cincinnati over the Ohio River had occurred at least as early as 1815, and the Kentucky legislature granted a charter to build one in 1829. There was apparently little follow-up at this point. Impetus for a bridge was renewed in 1839 when a group from Lexington met to discuss improved commercial ties between Lexington and Cincinnati. Additional meetings in Covington and Cincinnati were held, and eventually the decision was made to push for the completion of the Covington and Lexington Turnpike as the top priority.

A new charter for a bridge at Covington was issued by the Kentucky legislature in 1846. However, heeding opposition from steamboat interests, ferryboat operators, and others, the Ohio legislature took until 1849 to issue a similar charter, and several imposing restrictions were added by the Ohio lawmakers. The bridge must not be built in line with any existing Cincinnati street (Covington’s north-south streets had been laid out to align with those in Cincinnati), and the bridge must be at least 1,400 feet long, with a midspan clearance of 112 feet. An amendment in 1856 shortened the length requirement to 1,000 feet but increased the required clearance to 122 feet. It was anticipated that a bridge might enable escaping slaves to cross the river more readily, so provisions were included in both charters addressing that concern.

Little progress was made by the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company, which held the two state building charters, until a new president and board of directors took office in 1856. Among the directors was Covington resident Amos Shinkle, who reportedly energized the company. In August

1856 John Roebling, an experienced bridge designer and builder from Pennsylvania, was hired as chief engineer for the bridge project. Both Roebling and Charles Ellet had submitted proposals during the mid-1840s to build a bridge across the Ohio River at Covington. Ellet later built the suspension bridge that opened at Wheeling, W.Va., in 1849 to carry the National Rd. across the Ohio River. Roebling was chosen to build the bridge connecting Cincinnati and Covington.

Construction on the bridge Roebling designed began in September 1856 with excavation for the towers. However, the national economic panic of 1857 made it difficult to obtain funds, and work stopped in late 1858, with the tower on the Ohio side at 45 feet in height and the tower on the Kentucky side at 75 feet.

Work on the bridge did not resume until the middle of the Civil War. The September 1862 Confederate Army’s thrust into Kentucky and the ensuing threat to Cincinnati had helped to reinforce the need for the bridge. A pontoon bridge using coal barges had been hastily assembled just upstream of the unfinished bridge towers to move Union forces and supplies to the prepared fortifications in the hills above Covington and Newport.

Confederate cavalry patrols probed the area, but the main body of the associated troops remained in Central Kentucky.

With political support now on both sides of the river, the legislatures of Ohio and Kentucky were persuaded to reduce the bridge height requirement to a minimum of 100 feet above the low-water mark.

John Roebling then returned to Covington, and construction of the towers resumed in May 1863.

Work was also started on the anchorages that same year.

The towers were completed in 1865. Col. Washington Roebling had been discharged from the Union Army and was named as assistant chief engineer for the bridge project. John Roebling was at this time involved in planning for the Brooklyn

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Bridge in New York City and had turned over direct supervision of the work here to his son. The younger Roebling utilized his father’s perfected method of spinning the cables in place, and the procedure, begun in November 1865, was completed in June 1866. Installation of the suspenders, the floor beams, the trusses, and the diagonal stays then followed at a relatively rapid pace.

The new bridge was opened for pedestrians on Saturday, December 1, 1866, and according to reports 166,000 people crossed the bridge that weekend. Although the bridge was not totally completed, the company decided to open the span to vehicular traffic on New Year’s Day 1867. Freezing conditions that had prevented the local ferries from operating on a regular schedule prompted the decision. A procession of carriages, led by the company’s officers and the bridge engineers, formalized the opening. After crossing from Covington, the procession was met on the Cincinnati side by a contingent representing Ohio, and afterward the entire group crossed back to Kentucky At least 45,000 persons were reported to have crossed the bridge that day.

The bridge the Roeblings had completed in 1867 featured the world’s longest span, at 1,057 feet between the midpoints of the towers. The stone towers each rested on timber grillage, 75 feet by 110 feet, made up of various native woods. The towers, made of sandstone from the Buena Vista Quarries upriver in Ohio and limestone from quarries in Ohio and Indiana, each weighed more than 30,000 tons. The original anchor houses on each shore covered 11-ton anchor plates connected to the cables by chains of eyebars.

The original cables were made of wrought iron (imported from England because the material was unavailable in the United States during the war).

Each cable contained 5,180 wires laid side by side (not twisted); the cables were constructed on-site by a device perfected by Roebling that strung the wires as it traveled back and forth between the anchors. The cable wires were 9-gauge, wrapped tightly with 10-gauge wire, and the diameter of the two original cables was 12 1⁄3 inches. The cables rested in iron saddles on top of each tower. Roebling constructed brick turrets to protect the saddles and topped them with decorative Greek crosses.

The original floor system and iron trusses hung from suspender cables attached to the main cables.

The original flooring was wood. Seventy-six diagonal stay cables radiated from the tops of the towers to help stabilize the suspended spans. These diagonal stays were an innovation by Roebling that added stiff ness to his structures. They foreshadowed today’s modern cable-stayed bridges, such as the William H. Harsha Bridge at Maysville.

The floor of Roebling’s bridge was 20 feet wide with 7-foot walkways on either side, for a total width of 34 feet. Narrower walkways went through the 75-foot-high arches, although pedestrians could also walk around the towers. The total cost of the bridge was approximately $1.8 million, well above early estimates owing to inflation fueled by the Civil War. Roebling regretted that the Ohio charter forbade building the bridge in line with the existing streets. He noted that without this prohibition an

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JOHN A. ROEBLING BRIDGE

avenue could have been built that would have been grander than any such boulevard on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

John Roebling died of injuries he received in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Washington Roebling built the bridge over the East River there that his father had envisioned, completing it in 1883. The Brooklyn Bridge then became the world’s longest, with a center span of 1,595 feet. The Cincinnati bridge was a financial success for the bridge company headed by Amos Shinkle, who had become its president in 1866. Because Covington was the northern terminus of the Kentucky Central Railroad, the span was used to transport cargo that had arrived by rail to and from Cincinnati by wagon. The river crossing led to an economic boom in Covington and Newport. Horsecars began using the bridge in 1867, and electric streetcars began crossing in 1891. This transit system gradually expanded to serve the basin-area cities of Northern Kentucky.

By the early 1890s, an inspection revealed some weakening of the cable at the span’s anchorages due to moisture problems. Local bridge engineer Gustave Bouscaren devised reinforcing collars with friction clamps to restore the cable strength.

These devices can be seen today at each of the four original anchorages. They clamp onto the cables outside of the anchorage and, on the inside, connect to the same pins that join the strands of cable to the anchor chains.

Despite this successful and vital repair, the weight of the electric streetcars being used during the 1890s raised concerns about the structure’s future. The bridge company retained Bouscaren and five other prominent civil engineers to make independent recommendations after inspecting the condition of the bridge. Only the German-born Wilhelm Hildenbrand, who had extensive engineering experience with suspension bridges, suggested retaining the basic structure. He had been employed by John Roebling as a draftsman to prepare plan sheets and promotional illustrations for the Brooklyn Bridge, and he had become one of Washington Roebling’s principal assistants in the construction of that bridge. Hildenbrand consulted closely with Washington Roebling in the reconstruction of the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge in 1895–1899. The work was accomplished while maintaining the flow of traffic.

The reconstruction included adding two steel cables and four anchorages. These 10.5-inch cables were designed to support only the central span of the bridge. They are made of 6-guage wire wrapped with 10-guage galvanized wire. The John A. Roebling and Sons Company of Trenton, N.J., produced the wire for the cables. It was necessary to remove Roebling’s original turrets to place additional saddles to carry the cables over the towers.

The turrets were replaced with dome structures.

Hildenbrand’s work changed the appearance of the bridge mainly because of the massive steel trusses he added to replace the shallower iron trusses, which had given a much more delicate profi le to the bridge. He strengthened the floor with deeper beams and widened the road from 20 to 30

feet. As a result, pedestrians crossing the bridge now had to walk around the towers.

Approximately 1,200 streetcar crossings were made over the bridge each weekday in 1899, and the early part of the 20th century saw tremendous growth in the numbers of automobiles and trucks that were crossing. Highways U.S. 25 and U.S. 42 were routed over the Suspension Bridge. It was the primary roadway span connecting Covington and Cincinnati until the old C&O Bridge was converted to highway use in 1929.

During the record flood of 1937, the bridge was the only crossing open on the Ohio River between Steubenville, Ohio, and Cairo, Ill., a distance of more than 800 miles. It was necessary, however, to construct a ramp of sandbags, gravel, and timber connecting the bridge’s Covington approach to a point on Greenup St. The crossing provided a critical connection to move food, fuel, medical supplies, and emergency equipment.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky purchased the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge from the company in 1953 for $4.23 million. Kentucky also acquired buildings on each side of the river. The Kentucky Highway Department district office then moved from the John R. Coppin Building in Covington to the bridge company’s former headquarters on Second St. Shortly after purchasing the bridge, Kentucky replaced the timber floor with a stronger, yet lighter, open-grid steel floor. Other improvements included reconstruction of the bridge’s Ohio approach and the bus ramps to Dixie Terminal, the transit portal that accessed the bridge from Cincinnati. The bridge continued to be operated as a toll facility until November 1963. Tollbooths had been located at the ends of the anchor houses with various configurations over the years. In 1930 the portion of the bridge’s Ohio approach just south of Third St. in Cincinnati had been widened to a four-lane toll plaza.

Tolls in 1867 were 3 cents for pedestrians, 2 cents for each hog, 10 cents for a horse and carriage, and 5 cents for each additional horse. Rates for autos first appeared in 1901. Toll schedules published in 1935 and in 1953 both show the rate as 1 cent for pedestrians, 5 cents for motorcycles, and 10 cents for autos, as well as 10 cents for “onehorse vehicles.”

An observance billed as the Centennial Celebration of the Great Suspension Bridge was held on October 15, 1966. It included a parade across the bridge and ceremonies at Court House Square in Covington. The state governors of Ohio and Kentucky made brief remarks, and the major address was by Charles S. Adams. Marian Spelman sang the national anthem.

The Roebling Bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1982. The Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee, a local citizens group, began flying flags atop the towers in 1976 to commemorate the U.S. bicentennial. That committee is also responsible for the cable lighting system that was installed on the bridge in 1984 and named in memory of Julia

Langsam, a former president of the group and an enthusiastic supporter of the lighting project.

The Roebling Bridge was painted blue at the time of the national bicentennial. The previous color had been green—not unlike the hue of the patina found on many historic fountains, steeples, and other works of art and architecture.

After an in-depth inspection and analysis of the bridge in 1987, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) pursued a program of repairs and restoration in the early 1990s that cost more than $10 million. The work included replacement of suspender cables; masonry stone, concrete, and steel repairs; restoration of the anchorages, including new metal roofs; reconstruction of the Ohio approach; deck repairs; replacement of the saddle houses with turrets resembling the originals; and dramatic lighting. New ball-and-cross finials were set in place by helicopter on March 7, 1992.

Except for street widening, the approach in Covington had remained basically the same until the KYTC constructed what is termed the “yoke” project. Completed in 1992, it crosses over Second St. in Covington and connects Greenup and Scott Sts. directly to the bridge. On the Cincinnati side, the original approach had been a steep slope from Front St. It was extended to Second St. in 1897 and to Third St. in 1918. Beginning in 1921, ramps carried streetcars and later buses to the Dixie Terminal complex that fronted on the south side of Fourth St. in Cincinnati. These ramps were reconstructed several times and finally removed in the late 1990s.

The entire approach in Cincinnati was reconfigured during the late 1960s with the construction of I-71 (see Expressways). The Ohio approach was modified again in 1999 when the Fort Washington Way segment of I-71 was totally rebuilt. The bridge now connects in Ohio to Theodore M. Berry Way. In 2006 the bridge carried approximately 9,100 vehicles per day, including 700 Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky buses. A repair project was completed in spring 2007 before a longoverdue repainting.

Today, with renewed interest in the riverfronts, the John A. Roebling Bridge has become the symbol of the tri-state area. Its silhouette frequently depicted by artists and photographers, the historic bridge also routinely serves as the background for several local television newscasts.

Files of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, District Six, Covington, Ky. Gastright, Joseph F. “Wilhelm Hildenbrand and the 1895 Reconstruction of the Roebling Suspension Bridge.” In Fifth Historic Bridges Conference. Columbus, Ohio: Burgess and Niple, 1997.

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

“Report of John A. Roebling, Civil Engineer, to the President and Board of Directors of the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company, April 1, 1867.” In Reports on the Ohio Bridge at Cincinnati. Trenton, N.J.: Murphy and Bechtel, 1867.

Stern, Joseph S., Jr. “The Suspension Bridge: They Said It Couldn’t Be Built.” BCHS 23, no. 4 (October 1965): 211–28.

JOHNSON, DONALD “GROUNDHOG” Stevens, Harry. The Ohio Bridge. Cincinnati: Ruter Press, 1939.

Tenkotte, Paul A. “Rival Cities to Suburbs: Covington and Newport, Kentucky, 1790–1890,” PhD diss., Univ. of Cincinnati, 1989.

Worthington, William F., Jr. “John A. Roebling and the Cincinnati Bridge.” In Fifth Historic Bridges Conference. Columbus, Ohio: Burgess and Niple, 1997.

Ralph Wolff

JOHN G. FEE INDUSTRIAL HIGH SCHOOL. In 1928 the voters of Maysville approved a bond issue to finance the creation of a black high school, named for John Gregg Fee, the famed abolitionist and founder of Berea College, who was born in nearby Bracken Co. Fee had once been a minister in Mason Co. Located on the south side of E. Fourth St., east of the city limits at that time, John G. Fee Industrial High School became noted for its quality academic and vocational training; many of its graduates went on to Kentucky State College (now University) at Frankfort. The school offered both high school and elementary school grades, and its students were drawn from the city and the county.

It also had an excellent record in athletics. The 1933 and 1934 girls’ basketball teams, coached by Miss E. M. Clement, were state champions; in 1952 the boys’ basketball team, under coach John Fields, was the state runner-up, losing to Louisville Central in the finals. Professor William H. Humphrey (1880– 1958), the first principal of John G. Fee Industrial High School (1929–1949), is remembered as the administrator who oversaw the institution’s many achievements; the second and last principal was O. W. Whyte (1949–1957).

The integration of both the Maysville and the Mason Co. school systems began in 1956. That September, the Mason Co. system withdrew 78 students from John G. Fee Industrial, both at the high school and the elementary levels, and enrolled them in previously all-white county schools; the Maysville city schools closed the 10th through 12th grades at the black school and enrolled 23 African American students at Maysville High. John G. Fee Industrial High School continued a few more years until the process of integration was completed in Mason Co. The school building was then leveled for construction of a parking lot.

Calvert, Jean, and John Klee. Maysville, Kentucky: From Past to Present in Pictures. Maysville, Ky.: Mason Co. Museum, 1983.

Caron’s Maysville City Directory, 1934.

“Integration in Mason,” KTS, February 16, 1956, 12A. “Maysville Schools to Integrate,” KTS, September 3, 1956, 4A.

JOHN H. MOORE HOUSE. The John H. Moore House, located at 9733 River Rd. in Hebron, is one of the most historically significant Greek Revival structures in Boone Co. The house is on the National Historic register and commands a view of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Capt. John H. Moore built the brick portion of the house in the 1830s.

The one-foot-thick walls were built of bricks handmade on the property. In the early days, the house

had a wood-shingled roof. The original part of the house was a two-story single-pen hand-hewn log cabin, built between 1789 and 1805, during the time when American Indians were present. William and Nancy Kirtley, the previous owners, probably built the cabin. Nancy Johnson Kirtley was the daughter of the first Boone Co. clerk, Col. Cave Johnson, a previous owner of the land. Moore had many famous relatives, including President William Henry Harrison (1841), who lived across the Ohio River in Ohio, and Zebulon Pike, the discoverer of Pike’s Peak.

Moore (1799–1885), one of the first native-born farmers in Boone Co., He inherited the farm from his grandparents, William and Peggy Bates and eventually accumulated more than 1,000 acres. He raised cattle, horses, chickens, tobacco, fruit trees, grapes, hay, and vegetables. The family was fairly selfsufficient. The property includes numerous ponds and cisterns, a few springs, and several creeks. On the farm were a buggy-and-harness shop, a water-driven grain mill, an icehouse for cooling food and drinks, and a smokehouse for curing meat.

Dan Moore

JOHNS HILL. Johns Hill, a Campbell Co. community originally located along Ky. Rt. 9 and Johns Hill Rd., was aptly named for the very steep hill that dominates the area. Ky. Rt. 9, the Licking Pk., has been dramatically altered due to land slippages and was relocated westward toward the Licking River during the 1980s and 1990s. Johns Hill Rd. still climbs up the hill, as it has always done, but it is no longer part of Ky. Rt. 9.

The local 1883 Lake atlas shows the Johns Hill community as consisting of a cemetery, a school (Johns Hill Elementary Log School), the Johns Hill house (a tavern), two blacksmith shops, and St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and its school. The church began in 1847 on top of the hill in a log building. This structure burned. Leaving its early cemetery behind, the church community built a new stone church at the bottom of the hill along old Licking Pk. in 1858. A school was part of the church property into the 1960s. Another cemetery, known as St. Joseph Cemetery, is next to the current church building. It began as a Catholic cemetery for deceased members of Newport’s Catholic churches.

Today, most of the Johns Hill community is located on the very top of the hill. Subdivisions and condominiums are now settled on the hills of the area, even in the area of Battery Wiggins and Battery Holt, two of the Civil War fortifications built during the 1860s. To the south and up the hill, I-275 cuts under Johns Hill Road, and the growing Northern Kentucky University campus is farther to the south. Johns Hill has developed into a bedroom community, now part of Wilder.

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

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

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

Kenneth A. Reis

JOHNSON, CAVE, HOUSE. See Cave Johnson House.

JOHNSON, DONALD “GROUNDHOG” (b. July 31, 1926, Covington, Ky.). Five-foot-six, right-hand-hitting Don “Groundhog” Johnson, the first African American from Covington to try out for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, was the son of Howard Johnson and Margaret Battle. Johnson attended Lincoln- Grant School in Covington, which did not have a baseball team. He learned baseball by playing with the older kids in the neighborhood.

In 1947 Johnson was a member of a Covington baseball club named the Twenty Counts, which played most of its home games at the old Covington Ballpark along Ninth St. in the Willow Run section of town. Later that year, he tried out for the Cincinnati Reds. Ralph “Buzz” Boyle, the head scout for the Reds organization, had found Johnson. After signing a contract, Johnson was assigned to Ogden, Utah, a Class C Reds farm team, but because of an altercation that occurred before he even got off the train, he returned to Covington and was released by the major league club. In 1948 Johnson began a five-year stint in the Negro Baseball League (NBL). He was in the last group of players before the league folded during the 1950s.

Johnson played the infield in both the National and American divisions of the NBL for the Philadelphia Stars and the Chicago American Giants, finishing his career with a respectable lifetime batting average of .335. Afterward, he played semipro ball with the Cincinnati Tigers.

Upon his return to the area, Johnson was employed by Shillito’s Department Store in Cincinnati. After his retirement from Shillito’s, he was again active in baseball, this time coaching at the Finneytown (Ohio) High School. During the 1980s, Johnson coached at Hughes High School in Cincinnati, when former Covington LincolnGrant basketball coach James Brock was that school’s athletic director. In 1996 Johnson was inducted into the Negro League Hall of Fame. Today, he works at the Evanston Community Center and coaches baseball at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Covington mayor Butch Callery renamed the old Randolph field at Ninth and Prospect Sts. in Johnson’s honor on August 6, 2005.

Johnson currently lives in the Northside area of Cincinnati.

Glover, Robert Alan. “Play Ball! Negro Leagues’ Players in the Spotlight on Opening Day,” KP, March 29, 2003, 6K. Kenton Co. Public Library. Images of America: Covington. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2003.

Little, Aiesha D. “Cincinnati Kid: Donald Johnson.”

Cincinnati Magazine, April 2005, 70–71.

Lyle, Troy. “ ‘Groundhog’ Johnson Honored; Ballfield Named for Black Player,” KP, July 23, 2005, 3K.

Theodore H. H. Harris

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JOHNSON, GERALD WALTER, LIEUTENANT GENERAL

JOHNSON, GERALD WALTER, LIEUTENANT GENERAL (b. July 10, 1919, Owen Co., Ky.; d. September 9, 2002, St. Petersburg, Fla.). Military pi lot Gerald Johnson, the son of James B. and Attie Reeves Johnson, grew up on a farm near the small community of Pleasant Home in Owen Co., Ky. Johnson attended the local county schools and graduated from Owenton High School in 1937, then studied at the Bryant and Stratton Business School in Louisville. He worked in various jobs, but his great desire was to become a pi lot. In 1939 he entered Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College in Richmond and enrolled in the college’s ROTC program. After he had completed two years of college, Johnson’s dream to become a pi lot was about to come true. In 1941 he entered active military duty as an aviation cadet at Randolph Field, San Antonio, and in April 1942 graduated from flight school with a commission as 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

During World War II Johnson was a member of the Eighth Air Force, serving in the 56th Fighter Group. Flying P-47 aircraft, he was the first ace (pi lot achieving five combat kills) in the 56th Fighter Group and the second ace in the war’s European Theater of Operation. During 15 months of combat duty, Johnson flew 88 missions and was credited with 18 victories (aircraft shot down), 1 probable (unconfirmed) and 4 1⁄2 (one-half means that his and another plane damaged it) enemy aircraft damaged in combat. On November 29, 1943, Johnson was temporarily assigned by Brig. Gen. Jesse Auton to command the 360th Fighter Squadron of the 356th Fighter Group, which was just entering combat and needed an experienced combat pi lot. He returned to the 56th in early February 1944, taking command of the 63rd Squadron. On March 27, 1944, Johnson led his squadron on a strafing run of an armed German supply train heading for northern France. On the third pass, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire from the train and he crashed in a nearby field. Escaping with minor injuries, he set his plane on fire and ran toward the woods. As he reached the woods, the fire reached the cockpit, setting off the aircraft’s guns.

Johnson hit the ground as the last of his plane’s ammunition passed just above his head. Shortly after this close call, he was captured and sent to Frankfurt, Germany, for interrogation. Being uncooperative, he was held in solitary confinement for 24 days before being sent to a prison camp. He was a prisoner of war for 13 months at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany. On May 12, 1945, Russian forces liberated this prison camp; then, within three weeks of his liberation, he was turned over to American forces and flown to England aboard a B-17 bomber.

Remaining in the military, Johnson commanded an F-84 fighter wing during the Korean War. In 1953 he led a flight of 20 F-84G fighters nonstop from Albany, Ga., to Lakehurst, England; en route, each aircraft underwent three air-refuelings from KC-97 refueling air tankers.

Johnson was the first commander of the 4,080th Reconnaissance Wing, a combat unit equipped with U-2 and RB-57 aircraft. Following several staff assignments, he left fighter aircraft and transitioned

to bombers; he commanded the 305th Bomb wing and flew the B-58 Hustler bombers for three years.

During the Vietnam War, he was deputy chief of staff for operations at the SAC headquarters in Omaha, Neb. In 1973 Johnson became the inspector general of the U.S. Air Force in Washington, D.C. Prior to this appointment, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force SAC, with headquarters at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

Johnson’s military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross with four oak leaf clusters, a Bronze Star Medal, the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, an Air Force Commendation Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre. In uniform, Johnson wore command pilot wings and the Senior Missileman Badge.

Lieutenant General Johnson retired September 1, 1974, after 33 years of ser vice to his country.

He was one of Owen Co.’s two highest-ranking officers, the other being Vice Adm. Willis A. “Hose” Lee. Johnson died in 2002 in Florida and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Air Force Link. “Lieutenant General Gerald W. Johnson.” U.S. Air Force. www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp ?bioID=5958 (accessed November 5, 2006).

Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976.

Johnson, Gerald W. Called to Command: A WWII Fighter Ace’s Adventurous Journey. Paducah, Ky.: Turner, 1997.

Johnson, Lt. Gen. Gerald, to 1st Lt. Robert Snow, March 5, 1995. Personal handwritten account of ser vice, Robert Snow’s private collection.

“Lt. Gen. Gerald Johnson, 83, Native of Owenton,” KP, October 22, 2002, A6.

Olynyk, Frank. Stars and Bars: A Tribute to the American Fighter Ace, 1920–1973. London: Grub Street, 1995.

Vertical fi les, Owen Co. Public Library, Owenton, Ky. Wecker, David. “Her Uncle Was a Real Hero,” KP, October 3, 2002, 1B.

reported to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Tex., where he soon became ill. Johnson died from an acute heart condition in early May 1947 at Brooks Army Hospital and was buried at the International Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery in Owenton, Ky., following one of the largest funerals Owen Co. had ever seen.

Bourne, C. H. “Lebus Johnson Dies in Ser vice,” Owenton News-Herald, May 8, 1947.

Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976.

JOHNSON, WILLIAM C. (b. June 6, 1917, Centerville, Bourbon Co., Ky.; d. May 20, 1999, Warsaw, Ky.). William C. Johnson, the first African American elected to serve on the City Council of Walton in Boone Co., was the son of John Will and Lucy Campbell Johnson. He spent his youth on a horse farm before moving to Lexington, where he attended public schools and graduated from Dunbar High School in 1938. After moving to Northern Kentucky, Johnson worked for the Shillito’s Department Store in Cincinnati during the week; on Sundays, for 16 years he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Ripley, Ohio. Later he served as interim pastor of several churches, including the First Baptist Church in Burlington, Ky., and the Zion Baptist Church in Walton.

Elected to the Walton City Council in 1978, Johnson served for six years. During this period, he was the only African American officeholder in Boone Co. When he resigned for health reasons on August 6, 1985, his distant cousin Johnnie Ann Johnson replaced him. William Johnson died in 1999 at the Gallatin Co. Health Care Center and was buried at the Walton Cemetery.

“Distant Cousin Appointed to Council Man’s Vacant Seat,” KP, August 20, 1985, 5K. “Only Black Councilman Resigns Walton Seat,” KP, August 6, 1985, 5K. “Rev. William C. Johnson Former Walton Councilman,” CP, May 22, 1999, 13A.

Doris Riley

Theodore H. H. Harris

JOHNSON, LEBUS C. (b. 1910, Greenup, Owen

JOHNSON CREEK COVERED BRIDGE.

Co., Ky.; d. May 1947, San Antonio, Tex.). Lebus Cooper Johnson, army officer and inventor, graduated from Owenton High School in 1929 and received a BS in metallurgical engineering from the University of Kentucky in 1938. Having joined the U.S. Army in 1942 during World War II, he became an officer in an ordnance unit overseas by the end of that year. Eventually, Johnson was in charge of all Allied ammunition in Europe, and after the war it was his responsibility to deal with the disposal of huge stores of unused ammunition from both sides of the conflict. He halted the plan to throw the ammunition into the sea and instead devised machines and methods to convert the remaining munitions into fertilizer and plastics. He reportedly saved the Allies some $300 million; for those efforts, Johnson was highly decorated by several nations. After some 50 months abroad, he returned to the United States in December 1946 and

This historic covered bridge is five miles north of the Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park, near Burika in the southeastern corner of Robertson Co. It originally carried Ky. Rt. 1029 across Johnson Creek, coinciding with a former buffalo trace. The bridge, which can be reached via Ky. Rt. 1029 from U.S. 68, is one of 13 covered bridges surviving in Kentucky (at one time there were more than 400). Jacob N. Bower, a prolific covered-bridge builder, built it in about 1874. Made of poplar wood, the Johnson Creek Covered Bridge is more than 100 feet long and has Smith-type trusses. In 1910 it burned, and in 1914 Bower’s son Louis Bower Jr. rebuilt it, adding iron rods and wooden arches. It was closed to traffic in 1966. In 1968 the bridge caught fire again, but the fire was extinguished in time to avoid extensive damage. In 1986 a new roof was added; today, the bridge needs full restoration.

The structure was placed on the National Register of

JOLLY, JAMES MONROE

Historic Places in 1976, and there is a Kentucky Highway Marker at the site. Many visitors to Robertson Co. and the Blue Licks Battlefield State Park stop at the Johnson Creek Covered Bridge. For generations, the bridge has also been popu lar with young lovers.

Laughlin, Robert W. M., and Melissa C. Jurgensen.

Images of America: Kentucky’s Covered Bridges.

Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2007.

Powell, Robert A. Kentucky’s Covered Bridges. Danville, Ky.: Silverhawke, 2001.

JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY, GENERAL (b. February 2, 1803, Washington, Ky.; d. April 6, 1862, Shiloh, Tenn.). Albert Sidney Johnston, who fought in four wars, was the youngest son of Dr. John and Abigail Harris Johnston. His early education was in local schools, and he then attended Transylvania University in Lexington. After graduating, he was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he graduated in 1926, eighth in his class. He married Henrietta Preston of Louisville in 1829, and they had three children. Albert Johnston was assigned to military posts in New York and Missouri before serving in the Black Hawk War in 1832 as adjutant to the commanding general. Johnston resigned from the U.S. Army in 1834 and returned to Kentucky to care for his dying invalid wife. After her death on August 12, 1835, Johnston moved to Texas, where he took up farming. During the Texas War of Independence from Mexico in the 1830s, he enlisted in the Texas Army and by January 1837 had become the senior general of the Army of Texas.

On February 7, 1837, Johnston fought a duel with Brig. Gen. Felix Houston of the Texas Army, in which Johnston was seriously wounded; as a result, he lost his commission. On December 22, 1838, Mirabeau Lamar, president of the Texas Republic, appointed Johnston as his secretary of war.

In February 1840, Johnston resigned from that position and returned home to Washington, Ky. He married Eliza Griffi n of Louisville in 1843, and the newlyweds moved to a large Texas plantation, which Johnston named China Grove.

He rejoined the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, where he served gallantly as a staff officer under fellow Kentuckian Gen. Zachary Taylor. He participated in the Battle of Monterrey in September 1846. After the war concluded in 1848, Johnston resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and returned to his Texas plantation. Before long he reentered the U.S. Army, and in December 1849 President Zachary Taylor (1849–1850) appointed him, with the rank of major, an army paymaster; he held the position for five years.

During the Civil War, Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed Johnston to be a general in the Confederate Army and made him commander of the Confederate Army’s western theater of operations. On April 6, 1862, Johnston led his forces in a surprise attack against Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s forces at Shiloh Methodist Church near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River in Ten-

nessee. During the battle Johnston was hit in the leg by friendly fire and eventually bled to death from the wound. He was buried in New Orleans but was later re-interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Tex. In honor of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, the Texas Historical Commission erected a historical marker near what was once the entrance to his China Grove plantation.

Johnston, William Preston. The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston. New York: D. Appleton, 1878.

Roland, Charles P. Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics, Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1964.

Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War. “Albert Sidney Johnston.” www.civilwarhome.com (accessed March 17, 2006).

JOHNSVILLE. Fairview, or Johnsville, as it is now known, is a ridgetop hamlet that has been dissected

by Ky. Rt. 9 and the AA Highway; the town’s citizens have to cross the major highway to visit a neighbor. The first structure built in the town appears to have been the Arnold house, built near 1800; later it became known as the William Pepper home. Pepper had been a teacher before settling in the town, and before long he constructed a log schoolhouse on his farm and became the school’s first teacher. There was another small school erected in 1865, which served until 1890. At that time the Fairview School was opened as a graded school, with J. T. Watson as its first principal. Other early settlers were the Cooper, Haley, Hiles, Houston, Jordan, Pearl, and Taylor families. About 1872 the post office was started and the town was called Fairview, but soon the name changed to Johnsville, in honor of John Jackson and John Riley, who served as postmasters; the village of Johnsville was incorporated in 1883.

A favorite source of entertainment was the cornet band of local men that was organized in Johnsville in 1880 and led by Captain Smith of the nearby Boude’s Ferry. The Fairview I.O.O.F. Lodge No. 276 was another organization of local men, instituted in 1881. One of the businesses that operated in Johnsville was John Hiles’s Body Shop, opened during the 1920s. Hiles not only was a blacksmith but also built school buses for the Hiles Centralized School, truck bodies, and horse vans.

The Pioneer Cemetery at Johnsville, which contains the grave sites of the early settlers, has been restored. It provides a picturesque view of the village and surrounding hills and valleys.

W. A. Free. “History of Johnsville,” Bracken County News, March 22, 1934, 4.

Caroline R. Miller

JOLLY, A. J., JR. (b. March 1, 1924, Mentor, Ky.; d. January 12, 1989, Houston, Tex.). A. J. Jolly Jr., a lawyer who served as a judge, was a son of two school administrators: his father, A. J. Jolly Sr., was superintendent of Campbell Co. Schools, and his mother, Caroline, was an elementary school principal. His father died of typhoid fever at age 43, leaving his mother to raise three boys alone. A. J. Jr. attended the A. J. Jolly Elementary and High School at California, Ky., which had been named

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for his father. After graduating from high school there, he entered Miami University of Ohio, where he studied for one year. In 1942 he left school to join the Army Air Force. As a turret gunner on a B-17 bomber, Jolly participated in 35 missions and was awarded several air medals for bravery. He returned home a year and a half later and enrolled at Xavier University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He received his law degree in 1949 from the University of Cincinnati Law School. A. J. Jolly Jr. married Verna Tarvin, and the couple had five daughters. His political career began in 1949, when he was elected to the first of four terms as Campbell Co. judge (the post now called judge executive). While in that office, he was responsible for the creation of Lakeside Place Nursing Home, Youth Haven Home for Children, and the Campbell Co. Park (now A. J. Jolly Park) south of Alexandria. The park, which carries the name of his father, A. J. Jolly Sr., is situated on about 1,000 acres and has a 250-acre lake, bike trails, picnic areas, baseball and soccer fields, and an 18-hole golf course. Verna Jolly died of cancer on September 17, 1981, and A. J. Jr. died eight years later at the age of 64, after undergoing heart bypass surgery, at St. Luke Hospital in Houston. Both are buried in the Grandview Cemetery at Mentor.

Reis, Jim, “State Legislator Jolly Honored after His Death,” KP, August 26, 1996, 4K. Wecker, David. “Andy Jolly.” KP, July 7, 1982, 1.

JOLLY, JAMES MONROE (b. December 13, 1817, Sallisboro, Lewis Co., Ky.; d. September 25, 1900, Mentor, Ky.). James M. Jolly, both a clergyman and a builder, was the son of John and Martha Mackey Jolly. At times he was referred to as Rev. James Moses Jolly, but his tombstone seems to show his name as Rev. James Monroe Jolly. The first seven of the Jolly children were born in Lewis Co., and then the family moved to Jamestown (known today as Dayton) in Campbell Co., where the last two were born. The family relocated to Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1827; there James served for three years as an apprentice to William Shaw, learning the bricklaying and plastering trades. Returning to Campbell Co. in 1840, the Jollys settled on a farm near Twelve Mile Rd. On October 11, 1841, James Jolly married America Vickers, daughter of Rev. James Vickers, pastor of the Mouth of Licking Baptist Church (see First Baptist Church, Cold Spring). The couple had four children, all sons. Jolly was ordained as a Baptist preacher by his father-in-law in 1842 and became a circuit preacher, holding ser vices once a month in various local churches. In 1843 Jolly and his family moved to Newport, where he preached and worked in construction; then in April 1849 he became the pastor of the Flagg Springs Baptist Church. To be closer to the church, the family moved to a farm on Schababerle Rd., about a mile and a half west of the church. Jolly sold his farm at Flagg Springs in 1887 and moved into a new house that he had built in Mentor. Some of the buildings he reportedly constructed are the Campbell Co. Courthouse at Alexandria, the California Christian Church, the

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Wesley Chapel Methodist Church, the St. Peter & Paul Church at Gubser Mill, the Flagg Springs Baptist Church, the Walnut Hills Academy, the Beech Grove Academy, and numerous private homes. After 58 years of marriage, America Vickers Jolly died on March 23, 1900, and James Jolly died in September of the same year. Both were buried in the Grandview Cemetery, along Smith Rd. in Mentor.

Turner, Gary R. “Oral History of the Jolly Family,” Northern Kentucky Univ. Oral History Interviews, 1976, Archives, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights, Ky. Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County Kentucky. Alexandria: Privately published, 1997.

Jack Wessling

JONES, CHARLES EDWARD (b. August 25, 1880, Covington, Ky.; d. March 21, 1947, Covington, Ky.). Charles Edward Jones was the son of Edward L. and Amanda Jones. As a youth, Jones lived at 724 1 ⁄ 2 Sanford St. in Covington. In 1908 he was working for the Wallace A. Gaines Funeral Home as an embalmer; then in 1913 Jones purchased the business from Wallace Gaines and renamed it the C. E. Jones Funeral Home. He moved the enterprise from 633 Scott St., in the heart of the African American business district, to 29 E. Seventh St., adjacent to the original William Grant High School.

Jones was treasurer of the Ninth St. Methodist Episcopal Church and president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a 33rd Degree Mason and a member of the Kenton Masonic Lodge No. 16, the treasurer of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Kentucky, and a director in the National Funeral Directors Association. He promoted African American education as member of the community committee designated by the Covington Board of Education to review the plans for the new Lincoln-Grant Schools. The high school later honored him for his efforts by naming its auditorium after him. Jones was involved in many community and fraternal activities. As a member of the African American Businessmen’s Association, he helped sponsor an annual summer picnic in the country for the African American community.

In 1920 the C. E. Jones Funeral Home relocated from 29 E. Seventh St. back to 633– 635 Scott St., the original location of the Wallace A. Gaines business. From the 1920s until Jones’s death, this was the unofficial meeting place of the African American Businessmen’s Association. Being Horace Sudduth’s brother-in-law (Jones’s sister Melvina had married Sudduth) helped Jones to encourage other African Americans to enter into business.

Jones died in 1947 and was buried in Covington’s Linden Grove Cemetery. After his death, his widow, Anna Mae Watkins Jones, a former schoolteacher at the Lincoln-Grant School, operated the funeral home business until 1961.

Harris, Ted. “Reader Recollection,” KP, March 2, 1992, 4K. Reis, Jim. “Funeral Directors Assumed Civic Roles,” KP, February 2, 1987, 4K.

“School Board Given Bids by Architects,” KP, January 24, 1931, 1–2.

Theodore H. H. Harris

JONES, FREDERICK MCKINLEY (b. May 17, 1893, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. February 21, 1961, Minneapolis, Minn.). Frederick M. Jones, an inventor, was the son of an Irishman, John Jones, and an African American mother. Jones lived in rooming houses in Cincinnati with his father, who later placed him in the care of Rev. William B. Ryan, a Roman Catholic priest. Father Ryan was the pastor at St. Ann Church in West Covington from 1909 to 1917.

Father Ryan provided Jones with an upbringing that was more typical for an Irish or German Catholic child than for an African American child.

It was Father Ryan’s view that a child’s skin color did not matter. Hence, with Father Ryan’s help and guidance, Jones learned to read and write and developed the mathematical and reading skills necessary for a strong foundation in mechanics and science. He became an inventor, an engineer, and a “mechanical whiz” who had special talents in dealing with machinery.

One of Jones’s most significant contributions in the early part of his career was the design of a system that enabled refrigerated trucks and trains to keep fresh produce and meats from spoiling as they were transported across the country. Jones also contributed importantly to the nation’s efforts during both world wars. During World War I, he initially served in France with the U.S. Army’s 809th Pioneer Infantry Regiment. Because of his mechanical skills, he became an army electrician and helped to wire several of the army’s military installations in France, where he also taught practical electricity in the army’s technical schools. During World War II, while employed at the United

Frederick McKinley Jones, ca. 1950.

States Thermo King Control Company, Jones designed refrigerators used by the U.S. Army Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Quartermaster Corps. Machines that Jones designed were also used to cool the cockpits and engines of various aircraft. He also invented a refrigeration unit that allowed blood plasma to be moved throughout the war’s Pacific theater.

In the 1930s, when motion pictures were making the transition from silent fi lms to sound fi lms, Jones developed and patented both an electronicsound-track system and a ticket dispenser for movie theaters. He sold his sound-system patents to Radio Corporation of America (RCA). However, Jones’s main focus was the design of mechanical refrigeration in overland trucks and trains and in the airconditioning of automobiles. Jones is credited with helping to design the refrigeration and airconditioning units that were marketed by his employer, the United States Thermo King Control Company in Minneapolis. Jones held dozens of patents for his designs and inventions; the ones pertaining to refrigeration and air conditioning were the property of the United States Thermo King Control Company. He was a member of the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers.

Jones died in Minneapolis in 1961, at age 67. He was buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis.

Congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence, St. Anne Convent, Melbourne, Ky., to Theodore H. H. Harris, April 29, 2004.

Frederick McKinley Jones birth record, Archives and Rare Books Department, Univ. of Cincinnati.

Frederick McKinley Jones Military Ser vice Records, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn.

Ott, Virginia, and Gloria Swanson. Man with a Million Ideas: Fred Jones, Genius/Inventor. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1977.

JORDAN BAPTIST CHURCH Saint Ann Church, West Covington. Kentucky Centennial: The Celebration of Our Centennial, Sunday, November 20, 1960.

Saint Walburg Monastery, Villa Hills, Ky., to Theodore H. H. Harris, May 15, 2004.

Spencer, Steven M. “Born Handy.” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1949, 22–31.

Theodore H. H. Harris

JONES, THOMAS LAURENS (b. January 21, 1819, White Oak, Rutherford Co., N.C.; d. July 20, 1887, Newport, Ky.). Lawyer and politician Thomas Laurens Jones, the son of George and Elizabeth Mills Jones, grew up in Spartanburg, S.C. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in 1840 and his law degree from Harvard University in 1843. He spent the next two years expanding his horizons, traveling throughout Europe. Jones was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1846 and practiced law in New York City in 1847. In 1848 he married Mary Keturah Taylor, the granddaughter of Gen. James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. They spent an extended honeymoon in Europe. In Italy they saw a beautiful house, which greatly impressed them.

Upon returning, Mary told her father, James Taylor III, about it, and he decided to replicate it for them. The mansion, which was called the Jones Castle and, in recent times, Mount St. Martin’s (see Mount St. Martin), had 17 rooms and was built on a high hill in South Newport. In 1853–1855, Jones served as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives. In July 1862, during the Civil War, Jones was arrested as a Confederate sympathizer and jailed at the Newport Barracks. He was transferred to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, and was told he would remain in custody until he swore allegiance to the Union. He finally did and then returned to Newport. He was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served 1867–1871 and 1875–1879 (see Democratic Party). He ran for governor in 1883 and was narrowly defeated by J. Proctor Knott (1883–1887), the result of what his supporters claimed was a fraudulent count. He intended to run for governor in 1887, but failing health caused his withdrawal. He died that year and was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

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

“Our Honorable Thomas L. Jones Dead,” KSJ, July 21, 1887, 4.

Perrin, William Henry, J. H. Battle, and G. C. Kniffi n.

Kentucky: A History of the State. Louisville, Ky.: F. A. Battey, 1888.

Jack Wessling

JONESVILLE (GRANT CO.). Jonesville, on the western edge of Grant Co., was so named in the 1880s for the seven unrelated Jones families who owned farms in the vicinity. Earlier names for the community were Nonesuch and Macedonia. The Macedonia Baptist Church began there in 1843, with charter members Margarita and Amanda Hambrick, Jonathan and Julia Johnson, Robert Patterson, William Smith, Lydia Stone, and Wesley

and Nancy Wharton. The Macedonia post office was established in 1858 and closed in 1866.

Although a school is known to have existed in the community before the Civil War, the earliest public school records now available are from 1885 and list C. H. Beatty, R. McKinsie, and D. L. Stewart as town school trustees at that time. In 1894 trustees A. H. Calendar, Jefferson Davis Renaker, and Thomas V. Toon purchased the Masonic Hall on the Elliston Station Rd. for use as a schoolhouse. After the hall burned in 1931, a two-room frame school was constructed. It was replaced by a brick schoolhouse that was in use until 1966. When the county school system was consolidated, the Jonesville school children were bused to new locations.

The Jonesville Deposit Bank dates to 1893. In 1934 it was recapitalized and the articles of incorporation amended in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In 1940 the bank was reincorporated as the Citizens Bank, with its main office at Dry Ridge under the management of B. C. Cotton; the bank’s Jonesville office was managed by Carla Mullikin.

Currently, it operates as a branch office of Grant Co. Deposit Bank.

Jonesville was incorporated from the 1880s until the early 1920s. Being some distance from the Grant Co. sheriff s office and the jail, located at Williamstown, Jonesville maintained its own police force and jail to help keep the peace. As communications and roads improved, the need for a separate police force and jail lessened, and in 1919 the Jonesville jail property was sold to James Caldwell by the town’s Board of Trustees, J. M. Beverly, G. W. Caldwell, M. D. Hamilton, A. T. Stewart, and J. W. Stewart. In 1927 a post office was established, with Otis Wilson as postmaster. He was succeeded in 1937 by Margaret Thornton Conrad, who served from 1937 until 1972, when Kathryn Satterwhite became supervisor of the post office.

In 1910 Uriah Bickers donated ground for a new Methodist Episcopal Church South. The church first obtained a parsonage in 1924; then in 1937 a new parsonage was built on a lot near the church.

Today, with two churches, a general store, a bank, and a post office, Jonesville is a successful trading center in a prosperous farming community. In 1998 one of those churches, the Mount Pisgah Methodist Church, experienced a fire. Just to the west of town is another community also named Jonesville, in Owen Co. Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

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

“3 Church Fires Raise Suspicions—No Suspects in Grant Co. Blaze,” KE, November 3, 1998, B1.

“Town Lacks Business, but Not Pride in Unity,” KP, February 5, 1986, 8K.

John B. Conrad

JONESVILLE (OWEN CO.). Jonesville is one of two hamlets in Owen Co. that straddle the county line: Sparta, in northern Owen Co., is partially in Gallatin Co.; and Jonesville, on the eastern edge, is

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partially in Grant Co. At one time, Jonesville was called Nonesuch, but since Woodford Co. also had a town named Nonsuch, when seven families named Jones moved into the Nonsuch in Owen Co., its name was changed to Jonesville. The village is located on Ky. Rt. 36, seven miles northeast of Owenton and 10 miles west of Williamstown. The Jonesville post office was established in 1877. Over the years, there have been hotels, blacksmiths, tobacco warehouses, a jail, an undertaker, and barbershops in town. Several doctors have practiced there. In 1911 construction began on a railroad from Dry Ridge in Grant Co. to Owenton via Jonesville, but it was never finished; thus Owen Co. is one of only two Kentucky counties that never had an active railway line. There have been two major fires in Jonesville, and today it has its own volunteer fire department. The Methodists and the Baptists have churches in town.

Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976.

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

JORDAN BAPTIST CHURCH. The Jordan Baptist Church, located along Ky. Rt. 467 in Carroll Co., was founded on Christmas Day 1867. It started with 25 members, 18 of whom came from the White’s Run Baptist Church in Dallasburg and the rest from the Ghent Baptist Church.

Elder Williams Johnson, who became the Jordan Baptist Church’s first pastor, preached the dedicatory message, and a man named Baker, from the Wheatley church, assisted. On that same day, a church covenant was adopted. By 1870 a building committee had been organized, and the decision was made to build a 36-by-56-foot meetinghouse. In 1897 the first songbooks were purchased. In 1900 the Jordan Baptist Church, along with other churches, withdrew from the Concord Baptist Association to form the White’s Run Baptist Association.

The first Vacation Bible School was held in 1937, and also that year the church gave the State of Kentucky a right-of-way through the churchyard.

The church was wired for electricity in 1940. In 1955 the church purchased lumber for a new building. In 1971 aluminum siding was installed, and in 1972 stained-glass panes were installed in the side windows in the sanctuary.

In 1983 the church called a woman, Dr. Molly Marshall Green, to be the pastor; she was the first woman minister in the history of the church or in the White’s Run Baptist Association. Another woman minister, Loretta Reynolds, replaced Green in 1985. In 1988 a new roof was put on the sanctuary, and in 1989 inside restrooms were installed.

On December 5, 1993, the church celebrated its 125th anniversary. New front doors were installed, and the church was made handicap accessible by adding a ramp to the front door entrance and to the educational building.

Jordan Baptist Church Minutes, Jordan Baptist Church, Carroll Co., Ky.

Ken Massey

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JUSTICE, DAVID

JUSTICE, DAVID (b. April 14, 1966, Cincinnati, Ohio). Professional baseball player David Christopher Justice was only four years old when his father, Robert Justice, abandoned the family. David’s mother, Nettie Justice, took a job as a housekeeper in order to support her son. Growing up in the North Avondale section of Cincinnati, David spent his time playing sports with the other boys in his neighborhood. Football, basketball, and baseball were his life, and he had dreams of someday playing in the NBA (National Basketball Association).

At age 12, Justice began attending the Covington Latin School in Northern Kentucky. He was a prime candidate for the school, which requires students to skip at least one grade. Skipping grades was no problem for Justice, because he excelled in academics as well as in athletics, particularly basketball. As a senior, he averaged 25.9 points per game and made the Catholic All-American high school basketball team. Justice graduated from Covington Latin School in 1982, two years early (he had skipped the seventh and eighth grades). He attended college at Thomas More College, in Crest-

view Hills, on a basketball scholarship. During his years at Thomas More, his athletic ability was showcased not only in basketball but also in baseball; the college’s legendary coach, Jim Connor, mentored him in both sports. When Justice was age 18, he was a junior in college and a favorite prospect of many baseball scouts.

His professional baseball career began in 1985, when he was drafted in the fourth round by the Atlanta Braves. While in the minor leagues, he worked odd jobs during the off-season. He drove a shuttle bus at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and worked as an orderly at University Hospital in Cincinnati. In 1990 he played his fi rst full season in the major leagues and received the National League Rookie of the Year award while playing with the Braves.

On January 1, 1993, Justice made headlines off the field by marrying actress Halle Berry. Their marriage was brief, ending in divorce after three years. In 1994 he was voted one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People.

During his 14-season major league career, Justice played for the Braves in the National League and in the American League for the Cleveland Indians, the New York Yankees, and the Oakland Athletics. During that time he reached the World Series 6 times and made the baseball playoffs 10 times. Justice was a three-time all-star, who won World Series titles with the Braves in 1995 and the Yankees in 2000. He also holds the major league record for the most post-season games played. His career batting average was .279.

Baseball Almanac. www.baseball-almanac.com (accessed June 30, 2006).

“Baseball Notebook,” Toronto Star, February 7, 2003.

Bradley, John Ed. “Justice Prevails.” Sports Illustrated, June 6, 1994, 66.

Croyle, William. “Latin School a Head Start,” CE, February 10, 2006, 1B. Johnson, Chuck. “Postseason Justice,” USA Today, October 1, 2002, 1.

Peterson, Bill. “Coming Home: Once Again, Justice Returns with a Winner,” CP, June 6, 1998, 3B.

Susan Patterson