Chapter P 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

The Enquirer/Leigh Patton

POMPILIO’S RESTAURANT. Since 1902, the building at the southwest corner of Sixth and Washington in Newport has housed a bar and restaurant...

(cont’d on pg. 722)

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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

PAINT LICK. The old Louisville Rd. heading west from Boone Co., now U.S. 42, traverses a small piece of higher ground between Paint Lick Creek, Little Sugar Creek, and the Ohio River in eastern Gallatin Co. In fall 1861 this narrow neck of land was the scene of a Civil War skirmish; also, the Paint Lick Baptist Church was established nearby.

Just before the war, James Alexander, Ralph Bright, Conrad Denzler, John Hudson, James H. Jackson, Charles Rider, Elsberry Seaver, and the L. B. and Henry Sisson families inhabited the land around Paint Lick Creek. As the events of the Civil War unfolded, these families established a Baptist congregation that apparently met during the war.

In February 1866 this congregation purchased two acres of land on the Ohio River from Levi and Elizabeth Jackson for $200, using funds donated by Ralph Bright. According to the deed, half of the land was to be used as a cemetery. Henry Sisson donated the timber for the building. That same year, the Paint Lick Baptist Church was admitted to the Ten Mile Baptist Association. In 1886 the Paint Lick Baptist congregation built a church building on the knoll that was used for over 100 years. In 1957 it purchased an additional tract of land from Willie B. Norton for $1,500 to expand the church cemetery. In 2000 a modern church and Sunday school building was erected on the old church site. This is an active congregation today.

Jonathan Howe, whose son Silas was a captain in the 18th Kentucky Union Infantry, maintained a general store at the hamlet of Sugar Creek near the Ohio River. Jonathan Howe was born in Auburn, N.Y., to a family who migrated to Patriot, Ind., and became leaders in the antislavery Universalist Church there. Several of his nephews were steamboat pilots and were believed to be useful in giving information to the Union during the Civil War. Completely dedicated to the Union cause, Howe organized a company of Home Guards numbering 18 to 20 men. Their training camp, called Camp Boyle, was on Paint Lick Creek.

On October 30, 1861, two soldiers from Captain Jonathan Howe’s Home Guards were captured by a party of Confederates said to be 30 to 40 in number, led by Luther Green, a local recruit to the CSA. News came to Captain Howe that these two men were about to be hanged, so he immediately began pursuit and caught up with the Confederates. In the ensuing skirmish, Confederates Robert Herndon and T. J. Hughes were killed, and Luther Green was taken prisoner and sent to Cincinnati via steamboat to be incarcerated at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio. The two captured Home Guards were freed unharmed, and small arms and personal equipment were confiscated in the Battle of Paint Lick.

Several of the families in the Warsaw, Paint Lick, and Sugar Creek area sent sons into the Union Army. Officers in the 18th Kentucky Infantry included Lt. Col. John J. Landrum; captains D. R. Pugsley, Henry P. Richey, and James C. Bacon; and 1st Lt. Weedon C. Sleet. Officers in the 55th Kentucky Infantry were Capt. John C. Richards (mustered in as a 2nd lieutenant in the 18th Kentucky Infantry), Capt. Silas Howe (mustered in as 1st lieutenant in the Kentucky 18th), and 2nd Lt. George W. Story. The Union 7th Cavalry officers included Capt. George M. Sisson, 1st Lt. John S. Stoghill, 1st Lt. John Thomas Hopkins, and 2nd Lt. Robert E. Carlton. William M. Simpson served as quartermaster sergeant in the 11th Kentucky Cavalry.

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

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

Howe, Daniel, as reported in A Tour through Indiana in 1840: The Diary of John Parsons of Petersburg, Virginia, ed. Kate Milner Rabb. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1920.

Diane Perrine Coon

PALM, EUGENE JIMMY “GENE” (b. November 8, 1930, Newport, Ky.; d. February 20, 1987, Huntsville, Ala.). Gene Palm, who worked in missile development with the U.S. Army, was the only son of railroad mechanic Walter James “Jimmy” and Mayme Elizabeth Phirman Palm. Gene grew up along the west side of Saratoga St., near 10th St., in Newport, and he and his father were heavily involved in knothole baseball. Gene graduated from Newport High School in 1949. He attended the University of Cincinnati and earned a BS (1954) and an MA (1956) in chemical engineering. He finished school while the Hungarian uprising during the cold war was taking place in 1956, was drafted into the military, and went to Fort Knox for U.S. Army basic training. At the end of basic training, when most soldiers were assigned to train at specialized military schools, Palm was pulled aside and handed special orders. After two weeks of leave, he was to report to the Redstone Missile Base in Huntsville, Ala. There he was to report to Dr. Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi missile scientist, who was then heading up the U.S. missile development program. For the duration of his two years in the army, Palm was paid as a private while serving as one of von Braun’s assistants. Afterward, he was formally hired as a civilian by the U.S. Army Missile Command, where he worked for the next 30 years. Because of national security regulations, he was not allowed to discuss what he did, other than to explain that he worked with rocket fuels. He had a top-secret clearance and traveled the world.

Early one February morning in 1987, at his Huntsville home, Palm had a diabetic attack from which he did not recover. He was buried in a Huntsville cemetery. The work Palm did in Huntsville as one of von Braun’s assistants in missile research remains classified.

Phirman Family File, vertical fi le, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.

Michael R. Sweeney

PARISH KITCHEN. When Rev. William Mertes was appointed pastor of Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington in 1971, he initiated many changes in the parish. One of them was inspired by his discovery that homeless and lowincome individuals were often coming to the rectory looking for something to eat (see Homelessness and Homeless Shelters). He started a food kitchen in the parish hall, serving soup and sandwiches to those in need. In 1974, because of the need for more room to cook and serve, Mertes moved the soup kitchen to a former bar in Covington, located at the corner of Pike and Russell Sts., and called it the Parish Kitchen. Mary and James LaVelle helped to run the soup kitchen, along with many other parishioners, until Molly Navin became director in 1987. The building that houses the Parish Kitchen was remodeled from a front-room bar to a full room in the back of the building, with a commercial kitchen and tables and chairs. The Parish Kitchen serves a full hot meal from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., seven days a week. More than 300 guests are served each day, and there are more than 300 active volunteers who cook and serve at the kitchen or prepare desserts and entrées at home to be served at the Parish Kitchen. Others pick up donations from local restaurants such as Panera Bread, which offers the Parish Kitchen its overstocked goods each Sunday. To brighten holidays such as Thanksgiving, eager volunteers cook and serve turkey, dressing, and other traditional fare and offer fellowship to the homeless, low-income families, and anyone else who comes through the door.

The Kenton Co. Public Library sponsors a reading program for children at the Parish Kitchen.

On two Wednesdays each month, Erin Seitz, a children’s programmer with the library, comes in during the lunch hour and, moving from table to table, reads to the children. Thanks to donations from the community, Seitz also distributes books that the children may take with them. Used paperback books are also available for adults to borrow or keep.

Bogenschutz, Pat, Joan Burkhart, Mary Clare Duhme, Jodi Keller, and Molly Navin. Interviews by Nancy J. Tretter, 2006, Covington, Ky. Hicks, Jack. “At Parish Kitchen, Kindness Takes No Holiday,” KP, December 25, 1998, 1K. Kreimer, Peggy. “Nourishing Body and Mind,” KP, January 29, 2005, 1K.

Nancy J. Tretter

PARKER, ANNA VIRGINIA (b. March 28, 1889, Ghent, Ky.; d. March 23, 1979, Ghent, Ky.).

Anna V. Parker, the daughter of Belvierd D. and Susan Ferguson Sanders Parker, was a family historian. Her father was a native of North Carolina; her mother was the daughter of Joseph and Mary Eliza Lathrop Sanders. Never married, Anna Parker became educated and was a grade school teacher in Carroll Co. for many years. She lived with her brother, Will Parker, in Ghent.

Anna Parker collected original letters, diaries, manuscripts, and documents relating to her greatgrandfather Lewis Sanders and his family estate,

700 PARKER, ELIZABETH F. Grass Hills, located near Sanders. In 1966 the Coleman Publishers of Madison, Ind., published Parker’s book, The Sanders Family of Grass Hills.

From its release, this book has been acknowledged as a superior example of family history and genealogy. Kentucky’s premier historian, Thomas D. Clark, extolled Parker’s use of original letters and family documents to tell the stories of Lewis Sanders and George Nicholas Sanders in their own words. Clark also called attention to the detailing of the history of early Kentucky agriculture through these characters and applauded Parker’s attempt to draw more rounded portraits by describing their participation in the local political scene as it related to national events.

When Parker gave a voice to the individual slaves who were owned by Lewis Sanders at Grass Hills, she was among the first of the state’s local historians to include slaves’ own words in such an account. She also provided a relatively unvarnished view of the personalities of the Sanders family members. At the end of the book, Parker detailed collateral family genealogies and traced the interweaving of the Craig and Sanders cousins in the antebellum and Victorian periods.

Through her will, probated in May 1979, the major portions of Parker’s collection of Sanders family materials went to the Filson Club in Louisville (now the Filson Historical Society) and are kept in the special collections archives of the Filson Historical Society. Included are the correspondence, the journals, and the diaries; meticulous records of pedigreed short-horned cattle and sheep and thoroughbred horses; and clippings of articles and letters submitted by Lewis Sanders to various agricultural journals and magazines.

Parker was a member of the Ghent Methodist Episcopal South Church, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Port William Historical Society. She was a longtime member and past president of the Caby Froman Club and the Carroll Co. Homemakers Club. She died in 1979 and was buried in the Ghent Cemetery.

direct the two businesses, and she continues to live at the funeral home location on Elizabeth St. in Augusta. An avid historian, Elizabeth was a board member of the Kentucky Historical Society and is a recipient of the Bracken Co. Historical Society Living History Award. She actively contributes to educational and historical functions and to the local DAR and is the principal organist at the Augusta Christian Church.

“Elizabeth Jett Joins Flying Club,” Bracken Chronicle, October 17, 1935.

Caroline R. Miller

PARKER, LINDA (b. Genevieve Muenich, January 18, 1912, Covington, Ind.; d. August 12, 1935, Mishawaka, Ind.). Although often promoted as having been born in Covington, Ky., to mask her illegitimacy, country singing star Linda Parker (her stage name) was actually born in Covington, Ind. She had no known ties to Northern Kentucky.

Indiana Death Certificate No. 176, St. Joseph Co., Ind., for the year 1935.

Samuelson, Dave. “Linda Parker: WLS’s Sunbonnet Girl.” Journal of the American Academy for the Preservation of Old-Time Country Music 30 (1995): 16–17.

PARK HILLS. Park Hills is located on the hilltops just west of the city of Covington and is adjacent to Devou Park. Served by both the Dixie Highway and Amsterdam Pk., the city is bordered

by Fort Wright to the south, Covington to the east, and Devou Park to the north and west. The land on which Park Hills sits is known for its considerable natural beauty. Coram, Spencer and Corry Development Company first acquired a portion of the property, situated along Old State Rd., in the 1840s.

The company subdivided the tract and laid out streets, but they were never graded. Robert C. Simmons, a prominent Northern Kentucky attorney, and Ed Renz acquired Spencer and Corry’s tract in 1907. The two laid out Audubon Rd., hoping to develop the property, but they failed to grade it.

The true development of Park Hills began when D. Collins Lee purchased a tract of land at the end of what is now Emerson Rd. in 1922. To acquire city conveniences, such as gas, sewer, and water, Lee decided to purchase more land and subdivide it to make those city conveniences possible.

The resulting partnership between Simmons and Lee proved advantageous to both (Renz was deceased when Lee bought the land). They formed the Lee & Simmons Development Company and recorded numerous plats for the subdivision of Park Hills in 1924.

The company encountered a property dispute that slowed the development of Park Hills. The Light estate, which made up the north portion of Park Hills, including part of Emerson St., Morgan Ct., and Breckenridge and Upper Jackson Sts., was an essential piece of property. An elderly, eccentric man named Rufus Light claimed to own the property. He maintained a small refreshment stand near what is now Montague Rd. Light lived in a small shack near his stand until he was evicted on March 25, 1924, and moved into a tent. Light claimed to own the land, but the Covington Savings Bank and Trust Co. and the Covington Park Board disagreed. Light’s father had presumably presented the land to county authorities before his death. Ultimately, the Covington Savings Bank and Trust Co. dispossessed Light of his land for the payment of a debt against the estate. The Lee & Simmons Development Company acquired the property from the bank.

Before building any homes, Lee and Simmons paid for city water, sewer, and gas to be supplied to each lot. The direct access to the Fort Mitchell streetcar line also added to the city’s convenience.

The Park Hills trolley station has since been converted into a playground and public garden called Trolley Park. Simmons and Lee visualized a subdivision featuring beauty combined with convenience. All of their decisions seem to support this directive. Architects Deglow and Henthrone and C. F. Cellarius and the homeowners themselves designed many of the first homes built in Park

Accession Records, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Ky. “Obituary of Anna V. Parker,” Carrollton Democrat, March 28, 1979.

Parker, Anna V. The Sanders Family of Grass Hills.

Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1966.

Sanders Family Papers, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Ky.

Diane Perrine Coon

PARKER, ELIZABETH F. (b. January 27, 1916, Cincinnati, Ohio). Entrepreneur Elizabeth Frances Parker is the daughter of Garrett and Mollie Howard Jett of Brooksville. She attended Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee, Fla., and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where she was a student of aviation. After her marriage to undertaker John S. Parker, the couple operated the Moore and Parker Funeral Homes in Augusta and Brooksville from 1937 until John’s death in 1994.

Currently, Elizabeth and her son John G. Parker

White Horse Tavern, Dixie Highway, Park Hills. The tavern was destroyed by fire in 1972.

PASSIONIST NUNS

Hills. Lee’s home at the end of Emerson, built in an English Manorial style with slate imported from England, is still standing today. Park Hills features many diverse architectural styles in the homes constructed in the early years of the development.

To ensure further the picturesque quality of Park Hills, Lee and Simmons limited the business district to a small tract of land opposite the city’s entrance to Dixie Highway. The developers intended for the area to house a grocery, a drug store, and a restaurant. Today, the area is occupied by a green grocer, a dentist, a beautician, an auto repair shop, several restaurants, and various offices.

Park Hills proved to be a popu lar place to live.

Many Covington residents moved to the developing subdivision to escape city pollution and congestion. Park Hills also offered a riding club, a tennis club, and an archery club to entice buyers. These features were made possible by arrangements with Devou Park. By 1927, 100 homes had been built, with more planned. In addition, a 1927 Lee & Simmons Development Company brochure indicates that the company had already invested $1.5 million in the development, with another $1 million planned. This rapid growth prompted citizens to hold a mass meeting to decide whether or not the city should join with Covington or incorporate as an independent city. The group voted in favor of incorporation, and the City of Park Hills was officially incorporated on June 28, 1927. A board of trustees was named to govern the city until an election could be held. The first members of the board were Stanley G. Disque, Joseph Hermes, William Middendorf, R. M. Rankin, and William Ruef. At the time of incorporation, Park Hills had 500 inhabitants and property valued at nearly $4 million.

Park Hills became a fift h-class city in 1937. This status meant the city would administer its own affairs with a board of equalization, a city assessor, a tax collector, and a six-person council, presided over by an elected mayor. The first mayor was Lawrence Taylor. A mayor and a six-member council currently govern Park Hills. The first police chief of Park Hills was Melvin Crump, who received the meager salary of $75 a month. Crump did an excellent job, but it became apparent to city leadership that a second patrolman was needed, so Fred Hiltz was added to lighten the load. On the eve of World War II, an auxiliary police department was employed. These people received no salary and had to provide their own uniforms. The police department currently employs seven people, six of them full-time. Not until 1942 did Park Hills officially establish its own volunteer fire department. Previously, the city depended upon Covington’s fire services. Local newspaper columnist Jim Reis once noted that these ser vices may have cost Park Hills $50 per run. Park Hills also built a city building in 1942 at 1006 Amsterdam Rd. The first chief of the new fire department was Norbert Brahm. A volunteer rescue squad was added to the fire department.

The first public school in Park Hills was built for $35,000 in 1928—one year after incorporation.

Two prominent Catholic high schools, Covington Catholic High School and Notre Dame

Academy, were later moved from Covington to Park Hills. Covington Catholic was built on the site of the Kremer farm; Notre Dame was built on part of the St. Joseph Heights Convent’s property.

Both schools are still active and growing. The former Park Hills Elementary School is now owned and occupied by the Gateway Community and Technical College.

There are two churches within the city of Park Hills. The first, the Faith Christian Center (formerly Gloria Dei Lutheran), is located on Amsterdam Rd. directly across from the city building.

The other, the Church of the Nazarene (see Nazarenes), is on Dixie Highway near Covington Catholic High School.

The 1930s saw an economic boom along the Park Hills section of Dixie Highway. It became known as the Gourmet Strip, largely because of the excellent eateries inside Park Hills, which included the Blue Star Tavern and the White Horse.

In 1933 Covington passed a resolution permitting a suit to be brought against Park Hills for using Covington sewers without authority from the city of Covington. The suit was designed to force Park Hills to pay for the construction and maintenance of the Amsterdam Pk. and Willow Run trunk sewers. Ultimately, in 1935, as part of a Works Progress Administration project, Park Hills built a sewer at the end of Audubon Rd. and on the west side of Altavia Rd. that was designed to empty into a sewage disposal plant. The project cost $25,912, of which the government paid $21,418. In 1937 the St. James sewer was constructed, and the city paid the entire costs of $4,014.03. In that same year, Park Hills annexed Mocking Bird Valley, located along Old State Rd. In 1938 a sewage disposal plant was built, at a cost of $20,000.

The Park Hills Civic Association, responsible for many of the Park Hills signature events and city-beautification projects, was founded in 1934.

Funds from the annual Civic Association fund drive are allocated, in part, to the Park Hills Police Department, the Park Hills Volunteer Fire Department, and the Park Hills Rescue Squad.

The present boundaries of Park Hills were established largely by acquisitions in the 1940s of Cecilia Ave. (developed by William Dickman), Scenic Dr. (developed by the Newport Finance Company), the St. Joseph Ln. section, and the Mount Allen section, which included all of the Dickman properties, such as the sizable Dickman apartment complex. There has been little development of Park Hills in recent years, since nearly every usable lot was taken long ago.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau report, the Park Hills population in 2000 was 2,997. By 2005 that figure had dropped to 2,803. In 2008, 600 houses in the city were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

“Aged Recluse Is Evicted,” KP, March 25, 1924, 1.

“City Fight with Park Hills on Sewers Pushed,” KP, November 16, 1933, 2.

The City of Park Hills: Kentucky’s Most Beautiful City. Brochure. Covington, Ky.: Lee and Simmons Development Company, 1927.

701

Clark, Russell. “Development of Park Hills,” tape recording, 1985, fi les of the City of Park Hills.

“Gift Wrap the China; This Is Park Hills’ 20th Anniversary,” Pride of Park Hills, 1947. Newsletter of the Park Hills Civic Association.

Kenton Co. Deed Book 203, p. 521; Book 206, pp.

642–50; Book 209, pp. 519–20, Covington, Ky. “Light to Leave Covington,” KP, April 1, 1924, 4.

“Park Hills Becomes City in Less than Five Years,” KP, December 30, 1928, 7.

Park Hills Board of Trustees Minutes, June 30, 1927, Park Hills, Ky. Park Hills: The New City on the Hilltops. Brochure.

Covington, Ky.: Lee and Simmons Development Company, 1927.

“Park Hills to Begin Career as Fift h Class City at Meeting of Trustees on Monday,” KP, December 30, 1937, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Park Hills was Model for Suburbia,” KP, October 1, 1984, 4K. “Sewage Plant for Park Hills,” KP, October 10, 1939, 1.

Udry, Mrs. Richard J. “History of Park Hills Is Traced,” KP, August 8, 1940, 2.

U.S. Census Bureau. “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed May 25, 2007).

Iris Spoor

PARKS, ELIZABETH (b. May 1888, New York; d. May 7, 1925, Washington, D.C). Singer Elizabeth Parks was the daughter of Dr. Robert and Elizabeth Parks, both of whom were English. Her father was a well-known veterinary surgeon in Covington, and her mother was active in the Covington Art Club. The family lived at 1444 Madison Ave. and later at 1113 Scott St. Elizabeth attended the Covington public schools. Well recognized for her fine voice, she was prominent in the musical circles of Covington and for a time the soloist at Trinity Episcopal Church in Covington. Around 1910 she moved to Canada, and later during World War I, she traveled overseas to sing for the Allied troops as part of an entertainment tour sponsored by the YMCA. It was during this time that she met and married her husband, Herbert Hutchinson. In 1921 she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. She and her husband, who was a district secretary for the YMCA, resided in Ottawa, Canada. During a visit to Washington, D.C., in 1925 Elizabeth died; her husband and her young daughter survived her.

She was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Ky. “Deaths,” KP, May 8, 1925, 12.

Highland Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell, Ky. “Singer Dies at Washington,” KTS, May 8, 1925, 1.

PASSIONIST NUNS. Shortly after his arrival in Covington in 1945, Bishop William T. Mulloy invited the Nuns of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (Passionists) to come to the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics).

The Passionist Nuns are a contemplative congregation of women religious who devote their lives to prayer and penance. As such, they live in an enclosed community (a cloister) and speak to guests only through a grille. In response to the bishop’s

702 PATRICK, IRENE request, five sisters from the Passionist Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pa., headed by Mary Matilda Hartman, arrived in Covington in 1947. Mulloy reserved a place for them on the Marydale property that the diocese had just recently purchased in Erlanger. In 1949 the congregation of nuns acquired a site along Donaldson Rd. in Erlanger from the diocese and lived temporarily in a farmhouse while their convent was under construction.

Mulloy dedicated the new Passionist Convent on January 24, 1951. Before becoming enclosed, the sisters held a two-week-long open house so the public could view their new convent’s facilities.

Today, the convent, home to eight nuns, is open on Sunday and weekday mornings for visitors to join in their celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy or Mass, though the nuns are still separated by a screen. The congregation of nuns makes altar breads that they sell, providing income and supplying the Eucharistic bread or hosts for many parishes of the diocese. The Passionist Nuns also have a special ministry of prayer for the needs of the Diocese of Covington and the larger Catholic Church, as well as for the needs of the entire world.

Reis, Jim. “A Summer of Contests: Paper, Theaters Have Gimmick,” KP, June 3, 1991, 4K.

Irene Patrick, 1978.

“Bishop to Dedicate Passionist Convent at Marydale,” Messenger, January 14, 1951, 1A. “Diocese Fund Aids Retirees,” KE, December 10, 2005, B3.

“Passionist Nuns Arrive,” Messenger, May 4, 1947, 12.

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

Thomas S. Ward

Nancy J. Tretter

PATRICK, IRENE (b. August 7, 1929, Kenton Co., Ky.; d. December 23, 2007, Hebron, Ky.). Irene M. Patrick, a Boone Co. commissioner, was the daughter of Dalton and Nora Colston Martin.

She married Charles Patrick in 1949, and the couple had two daughters. In 1977 Patrick ran against incumbent Galen McGlasson for county commissioner and became the first woman in the entire state to be elected to that position. Patrick was also a Girl Scout leader, a Homemakers officer, a PTA president, and the chair of the Junior Red Cross, as well as working at the family business, Patrick Auto Parts. After serving as commissioner for 17 years, she lost one election but later returned for 9 more years; throughout her career, she served with four judge executives. Patrick was always interested in helping Boone grow and prosper. When property owners living in Rabbit Hash wanted to put in a dock for boats that would bring tourists to their town, they approached the county commissioners for assistance. Patrick not only endorsed the plan but recruited volunteers to help build the dock. In appreciation for her assistance, the dock was named in her honor. In 1999 Patrick was honored with the Outstanding Woman of Northern Kentucky award for her notable achievements, outstanding ser vice, and personal qualities of integrity, perseverance, and leadership. She died in 2007 and was buried in Hebron Lutheran Church Cemetery.

PATTERSON, ANNE LEE (b. October 20, 1912, Ludlow, Ky.; d. December 13, 2003, Camarillo, Calif.). Anne Lee Patterson was the daughter of John W. and Anna L. Burns Patterson. Her father worked for the Southern Railway, and the family lived in Ludlow at 29 Kenner St. She attended St. James School in Ludlow and La Salette Academy in Covington. Patterson appeared in beauty contests at the Coney Island Amusement Park in Cincinnati and worked as a model and a clerk for the Coppin’s Department Store in Covington. In 1931, at age 18, she was crowned Miss United States at Galveston, Tex. Later that year, she was named runner-up in the Miss Universe Contest, finishing ahead of future movie glamour queen Dorothy Lamour. On June 25, 1931, the city of Ludlow put on a parade in Patterson’s honor, and it was attended by thousands of Northern Kentuckians.

Beauty contests in those days were totally based on beauty, and not on the talents of the contestants.

Patterson was five feet and five inches tall, with a 26-inch waist, and weighed 118 pounds. From 1931 through 1933, she performed with the famous Ziegfield Follies and in the musical Showboat, on the Broadway stage. She married a shirtmanufacturing executive, Joseph Bandler, and they moved to Los Angeles, where they raised two sons. Her husband, who was 14 years her senior, died in 1993, and Anne died in 2003. Her burial location is not known at this time.

Crowley, Patrick. “Patrick Served Passionately,” KE, December 25, 2007, B1.

“Five Lives of Ser vice and Achievement,” KP, April 20, 1999, 6K.

Hicks, Jack. “In 1931, Ludlow Teen Was Crowned Miss U.S.” KP, September 27, 1999, 1K. “ ‘Miss America’ Wins Home Town Plaudits,” KP, June 26, 1931, 1.

PATTIE, JAMES OHIO (b. 1803, Augusta, Ky.; d. ca. 1833, place of death unknown). James Ohio Pattie is the author of one of the most important early travel narratives in U.S. literature, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie. He and his father, Sylvester Pattie, were among the first pioneers in the U.S. Southwest and California and are widely acknowledged to have led the first party of explorers to thread the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and record that journey. Born in Augusta, Ky., James Pattie was the oldest of the eight children born to Sylvester and Polly Pattie. In 1812 his family moved from Kentucky to Missouri.

As noted by historian and Pattie scholar Richard Batman in his book American Ecclesiastes: An Epic Journey through the American West, Pattie’s family prized education. Into his late teens, Pattie attended a school his grandfather had helped found, Bracken Academy at Augusta, which later became Augusta College. While not completely prepared for life as a fur trapper and explorer, this young frontiersman was uniquely positioned to record his adventures.

The first published narrative recording an overland journey to California, Pattie’s story covers his sojourn of five years and several thousand miles.

From 1825 to 1830, his trapping and exploring led him, his father, and his companions through the Southwest, as they crossed the arid peninsula of Lower California and eventually reached Mission Santa Catalina on the Pacific coast. Trespassing onto Mexican territory without passports, they were placed in custody and taken to San Diego, a Spanish settlement. Sylvester Pattie died in jail and became the first U.S. citizen buried in California, but eventually James Pattie was paroled. He traveled up and down the coast of California for another year before sailing to Mexico in an attempt to secure reparations for furs lost before and during his and his father’s imprisonment in San Diego. After a half decade of exploration and fortune hunting, in 1830 Pattie arrived by ship in New Orleans, La. By the time he finally returned to the place of his birth on the Ohio River, he was physically and emotionally exhausted, not to mention penniless. He had only the stories recorded in his journal.

Before long, word of Pattie’s western narrative reached Timothy Flint, a well-known preacher, author, publisher, and propagandist of American Protestant expansion who lived in Cincinnati. He was fascinated by Pattie’s journey and set about making arrangements for publication of the account. Ever since Pattie’s narrative first appeared in print in 1831, it has been in continuous publication. Some have argued that much of it was invented and written by Flint himself—a viewpoint discredited by Pattie expert Batman. Based on a variety of compelling reasons, the narrative is credited to the frontiersman rather than Flint’s imagination.

After his book was published, James Pattie vanished without a trace. The last record was his appearance on the Bracken Co. tax list in 1833.

PAUL, GABRIEL RENE, BRIGADIER GENERAL

There have been an abundance of theories and reported sightings over the ensuing years, but the most likely scenario is that he was a victim of the wide-spread cholera epidemics that struck Kentucky in 1833 and was buried anonymously in a mass grave.

Batman, Richard. American Ecclesiastes: An Epic Journey through the Early American West. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

Cleland, Robert Glass, and Glenn S. Dumke, ed. From Wilderness to Empire: A History of California.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.

Coblentz, Stanton A. The Swallowing Wilderness: The Life of a Frontiersman—James Ohio Pattie.

New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961.

“Kentuckians Early California Pioneers—Father and Son, Bracken Co. Natives, Helped Open Up,” KP, June 21, 1931, 8.

Pattie, James O. The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie. Cincinnati: E. H. Flint, 1831.

Steven Pattie

PATTIE, SYLVESTER (b. August 25, 1782, Craig’s Station, Ky.; d. May 24, 1828, San Diego, Calif.). Sylvester Pattie, the son of John and Ann Pattie, led the first party of U.S. citizens into Lower California. His parents had traveled overland from Virginia to Kentucky in about 1781. They entered the state as part of Lewis Craig’s Traveling Church, a large Baptist fellowship from Spotsylvania Co., Va., traveling west to escape religious persecution by the Anglican Church. Although the Patties were part of this caravan, they may or may not have subscribed to the church’s religious views, since Craig welcomed all. The migrating congregation established Craig’s Station in Kentucky (sometimes referred to as Burnt Station) in 1780–1781.

Sylvester Pattie grew up in Bracken Co., where his father, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, helped establish the town of Augusta. He married Polly Hubbard and they had eight children. After serving in the War of 1812, Sylvester Pattie moved from Kentucky to the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. There he founded and ran a lumber mill, served on county commissions, and became relatively prosperous. However, his good fortune ended when his wife died suddenly. His son James later reported that his father had been left “silent, dejected, and inattentive to business.”

Aware of the western migration of others, the 42-year-old Pattie decided to pack up and head west in 1825. He took with him his first-born child, 22-year-old James Ohio Pattie and dispersed the remaining children among his family.

Other adventuresome individuals joined the Pattie Party, their primary purpose being to trap and explore the West.

Pattie, his son, and the rest of their party were among the first to explore the U.S. Southwest. Pattie led what was likely the first party of explorers to see and to traverse the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (hence the naming of Pattie Butte). After four years of trapping and, at one point, working a copper mine in what became New Mexico, they crossed the arid peninsula of Lower California and reached Mission Santa Catalina on the Pacific

coast. Because they had trespassed onto Mexican territory, Mexican governor Jose Maria Echeandia took the party into custody on March 27, 1828.

While confined at the San Diego Presidio, Sylvester Pattie became seriously ill and died in May 1828. He was interred on the grounds of the Presidio and is believed to be the first U.S citizen buried on California soil. A plaque mounted on the stone jailhouse immortalizes his contributions by referencing the key role he played in the development of the American West: he was a “pathfinder, leader of the first party of Americans into Alta California over southern trails.”

Batman, Richard. American Ecclesiastes: An Epic Journey through the Early American West. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

“Kentuckians Early California Pioneers—Father and Son, Bracken Co. Natives, Helped Open Up,” KP, June 21, 1931, 8.

Pattie, James O. The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie. Cincinnati: E. H. Flint, 1831.

Steven Pattie

PAUL, BARBARA (b. June 5, 1931, Maysville, Ky.). Author Barbara Paul attended Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio (BA, 1953), the University of the Redlands in Redlands, Calif. (MA, 1957), and the University of Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh, Pa. (PhD in theater, 1969). She has taught at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga., Erskine College in Due West, S.C., and the University of Pittsburgh. She also served as drama director at Erskine College. She has produced at least 24 novels; the first was An Exercise for Madmen, a science fiction piece, in 1978. With The Fourth Wall (1979), she began writing mysteries with theatrical settings. Paul then shifted to historical mysteries and homicide detective thrillers such as Jack Be Quick and Other Crime Stories (1999), which comprises stories about the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of London prostitutes during the 1880s. For several years, Paul lived and wrote in Pittsburgh. Along with Ben Lucien Burman, she is one of the more prolific authors born in Northern Kentucky.

Barbara Paul. www.barbarapaul.com (accessed December 6, 2005).

Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series. Vol. 62. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

The Writers Directory. 11th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994 .

PAUL, GABRIEL RENE, BRIGADIER GENERAL (b. March 22, 1813, St. Louis, Mo.; d. May 5, 1886, Washington, D.C.). Gabriel Rene Paul was the son of Rene and Eulalie Chouteau Paul. Before immigrating to the United States, his father had served as a colonel of engineers under Napoleon Bonaparte and on the French flagship at the naval battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where he was severely wounded. Gabriel Rene Paul began his U.S. military career by obtaining an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., from which he graduated in July 1834. He was assigned to frontier duty in the 7th Infantry and stationed

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at Fort Gibson in present-day Oklahoma. On March 24, 1835, he married Mary Ann Whistler, daughter of Col. William Whistler. Mary’s father and grandfather were both military men previously stationed at the Newport Barracks, and Mary Whistler was probably born in Newport about 1815.

Paul served several years of recruiting duty and in 1842 fought the Seminole Indians in Florida. He then served in the Mexican War, taking part in the defense of Fort Brown, the battle of Monterey, the siege of Vera Cruz, and several other battles, including the Cerro Gordo battle, where he was wounded. He led a storming party at Chapultepec, capturing the enemy flag, and for that act he was brevetted a major. The citizens of St. Louis, Mo., presented a sword to him for his ser vice in the Mexican campaign. During the 1850s he was involved in tours in Texas, and in the 1852 Rio Grande expedition, he captured Carvajal and his gang of desperadoes.

In 1854 William Whistler moved his family back to Newport, possibly bringing the Paul family with him. The marriage of Mary Whistler and Gabriel Rene Paul broke up at some point, and Paul married Louise Rodgers in Campbell Co. on April 13, 1858.

From 1858 to 1860, Paul served in the Utah expeditions, in the course of which he was engaged in the surprise and capture of a camp of hostile Indians. He was promoted to major and transferred to the 8th Infantry in April 1861. Then from July to December 1861 he served as acting inspector general of the Department of New Mexico. He was appointed a colonel and commanded Fort Union and the southern military district of New Mexico. In April 1862 he was made a lieutenant colonel. Paul was elevated to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers on September 5, 1862.

Transferred to the Army of the Potomac in March 1863, he took part in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

It appears that about the time Paul transferred east, his wife Louise returned to Newport, where she appears in the 1863 tax list with a town lot. On July 1, 1863, at about 2:00 p.m., at the Battle of Gettysburg, Paul’s brigade was attacked from three directions by elements of four Confederate brigades and, after a stiff fight, was overwhelmed. A musket ball struck Paul’s right temple an inch and a half behind his eye, severed the right optic nerve, passed through his head, and exited through the left eye socket, removing the eye. Paul fell unconscious and was left for dead on the field; a dispatch from Gen. George Meade to Gen. Henry Halleck reported him killed. However, he was found alive

by Union prisoners working as stretcher-bearers, carried to a local residence, and placed under the care of the surgeon of the 11th Pennsylvania. Paul apparently returned to Newport to recover from his Gettysburg wounds, because the 1864 and 1865 tax lists include both Louise and G. R. Paul. The 1866 tax list shows only Louise Paul.

In February 1865, Paul was retired from active military ser vice “for disability resulting from wounds received in the line of duty.” Despite being

704 PAVY, JOHN totally blind, suffering violent attacks of head pain, and having epilepsy, he was at that time made deputy governor of the Soldiers’ Home near Washington, D.C. In June 1865 he was placed in charge of the military asylum at Harrodsburg, Ky., where he served until December 1866. A resolution of Congress granted him full pay and allowances of brigadier general on April 12, 1870. Records show that his seizures increased, occurring several times per day in the later years. Paul died at his residence in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 1886. He was given a hero’s burial in Arlington National Cemetery, and a monument was erected over his grave by his comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).

Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Arlington National Cemetery Web site. “Gabriel Rene Paul.” www.arlingtoncemetery.net/grpaul.htm (accessed June 8, 2006).

“G. R. Paul Pension Record,” National Archives, Washington, D.C. Polley, Daryl. “Gabriel Paul,” Campbell County Historical and Genealogical Society Newsletter, January 1999.

Daryl Polley

PAVY, JOHN (b. March 17, 1791, Sussex Co., Del.; d. November 9, 1869, Decatur Co., Ind.). Like many Baptist preachers in Kentucky before the Civil War, John Pavy took a bold public stance against institutional slavery. In 1823 Pavy, who was preaching at Fredericksburg (Warsaw) in Gallatin Co., was run out of town for his views opposing slavery.

It is unclear how John Pavy became an abolitionist or whether his relatives in Harrison and Campbell counties also held antislavery views, but three Harrison Co. Paveys moved into Switzerland and Decatur counties on the Indiana side of the Ohio River.

Sometime before 1761, John Pavy’s grandfather, Samuel Pavey (Pavy), brought the family south from New Hampshire into Accomack Co., Va. The Pavy family migrated through Maryland and Delaware before coming to Northern Kentucky about 1808. John Pavy married Jane S. Winn, September 5, 1811, in Harrison Co. Their family of 11 children included seven sons, three of whom became Baptist ministers. Five of the oldest children were born between 1812 and 1822 in Gallatin Co. Following an 1823 incident at Warsaw, John Pavy crossed the Ohio River into Indiana. He purchased a farm that straddled what is now Ind. Rt. 56 at the top of a hill above Vevay, Ind. (Switzerland Co.), on the Mount Sterling Rd. Pavy preached at several local Baptist churches before moving to the Sand Creek Baptist Church in Decatur Co., Ind., during the mid-1840s. He also preached at the Adams, Liberty, and Salem Baptist Churches nearby.

The first documented safe house for runaway slaves in Switzerland Co., Ind., was established by John Pavy along with his eldest son, Samuel Husk Pavy, and fellow Kentuckian Stephen R. Gerard (also spelled Girard, Garrard, and Jerrard by various census takers). These three men operated the

Vevay and Craig Township Underground Railroad station for many years. Samuel H. Pavy continued his father’s antislavery activities after John Pavy moved to Decatur Co. Girard, Mary, and Roy Girard. The Pavy Family History. Privately published, 1999.

History of Switzerland County, Indiana. Chicago: Weakley, Harraman, 1885.

Switzerland Co., Indiana, Photo Album. http:// myindianahome.net/gen/switz/photos/index.html (accessed March 24, 2007).

Switzerland Co. Complete Civil Order Book F, September Term, 1832, Vevay, Ind.

Diane Perrine Coon

PAXTON INN. One of the earliest public inns in Kentucky is still standing in the town of Washington. The inn, built between 1810 and 1819, was owned by James Paxton, who lived in a house next door. Records indicate that the inn was being operated by James Artus in 1819. Paxton was a lawyer, and customers for the successful inn included persons working in the nearby courthouse and other lawyers, as well as travelers to the area. Paxton moved to Ohio in 1823 because he was an abolitionist, not a popu lar stance in slaveholding Kentucky. He died in a fall from a buggy while on a visit back to Kentucky in 1824. The inn was sold by Paxton’s heirs, and Willis Lee was still using it as a tavern as late as 1838. A two-story, plainly styled brick Federal row house with a basement, the structure eventually became the headquarters of the Mason Co. Telephone Company and then was purchased by succeeding telephone businesses.

The Continental Telephone Company was the last of those companies; when the building no longer met their needs, the firm decided in the mid-1960s to tear the structure down. Led by Mrs. Andrew Duke, an effort was started to save Paxton Inn. Continental Telephone was supportive, and the building was turned over to the Limestone Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1967. As restoration efforts continue, the house is used by the local DAR chapter for its functions and is open to the public, who can observe its early-19th-century fireplaces, mantels, and woodwork. A portrait of William Beatty, a local lawyer and jurist in the 1830s and a relative of James Artus, is one of the artifacts placed in the house during restoration. Each floor features a room 18 feet wide by 36 feet long. These rooms were occupied by inn patrons, and the one on the second floor was sometimes used for dancing. A concealed staircase, speculation by locals, and the history of Paxton’s abolitionist leanings point to the inn as perhaps having been used as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Collection of the Kentucky Gateway Museum, Maysville, Ky. “Maysville Preserver of the Past,” KP, July 6, 1983, 8K. “Walk into 158 Years of Paxton Inn History,” KP, August 17, 1968, 1K. “Washington Rings in Christmas,” KP, December 1, 1983, 12K.

John Klee

PAYNE, WILLIAM HERMAN (b. December 28, 1943, Covington, Ky.; d. March 9, 1970, Bel Air, Md.). William Payne, the son of Emmett Payne Jr. and Emma F. Robinson Payne, became the first African American from Covington killed during the modern civil rights movement. Payne was raised in Covington and attended Lincoln- Grant School, then graduated in 1963 from the William Grant High School, where he was the basketball team manager. After graduation, he served with the U.S. Naval Reserves for two years of active duty during the Vietnam War. He attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, and while in college he became active in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the youth organization of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was formed by Martin Luther King Jr. Payne has been described as highly intelligent and an organizer.

In 1967 he moved to Atlanta, Ga., and traveled throughout Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi on civil rights and voter-registration drives. He became a friend of SNCC’s national chairman, Herbert “H. Rap” Brown, and its former leader Stokely Carmichael. It was while Payne was in Atlanta that he became known as Ché, a name also used by the well-known revolutionary leader from Cuba. In 1970 Brown went to Bel Air, Md., where SNCC had established a presence because of civil rights issues; he was to face charges stemming from various protest marches and rallies. While traveling in Maryland to support Brown, Payne and a companion, Ralph Featherstone, were killed on March 9, 1970, when their car exploded. The incident was publicized nationally as part of the civil rights movement. Payne was buried in Mary E. Smith Cemetery in Elsmere, Ky. Harris, John. “Black Leaders Eulogize Payne,” KP, March 17, 1970, 1K–2K. ———. “Black Struggle Leader Buried,” KP, March 16, 1970, 4K. ———. “Nobody Can Say He Was a Militant,” KP, March 13, 1970, 1K–2K. “Ser vices Held for Bomb Blast Victim,” KP, March 17, 1970, 5K.

Theodore H. H. Harris

PEACH GROVE INN. The original Peach Grove Inn was located on a lane that was part of Washington Trace Rd., about a mile off Ky. Rt. 10, near the Wesley Chapel Methodist Church, in northeastern Pendleton Co. In 1858 Lacky and Sarah Lancaster conveyed the property to George Daniel, who transferred it to Garrett Daniel. The inn was a two-story log cabin (one room and a loft), and it had sections of the logs cut out to serve as gun ports. It may be that the occupants wanted to protect themselves against American Indians, or perhaps the building was used as a Confederate military post and stronghold. Two local Confederate operatives, William Francis Corbin and Thomas Jefferson McGraw, were captured at this inn in 1863 during the Civil War. They were arrested for recruiting soldiers into the Confederate Army and later were shot to death by the Union Army at Johnson’s Island, Ohio.

PENDLETON, EDMUND

The 1884 Lake atlas shows the structure, identified as a home, located just northwest of the Peach Grove post office, which in turn was located at the cemetery and next to the old Second Mile Baptist Church. The former inn was owned by F. M. Ellis at this time. Dean Richards Maxddon restored the inn in the 1970s.

Lathrop, J. M. An Atlas of Bracken and Pendleton Counties, Kentucky. Philadelphia: D. J. Lake, 1884.

Mildred Belew

PEASELBURG. This quaint little village, now within Covington, was founded in the mid-1800s and originally was known as Silkyville. The neighborhood boundaries were 19th St. on the north, 26th St. on the south, Madison Ave. on the east, and Benton Rd. on the west. Most of the residents were German Catholics, but a few Irish families lived there, helping to make life in the neighborhood varied and interesting. Many of the men of the town worked for the nearby Kentucky Central Railroad or at the car barn at Madison Ave. and State St. The Monte Cassino Chapel and monastery were located on the hills above Peaselburg. Each morning, noon, and evening the monastery bells rang, to remind residents to bow their heads for a time of prayer and meditation. The monks tended their vineyards and made wine on the monastery property for sacramental purposes and for commercial sale. They regularly made home deliveries of their wine in Peaselburg, as milkmen of their day delivered milk.

Hundreds of geese roamed freely in the city, most of them owned by the Drees, Niehaus, and Uhlmann families, who were called by some people goose ranchers. How anyone knew who owned which geese was a mystery to everyone. The aggressive geese ruled almost every sidewalk, street, and yard in the community and would attack anyone or anything that challenged them. Eggs could be found behind many bushes, and quills and feathers were everywhere. The goose population supplied goose grease, which people used to tame their unruly hair, goose feathers to fi ll mattresses and pillows, and the goose liver and goose eggs that were used to make sandwiches for children’s school lunches. Geese were as symbolic of Peaselburg as horses are of the state of Kentucky.

A favorite playground for many of the Peaselburg children was the nearby, enchanting, Willow Run Creek valley. The frequent fistfights and stone-throwing battles between the Irish and the German youth turned into a popu lar spectator sport. The biggest event of the year was the annual Easter fire, set on the vacant lot bounded by 18th, 19th, Russell, and Holman Sts. Peaselburg residents also loved to watch the Covington Blues baseball team perform on their field at 19th and Euclid Sts. Life for most Peaselburg families centered on activities at the St. Augustine Catholic Church, which originally was located on Russell St. just south of Willow St. In 1912, much to the chagrin of baseball fans, the Blues’ playing field was razed for construction of a new St. Augustine

Church. Some of the better-known families living in early Peaselburg were named Drees, Heidel, Holtsman, Kruse, Niehaus, Shoemaker, Trenkamp, and Uhlmann.

A Covington Ticket newspaper article of September 1876 addressed the puzzling name of Peaselburg with the question “Who or what is peasel?” Townspeople had often wondered also. It turned out that early German residents had named the town Peaselburg (also spelled Peasleburg), based on a Low German term that can be translated as “the city of goose droppings.” Once the secret was out, the name became an embarrassment to the community and attempts were made to change it. A Ticket article also ridiculed the name by referring to Peaselburg as Goose Town. In 1876 there was an attempt to rename the city Wolfsburg, but nothing came of the idea. Central Covington, which included Peaselburg, was incorporated by the state in 1880. In 1906 the voters of Central Covington approved annexation to Covington.

Geaslen, Chester F. Strolling along Memory Lane.

Vol. 1. Newport, Ky.: Otto, 1971.

“The Kentucky Legislature,” Covington Ticket, May 4, 1880, 2.

Reis, Jim. “Goats, Geese, and Goons Colored Life in Suburbs,” KP, July 9, 1984, 9K. ——— . Pieces of the Past. Vol. 1. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1988.

“Who or What Was Peasel?” Covington Ticket, September 28, 1876, 3.

Jack Wessling

PECK, JOHN MASON (b. October 31, 1789, South-Farms, Litchfield Co., Conn.; d. March 15, 1858, O’Fallon Station, Ill.). John Mason Peck, the son of Asa and Hannah Farnun Peck, humble family farmers, became a noted Baptist preacher and educator. By 1813 he was a minister at Catskill, N.Y., and by 1817 he was assigned to the western missionary frontier at St. Louis, Mo. He traveled thousands of miles through Illinois, preaching, publishing, and founding Baptist colleges and seminaries, and it was said that perhaps no man had done more to guide the thoughts, mold the manners, and form the institutions of the West than John Peck.

On November 10, 1834, Peck formed the Western Baptist Educational Society, which evolved into Covington’s Western Baptist Theological Institute. He took part in the doctrinal and political compromises that enabled the institution to open in fall 1844. Although he leaned toward the Southern position on the slavery issue, he did everything in his power to keep this issue from destroying the new school.

Peck published several books and newspapers and wrote histories. He also produced a sketch of Daniel Boone. Peck recognized early in his career the importance of educational training for ministers and the populace. He established some 900 churches and saw 600 ministers ordained and 32,000 persons become Baptists. He received a DD degree from Harvard at Cambridge, Mass., in 1852. While president of the Western Baptist Theological Institute in 1854, he caught a fever from

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which he never fully recovered. He also served as the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Covington. Peck died in 1858 and was first buried in Rock Springs, Ill. His remains were later moved to the Bellfontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Mo. “Death Notice,” CJ, March 27, 1858, 2.

Wilson, James Grant, and John Fiske, eds. Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton, 1894.

PELHAM, WILLIAM (b. 1803, Maysville, Ky.; d.

1879, Manchaca, Tex.). William Pelham, who became the only Confederate governor in the New Mexico Territory, was the son of Charles Pelham and Isabella Atkinson. He moved westward during the 1820s. He was appointed as a U.S. auditor and then as U.S. surveyor general of the Arkansas Territory. He married Mary Ann Conway, and they had three children. In 1849 Pelham and his family, with their slaves, moved to Texas, where he established a ranch. In 1854 he was appointed the U.S. surveyor general of the Territory of New Mexico, where he was active in promoting the opening of the territory to slavery.

When Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, all residents in the Territory of New Mexico were ordered by its governor, Henry Connelly, to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. Pelham refused and was arrested and jailed at Santa Fe. On July 23, 1861, Confederate forces invaded New Mexico, but it was not until 1862 that they advanced to Santa Fe. On March 10, 1862, Santa Fe fell to the Confederate Army. Pelham was released from jail and appointed the Confederate governor of the territory. Confederate forces were defeated at Glorieta Pass on March 28, 1862, and forced to retreat to Texas. Santa Fe was evacuated by the Confederates on April 8 of that year, and Pelham retreated with the Confederate Army, but he and his escort were captured by Union troops before reaching Texas. Pelham spent the remainder of the war in confinement. During the war, his only surviving son, Charles, was killed while serving as a Confederate soldier in 1864 in the fighting around Atlanta, Ga. In 1865 Pelham was released and allowed to leave New Mexico. He returned to Manchaca, Tex., where he established another ranch and was active in Democratic politics. He died at his ranch in 1879.

Kerby, Robert L. The Confederate Invasion of New Mexico and Arizona, 1861–1862. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1958.

Museum of New Mexico. The Civil War in New Mexico. Santa Fe, N.Mex., 1961.

Charles H. Bogart

PENDLETON, EDMUND (b. September 9, 1721, Caroline Co., Va.; d. October 23, 1803, Richmond, Va.). Edmund Pendleton has as his namesake Pendleton Co., Ky., which was created on December 13, 1798, from portions of Campbell and Bracken counties. He was a well-known Virginia politician, lawyer, and judge. Pendleton was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1745 and became the

706 PENDLETON ACADEMY justice of the peace for Caroline Co., Va., in 1751.

He was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1752 to 1776 and represented Virginia in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1775.

He was the first Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and became the first judge of the High Court of Chancery in 1777. Pendleton was president of both the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals from 1778 to 1803 and the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788. Eventually, he refused appointment to the federal judiciary in 1788 because of advancing age. Pendleton died in Richmond, Va., in 1803. He was buried first in Edmundsbury, near Bowling Green, Va., but his remains later were moved to Bruton Parish Church Cemetery in Williamsburg, Va., in 1907.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

“Pendleton, Edmund (1721–1803).” http://bioguide .congress.gov (accessed April 5, 2006).

Mays, David J. Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803: A Biography. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952.

———, ed. The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton. 2 vols. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1967.

Jenny Plemen

PENDLETON ACADEMY. The Pendleton Academy in Falmouth began in 1814 under the direction of Professor R. C. Robinson of Moscow, Ohio, in a one-story building, 20 by 30 feet. The brick used in the building was available on-site.

Constructed on land purchased from Reuben Turner for $30, the academy’s building was at the corner of Broad and Fourth Sts. For many years, this private school was simply called the seminary.

In 1848 a new one-story building, 20 by 56 feet, was erected where the present Falmouth Middle School now stands. It was later known as Pendleton Academy.

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

Mildred Belew

PENDLETON CO. This 281-square-mile county is bordered by Grant, Kenton, Campbell, Bracken, and Harrison counties. The Ohio River borders Pendleton Co. for five miles along its northeastern border, and Falmouth is the confluence of major forks of the Licking River. The terrain consists of fertile river valleys surrounded by undulating hills.

Most of the farm production is burley tobacco and beef and dairy cattle. The county was created on December 13, 1798, from portions of Campbell and Bracken counties and was named after Edmund Pendleton (1721–1803), a longtime member of the Virginia House of Burgesses (1752–1774) and the Continental Congress. Falmouth is the county seat. The other incorporated city in the county is Butler, located on the Licking River seven miles north of Falmouth. In 1820, 250 square miles of the county were taken to establish Grant Co. The Licking River was an important avenue for the early exploration of Kentucky. Along with an overland route through the county, the English captain Henry Bird (see Bird’s [Byrd’s] War

Road) took the river in leading 600 Indians and Canadians in the June 1780 attack on Ruddell’s and Martin’s stations in Central Kentucky. The first settlement in the county is believed to have been the one at the fork of the Licking at some time around 1780. The settlement, which became Falmouth, was established by James Cordy, Peter DeMoss, Samuel Jones, Gabriel Mullins, and James Tilton.

With the exception of the county seat, Pendleton Co. remained rural during the 19th century.

The farm economy was based on tobacco, and legend has it that the first crop was raised in the southwestern part of the county with seed brought from Virginia. In the 1830s Oliver Browning floated 100-pound hoop-pole packages of the crop from McKinneysburg on flatboats down the Licking River to Cincinnati and points beyond. The coming of the Covington and Lexington Railroad through the county in 1853 gave sellers a connection to markets at Cincinnati and Louisville.

By the 1890s, intensive tobacco production had depleted much of the soil in Pendleton Co. Sweet clover brought from Alabama in 1895 was planted in worn-out tobacco fields, restoring profitability to tobacco cultivation, as well as to apiary and dairy industries. Pendleton, “the county that came back,” nevertheless lost one-third of its residents at the height of the economic crisis. Another forage crop that succeeded in the county was alfalfa, probably introduced between 1900 and 1910 by traveling Mormon preachers. By 1925 local tanners produced hundreds of tons and were exporting alfalfa to other areas.

In the late 1850s, a company of Pendleton Co. soldiers was organized to perform peacekeeping duties among the Mormons in Utah. During the Civil War, the county sent men to both armies. A Union recruiting camp was established in Falmouth in September 1861. Two Confederate recruiters were captured and executed in the Peach Grove area of northern Pendleton Co. In July 1862 a number of county citizens were rounded up by Union troops during a crackdown against suspected Confederate sympathizers. In June 1863 a number of women were arrested at DeMossville because they were believed to be potential spies “dangerous to the federal government.” Falmouth was the site of a small skirmish on September 18, 1862, between 28 Confederates and 11 Home Guardsmen (see Falmouth, Battle of).

The city of Butler was established in the 1850s when the Covington and Lexington Railroad was built through the area. Originally called Clayton, for reasons unknown, the city was named for William O. Butler, a U.S. congressman, when it was incorporated on February 1, 1868. Like Falmouth, Butler in the 1870s and 1880s was a major tobacco market and its other businesses included lumber and sawmills, flour- and gristmills, churches, schools, a railroad depot, a blacksmith shop, and various stores. In 1871 a covered bridge was built across the Licking River at Butler (see Butler Covered Bridge). The bridge was used until the 1937 flood weakened its supports. The structure was later torn down and replaced with a steel bridge.

Major floods of the Licking River in 1937, 1948, 1964, and 1997 made flood control a major concern of residents (see Flood of 1937; Flood of 1964, Licking River; Flood of 1997, Licking River). The creation of Falmouth Lake (now Kincaid Lake) State Park near Falmouth, a 200-acre impoundment, failed to prevent the 1964 flood (see Kincaid Lake State Park). Initial planning for a 12,000-acre impoundment of the Licking River nine miles south of Falmouth got under way in the mid-1970s, but because of the magnitude of the project, it was abandoned.

The completion of the AA Highway in 1990 has made Pendleton Co. more accessible to the urban areas of Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

Many county residents not engaged in farming are employed outside of the county, commuting to jobs within the metropolitan area. The population in 2000 was 14,390.

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

1994].

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

U.S. Census Bureau. www.census.gov/ (accessed January 2, 2008).

Warren J. Shonert and Staff

PENDLETON CO. MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL. Pendleton Co. Memorial High School opened its doors on September 8, 1959, in its present single-story brick structure, situated on a bluff outside Falmouth on U.S. 27 North. In its first year, the school enrolled 360 students from the former Morgan and Butler high schools. In fall 1968, the Falmouth High School was merged into Pendleton Co. Memorial High School. In fall 1971, many students from the St. Xavier High School in Falmouth also joined the school’s rolls.

In May 1960, the high school’s first graduating class consisted of 70 students. Adopting the traditions of its predecessor high schools, Pendleton Co. Memorial High School observes unique, multievent graduation ceremonies. On Class Night, students are introduced to the audience, noting their parents’ names and their home community within the county. Scholarships and awards are presented, and members of the graduating class perform vocal and instrumental selections, skits, and dances.

The following Sunday evening, baccalaureate is held at a local church. On the third evening, commencement itself takes place.

Pendleton Co. Memorial High School’s mascot is the Wildcat, and the school’s colors are red, white, and black. The school has published its yearbook, The Pendleton Echo, each year since it opened. A school newspaper, known originally as The Pendletonian and later as The Cats’ Paws, has been published intermittently.

The high school’s facilities have undergone several renovations over the years, with a major one during the late 1980s. In spring 2007, the school began a major expansion (designed by architects Sherman, Carter, and Barnhart of Lexington) that included eight new classrooms, a 450-seat auditorium, an auxiliary gym, a new library–multimedia

708 PENDLETON CO. PUBLIC LIBRARY center, and renovation of all of the former classrooms; it was scheduled for completion in fall 2008. In 2008 the enrollment was 850. The high school offers a varied curriculum, including many dual-credit and advanced placement courses, and a very competitive sports program. The school also has a functioning greenhouse. Pendleton Co. Memorial High School counts among its graduates a Nobel Prize winner, Philip A. Sharp.

Belew, Mildred Bowen. “History of Pendleton County Schools.” www.rootsweb.com/~kypendle/ school history.htm (accessed on September 29, 2006).

Dennie, Debbie, and Patty Jenkins, comps. Forks of the Licking, Bicentennial Edition, 1798–1998.

Falmouth, Ky.: Falmouth Outlook, 1998.

Hornbeek, Carolyn, and Bobby Nordheim, eds. The Farewell, 1959. Butler, Ky.: Butler High School, 1959.

Morris, Linda S. Thornton, ed. The Pendleton Echo, 1960. Falmouth, Ky.: Pendleton High School, 1960.

Pendleton Co. Schools. www.pendleton.k12.ky.us (accessed October 2, 2006).

Michael D. Redden and Aprile Conrad Redden

PENDLETON CO. PUBLIC LIBRARY. The Pendleton Co. Public Library began in 1953 when Pendleton Co. received a grant from the Commonwealth of Kentucky and additional funds from the Falmouth City Council, the Falmouth City School, the Pendleton Co. Fiscal Court, and the Pendleton Co. Schools. The library opened in the Falmouth City Hall council chambers, and the first chairman of the library board was Ray Hogg. The library was able to obtain a bookmobile, which served the general population by making stops in subdivisions and community centers, nursing homes, senior citizens centers, and remote rural areas. Josephine Dougherty and Josephine McKenny were early librarians. On October 15, 1967, the library moved to the LLL Building on the corner of Shelby and Main Sts. in Falmouth, where it remained until 1976.

In August 1967 the board bought the former George B. Held property and cleared it to make way for a new building with adequate parking. In 1975 the board received a $135,000 building grant; that grant, combined with funds from the board’s savings account and a $90,000 bank loan, made it possible to construct a new library, which ended up costing more than $200,000. The new Pendleton Co. Public Library, at 228 Main St. in Falmouth, was dedicated in an impressive ceremony on September 26, 1976. A large crowd visited the library to see the collection of some 10,000 books and view the Barton Papers collection housed there.

Othelia Moore was the librarian at the time. She retired and was replaced by Janie Harter in 1985.

When Harter retired in 2005, Cheri Figgins was appointed librarian.

The flood of 1997 devastated the library’s interior and its holdings. Because the water rose to four feet on the main floor, very few items were salvaged; but through help from both state and

federal agencies and private individuals and groups, such as the Campbell Co. Historical Society, the building’s interior was restored and its bookshelves fi lled again. Many people donated books and information about their families to restock the genealogical research room. Today there are about 38,000 items housed at the library.

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

1994].

“Hundreds Turn Out to View Pendleton Library,” KP, September 27, 1976, 8K.

Mildred Belew

PENDLETON CO. PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Public education in Pendleton Co. began in Butler with a school that included multiple grades and was located in three rented rooms on the upper story of the Armstrong Store. A one-room schoolhouse was built in the town around 1856 from what had been an old blacksmith’s shop; all grades were taught there, including high school. By 1875, there were about 70 schools for whites and 3 for blacks in Pendleton Co. By 1895 or so, the Falmouth independent public school system was established.

In 1909, the county had three independent public high schools at Butler, Falmouth, and Morgan (see Butler High School; Falmouth High School; Morgan High School). Around this time, the Butler Graded and High School was relocated to Matilda St. in Butler and housed in a twostory frame building. In 1915 the county had 62 schools for whites and a single school for blacks. In 1927 the Butler Graded and High School moved into a larger, multistory brick building that was built to replace the former building on the same site; 12 rooms were added to the new school in 1940.

By the 1920s, the county had public schools for whites for grades one through eight in at least the following locations: Auburn, Butler, Falmouth, Goforth, McKinneysburg, Morgan, Mount Auburn, and Portland. In 1924 the elementary school at Goforth became Kentucky’s first rural school to offer a hot lunch program; the lunches were free of charge, with local farmers donating goods and students supplying the volunteer labor. The school sponsored a box social to raise the seed money for the endeavor, and a school bookstore funded the ongoing operation of the program. The school at Goforth was also the first among Kentucky’s rural schools to include home economics in the grade school curriculum.

In 1930 there was at least one school for African Americans operating in the county; it was known as the Pendleton Co. or Falmouth Colored School. At the December 1955 Falmouth Board of Education meeting, this building was sold to Bob Best, a local realtor, for $1,250. Oral tradition indicates that for some time after the school closed, its students were bused to neighboring Harrison Co., rather than being integrated into Pendleton Co.’s or Falmouth’s school system.

The Morgan and Butler high schools ceased to exist at the close of the 1958–1959 school year, when

the Pendleton Co. Board of Education consolidated its upper grades into the newly constructed Pendleton Co. Memorial High School. In the fall of 1968, Falmouth High School was merged into Pendleton Memorial High School.

In the early 1970s, the Pendleton Co. Board of Education began the countywide consolidation of its primary schools with the opening of Southern Elementary, located at U.S. 27 North and Woodson Ln. in Falmouth, and Northern Elementary, located at 925 Ky. Rt. 177 East in Butler; both schools serve grades one through six. At this time, the Falmouth High School building was converted into the countywide Pendleton Co. Middle School, for grades seven and eight. In January 1998 the middle school was relocated to a new facility at 35 Wright Rd. and U.S. 27 North in Butler and renamed the Phillip A. Sharp Middle School. It began serving grades six through eight, to ease spacing concerns at the elementary schools, which today offer preschool and kindergarten classes.

Over time, the old school buildings have found new and varied uses. The school building at Butler was used as a low-income apartment complex until it was damaged by fire; it is now vacant. The Morgan High School building served as a recreation center with a roller skating rink until it was purchased by a private citizen. The high school building in Falmouth is maintained by the county school system and is the Falmouth School Center, offering GED, career placement, and other services. The Mount Auburn school is a senior citizen apartment complex; the McKinneysburg school is now a privately held apartment complex.

Belew, Mildred Bowen. “History of Pendleton County Schools.” www.rootsweb.com/~kypendle/school history.htm (accessed September 30, 2006).

Bray, Nancy, transcriber. “Common School Directory of Pendleton County, Kentucky 1915–1916.” www .rootsweb.com/~kypendle/comschool.htm (accessed September 30, 2006).

Butler Woman’s Club, comp. As I Remember Butler.

Butler, Ky.: Butler Women’s Club, 1975.

Dennie, Debbie, and Patty Jenkins, comps. Forks of the Licking, Bicentennial Edition, 1798–1998.

Falmouth, Ky.: Falmouth Outlook, 1998.

“Looking Back through the Years,” Falmouth Outlook, December 27, 2005, 2.

Wolfe, Ronald Glenn, ed. The Morganeer, 1958– 1959. Morgan, Ky.: Morgan High School, 1959.

Michael D. Redden and Aprile Conrad Redden

PENN GROVE CAMP MEETING. The land now occupied by the Penn Grove Campground, on the edge of Mount Olivet in Robertson Co., was first an informal gambling resort known as Long Branch. Cards and craps were the games of choice, and they were played at all hours of the day and night. In 1893, Rev. William A. Penn and his brother Lew desired to do something about the grounds, so they purchased the 30-acre tract and built the campground, which eventually included an auditorium, a dining room, and 36 cabins.

Gambling ceased, and religious camp meetings replaced that unsavory activity. Various citizens

PEOPLE’SLIBERTY BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, COVINGTON

from throughout the county bought shares of stock in the venture. For many years, Penn Grove was the major mass meeting place for wholesome events in Robertson Co., in addition to the typical southern-style church summer camp meetings, which were held by many different religious denominations.

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

PENTECOSTALS. Some of the earliest Pentecostal churches in Northern Kentucky included the First Church of God at 502 Johnson St. in Covington, the Church of God at 1044 Prospect St. in Covington, the First Church of God of Erlanger, and the Full Gospel Assembly of God in Newport.

The First Church of God, Covington, moved to 524 Southern Ave. in Covington, where a basement church was built in 1949, and a new sanctuary above it in 1955. The Full Gospel Assembly of God in Newport was founded in 1948 by Rev. Orville A. Morgan, a native of Lee Co., Ky. Christ’s Chapel Assembly of God in Erlanger was founded by Rev. Terry Crigger in 1986. One of the largest Pentecostal churches in the region is the Heritage Assembly of God in Florence, which also operates the Heritage Academy.

Currently, Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) congregations are located in Alexandria, Cold Spring, Covington, Crescent Springs, Dayton, Falmouth, Florence, Highland Heights, Newport, Walton, and Williamstown. There are Assembly of God churches in Alexandria, Bellevue, Boone Co., Brooksville (see Brooksville Assembly of God), Covington, Dry Ridge, Erlanger, Falmouth, Florence, Maysville, Mount Olivet, Newport, and Owenton. There are also many Pentecostal churches of other denominations, as well as unaffiliated congregations, in Northern Kentucky.

Pentecostals are Christians who derive their name from the Pentecost of the New Testament, the occasion at which Christians believe that the Apostles received the Holy Spirit. Worldwide today, Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing movement in Christianity and, measured by actual membership, the second-largest denomination of Christianity, next to that of Roman Catholics.

Pentecostal Protestants trace their earliest roots to John Wesley (1703–1791), founder of the Methodist Church (see Methodists). Wesley emphasized a two-step religious experience for individuals, conversion or “justification,” followed by Christian perfection or “sanctification.” In conversion, individuals realized their sinfulness and were forgiven for their own personal sins. In the second phase, their “inbred sin” or “residue of sin,” a consequence of the “original sin” of Adam and Eve, was removed as they received the Holy Spirit; they then grew in “holiness.” The American camp meeting (see Reeves’ Campground), featuring thousands of attendees in a highly emotional setting marked by trembling, trances, and other “gifts of the Spirit,” had its origins at Cane Ridge in Bourbon Co. in 1801. “Holiness” revivals—the basic foundation of

modern Pentecostalism—spread throughout the nation before the Civil War. In contrast to the Calvinism of some religious denominations of the time, which stressed predestination and the selectivity of salvation, the holiness revivals stemmed from Arminianism, which maintained that all could be saved. This democratic and dramatic individualistic element of the Holiness movement of Methodism proved especially appealing in frontier areas like Kentucky.

After the Civil War, the Holiness movement experienced resurgence. By the 1880s, however, for a variety of reasons, Methodists began to dissociate themselves from what they viewed as an increasingly radical movement that appeared to be taking on an antidenominational stance. Holiness churches began to be formed, beginning with Daniel S. Warner’s organization of the Church of God in Anderson, Ind., in 1880 and continuing with the Nazarenes and the Pilgrim Holiness Church, founded in Cincinnati in 1897. By the 1890s the term Pentecostals came into wider usage, led by Henry C. Morrison of Asbury College in Wilmore, Ky., and others.

The modern Pentecostal movement is traced to Rev. Charles Fox Parham of Kansas, who stressed a “third experience,” a baptism with the Holy Spirit, as subsequent to and wholly separate from the second experience, “sanctification,” which Parham viewed as a cleansing from inbred sin. According to Parham, glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, was evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit; before this time, glossolalia was a little-known phenomenon.

Beginning in 1906 and lasting for three and a half years in a church on Azusa St. in Los Angeles, William Joseph Seymour, an African American follower of Parham, oversaw enthusiastic Pentecostal revivals marked by glossolalia on a massive scale.

Azusa St. captured the attention of the media, as thousands flocked to Los Angeles, and modern Pentecostalism was born and spread quickly throughout the world. By 1910 Rev. William H. Durham of Chicago officially introduced the doctrine of the “finished work,” denying the “residue of sin” and claiming that at the time of conversion an individual was sanctified and would grow progressively in grace thereafter. Some Pentecostals, namely the newly formed Assemblies of God (1914), adopted the “finished work” doctrine, departing from the three-step process of other Pentecostals. Those denominations believing in the three original steps of grace became known as “second work” or Wesleyan Pentecostals and included the Church of God of Cleveland, Tenn. A third division of Pentecostals, represented by the United Pentecostal Church, are called “Oneness” or “Jesus Only,” meaning that they are Unitarians rather than Trinitarians; they regard the terminology of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as different titles for Jesus. In the 1940s and after, Pentecostal revivalism concentrated on healing. Originally associated with the poor and minorities, Pentecostalism was largely scorned by older, mainline Christian denominations. Slowly, Pentecostals, especially preachers such as Oral Roberts (who became a Methodist in 1968), achieved acceptance. Also, by

709

the 1960s and 1970s some members of mainline denominations began their own charismatic renewals, making Pentecostalism more understandable and palatable.

Anderson, Robert Mapes. “Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.” In Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Detroit: Thomson Gale, ca. 2005.

“Anniversary,” KTS, March 18, 1955, 2A. “Church of God to Break Ground,” KTS, April 4, 1958, 8A. “Evangelistic Ser vices,” KP, January 17, 1931, 2.

“First Ser vice in New Church,” KTS, January 28, 1955, 6A. “Orville Morgan, 95, Founded Newport Church,” KE, October 14, 2003, 4B. “Pastor Heeds Call to Start New Church,” KP, January 11, 1986, 9K. “Revival to Be Continued,” KP, November 18, 1930, 3.

Synan, Vinson. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997.

Paul A. Tenkotte

PEOPLE’S-LIBERTY BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, COVINGTON. People’s-Liberty Bank of Covington, once the largest bank in Northern Kentucky, was the result of a 1928 merger between People’s Savings Bank and Trust Company and the Liberty National Bank (formerly German National Bank) of Covington.

The German National Bank of Covington was founded in 1871 and in January 1890 moved to a Richardsonian Romanesque–style building still standing at 609– 611 Madison Ave. In 1913 it merged with the Merchants National Bank, retaining the name German National Bank. Because of the backlash against German culture during World War I (see Anti- German Hysteria, 1917–1920), in 1918 the bank changed its name to Liberty National Bank of Covington. In 1921 it purchased the Walsh Building at the southeast corner of Sixth St. and Madison Ave. (see Covington, Downtown) and in 1923 opened on the site a new bank, designed by architect Harry Hake of Cincinnati in the Neoclassical style. The Carl Brothers provided the cut stone, granite, and masonry for the building.

People’s Savings Bank and Trust Company was organized in Covington in 1903 and soon opened offices on the ground floor of the newly completed (1904) Farmers and Traders National Bank (see First National Bank and Trust Company of Covington) at the northwest corner of Sixth St. and Madison Ave. It moved across the street, to the southwest corner of Sixth St. and Madison Ave. (originally called the Walker Dry Goods Building and later the Degginger Dry Goods Building) in 1912, after architect Bernard T. Wisenall oversaw remodeling of the structure into a bank. In 1926 U.S. Senator Richard Pretlow Ernst and businessman L. B. Wilson purchased controlling interest in the bank.

After its 1928 merger, People’s-Liberty Bank and Trust Company was the second-largest bank in Kentucky and the largest in Northern Kentucky.

710 PERKINS, CHRISTOPHER WALLACE, SR., “C.W.,” SERGEANT In 1933 People’s-Liberty merged with the Central Savings Agency, located at 20th St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. In March 1933, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) declared a “bank holiday,” to allow government officials time to examine the solvency of banks nationwide. People’s-Liberty passed inspection and reopened immediately. In 1942 the bank named Joseph N. Cuni as president and Clifford E. Homan as executive vice president; in 1958 Homan became president and Cuni chairman of the board. In 1959 Kentucky state law first allowed banks to open branches outside of their city of incorporation but within the same county. People’s-Liberty subsequently opened a branch in Elsmere. In 1969 the bank named Ralph Haile president and chief executive office; he served for 19 years. In 1970 the Bank of Independence merged with People’s-Liberty. In 1983 the bank formed a holding company called Peoples Liberty Bancorporation, of which People’s-Liberty Bank became a wholly owned subsidiary. First National Cincinnati Corporation, a holding company that owned 12 banks including First National Bank in Cincinnati and Newport National Bank, expressed its interest in People’s-Liberty in 1987, and the purchase was approved by the stockholders of People’s-Liberty in January 1988. In 1989 First National Cincinnati Corporation changed its name to Star Bank. In 1993 Star Bank, N.A., Kentucky, which had acquired First National Bank and Trust Company of Covington in 1991, moved its headquarters from RiverCenter to the old People’s-Liberty Bank on the southeast corner of Sixth and Madison Aves. In 1999 Star Bank was renamed Firstar, and in 2000 US Bank purchased Firstar.

“Built the Bank: Men Whose Work Shows in New Structure,” KP, September 5, 1923, 5.

“Ernst and Wilson Buy People’s Bank,” KP, February 6, 1926, 1.

“Merger of Two Banks Voted,” KP, January 10, 1928, 1.

“New Bank: The People’s Savings Society of Covington Will Organize within a Few Weeks,” KP, February 18, 1903, 1.

“Peoples Bank Opens Its New Quarters,” KP, March 9, 1912, 3.

“Peoples Liberty Bancorporation: 1983 Annual Report,” vertical fi les, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington.

“Trust Company Will Have New Bank Quarters,” KP, January 11, 1911, 2.

Paul A. Tenkotte

PERKINS, CHRISTOPHER WALLACE, SR., “C.W.,” SERGEANT (b. June 19, 1915, Florence, Ala.; d. May 6, 1998, Cincinnati, Ohio). Jazz musician C. W. Wallace was the son of Constantine and Willie Bertha McMillan Perkins (see Constantine Perkins). C.W. was named after his father’s childhood friend William Christopher Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” and after his father’s favorite teacher, Professor Y. A. Wallace. C.W. moved with his parents and older brother Carranza to Covington, Ky., in 1921, when C.W. was six years old. He briefly attended Lincoln Grant School in Covington, but his father later enrolled him in a Catholic

school in Cincinnati because it had a better arts program. C.W.’s father was his first music teacher; like his father, C.W. had a strong love for music and exhibited great talent at an early age. Even though he learned to play mainly religious and classical music at school, he was drawn to the sound of jazz music by his teens, and he turned to his father for help in improving his jazz-playing skills. When the Cincinnati Cotton Club opened in 1934 in the city’s West End, Perkins became its first-chair trumpet player. From 1934 to the 1950s, Perkins was one of the best-known black musicians in Greater Cincinnati. He was nicknamed the “Granddaddy of the Cotton Club” by his protégé Nelson Burton. Perkins also performed as a backup musician for King Records in Cincinnati in 1947.

The only time Perkins was not playing for the Cotton Club during those years was when he was drafted and served in the U.S. Army. He became a member of the army band and achieved the rank of sergeant because of his advanced talents. During those years he also traveled for less than a year with a well-known entertainer, Maurice Morocco.

When Josephine Baker, an internationally known entertainer, performed at the Albee Theatre in Cincinnati in 1951, she refused to go on stage until the theater provided her with an integrated band. Perkins was one of four men that the Albee hired from the Cotton Club to play for Baker. The Albee planned to have the “colored” musicians just be on standby and not perform, but Baker insisted that they play. In retaliation, the Albee selected an extremely difficult part for Perkins to perform, hoping that he would fail and that they could dismiss all four African American musicians. Instead, Perkins hit every note, high or fast, with perfection. After his performance, the Albee kept its band integrated. In the Cincinnati Times Star, a writer who did not realize that Perkins was a local musician reported that Baker had a “very hot trumpet player.” Perkins was asked by many famous entertainers (for example, Josephine Baker, Count Basie, and Nat King Cole) to go on the road after he performed with them during the famous musical jam sessions at the Cotton Club. Perkins would never leave, though, because he did not want to be away from his young sons. Even after the Cotton Club closed, he continued to perform with local bands such as the Frank Payne Quartet. He was a well-sought-after backup musician, performing with entertainers like Tony Bennett and Luther Vandross when they were in town.

In the 1980s Perkins began serving as a musician at Holy Name Church in Mount Auburn, Ohio. He performed every Sunday until he became ill in 1998. He died one month before his 83rd birthday and was buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Montgomery, Ohio.

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

Cincinnati: Clifton Hills Press, 2000.

CTS, June 15, 1951, 8.

Perkins, Christopher W., Sr., to Jessica Knox-Perkins, April 1997.

Ruppli, Michel. The King Labels: A Discography.

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Jessica Knox-Perkins

PERKINS, CONSTANTINE, JR., “CONSTANT” (b. May 15, 1870, Florence, Ala.; d. October 31, 1942, Covington, Ky.). Constantine Perkins, a musician and the father of Christopher Perkins, was born to former slaves Constantine T. Perkins Sr. and Victoria Simpson Perkins. When he was only five, Constant was skilled as a pianist and quickly mastered several musical instruments, especially the cornet. He became known in Florence, Ala., as a musical prodigy. His father became a wealthy businessman after slavery and owned a barbershop at which young Perkins would play the piano. Musicians from traveling minstrel shows who frequented the shop during their travels were astounded at the young musician’s talent. By the time he was 20, Perkins was known throughout Alabama for having one of the fi nest black bands in the state.

W. C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” was a childhood friend of Perkins. In Handy’s autobiography, he recognized Perkins as a strong musical influence on his life: he was responsible for teaching Handy how to play Ragtime and the Blues, the type of music that brought fame and notoriety to Handy. Perkins and Handy joined the Mahara Minstrel Show and performed widely in the United States, Canada, and Cuba. Both were very popu lar musicians with the show, and their unique style of music made a major impact on other musicians.

Perkins left the show and returned home when his young daughter became very ill, a twist of fate that removed Perkins from the music world while Handy continued to advance. Back in Alabama, Perkins joined his father’s barber business and became even more prosperous than his father. However, his success was interrupted when he refused to comply with Alabama’s expanding laws requiring segregation. He had to leave Alabama and everything that he had accomplished and acquired.

In Alabama Perkins had worked with organizations like the NAACP to help put an end to segregation and the lynching of blacks, and when he moved to the Greater Cincinnati area, he continued his work for civil rights. He did not live to see the passing of the antilynching law (1947) or the Civil Rights Act (1964), though. Perkins died of a stroke in 1942 while residing at 1209 Russell St. in Covington. He was buried at St. Mary Cemetery, Fort Mitchell.

Florence (Ala.) Times, August 22, 1890, 3.

Handy, W. C. W.C. Handy: Father of the Blues. New York: Macmillan, 1941.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 24816, for the year 1942.

“What’s Happening,” Florence (Ala.) Herald, August 5, 1897, 1.

Willie Bertha Perkins to Jessica Knox-Perkins, June 1980, Cincinnati.

Jessica Knox-Perkins

PERKINS, GEORGE G. (b. July 10, 1839, Burlington, Ky.; d. August 17, 1933, Lake Mohonk, N.Y.). George Gilpin Perkins, a lawyer, a longtime Kenton Co. Circuit Court judge, and a member of the Democratic Party, was the son of John Hilton and Mariah R. Stansifer Perkins. His father

PETERS, AMO LUCILLE POWELL

was a native of Bourbon Co. who had moved to Burlington in 1828. George’s mother was a member of the prominent Boone Co. Stansifer family.

George was the second of the 10 children born to the couple. The Perkins family moved to Covington in 1849 and several years later to land across from the Kruempelmann Farm, on what is now Dixie Highway. The former Perkins land today encompasses the entire city of old Fort Mitchell.

They built their home where the Fort Mitchell Country Club now stands.

George Perkins’s early education was mostly by private tutor. After the family moved to Covington, he attended the private school of Professor Tackett Read, which was located on the second floor, above a firehouse, on the southwest corner of Washington and Pike Sts. Perkins later was a student at Shelby College in Shelbyville, Ky. Just before the Civil War, he joined the reserves and underwent military training during the summers, between college terms. While in training with the Madeira Guards in Harrison Co. during the summer of 1859, he contracted typhoid fever and spent the next year at home, recuperating. He then entered Farmer’s College (later known as Ohio Mechanics Institute and later still as Ohio College of Applied Science) in Cincinnati, where he graduated in 1861. Perkins apprenticed law under Judge James Pryor and was admitted to the bar in 1863.

In June 1864, Perkins married Lavinia Jane Smith of Madison, Ind., who was a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. The couple had a son, Gilbert and a daughter, Anna. The family lived on Garrard St. near Fift h, where they were neighbors of future governor John White Stevenson. Perkins also became a close personal friend of John G. Carlisle, who later served as treasury secretary under President Grover Cleveland. Perkins was a prominent figure in Kentucky horse racing circles and was one of the founders of the Latonia Jockey Club.

He entered politics in 1867 and was elected to the Kentucky legislature, where he served for two years. In 1869 he was elected judge of the Kenton Co. court and served there until he was appointed in 1874 as judge of the Kentucky 12th Judicial District’s criminal court. In January 1893, a new state constitution went into effect and the state’s courts were redesigned; thereafter he became judge of the new Kenton Co. Circuit Court. Eventually, he resigned to become a lawyer in New York City. He remained there for about five years and then retired to an estate called Greenacre, in Chevy Chase, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C. Judge Perkins wrote a book about his life, entitled A Kentucky Judge, which was published in 1931. He died in his summer home on Lake Mohonk, N.Y., at age 94. Funeral ser vices were held in Washington, D.C. “Death Takes Former Judge,” KTS, August 18, 1933, 1.

“G.G. Perkins Is Dead; Kentucky Patriarch,” NYT, August 19, 1933, 11.

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

Perkins, George Gilpin. A Kentucky Judge. Washington, D.C.: W. F. Roberts, 1931.

PERRY PARK. Three large creeks, named the Mill, the Little Twin, and the Big Twin, drain most of northwestern Owen Co. and empty into the Kentucky River within a few hundred yards of each other. This is where the community known as Perry Park is located. According to legend, the area was first called Lick Skillet after a pioneer surveyor running short on rations was reputed to have remarked, “We would eat everything in sight, then lick the skillet”; later the community was referred to as Cleveland in honor of two-term U.S. president Grover Cleveland (1885–1889 and 1893–1897); next it was called Ball’s Landing for some of its early settlers, the Ball family; and finally the name was changed to Perry Park to honor the Perry family, longtime residents of the community.

Being one of the major landings for large boats traveling the Kentucky River made the Perry Park area a site of continual activity. James Ball was the first local wharfmaster. A road ran to the water’s edge, and freight could be loaded onto wagons for various inland destinations or stored in a nearby warehouse.

In the early days of the settlement, school was held at a home in town and in one located at nearby Zion Hill. The Methodist Church, originally located on Gratz Rd., was moved to town. At one time, the town of Perry Park had a picture gallery, a millinery store, three blacksmith shops, some general stores, the Star Hotel, and a doctor’s office. The post office was located in the drug store. The lead mine on Big Twin Creek was operated by a Colorado syndicate from 1899 to 1901 and employed a number of miners. The ore was shipped away on riverboats. This mine was reopened during World War I but was closed shortly afterward.

Perry Park no longer exists as a town. It has become the Glenwood Hall Resort, a resort area with homes, condominiums, a restaurant, a golf course, and a landing strip (see Airports). The resort’s clubhouse is the original home, with some modifications, of the Perry family. Today, it is used as a meeting area.

Friedberg, Mary. “Get-Aways Not Far Away,” KP, August 1, 1995, 8K. Vertical fi les, Owen Co. Public Library, Owenton, Ky.

Doris Riley

PERSIMMON GROVE. Persimmon Grove is a small farming community in Campbell Co. located at the intersection of Persimmon Grove Pk. and Race Track and Wagner Rds. The centerpiece of the community is its Baptist church. The community, the road, and the church derive their names from the same nearby grove of persimmon trees.

The 1883 Lake atlas shows a post office, a tobacco warehouse, a store, and a Methodist church in the area. A cemetery dating far back in time is located beside the Persimmon Grove Baptist Church. Two public schools also carried the Persimmon Grove name: one was located directly behind the Baptist church’s cemetery, and the other (a replacement of the first school) was a two-room building just down the road. Persimmon Grove is much as it always was, a farming community where most resi-

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dents travel to town for nonagricultural work opportunities.

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.

Hartman, Margaret Strebel, and W. Rus Stevens.

Campbell County Kentucky History & Genealogy. Campbell Co., Ky.: W. R. Stevens, 1984.

Kenneth A. Reis

PETERS, AMO LUCILLE POWELL (b. December 5, 1912, Cynthiana, Ky.). Amo Lucille Powell Peters, the leader of the civil rights movement in Maysville, as a child dreamed of serving as a missionary in Africa, but later she dedicated her life to the enrichment of the lives of African Americans in Mason Co. She married the late James Peters, and the couple had six children, three sons and three daughters. A longtime member of Maysville’s Bethel Baptist Church, Amo Peters served as a Sunday school teacher, as president of the Senior Choir, and as president of the Women’s Missionary Society; in 1985, at age 73, she received her church’s Woman of the Year Ser vice Award.

She continues at age 94 to serve as a trustee on the Administrative Board.

Peters was the first African American hired at the former Hayswood Hospital in Maysville, where she worked for 30 years. At first a nurse’s aide, Peters earned her Licensed Practical Nurse degree and eventually was promoted to night nurse in charge. Later she worked as coordinator for the hospital’s information and referral ser vices.

In the 1960s Peters organized local marches and peaceful demonstrations to end segregation and unfair conditions for African Americans. She became chairman of the Maysville–Mason Co. Human Rights Commission and helped plan the 1964 March on Frankfort in support of the Public Accommodations Act. More than 10,000 people attended the march, which featured singer Mahalia Jackson, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and former baseball player Jackie Robinson. Although the bill never made it out of committee, local organizers such as Peters worked for the next two years to persuade their state representatives to pass civil rights legislation in 1966. Her personal visits with the owners of local businesses and civic leaders led many to support her efforts to hasten integration.

Under her leadership, Maysville saw the integration of its theater, its hospital, its restaurants, its local stores, and other facilities. Because of her persistent efforts for negotiation, the first black postal worker and the first black employee at the Social Security office in Maysville were hired. She also led the first local black troop of the Girl Scouts of America. The Black Caucus of Maysville arranged for Peters to receive a Kentucky Colonel Commission in 1985.

Continuing in her local activism long after her retirement, Peters has worked on behalf of disabled, elderly, and poor citizens. She has served on the Board of Commissioners for the Five County

712 PETERSBURG Aging Council, the Buffalo Trace Aging Advisory Council, the Licking Valley Handicapped Board, the American Red Cross local chapter, the Comprehend Foster Grandparents Board, the Low Income Advocacy Committee, the Interagency Council, and the Buffalo Trace Senior Olympics Steering Committee. In 1982 Governor John Y. Brown (1979–1983) appointed Peters as a member of the Kentucky Institute for Aging. She was the first black to serve on the Planning and Aging Commission. Peters served as the physical fitness coordinator for the Buffalo Trace Adult Day Care and was coordinator of activities for senior centers.

Maysville mayor Harriett Cartmell appointed Peters in 1988 to the local Housing Commission, where she served as commissioner, chairman, and vice chairman. Peters also served on the committee for the Revitalization of Downtown Maysville.

As a member of the Mason Co. Homemakers Association, she served on the board for the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship. In her eighties, Peters continued to volunteer in local organizations, such as the Hospice of Hope and the Licking Valley Community Action Program. She remains active in the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, where in the past she organized physical education programs.

Peters has claimed a number of prestigious awards, including the Outstanding Black Women’s Award in 1981, from the National Black Coalition, and the Community Ser vice Award in 1985 for Outstanding Leadership and Devotion, from the Black Caucus at Morehead State University. In 1989 the National Black Caucus presented her with the National Community Ser vice Award in Washington, D.C. Local honors include Maysville’s Community Ser vice Award in 1988 and recognition of outstanding community ser vice in 1996 from the Students United for Minority Awareness at Maysville Community and Technical College; she was named Maysville’s Lady of the Year in 1988 by the Alpha Nu Chapter, Beta Sigma Phi Sorority.

In 1998 the Maysville Housing Authority named its new building on Meadow Dr. the Amo Peters Community Center. In 2000 the Kentucky Gateway Museum’s Curator, Sue Ellen Grannis, nominated Peters for the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame, and she was nominated two more times in subsequent years. In 2003 the Christian Women United of the Maysville–Mason Co. area (an organization she had formerly served as president) presented her with its first Valiant Woman’s award. On January 15, 2004, the Kentucky state legislature passed resolutions honoring Peters and recognizing her as the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Citizenship Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. State Commission. The Mason Co. Fiscal Court honored her the next month with the Frontiersman Award, and Maysville gave her a key to the city. Asked during an interview in 1996 to sum up her philosophy, Amo Peters said, “I am a firm believer that the good Lord does his part, and he expects you to do your part.”

Kentucky House of Representatives Resolution No. 77 and Senate Resolution No. 28, January 15, 2004.

Long, Barbara Phillips. “Donating Their Time: R.S.V.P. Volunteers Provide a Wide Range of Ser vices,” Maysville Independent-Ledger, April 20, 1996, C1–C2.

“Maysville Community College Offers Computer Classes at Amo Peters Center,” Maysville Independent-Ledger, December 8, 2000, A3.

Peters, Amo. “How Much Farther Do We Have to Go?” Maysville Independent-Ledger, 1994, clipping in the collection of Robert S. Peters.

Stahl, Matt. “Amo Peters Community Center to Be Dedicated in Friday Ceremony,” Maysville Independent-Ledger, May 7, 1998, B1–B2.

Randolph Hollingsworth

PETERSBURG. Petersburg, the oldest town in Boone Co., was built on the ruins of even older settlements. A large prehistoric village had existed there, which was inhabited at various times between about a.d. 1250 and a.d. 1650. Petersburg is a well-known Fort Ancient Indian cultural archaeological site, which was fi rst studied and recorded during the 1940s. Archaeologists have revisited the site periodically ever since. In 2004 archaeological salvage excavations documented a series of prehistoric burials that will almost certainly reshape archaeologists’ understanding of the Fort Ancient culture in the Ohio River Valley.

The stage was set for developing the land at Petersburg when a 1,000-acre tract in the vicinity was surveyed for William Holliday of Stafford Co., Va. The property changed hands several times before Col. John Grant of North Carolina, who was a nephew of Daniel Boone, purchased 750 acres of it. In 1789 a Baptist preacher from North Carolina named John Tanner led a party to the site and built a stockade there. Known as Tanner’s Station, this became the first permanent Euro-American settlement in the territory that in 1799 became Boone Co. Although the Tanners remained for only a few years, the Tanner Stone House can still be seen along the road below the sharp switchback on Ky. Rt. 20 as one descends into Petersburg.

By 1806 John Grant had established a ferry and a tavern and had laid out 100 acres of his land for a town to be called Caledonia. Short of funds, he transferred his holdings to his son-in-law John James Flournoy. The development of Petersburg between 1810 and 1830 was closely entwined with Flournoy’s many business enterprises. He has been referred to as a Frenchman, but it is believed that he came to Petersburg from North Carolina. With the permission of the Boone Co. Court, Flournoy established a warehouse at Tanner’s Station for the purpose of inspecting flour, tobacco, pork, and hemp. In September 1817, he platted a town on the site of Grant’s Caledonia, and the Kentucky legislature recognized the settlement as Petersburg the following year. He soon began advertising “free lots for artisans and tradesmen” who were willing to become permanent settlers, a common practice in the settlement-era Ohio River Valley. Flournoy also established the Petersburg Steam Mill Company, which eventually became the largest distillery in Kentucky (see Petersburg Distillery), and

the Petersburg Bank. He sold his interest in the mill in 1825 and left Petersburg before 1840.

The town’s location on the Ohio River encouraged its growth throughout the 19th century, as did the mill complex, which incorporated a distillery in the 1830s. In large part because of the distillery, Petersburg soon became the most populous and prosperous town in Boone Co. In 1850 it had 250 residents, a flourmill, a tobacco factory, a tavern, schools, and churches. The town’s population was diverse. In 1860 half were native Kentuckians; immigrants from Ireland, Britain, and Germany, as well as people who had come from elsewhere in the United States, made up the other half. African Americans were part of the town from its earliest days. In 1865 the Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory described Petersburg as a “flourishing post village . . . [with] a good landing and an active trade . . . and about 600 inhabitants.”

By 1879 the Gazetteer reported: “This town . . . has more life than many Kentucky villages. It has 1 distillery, 1 stave factory, 2 churches, 1 public and 1 private school, and ships whisky, live stock, grain and willows. Two mails daily.”

The layout of Petersburg reflects its preeminence, as well as the town founders’ hopes for the future. The town plat consists of a formal grid of 24 square blocks perpendicular to the river, two central squares reserved for public use, and broad streets. Imposing, multistory brick buildings such as the Masonic Lodge, the 1892 opera house, and the 1913 Odd Fellows Hall also testify to the town’s prosperity. Vintage postcard views of the town show wide, tree-lined streets with neat houses, churches, and shops. Contrary to legend, Petersburg was never planned as the capital of Kentucky; that distinction fell to a paper town of the same name on the Kentucky River, founded years earlier.

Steamboats shaped the fortunes of Petersburg. As many as three would dock at the wharf at one time to have their cargoes loaded or unloaded, while barges were being loaded with coal or corn for the distillery. The distillery had its own boat, the Levi J. Workum, named after one of the later owners. The boat, which featured a whiskey barrel mounted between the two stacks, made regular runs up and down the Ohio River.

Steamboats brought mail, newspapers, and imported goods and carried passengers. Hundreds of sacks of corn and mountains of wood were brought to the distillery by steamboat, and thousands of barrels of whiskey were shipped away.

Ferries also crossed the river to Aurora and Lawrenceburg, Ind. People traveled by ferry to shop, attend school, see doctors, and board trains to distant points. Contractors and artisans also crossed the river to fi nd work.

During the 19th century, students seeking secondary education traveled to Aurora or Lawrenceburg to attend high school. A graded school was built in Petersburg in 1910, several years after Boone Co. schools were consolidated. The sturdy, cross-plan brick structure was a landmark on the eastern side of town until 2003. Petersburg also pioneered school busing in 1913, by

PETERSBURG DISTILLERY

transporting pupils from the local Berkshire and Terrill districts.

Another educational milestone was the establishment of the county’s first public library in Petersburg in 1949. The Chapin Memorial Library, donated by Petersburg native Edward Young Chapin, was housed in an addition to the Petersburg Christian Church, where it remains today.

Among the treasures of the library are the original diaries of resident Lewis A. Loder, which record in great detail daily life in Petersburg from 1857 to 1903. Loder’s residence, the Loder House on Front St., built about 1840, is one of the best-known historic taverns in the county. It and the nearby Jonathan Carlton House (Schramm’s Tavern), dating from about 1825, welcomed travelers with broad, river-oriented galleries.

A wide terrace, with rich farmland, surrounds Petersburg. Perhaps the most famous farm of Petersburg Precinct was Prospect Farm, the home of Joseph Carter Jenkins, who was born in Orange Co., Va., and came to Boone Co. in 1832. He eventually became part owner of the distillery. Always a gentleman farmer, Jenkins raised fine livestock, including Jersey cattle, Cotswold sheep, and Chester hogs, on his 1,200-acre estate. Jenkins’s grand residence was built in 1860. Superbly sited on a loft y hilltop overlooking the town, the structure is an artful composition of Italianate, Gothic, Greek Revival, and Moorish elements. At the western edge of Petersburg, within view of the Jenkins house, is the Jenkins-Berkshire House. A frame Gothic Revival dwelling of the Downing Cottage type, it was built for Jenkins’s son in about 1860. A local tradition maintains that the house was sited so the son could be seen but not heard.

By the end of the 19th century, the distillery at Petersburg had grown into one of the largest in the nation, surpassed in production only by the massive distilleries of Peoria, Ill. The Freiburg & Workum Company operated the facility for 30 years but finally sold out in 1899 to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company. This New Jersey– based company acquired 59 Kentucky distilleries, most of which they eventually closed. Production at the Petersburg distillery was curtailed and ended in 1910. The October 10, 1910, edition of the Kentucky Post noted, “The removal will affect the revenue ser vice of this district and deprives many Petersburg families of employment.” Bottling continued until the warehouses were depleted and then demolished one by one for brick salvage. Distillery bricks were used to construct many buildings in Petersburg, including the 1916 Petersburg Jail and the Petersburg Baptist Church. The foundations of the distillery are still visible, and the former cooperage presently serves as a barn. Numerous ancillary buildings associated with the operation also survive, including the 1885 distillery superintendent’s house, the scales office (ca.

1850), and many workers’ cottages.

As the 19th century wore on, river traffic was supplanted by railroad transportation, negatively affecting Boone Co. river communities such as Taylorsport, Petersburg, and Hamilton. As its star fell, Petersburg’s population declined and, like

many other Boone Co. towns, it became a quiet rural trading center. The same loss of prosperity has, however, preserved the town’s matchless stock of historic architecture.

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Warminski and Matthew E. Becher

PETERSBURG DISTILLERY. For more than a century, the Petersburg Distillery, the leading industry of Boone Co., operated along the banks of the Ohio River in Petersburg. The business began about 1816 as a steam mill; the distillery was added in the mid-1830s. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the mill and distilling complex was continually expanded by a succession of owners. In the last decades of the century, it was the largest distillery operating on Kentucky soil and one of the largest in the nation.

The early development of Petersburg was closely tied to a North Carolinian named John James Flournoy. In September 1817, Flournoy platted a town at Tanner’s Station, and the Kentucky legislature recognized the settlement as Petersburg the following year. Flournoy also conveyed two and a half acres and $1 to the “president, directors, and company of the Petersburg Steam Mill Company,” who agreed to build a steam mill on the property. Flournoy was an officer of that company, together with George Cornelius, Reuben Graves, and John Terrill.

Petersburg Distillery during the flood of 1907.

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William Snyder, who came from Virginia, was the one who transformed the mill into an industrial power. In 1833 John and William Snyder bought the steam mill and the adjacent dwellings.

By 1836 Snyder had begun operating a distillery in conjunction with the mill, and in 1840 he had $34,000 invested in the complex. By 1850 Snyder’s mill and distillery complex was a successful concern worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In 1860 the distillery produced a staggering 1.125 million gallons of whiskey. Snyder’s whiskey was moving up and the down the Ohio River, as was his flour; 30 men were employed in his mill, distillery, and cooperage. But despite the apparent success of the distillery, Snyder was unable to repay the sum of more than $30,000 loaned to him by some of Petersburg’s most influential men. In February 1862 William Snyder’s personal property and real estate were liquidated to pay his creditors.

His son-in-law William Appleton bought the mill and distillery lot, the cooperage, and Snyder’s residence. Snyder quietly moved his family to Chattanooga, Tenn.

Col. William Appleton had begun operating the distillery complex before Snyder was gone. By 1862 Appleton was shipping flour and whiskey on the Ohio River to Lawrenceburg, Ind., to Cincinnati, and to points beyond. During much of the Civil War, Appleton weathered the exorbitant federal liquor taxes, but he was eventually forced to sell most of his interest in the firm to Joseph C. Jenkins and James Gaff of Aurora, Ind. Jenkins owned 50 percent of the Petersburg Distillery and Gaff and Appleton each owned 25 percent.

Under J. C. Jenkins & Company, the distillery closed for a short time, although whiskey was coming off the stills again by 1865. Jenkins was a wellto-do farmer and a leading Petersburg citizen. He was well acquainted with the distillery’s operations, having partnered to some extent with its previous owner, William Snyder. Jenkins’s partner James Gaff was the brother of Thomas Gaff, who,

714 PHARMACY in 1855, built Hillforest, a notable home, in Aurora, Ind. James and Thomas Gaff also operated the T. & J. W. Gaff & Co. Distillery in Aurora. James Gaff ’s mansion, Linden Terrace, was located at Fourth and Main Sts., Aurora. In 1869 ownership of the distillery changed again when Jenkins sold his share to the Cincinnati firm of Freiburg & Workum, headed by Bavarian-born Julius Freiburg and his brother-in-law Levi J. Workum. Gaff sold his 25 percent share to Freiburg & Workum in 1872, and Appleton followed suit in 1874.

Cincinnati’s whiskey industry of the late 19th century was marked by expansion and agglomeration, and the Freiburg & Workum firm was the biggest fish in a very large pond. Under Freiburg & Workum, the Petersburg Distillery experienced a period of progress and stability that continued through the end of the century. By 1880 the distillery in Petersburg was making more whiskey than any other distillery in the state. That year, the distillery was worth $250,000 and produced 975,820 gallons of whiskey. By comparison, the nine distilleries in famed Bourbon Co., Ky., produced only 433,263 gallons of whiskey in 1880. The only distillery in the state that came close to the Petersburg Distillery’s 1880 production figures was the G. W. Robson & Company Distillery in Campbell Co., which produced nearly 790,000 gallons.

By 1897 the Petersburg Distillery complex had elements on the Indiana shore, and its products were available in national and international markets. The distillery’s capacity of 4 million gallons of whiskey per year was more than four times the amount produced in 1880. The daily capacity of the stills (12,000 gallons) was more than 14 times that of the average 1890s Kentucky distillery and was comparable to the capacities of the 14 massive distilleries of Peoria, Ill. In 1899 Freiburg & Workum sold the Petersburg Distillery to a firm known as the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company (KD&WHC).

Between 1899 and 1916, the KD&WHC bought 59 distilleries in Kentucky, most of which they eventually shut down. In 1910 the KD&WHC announced plans to close the Petersburg Distillery.

Over the next several years, the remaining bonded whiskey was withdrawn and the massive brick warehouses were dismantled one by one. Much of the brick was reused in construction projects outside Boone Co. However, a number of buildings in Petersburg were built from distillery brick, including the tiny 1916 Petersburg Jail. Along with several houses, the National Register lists the 1913 Odd Fellows Hall and the 1916 Petersburg Baptist Church, also built of distillery bricks.

Today, the Petersburg Distillery is an archaeological site with remnants of stone, brick foundations, and walls. The only distillery building on the parcel is the distillery cooperage (ca. 1870), located in a cow pasture at the end of First St. The distillery scales office (ca. 1850), at the corner of Mill and Front Streets, is now a small wood-frame residence.

The finest surviving building is the 1885 distillery superintendent’s house, across Front St. from the scales office. The brick building is an exceptional Queen Anne–style double house with an

urban form, unique in Boone Co. This is all that remains of a distillery that was once the largest in Kentucky.

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

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

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

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

Matthew E. Becher

PHARMACY. No clear records of the earliest pharmacies established in Northern Kentucky have been found. There were several drugstores in Covington as early as 1839, and there is a record of a drugstore in Newport at Fourth and York Sts. before the Civil War. However, through much of the first half of the 19th century, doctors prepared and dispensed many of their own medicines. Some even kept small doctors’ shops, where medicines were compounded and dispensed. Such shops were usually connected with the office where the doctor practiced. In Northern Kentucky’s early days, much of the commerce along the Ohio River took place on the Cincinnati side, and so when John Uri Lloyd and his father were searching for a pharmacy apprenticeship in 1864, there were no openings in Covington; a position was eventually found with the Gordon Brothers in Cincinnati.

Most pharmacists in the 19th century learned their trade through an apprenticeship. Not every established pharmacist accepted apprentices, however, even though apprentices were a source of relatively inexpensive labor. Joseph Feth and Louis

Holzhauer were two pharmacists who trained apprentices in Newport. When the first colleges of pharmacy were established, students still had to work four years in a drugstore before receiving their degrees. In 1850 the first pharmacy school west of the Appalachians opened in Cincinnati, but not until after the end of the Civil War were significant numbers of students enrolled. The first college of pharmacy in Kentucky opened in Louisville in 1870; it became part of the University of Kentucky in 1947 and was moved to Lexington in 1957. In 1883 a short-lived pharmacy college for women opened in Louisville, but it operated only until 1893. Many of the young men and women from Northern Kentucky who wanted to become pharmacists went across the Ohio River to the closer Cincinnati College of Pharmacy (now the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy) for their professional education.

The first national association of pharmacists, the American Pharmaceutical Association (now the American Pharmacists Association), was formed in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1852. Pharmacists from the colleges of the period, including those in Cincinnati, agreed to work together to limit the importation of adulterated drugs and to establish standards of practice. The first pharmacists from Northern Kentucky to join the national association were Richard G. Mauss (1869), and Peter Nodler (1870), whose drugstore was located at the corner of Fifth St. and Madison Ave. in Covington.

In 1874 Kentucky passed legislation to regulate the sale of medicines and poisons; it was one of the first states to do so, but the law applied only to Louisville. In 1876 an amendment expanded coverage to all cities having a population of at least 5,000. In 1877 a preliminary meeting to form the Kentucky Pharmaceutical Association was held in Frankfort,

F. A. Pope Drug Store, Ritte’s Corner, Latonia, before 1941.

PIATT’S LANDING

and pharmacists from Covington, Maysville, and Newport were part of the organizing body. G. A. Zwick and M. Heermance, both of Covington, were elected second and third vice president, respectively, and Peter Nodler, also of Covington, was elected treasurer. One of the organization’s first orders of business was to strengthen the poisons act and establish a state board of pharmacy.

By 1890, there were more than 100 pharmacies operating in Northern Kentucky. Scientific pharmacy was advanced in the United States when German-trained pharmacists immigrated. In both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, a number of German immigrants opened Apothekes, or pharmacies. G. A. Zwick, Covington; A. F. Goetze, Dayton; and G. Holzhauer and Otto Breck, Newport, were among the early German pharmacists working in Northern Kentucky.

Pharmacy was largely a male occupation during the 19th century. The few women who became pharmacists were typically apprenticed to relatives and only slowly gained admittance to the early colleges of pharmacy. Marcella Feth was one of the early women graduates of the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy in 1897. She joined her father, Joseph B. Feth, in his store at the northwest corner of Eighth and York Sts. in Newport (the location today of the York St. Café).

Traditionally, pharmacies were small businesses, owned by the pharmacist and frequently staffed by family or a hired clerk or two. The owner’s spouse and children were handy, if sometimes unwilling, workers. Edward C. Farrell opened a drugstore in Ludlow in 1908; two of his sisters and his sons William and John became pharmacists, as did John’s son. Henry Morwessel, an 1883 Cincinnati College of Pharmacy graduate, opened his pharmacy in Covington, and it was operated by three generations of the family, continuing into the late 1990s. Its final location was on the southeast corner of W. Sixth and Russell Sts. in Covington.

By the beginning of the 20th century, pharmacy store chains were forming. Cora Dow founded the Dow chain in Cincinnati (see Dow Drug Stores), and by 1916 the firm had opened stores in Newport and Covington. The Dow drugstore chain was one of the largest of its kind in the United States at the time, larger than the Walgreens chain, which started in 1901. Louis Liggett, who had the idea of forming a cooperative that would allow independent drugstores greater buying power, in 1903 launched the Rexall business concept. The Rexall cooperative-purchasing way of doing business quickly spread; at one time, at least 20 percent of the nation’s pharmacies were members, including the Dow Drug Stores. The other major franchise program of the period appeared in 1929 with the introduction of Walgreen Agency stores. The Rexall and Walgreen Agency drugstores competed for business in the smaller communities; each had one-cent sales designed to entice consumers to stock up on store rather than national brands. In 1923 the Model chain of pharmacies in Cincinnati, owned by African Americans, had a store in Covington (see Model-Evans Pharmacy).

Relationships between pharmacists in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati were excellent. Leaders from both sides of the Ohio River were involved with the Ohio Valley Druggists Association. The Widrig brothers, T. J., Louis, and Edward, had separate stores in Newport. Louis Widrig (see Widrig Family), a graduate of the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, was for a number of years the treasurer and a stockholder in the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team. He was also the president and principal stockholder of the Alexandria Turnpike (U.S. 27).

Modern pharmacy has changed from the days when it merely involved the dispensing of compounded prescriptions at the corner drugstore.

Institutional pharmacy in hospitals and nursing homes has become an important part of the profession. In general, the one-owner store has given way to the large chain pharmacies such as Walgreens, CVS, and the pharmacies operated in Kroger grocery stores (see Bernard H. “Barney” Kroger). In 1998 Omnicare moved its headquarters to Covington. Originally formed in 1981 to provide pharmacy ser vices to nursing homes, this company continues to expand its ser vices to institutional health care providers. There are still independent drug and pharmacy stores in Northern Kentucky, however; for example, Blanks Pharmacy in Covington has been in operation for more than 100 years. Pharmacists continue to develop new ways to provide ser vices to their patients. The Ruwe family, involved in pharmacy for multiple generations, has expanded its retail counter operation to include providing clinical pharmacy ser vices in senior apartments located throughout Northern Kentucky. Beginning in 2002, persons in need have received help through the charitable pharmacy program of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

Flannery, M. A., and D. B. Worthen. Pharmaceutical Education in the Queen City. Binghamton, N.Y.: Pharmaceutical Press, 2001.

Poweleit, A. C., and J. A. Schroer. A Medical History of Campbell and Kenton Counties. Cincinnati: Campbell-Kenton Co. Medical Society, 1970.

Dennis B. Worthen

PHILIPPS, MIKE (b. June 30, 1946, Muncie, Ind.). Cincinnati Post editor John Michael Philipps is the son of John Albert and Jean Philipps.

He grew up in Lima, Ohio, and at age 16 he became a freelance photographer for the Lima News. In 1968 he graduated from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Va., with a degree in English literature and a regular U.S. Army commission. He immediately was sent to active military duty in Vietnam, where he worked in military intelligence under future CIA head William Colby. Philipps then returned to the Lima News, where his boss was his future wife, Carole Simeon. In 1977 they both joined the staff of the Cincinnati Post. Over the years, Philipps held various positions at the Post and became the editor of both the Cincinnati Post and the Kentucky Post in 2001. He is a boater, an airplane pi lot, a ham radio operator, and a pho-

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tographer and has also been a member of several important civic boards and organizations in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area.

PHISTER, ELIJAH C. (b. October 8, 1822, Maysville, Ky.; d. May 16, 1887, Maysville, Ky.). Elijah Conner Phister, a legislator and a mayor, was the son of Conrad Phister, from Germany, and Mary W. Conner, of Maryland. Elijah Phister attended the Seminary of Rand and Richardson in Maysville and graduated from Augusta College in Augusta in 1840. He undertook the study of law with John Sargent in Philadelphia, Pa., and was admitted to the bar in 1844. As a lawyer, Phister practiced in Mason Co. with the firm Payne & Waller. He was elected mayor of Maysville in 1847 and 1848. From 1856 to 1862, Phister served as a judge on the circuit court. He was affi liated with the Whig Party and a supporter of Henry Clay but later became a Democrat. After the Civil War, he was elected a state representative in Kentucky, serving from 1867 to 1871 and holding the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee in his second term. Kentucky governor Preston H. Leslie (1871– 1875) wanted to appoint him to a commission to revise the Kentucky statutes in 1872, but Phister turned down the offer. He was elected as a Democrat to the 46th and 47th U.S. Congresses, holding office for two terms from 1879 to 1883. He died in Maysville in 1887 and was buried in the MaysvilleMason Co. Cemetery.

Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chicago: John M. Gresham, 1896.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985.

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

Thomas S. Ward

PIATT’S LANDING. Piatt’s Landing was a ferry landing established by Robert Piatt (1769–1857) in the East Bend Bottoms of Boone Co., about three miles below Rabbit Hash, along the Ohio River. In the early 1800s, several ferries were operated by members of the Piatt family, including ferries between Touseytown, Ky., and Lawrenceburg, Ind.; between Rabbit Hash, Ky., and Rising Sun, Ind.; and between East Bend, Ky., and North Landing, Ind. The Piatts came to the Ohio River Valley from New Jersey about 1800. Robert Piatt acquired 200 acres in East Bend Bottoms in 1810 and moved to the site about 1812. That year he requested permission from the Boone Co. Court to establish a ferry at East Bend and to build a road from the landing.

He commenced building a house at East Bend about the same time. His home, renamed Winnfield Cottage by its second owners, was one of the finest vernacular Greek Revival residences in the county.

As a ferry landing, Piatt’s Landing was typical of Ohio River transportation of the day. Piatt’s Landing will always be remembered as the birthplace of Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, who rose to the rank of general in the Union Army and accepted the final surrender in 1865 of Confederate

716 PICKETT, JAMES C., COL O NEL forces commanded by generals Richard Taylor and Edmund Kirby Smith. Today, the East Bend Power Plant occupies the site.

Shaffer, James F. Piatt’s Landing East Bend. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company, General Engineering Department, 1978.

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

Matthew E. Becher

PICKETT, JAMES C., COLONEL (b. February 6, 1793, Faquier Co., Va.; d. July 10, 1872, Washington, D.C.). Col. James Chamberlayne Pickett, a lawyer, a legislator, and a diplomat, was the eldest son of Col. John and Elizabeth Chamberlayne Pickett. When James was three years old, his family moved to Mason Co., Ky. His early education was at the best schools, and he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Pickett was an excellent student, proficient in several languages. After graduation, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812. He left the army after the war to become a lawyer. In 1816 he served as editor of the Maysville Eagle newspaper.

He returned to the army in 1818 with the rank of captain and was later promoted to colonel. In 1821 he resigned his commission and entered the practice of law in Mason Co. He was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1822 for one term and then served as Kentucky secretary of state from 1824 to 1828. Appointed by President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837), he served with the U.S. legation to Colombia from 1829 until 1833.

Pickett was appointed superintendent of the U.S. Patent Office in 1835 and then served as an auditor of the U.S. Treasury from 1836 to 1838. Afterward he headed U.S. diplomatic relations with Ecuador and the Peru-Bolivia Confederation. Returning to Washington, D.C., he retired to private life and became the editor of the Congressional Globe (an insert to the Washington Globe newspaper) from 1848 until 1853. In addition to his other accomplishments, Pickett was a prolific writer, especially on scientific subjects; he also wrote extensively about diplomatic history. In his 75th year, he published a book of poems. His writings were marked by notable clarity, power, and intellectual vigor.

Pickett was well liked and established numerous friendships throughout his life. A close friend for 58 years was Judge Lewis Collins, the author of the extremely popu lar work Historical Sketches of Kentucky (1847). Pickett died in Washington, D.C., at age 79 and was buried at the Congressional Cemetery. In October 1818, he married Ellen Desha, daughter of Kentucky governor Joseph Desha (1824–1828). They had two sons, Joseph Desha Pickett, a college professor at Bethany College in West Virginia and at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and Col. John T. Pickett, who served as consul to Mexico.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Padgett, James A., ed. “Letters of James Chamberlayne Pickett,” RKHS 37, no. 119 (April 1939): 151–70.

PIERCE, JEANNETTE RIGG (b. October 12, 1922, Pendleton Co., Ky.; d. August 27, 1998, Falmouth, Ky.). Jeannette Rigg Wyatt Pierce of Falmouth, a pioneering special education teacher, began her teaching career at the Goforth and Morgan elementary schools in Pendleton Co. and subsequently took an interest in the nascent field of special education. She earned certification as a special education teacher at the University of Kentucky at Lexington and then helped start Northern Kentucky’s first state-supported special education program in Pendleton Co. She was selected by her school’s superintendent, Richard Gulick, as the program’s first teacher. Pierce not only taught the children; she looked after their welfare, even making a good breakfast for them each morning.

After the Pendleton schools were consolidated, Pierce taught at Southern Elementary School; later she taught more severely challenged students at the county’s Middle School. She helped organize the Pendleton Co. Mental Health Association, out of which came the George Gedge workshop and other opportunities for the county’s special-needs children. In 1972 she was honored as the Outstanding Elementary Teacher in America for her work with mentally handicapped children.

Her husband, Samuel E. Pierce, also taught school. He died in 1998, just two months before Jeannette died. The Pierces were members of the Morgan Christian Church in Morgan, and they were both buried in the Morgan Cemetery.

“Falmouth’s Jeannette Pierce, Pioneering Special-Ed Teacher,” KP, August 28, 1998, 16A. Kentucky Death Certificate No. 26725, for the year 1998.

Diane Perrine Coon

PIKE, ZEBULON MONTGOMERY (b. January 5, 1779, Lamington, N.J.; d. April 27, 1813, Lake Ontario, N.Y.). Military officer and explorer Zebulon M. Pike was the son of Zebulon and Isabella Brown Pike. His father was a military officer who served in the Revolutionary War and, afterward, along the western frontier. His mother was a sister of John Brown, a Revolutionary War officer from New Jersey, who settled as a planter in Boone Co., Ky. Pike followed his father into the regular army, where he too served on the frontier. After delivering supplies to the forts in the Ohio wilderness and protecting shipments of supplies on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the younger Zebulon Pike led his famous explorations into Minnesota and the central Rockies, where he first saw the peak near Colorado Springs, Colo., later named for him, and up the Arkansas, Red, and Missouri rivers.

The Boone Co. home of his uncle, the Brown plantation near the Ohio River, was one of the places Pike regularly visited. Pike and his cousin Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Brown wanted to marry, but her father refused to sanction the marriage.

Nevertheless, Pike and Clara Brown married on March 4, 1801, in Boone Co., after eloping (see Sugar Grove Plantation). Five children were born to the couple, but only one, Clarissa Brown Pike, reached adulthood.

Throughout his military career, Pike rose rapidly through the ranks, and he kept daily records of his experiences. During the War of 1812, he was sent to the Canadian theater, where he was mortally wounded in the battle fought at York. While a captured British flag lay under his head, Pike died on the deck of the gunboat Madison on Lake Ontario and was buried with full military honors at Sackett’s Harbor, N.Y. Carver, Harvey L. Zebulon Montgomery Pike: Pathfinder and Patriot. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Denton, 1956.

Castel, Albert. “Zebulon Pike, Explorer,” American History Illustrated 7, no. 2 (1972): 45–48.

Hollon, W. Eugene. The Lost Pathfinder: Zebulon Montgomery Pike. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1949.

Hyslop, Stephen G. “An Explorer or Spy?” American History 37, no. 3 (August 2002): 58– 65.

Peterson, William J. “The Zebulon M. Pike Expedition,” Palimpsest 49, no. 2, (February 1968): 41–80.

Margaret Prentice Hecker

PIKET, LOUIS A. (b. December 12, 1839, Utrecht, Holland; d. January 25, 1910, Cincinnati, Ohio). Noted architect Louis A. Piket was born and raised in Holland, where he received a solid education in both construction and music. By age 15 he was an accomplished musician and singer and was employed as an organist in his hometown.

In 1857 he and his father, Anton (Anthony) Piket (1805–1888), immigrated to the United States and settled in Cincinnati, where Anthony Piket worked as a carpenter. Louis took a position as an organist.

By 1858, both Louis and his father were listed as practicing architects. They apparently formed a partnership, which according to the 1860 Cincinnati city directory was named Anthony Piket and Son. By 1866 Anthony Piket had moved to Newport, and two years later to Covington, while Louis remained in Cincinnati. A similar pattern was seen in other architectural firms, such as Dittoe and Wisenall and Walter and Stewart; the purpose, apparently, was to attract business from both sides of the Ohio River.

The Pikets designed and built Anthony’s home at 715 Bakewell St. in Covington. They also designed the St. Joseph, St. Aloysius, and St. Patrick Catholic churches in Covington and the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Newport. The Pikets seemed to prefer Gothic Revival design for churches and Renaissance or Italianate design for other structures. Both Anthony and Louis Piket became teachers of architecture and mechanical drawing at St. Xavier College in Cincinnati. Anthony Piket retired in 1884, moved to Cincinnati, and died in August 1888. Louis Piket later designed the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bellevue and designed improvements to the Trinity Episcopal Church in Covington.

He also drew the architectural plans for numerous other churches, schools, stores, and factories throughout the Greater Cincinnati area. After a long and colorful career, he died in 1910 at age 70.

Funeral ser vices were held at St. George Catholic Church in the Clifton section of Cincinnati, and he

PIPE ORGANS

was buried in St. Mary Cemetery, St. Bernard, Ohio. His wife was Mary Koehler Piket, who died in 1916.

Goss, Charles F. Cincinnati: The Queen City, 1788– 1912. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912.

“New Church Edifice,” CDE, May 23, 1867, 3.

St. Mary Cemetery Records, St. Bernard, Ohio.

“Suburban News, Covington,” CDG, September 11, 1871, 3.

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

PINER. Piner is a small, unincorporated town located in southern Kenton Co. at the intersection of Ky. Rt. 17 (Madison Pk. or the Three-L Highway), Ky. Rt. 14 (Bracht-Piner Rd.), and Rich Rd. It is about 20 miles south of Covington and 7 miles south of Independence. Piner and its close neighbor Fiskburg, located two miles farther south along Madison Pk., are collectively known as the PinerFiskburg Fire District. The Piner-Fiskburg Volunteer Fire Department, organized in 1961, is located in Piner. The population of the Piner-Fiskburg area, which numbers about 1,450, is served by the Morning View post office.

Piner was originally called Piner Crossroads, for Brack Piner, who owned and operated the first grocery store there in 1849. A market at the southwest corner of the intersection and the Piner Elementary School on Rich Rd. still exist. The original school was a one-room log structure built in 1849 on the current site of the Goshen Christian Church on Bracht-Piner Rd., a half mile from the intersection. Called Goshen Grammar School, it included grades one through eight and also served as a church on Sundays. Around 1870 a four-room frame building was built at the site of the present school on Rich Rd., and in 1914 a new four-room frame building was constructed to accommodate grades 1 through 12. The first graduating class of Piner High School was in 1917. This 12-grade school consolidated six one-room schools from the area. When Simon Kenton High School in Independence was finished in early 1937, the school at Piner reverted to being a 6-grade elementary school.

In 1881 Piner had a tobacco-drying warehouse, a grocery, and a combination blacksmith shop and livery stable. The combined enterprise was converted into an automobile garage in 1909 and into a milk-hauling business in 1945.

Piner Baptist Church is located on the west side of Ky. Rt. 17 about a half mile from the intersection of Ky. Rts. 17 and 14. It was organized in 1952 by a group of 110 members of the Wilmington Baptist Church. The congregation built a larger sanctuary in 2001 to accommodate its current membership of 400.

The Piner-Fiskburg area contains many large family farms, which have begun to be sold for residential development. Since the area is served with city water and is located only seven miles from the Walton exit off I-75, it is expected to grow quickly.

So far, large developers have not attempted to build in this area, however, owing to the lack of sanitary

sewers. The farms being subdivided are in 5- and 10-acre tracts, with sufficient land area for septic tanks.

The Piner-Fiskburg area remains a very closeknit community, even though most of its citizens work and shop in Florence, Covington, and Cincinnati. There are only three full-time working farms remaining in the area, all dairy farms. Other farmers are bivocational in order to supplement their incomes.

“Development Slowly Creeping South with Water, New Homes,” Kenton County Recorder, September 14, 1994, 3.

“Piner,” KP, June 20, 1928, 2.

“Piner High School Dedicated,” KP, September 28, 1914, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Tiny Towns,” KP, July 30, 1986, 4K. “2 County Schools to Open in Kenton,” KP, September 3, 1937, 9.

Pat Workman

PINER HIGH SCHOOL. Piner High School was the second of four Sullivan Law–inspired public high schools that opened in Kentucky within the Kenton Co. school district. Passed by the Kentucky legislature in 1908, the Sullivan Law overhauled public school funding in Kentucky and required that each county have at least one public high school. In May 1912 the Kenton Co. School Board authorized construction of a high school in Piner to serve the southern portion of the county.

Completed in October 1914, at a cost of $6,083, the two-story brick Piner High School eventually housed both primary and secondary students.

Later campus additions included a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and an auditorium. Elma Taylor served as Piner High School’s principal through much of its existence. In 1937 the Kenton Co. School Board closed Piner High School and merged it into the new Simon Kenton High School in Independence.

The Piner High School building continued as an elementary school until its replacement by a new facility during the early 1960s. Perhaps the most famous graduate of Piner High School was Brig.

Gen. Jesse Auton, a World War II Army Air Force pi lot who died in an aviation accident at Omaha, Neb., in the early 1950s.

Caywood, James A. “A Brief Sketch of the Development of the Kenton County School System,” an address delivered to the Filson Society, January 14, 1958, Louisville, Ky. Klotter, James C. Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox, 1900–1950. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Greg Perkins

PIPE ORGANS. Found in many churches in Northern Kentucky, pipe organs differ from electronic organs in the fundamental way sound is produced. Pipe organs have various sets of pipes (ranks) made of metal or wood, in varying shapes, which produce different sounds, or timbres, when air moves through them. The size of the pipe is related to its pitch, that is, whether it produces high or low notes. Electronic organs, in contrast, produce sounds electronically through speakers. Be-

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fore electricity was available, of course, the pipe organ was the only type of organ; a person (often a choirboy or a parish son) would pump a bellows lever that generated the flow of air to the pipes. The organist plays a pipe organ using manuals (keyboards; the instruments usually have two or more manuals) and pedals, which amount to keyboards for the feet. Older organs most often have a straight pedal board, in which the pedals are arranged in a straight line. Modern organs have a curved pedal board; the pedals radiate outward from the organ bench to the pedal tips and are set also in a curve from the middle upward toward the sides, allowing more comfort and ergonomic effectiveness for the performer. A rank is a set of pipes tuned to match the keys on the keyboard; each rank has its own distinctive timbre. Scale in pipe-organ construction refers to the length (height) and circumference (width) of a pipe. A stop is the knob or button that activates a rank. A division is a set of ranks, usually called Great, Swell, Choir, Pedal, and sometimes Positiv. Stoplike knobs or buttons that can be set to combine several manuals or divisions activate a combination, or coupler. Trackers, the original link systems between the keys or pedals and the ranks of pipes, are thin strips of (predominantly) wood.

In recent years, little distinction has been made between pipe organs and electronic organs. Both seem to be taken as viable alternatives in modern art culture; for example, the current installation at the Cincinnati Music Hall replaced a historic pipe instrument with an electronic one. The acoustic pipes produce timbre and pitch by air moving past an aperture, tempered by the shape, material, and fine-tuning of a physical pipe, much as any wind instrument, such as a trumpet, flute, or oboe, functions. The electronic organ imitates the actual acoustic reality of timbre and pitch by electronic means, relying on a speaker as resonator and an electronic generation of the same sound-wave size and shape for timbre and pitch. Overtones (the elements of sound that are usually not evident to an untrained ear) are produced in very different ways in the two instruments. Pipe organs do not require much more than regular tuning and infrequent repairs, but for a pipe organ that has not been maintained, the repair bill can be quite high.

The three most important names in Northern Kentucky organ building before the 20th century are Matthias Schwab (d. 1864), Johann Heinrich Köhnken (d. 1897), and Gallus Grimm (1827–1897).

Of these crucial figures, Schwab was the eldest and could be called the founding member of the organbuilding culture in Northern Kentucky. He opened his organ factory in Cincinnati about 1831, and Köhnken joined the company in 1839. Schwab retired in 1860 from the arduous business of organ building, and Köhnken took over the business. After Grimm joined Köhnken in 1875, the company took on major contracts. Köhnken retired in 1896, and afterward Grimm went on to build a few more organs. Both Köhnken and Grimm died in 1897, and the business was sold to Alfred Mathers in 1908. Between 1865 and 1892, every organ in the Catholic churches of Covington was built by the

718 PLEASANT HOME firm of Köhnken and Grimm. In the 1850s, Schwab built and installed the organ at the St. Mary’s Cathedral along E. Eighth St. in Covington.

Schwab built what was perhaps his masterpiece for the German-speaking parish of St. Joseph Catholic Church, located until 1970 at the corner of Greenup and 11th Sts. in Covington.

That instrument, built in 1859–1860, has been described by visiting recital organists as a direct American link to one of the most influential German organ builders, Gottfied Silbermann. The St. Joseph Schwab organ is unusual among Northern Kentucky Roman Catholic historic organs. It was saved from destruction by Robert Schaffer of the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, who orga nized the careful removal of the instrument from St. Joseph Catholic Church before the building was demolished in 1970. The German parish had been one block from the Irish Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption (now the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption); in the 19th century, parishioners from the two parishes rarely interacted; they spoke their different languages and celebrated the Roman liturgy in their own culturally distinct ways. It is either irony or beauty, therefore, that the originally Irish parish of the cathedral now is a loving home for the German instrument from the German parish. The estimated cost to restore the Schwab organ to its original state was more than $300,000; however, it has been tended to regularly and is in basically good condition. The Cathedral Concert Series accepts donations regularly, which assist in the maintenance of the instrument. During his meticulous restoration of the later (1866) Schwab organ at the historic Isaac Wise (Plum St.) Temple in Cincinnati, German organ builder and restoration specialist Fritz Noack consulted this instrument to gain a full understanding of Schwab’s tonal concept and technical construction.

Another instrument built by Schwab survives in Falmouth at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church. Originally at St. Walberg Convent in Covington (next to St. Joseph Catholic Church), it is a small instrument with one manual and a small pedal division, but it is well suited to the size and acoustics of the church. It is still used as the primary ser vice music accompaniment.

After Schwab retired from the company, Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington commissioned the firm of Köhnken and Grimm to build its organ. Köhnken seems to have voiced his ranks more in keeping with the popu lar American tastes of the day, a broader scale of sound. The broader-scale pipes allow for a more diff use, perhaps more comfortable sound from the instrument. Schwab, in comparison, created instruments based on the traditional German idea of brilliant clarity of sound.

St. John Catholic Church in Covington houses the first installation by Walter Holtkamp’s own company of Cleveland, Ohio.

In the same manner as J. S. Bach’s friend and organ builder, Gottfried Silbermann in Baroque Germany, Ferris Steiner had the business sense to offer a free installation to the Diocese of Coving-

ton (see Roman Catholics) as a model of his work for demonstration. When it turned out that finances were prohibitive, Bishop William Mulloy allowed the diocese to pay for the installation in the chapel of the Covington Latin School. The first Steiner pipe organ installation remains in the third-floor chapel; it is functional and used for school liturgies. It is, however, like many other pipe organs in the area, in need of funding for repair and maintenance.

Another Steiner instrument was installed in the Seminary of St. Pius X, in Erlanger, which closed in 1986. Most recently the beautiful seminary buildings housed the Catholic Center, which was home to many offices of the Diocese of Covington; the Catholic Center has been moved into downtown Covington in the interest of fiscal management, and the future of the old seminary building and its organ remain uncertain at this time.

The most recent full-tracker-action installation in Northern Kentucky is the 2003 instrument built by the Noack Organ Company of Lawrence, Mass., for the Lakeside Presbyterian Church. Organist Tom Miles oversaw the project.

Hart, Kenneth Wayne. “Cincinnati Organ Builders of the Nineteenth Century,” BCHS 31, no. 2 (Summer 1973): 79–103.

Listerman, Mary Lu. “Church Pipe-Organ Season Begins,” KE, October 15, 2006, B3.

Ochse, Orpha. The History of the Organ in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1975.

Rebecca Schaffer Wells

PLEASANT HOME. The community of Pleasant Home, located in the northeast corner of Owen Co., near Eagle Creek and the Eagle Tunnel, had two of the county’s original one-room schools: one was for white students, the other for African American students. The church, the schools, and the stores at Pleasant Home have been the traditional focal points of life in the community. The church is known as the Mount Pleasant Church (not to be confused with the Pleasant Home Baptist Church in neighboring Eagle Hill), and it dates back to the 1840s. One of the common surnames in the local area is Lowdenback, the name of the family that ran many of the area’s businesses. For many years, a member of the Lowdenback family operated the local store. During the Civil War, patrols from both sides of the conflict roamed Owen Co., and the Lowdenback store at Pleasant Hill was a favorite spot to raid. The raids took place so often that the family finally abandoned the store for the duration of the war. Another family member ran the barbershop and had a photography studio. During the first half of the 20th century, people countywide would travel to Pleasant Hill to have pictures made.

A member of the Lowdenback family also had a jewelry store at Pleasant Hill. Only one store, no longer operated by a Lowdenback, remains today.

An Atlas of Owen County, Kentucky. Philadelphia: Lake, 1883.

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

PLEASANT RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH. The Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church, believed to have been organized on August 14, 1855, is located in west-central Pendleton Co., between Dividing Ridge and Portland, along what is today Ky. Rt. 467. The first surviving record of the church’s business activities dates to September 8, 1865, when Kennedy Blackburn transferred to the trustees of the church one and one-half acres of property for $10. The earliest surviving minutes are dated December 1867. No church records exist for the period 1855–1867, except for two pages, believed to be from the 1855 minute book. The first pastors at the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church were Elder Thomas Stephens and William Lancaster. Some of the charter members were Benjamin Blackburn and his wife, Kennedy and Angeline (?) Blackburn, Simeon and Martha Bush, J. N. Colcord Sr., Samuel Colcord, William Lancaster, Jesse and Susan Stith, and Elrod and Frances Tewell. The committee for construction of a new building consisted of Elder Thomas Stephens, Newton Belew, Jackson H. Gardner, J. J. Plunkett, T. F. Sanders, Jesse Stith, and James Elrod Tewell. When the church was five years old, it became a charter member of the Crittenden Baptist Association and continues today to send delegates to the association’s convention.

Sunday School, then called Sabbath School, at the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church was begun in 1870.

The first prayer meetings were held in 1873; in 1946 it was decided to start holding them weekly, and this practice continues today. In 1885 the congregation sold its log building to the school district and constructed a new church.

The church has helped support orphanages from its beginnings. In the earlier years, each fall a barrel of jars was received from the Children’s Home, and the jars were fi lled with fruit, vegetables, jellies, and jams to be returned to the Children’s Home at Thanksgiving, along with crates of eggs and coops of chickens. Today, members donated one day’s worth of their pay for this cause. In 1939 the Women’s Missionary Society was started at the church and in 1945 the first Vacation Bible School was held. In 1949 a parsonage was built on the Straight Shoot Pk. about a half mile from the church. When the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church held its centennial celebration on August 14, 1955, the church’s official register showed an attendance of 447 that day. On August 16, 2005, this church celebrated its 150th anniversary.

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

1994].

Mildred Belew

PLEASURE ISLE SWIM CLUB. Pleasure Isle was a popu lar swimming pool located near the intersection of the Three-L Highway and Hands Pk. just north of Independence in central Kenton Co. The pool was a state-of-the-art facility when it opened in the years before World War II; it reached its zenith in popularity in the postwar boom years as residential development expanded in the area.

THE POINT LICKING RIVER

Banklick Creek (see Banklick Creek and Watershed), which runs near the property, was already a popu lar swimming hole and picnic destination before George Winholtz bought the property in 1933. He made improvements to the grounds, calling the area Island Lodge. Talk of constructing a sportsman’s club to go along with the swimming hole and the fishing lake began around 1937. Irvin J. Klein headed a group of sportsmen’s organizations that sponsored a park there, called Pleasure Isle, that offered tennis courts, an archery range, horseshoe pits, table tennis, badminton, shuffleboard, trapshooting, and even a nine-hole mini-golf course. The ambitious project was completed and opened to the public on May 25, 1940. A group of Hopi Indians visited the park that year.

In the 1940s a sand-bottomed pit was constructed that eventually became the Pleasure Isle Pool. The pit was replaced in 1951 by a concrete pool, which remained until the park’s closure. The park was successful from the start. Pleasure Isle also became a popular destination for outings for employees of the Coppin’s Department Store in Covington, for the Covington Rotary Club, and for other groups.

Klein, who became the first manager of the complex, led an effort to build a subdivision near the park. He and a group of local investors in July 1946 created the Pleasure Isle Real Estate Company, which completed a $1 million, 120-house subdivision near the pool along a road that became known as Pleasure Isle Drive. The housing area was created with Federal Housing Authority money and was intended for use by returning World War II veterans. The subdivision successfully repelled an annexation attempt by the City of Covington in 1968, before becoming a part of Erlanger.

A fire in February 1976 disrupted the operation of Pleasure Isle. On the morning of February 4, Charlie Robinson, owner of the complex, awoke in his office to the sound of breaking glass, which turned out to be caused by a raging fire. The blaze destroyed Robinson’s on-site barbershop and bar, which doubled as a clubhouse for the pool. Robinson had just purchased the pool in August 1975 from Fred “Bud” Winholtz, who had operated Pleasure Isle for 26 years.

The fire was only the beginning of the end for the park. The 1980s and 1990s saw declining attendance as the pool competed with larger, regional swimming pool amusement parks that were opening in Ohio. Pleasure Isle’s fate was sealed with the planned widening of the 3L Highway in the late 1990s. The fi nal season was in 1997, and the park was demolished in 1999, though its famous entryway remained standing for several years. The widening of 3L Highway was completed in 2001, opening this already fast-growing area to further commercial and residential development.

By 2006 a new family-activity center was built near the Pleasure Isle site. Called the Fun Center at Pleasure Isle, it did not include a swimming pool but did offer other social and recreational activities.

“Pools Out for Summer—Forever—Pleasure Isle Is Road Kill,” KE, June 3, 1998, B1.

“Owner Flees as Fire Guts Pleasure Isle,” KP, February 4, 1976, 6.

“Million Dollar Project Set in Kenton County,” KP, July 27, 1946, 1.

Chris Meiman

POGUE, CHUCK (b. January 18, 1950, Cincinnati, Ohio). Charles Edward Pogue, the son of Charles and Betty Hick Pogue, is a Hollywood screenwriter, an author, and an actor in regional Kentucky theater. He grew up in Fort Thomas and graduated in 1968 from Highlands High School, where he was active in theater productions. He is also a cofounder of the Mercury II Theatre in Fort Thomas. Pogue earned a degree in theater arts from the University of Kentucky at Lexington, and his stage work took him to places like Odessa, Tex., and introduced him to stars as diverse as Cyd Charisse and Bob “Gilligan” Denver. Pogue began writing plays and screenplays after moving to Los Angeles.

He has written screenplays for major motion pictures, such as The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis; Psycho III, starring Tony Perkins; Dragonheart, starring Dennis Quaid; D.O.A., starring Dennis Quaid; and Kull the Conqueror, starring Kevin Sorbo. The Fly and Dragonheart were nominated for a number of Academy Awards. Pogue has also written novels based on his screenplays. In 1990 he wrote and coproduced the television miniseries Hand of a Murderer for CBS, and in 2005 he wrote the screenplay for Hercules, another television miniseries.

Pogue is married to Julieanne Beasley and resides in Georgetown, Ky. He and his wife are active in theater productions in Lexington.

Schroeder, Cindy. “Actor Speaks at Alum Luncheon,” CE, November 5, 2006, 1B. “Script Changes Irk Writer,” CE, June 9, 1996, D6.

Bill Thomas

POGUE, HENRY E. “BUD,” IV (b. September 18, 1920, Maysville, Ky.; d. December 4, 2006, Fort Thomas, Ky.). Henry “Bud” Pogue, a developer, a real estate agent, and a member of the Kentucky Board of Education, was the son of Henry E. and Mary Parker Pogue, a Mason Co. distillery family.

The Pogues moved to Fort Thomas in 1925. A 1938 graduate of Highlands High School, Bud Pogue attended Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., where he played basketball in the 1942 NCAA championship game that Dartmouth lost to Stanford. During World War II, Pogue served in the navy. Following the war, he became a general contractor, developer, and real estate agent and helped to build many of the houses in Fort Thomas, including several in the areas around Rossford and Winston Hill Aves. He also constructed and renovated schools and public buildings in Cincinnati and St. Bernard, Ohio, as well as in Campbell and Kenton counties. Included among these projects were building projects at the Piner and Park Hills elementary schools in Kenton Co. and renovations

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at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fort Thomas.

Kentucky governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler (1935–1939 and 1955–59) appointed Pogue a member of the Kentucky Board of Education in 1956, and seven successive governors, extending through the administration of Martha Layne Collins (1983–1987), reappointed him to this post. He was one of the longest-serving chairmen of the board. Pogue helped steer education in Kentucky toward modernity during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. For example, there were more than 1,500 one-room schoolhouses in the state in 1956, when Pogue was appointed to the state’s education board; only about 50 of them remained when he left his post 35 years later. Two of his achievements while serving on that board were the reconciling of Kentucky’s Administrative Regulations for Education with the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 and bringing board attention to the need for improvements to some school districts in Eastern Kentucky. A longtime member of the Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents, he received the university’s prestigious Lincoln Award in 1995. Pogue was a Northern Kentucky civic leader for more than 60 years.

“Envision a New Urban Community, Then Cooperate to Make It a Reality,” KP, January 4, 1983, 4K. “N. Ky. Counts Its Successes—Group Looks Back on 35 Years Working with Chamber,” KE, September 17, 2004, C1–C2.

Paul L. Whalen

THE POINT (LICKING RIVER). To early explorers and settlers of the Ohio River Valley, the southwestern juncture of the Ohio and the Licking Rivers, now part of Covington, was known as the Point. It was the place where migrating buffalo crossed the Ohio River for possibly thousands of years before the coming of the Europeans. Numerous American Indians of various tribes used it as a lookout post and as a meeting place during hunting and warring expeditions.

One of the first white men known to visit the Point was Christopher Gist in 1751, with his band of men exploring for the Ohio Company.

Several friendly Indians took the group to Big Bone Lick in modern Boone Co., to view the huge prehistoric animal bones found on that site. Two women, Mary Ingles and her companion the “mad” Dutch woman (possibly Frau Stumpf), visited the Point in 1755 while attempting to return home after escaping from Indian captivity at Big Bone Lick. In 1765 Col. John Croghan came to the Point during his exploration of the western territory. Simon Kenton stopped at the site numerous times, the first time with John Strader and George Yeager in 1771, on their way back from a trip to the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville). About that same time, two explorers named Hinkson and Miller, with 14 other men, also visited while exploring the Licking River valley.

In the late 1700s and the early 1800s, the Point was a favored gathering place for military personnel, especially when assembling for attacks against the

720 THE POINT/ARC OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY Shawnee Indians living in central Ohio. In spring 1779, 300 Kentuckians gathered there in preparation for an attack against the Indian town of Chillicothe. After the battle they reassembled at the Point to divide the plunder and then returned to their Kentucky homes. That attack led, several months later, to reprisal attacks by Capt. Henry Bird against Ruddle’s and Martin’s stations, along what was called Bird’s War Road in Kentucky.

In 1780 Col. George Muse was awarded a patent for 200 acres at the Point as part of his payment for ser vice in the French and Indian War. Several months later, he transferred ownership to his friend Col. James Taylor Sr., who shortly thereafter sold the property to Col. Stephen Trigg of the Kentucky Court of Land Commissions.

In August 1780 an army of 1,000 men led by Gen. George Rogers Clark assembled at the Point before attacking the Ohio Indian towns of Piqua and Miami. In February 1781 ownership of the land known as the Point was transferred to John Todd Jr., and several months later to James Welch. In 1789 Francis Kennedy came to Cincinnati and began operation of a ferry between that city and Covington. Shortly thereafter his brother, Thomas Kennedy Sr., moved to the Kentucky side of the river and operated the southern shore’s ferry landing (which became known as Kennedy’s Ferry), perhaps initially renting the land owned by Welch. In 1801 Thomas Kennedy Sr. officially completed the purchase of the 200 acres at the Point.

The Kennedy family sold 150 acres of the farm in 1814 to a partnership of Thomas D. Carneal, John S. Gano, and Richard Gano for $50,000.

That group of men established the City of Covington in 1815 and began the sale of building lots.

They named the city in honor of Brig. Gen. Leonard Covington, a U.S. Army officer who had been mortally wounded on November 11, 1813, at the Battle of Chrysler’s Field in Canada during the War of 1812.

“Early Incidents at the Point,” Colonel Covington’s Chronicle, June 1, 1979, 11.

“Gano Got the Point in 1814,” CE, December 11, 1994, D4.

“Point of View,” CE, June 18, 1995, H1.

Smith, Allen Webb. Beginning at “the Point,” a Documented History of Northern Kentucky and Environs, the Town of Covington in Par ticular, 1751–1834. Park Hills, Ky., Self-published, 1977.

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

Jack Wessling

THE POINT/ARC OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY. The Point/Arc (formerly the Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States; now The Arc of the United States) of Northern Kentucky (The Point/Arc) is a nonprofit agency that provides educational, residential, social, and vocational opportunities to adults with mental and developmental disabilities. It also offers special educational ser vices to assist parents and caregivers of children with mental and developmental disabilities while these children are receiving appropriate public ed-

ucation. The Point/Arc is the only local organization that offers a comprehensive and diverse group of programs in these areas. Furthermore, the programs are provided in an integrated setting as opposed to a segregated one. Located in Covington, The Point/Arc serves Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties.

The organization was founded in 1972 as Northern Kentucky Association for Retarded Citizens (NKARC), by parents of children with mental or developmental disabilities; the name was changed to The Point/Arc of Northern Kentucky in 1998.

Before 1972, the group that became NKARC existed under the name Helpers of All Retarded Children (HARC). It was a loose coalition of supportive parents whose children attended various private schools for children with special needs in Campbell and Kenton counties. These dedicated parents generated financial support through an annual holiday fundraiser called Joy to the World, held at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate. The fundraiser, which was continued by NKARC and The Point/Arc, has been ongoing and is now held at the Drawbridge Inn in Fort Mitchell.

The current executive director of The Point/Arc is Judi Gerding, who has been with the organization since its early days and was one of the moving forces behind the formation of both HARC and NKARC. NKARC’s initial goal was to provide support for the students at the Riverside– Good Counsel School, which was dedicated exclusively to the education of kindergarten through high school– aged children with special needs. When the U.S. Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, it required school districts to provide “free appropriate public education” to all individuals with disabilities and mandated that children with disabilities be transitioned into the public school system.

Subsequently, NKARC, still primarily a parents’ advocacy group, began focusing solely on ser vices for mentally and developmentally disabled adults in the community. The group organized fundraisers and supported a variety of programs in Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties. One of NKARC’s ser vices was to help make buildings more handicap accessible and provide transportation for people with mental and physical disabilities.

In 1978, when Gerding became president of NKARC, she recognized the organization’s need to be housed in its own building. NKARC’s first office opened at Ninth and Willow Sts. in Covington, but the agency remained there only a few years, until the city razed the building, clearing the land for a park. In 1981 NKARC established a permanent office by purchasing the Roeding Insurance Building at the “point” of Pike and Washington Sts. in Covington. The following year, the Point Restaurant, now called the Point Deli and Catering, opened at 45 W. Pike St., the site of an earlier restaurant known as the Clock Hamburgers. The restaurant established by NKARC serves as a real work environment in which to train individuals affected by mental retardation or developmental disabilities and teach them interpersonal and customer-service skills. In 1985, when NKARC’s

Employment Ser vices Program was established to provide clients with new and varied job training and work experiences, the Point Deli and Catering became part of the new program.

Typically, clients are referred to the Employment Ser vices Program by other agencies, school programs, or the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. Trained counselors assist clients by assessing existing employment skills and potential future skills, providing realistic job training, and helping with work expectations, grooming, and punctuality. The purpose is to enable the clients to hold employment outside that offered by The Point/Arc Trainees usually remain at The Point/ Arc for three to six months before advancing to a job in the private sector. Counselors work with employers in the community to match individuals with suitable jobs. After outside employment is secured, The Point/Arc counselors provide personal training according to the employer’s specifications; they also provide lifelong follow-up coaching to clients to ensure their success.

Besides the restaurant, the Employment Services Program includes three other businesses: the Point Laundry Company, the Point Commercial Cleaning Company, and the Point Distribution Company. The Point Laundry Company began in 1996, with an exclusive contract to provide laundry ser vices to the Netherland OMNI Hotel in Cincinnati (now the Hilton). Currently located in Dayton, Ky., the laundry employs 35 trainees and cleans 3.5 million pounds of linens per year. The Point Commercial Cleaning Company started in 1985 and currently employs two full-time and eight parttime custodians who ser vice commercial buildings in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati. The newest business venture, the Point Distribution Company, sells brand-name batteries and safety equipment to individuals and businesses. Trainees sort, count, bag, and package products; prepare packages for shipment; and take inventory.

The Point/Arc’s residential program began in response to the growing number of cases in which mentally disabled clients’ aging parents or families were no longer able to care for them. In each of 10 homes that The Point/Arc owns in Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties, between three and five clients reside along with one or two live-in caretakers. The clients are carefully placed based upon their individual preferences and personalities, and the caretakers and the clients in each home operate as a family in an atmosphere of consistency. The success of a recent capital fund drive has made it possible to expand the residential program to include additional homes.

The agency’s extensive Activities Program, begun in 1999, serves more than 300 clients annually through an array of events. The full-time activities director plans opportunities for clients to socialize in the community among their peers. Weekly events, such as dinners at a restaurant, movies, and trips to the museum, zoo, aquarium, or sporting events are chaperoned by adult volunteers and are open to any mentally or developmentally disabled adult. There is also a seasonal sports program, six annual dinner dances held at the Point Pavilion,

POLUSMIAK, SERGEI

and four out-of-state vacations scheduled each year. These events enable clients to make the connections necessary for forming friendships.

The Educational Ser vices Program reaches thousands of elementary school students annually.

The Everybody Counts program is a volunteer-run weeklong lesson for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. It makes students aware of the physical and emotional realities that people with disabilities face. Helpful training tools and specially designed lessons for students with disabilities are offered to schools at no charge.

In 2004 the Citizen Advocacy Program of Northern Kentucky merged with The Point/Arc, becoming Point One by One Special Education Advocacy Ser vices. This program assists parents and caregivers of children with mental and developmental disabilities to obtain most efficiently “the free appropriate public education” that was mandated by federal law. Special educational advocates meet with concerned parents and caregivers to discuss the child’s needs and educational rights under the law; they may intervene on the child’s behalf at the parent’s request. The advocates also provide information about resources and referral to other ser vices if necessary.

For more than 30 years The Point/Arc (formerly NKARC) has helped persons with mental and developmental challenges by emphasizing ability rather than disability. Annually, The Point/ Arc organization assists more than 600 clients with educational, residential, social, or vocational needs so that they may live, play, or work independently and improve their quality of life. It obtains 90 percent of its funding from its own programs and charitable donations and is supported by more than 1,000 volunteers annually. In 2008 the Point restaurant moved its operations from Pike and Washington Sts. to the Panorama Apartments on Fourth St. in Covington.

ARC of Northern Kentucky. www.thepointarc.org/ (accessed December 26, 2007).

Gannon, Tammy, activities director, The Point/Arc of Northern Kentucky. Interview by Sarah A. Barlage, January 26, 2006, Covington, Ky. Gerding, Judi, executive director, The Point/Arc of Northern Kentucky. Interview by Sarah A. Barlage, January 26, 2006, Covington, Ky. Kreimer, Peggy. “Point to Expand Training Programs,” KP, December 21, 2007, 2A. Schroeder, Cindy. “Point Changes Name to Emphasize Its Deli-Style Foods and Catering,” KE, January 20, 2006, B4.

Sarah A. Barlage

POLICE DEPARTMENTS. With the arrival of Eu ropean settlers in Northern Kentucky came the need for an ordered society, and thus the need for law enforcement. At fi rst, county sheriffs had the responsibility of enforcing the law. For example, when Owen Co. was formed in 1819, Cyrus Wingate was elected the fi rst sheriff of the county; gradually, as the population increased, a staff of deputy sheriffs was assembled. In the more urban areas, formal city police departments developed.

In Covington, Jacob Hardin was the captain of the patrol as early as January 1817. His territory was the city of Covington and eight miles out, and he soon was assisted by others, including Bartlett Graves Jr. At incorporation, in 1834, the city’s first mayor, Mortimer M. Benton, appointed Isaac Martin as the first marshal. Eight months later, Edward G. Bladen replaced Martin, to serve a twoyear term. It was said that Bladen patrolled the city by day, and when night came he sought his home and family; the door of his residence would be “rapped” whenever there was trouble. He delivered arrested individuals to police court, or to the mayor’s court, an institution that persisted until the early 1980s (see Court Systems). From the time of Bladen until 1883, the top law enforcer in Covington was elected by voters. As the city grew in population and wealth, so did its police force. In May 1856, Marshal Clinton Butts lost an arm in the Turner riots. Butts served two complete terms, and during his third term, in 1874, he died and was replaced by his brother John. By 1870 an important aspect of modern law enforcement, keeping crime statistics, had begun. By 1873 patrolmen were wearing a recognizable dress uniform. On January 1, 1883, the first department under a chief of police was sworn in, under chief John A. Goodman.

Goodman was both the last town marshal and the first police chief. As police chief, he reported to the mayor rather than being elected every two years; the system was altered in an attempt to remove politics from the head law-enforcement position. In 1894 the new city charter called for the chief of police to be appointed by a board of police and fire commissioners, which included men such as Judge George G. Perkins. In 1906, under chief Henry B. Schuler, the Covington police force consisted of 5 officers, 4 detectives, and 38 patrolmen. When the city-manager form of government was instituted, the Covington police department came under the direction of the city manager. Today, Covington has a 100-member modern police department.

The development of Newport’s police force parallels that of Covington’s. Before 1875, the city had a town marshal. The first Newport chief of police was David R. Lock, who served from 1873 to 1879. After 1933, the Newport police chief answered to the city manager, rather than the mayor.

Today, Newport has a 50-member department. In the mid-20th century, in both Newport and Covington, the presence of criminal elements controlled from outside the region often put the police in the spotlight.

The role of the sheriff varies in Kentucky. In areas where there are local police departments as part of city government, the sheriff ’s role is relegated to that of tax collector, protector of the local county courthouse, and server of important legal documents. In areas with lower population, the sheriff carries out those tasks and has police powers as well.

Both Kenton and Campbell counties today have county police forces, which exist to provide law enforcement in the unincorporated areas of each county. For many years, the Kenton Co. Po-

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lice were headquartered in a small building at 1825 Dixie Highway in old Lookout Heights. Today they are located at 11777 Madison Pk. in Independence. The Campbell Co. Police have an administration building along U.S. 27 south of Ky. Rt. 10 in Alexandria, along Constable Dr. In recent years several cities have merged their police forces, realizing dramatic savings in the cost of administration. One such example in Kenton Co. was the Dixie Police Authority, a combination police agency for the cities of Crescent Park, Crescent Springs, and later Bromley. That authority was dissolved in 1997. Another example, dating from 1968, is the merger of the Lakeside Park and Crestview Hills police departments into the Lakeside Park– Crestview Hills Police Authority, which continues today.

Since 1948 the Kentucky State Police have served the entire state. Formerly called the Kentucky Highway Patrol, which was founded in 1936, the State Police operate in Northern Kentucky from three command posts: Post 8, in Morehead, covers Mason Co.; Post 5, in Campbellsburg, covers Carroll, Gallatin, and Owen counties; and Post 6, in Dry Ridge, covers the remainder of the region.

Statewide, there are around 1,000 troopers, whose purpose is to supplement county sheriffs and local police departments. Generally speaking, they have been involved in the cities of Covington and Newport only when their assistance has been requested.

The State Police have full police powers; they do more than just patrol highways, which is where citizens are most aware of them.

There are several specialized police departments in Northern Kentucky today. The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport has its own police force, which carries out the police functions needed at a major airport. Northern Kentucky University, in Highland Heights, has its own force, as does the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fort Thomas; the latter force is made up of federal police. The U.S. marshals operate out of the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Covington and protect the facilities there. There are waterway police on the Ohio and Licking rivers, and there are various wildlife law-enforcement officials in the region. The railroads have their own police officers with full police powers related to railroad activities.

Flinker, Paul Joseph. “Development of Policing in Covington, Kentucky: The Nineteenth Century, 1815–1900,” unpublished thesis, 1994, Union Institute, Cincinnati.

History of the Covington Police Department. Covington, Ky.: Policemen’s Benevolent Association, 1906.

Reis, Jim. “Evolution of Law Enforcement,” KP, January 10. 1994, 4K.

POLUSMIAK, SERGEI (b. March 5, 1951, Kharkiv, Ukraine). Sergei Polusmiak is an internationally prominent concert pianist and the Tom and Christine Neyer Professor of Music at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), where he has taught since 1998. Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, to Sergei Ivanovich and Lyubov Ivanovna Polusmiak,

722 POMPILIO’S RESTAURANT Sergei was less than one year old when his parents moved the family to Vorkuta, Russia, in the tundra near the Arctic Ocean. At age 11 he learned to play the piano on a paper keyboard, since the family had no piano. The following year he attended a newly opened music school in Vorkuta; passionate about music, he completed the school’s seven-year program in three years. At age 15 he returned to his birthplace to attend Kharkiv Music College, a college preparatory school. After he graduated at the head of his class, he was accepted at the Kharkiv Institute of Arts, where he studied with Regina Horowitz, sister of Vladimir Horowitz. He earned a Post Graduate Diploma from the Kiev Conservatory. Between 1975 and 1998, Polusmiak served as professor at the Kharkiv Institute of Arts and the Kharkiv Special School for Gifted Children, Ukraine. He earned the title Honored Artist of Ukraine from the Ukrainian president. In 1998 Polusmiak immigrated to the United States.

A dedicated and tireless teacher, Polusmiak has coached pianists entering international competitions. He is also a jury member for major international piano competitions, such as the first international Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, Kiev, Ukraine. He is the founder and director of the Ukrainian Children’s Music Theatre of Kharkiv, which performed with Cincinnati’s May Festival Chorus in 1992 and 1994. His piano students at NKU include international scholars from Europe and South America.

Among Polusmiak’s numerous recordings are Sergei Plays Sergei (and Alexander) (piano works

by Rachmaninoff and Scriabin), Hommage à Shostakovich (music for two pianos, with French pianist Thérèse Dussaut), Music for Clarinet and Piano (with Ukrainian prodigy Alexander Bedenko), Beautiful Music for Friends (music by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff ), and Thérèse Dussaut, Sergei Polusmiak, Piano 4 Hands (music by Tchaikovsky and Dvorak).

Polusmiak has performed concerts in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and the United States. He has appeared with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and the Russian Chamber Orchestra of San Francisco. He has also served as featured artist and adjudicator for the Ohio and Kentucky chapters of the Music Teachers National Association, highlighted artist at the NKU Summer Piano Institute, and visiting artist at the Pedagogical University of Luhans’k, Ukraine.

His daughter Anna Polusmiak (born 1983 in Kharkiv, Ukraine) has flourished as a concert pianist under her father’s tutelage and has performed in numerous European and North American venues.

Gwynne, Bill. Sergei Polusmiak: Sergei Plays Sergei (and Alexander). Cincinnati: Cricket Records, 1995. Recording annotations.

Hutton, Mary Ellyn. “Pianist and Teacher Building a Legacy at NKU,” CP, December 2, 2005, 1B. ———. “Young Piano ‘Lioness’ Is Guest at CSO,” CP, April 25, 2006, 1B.

Northern Kentucky Univ. Music Department. “Sergei Polusmiak.” http://music.nku.edu/polusmiak.htm (accessed June 5, 2007).

Polusmiak, Sergei, to John Schlipp, e-mail, July 20, 2007.

John Schlipp

POMPILIO’S RESTAURANT. Since 1902 the building at the southwest corner of Sixth and Washington in Newport has housed a bar and a restaurant. In April 1933, at the end of Prohibition, Pompilio’s came into existence there.

Founded by Italian immigrants who had tried several previous enterprises, including moonshining, the restaurant quickly became a local favorite and eventually a famous Northern Kentucky tradition.

Tasty Italian food, inexpensive drinks, and general good cheer lasted throughout the years (1933– 1982) when Col. John Pompilio and his family owned the business and have continued under the Mazzei family more recently.

Pompilio’s is where the famous toothpick scene, involving actors Dustin Hoff man and Tom Cruise, took place in the 1988 Oscar-winning movie Rain Man. Visitors often look for the yellow table where Rain Man (Hoff man) ordered pancakes in the movie. “If it is Tuesday, I want pancakes,” he mumbled. Later, Rain Man spilled a box of toothpicks and immediately called out the number of picks on the floor to the amazed Cruise. Another Hollywood production, the 1993 skateboard movie Airborne, also fi lmed a scene at Pompilio’s.

For Airborne, the outside of the building was decorated beyond recognition.

Over the years additions have been made (dining rooms, boccie ball courts, parking spots), but Pompilio’s remains what it has been for more than 75 years, a neighborhood establishment with regional appeal and a new national interest.

“For Pompilio’s and Newport It Has Been 63 Years of Amore,” KE, October 2, 1996, B1A. Sweeney, Michael R. “Pompilio’s Restaurant, a Centennial History: 70 Years of Spaghetti and More,” NKH 11, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2004): 2–20.

Michael R. Sweeney

PONTOON BRIDGES, CIVIL WAR. In late summer 1862, Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky were targeted for invasion by the Confederate armies of generals Braxton Bragg, Kirby Smith, and Henry Heth (see Civil War). After a Confederate victory at Richmond, Ky., the South hoped to gain control of Cincinnati, then the seventh-largest city in the nation and a major manufacturing center with strong commercial ties to the South. By September 1862, Gen. Lew Wallace, later author of Ben Hur, had assumed command of Union forces at Cincinnati and called for volunteers to protect the city. Thousands of citizen-soldier farmers, known as Squirrel Hunters, responded. They crossed the Ohio River on a hastily constructed pontoon bridge made of coal barges.

It was assembled within a 30-hour period, from roughly noon September 2 to sunset September 3.

Architect Wesley M. Cameron (1813–1895) had

said to Wallace, “Give me a steamboat and 48 hours, and I’ll build you a bridge.” Taking coal barges from the mouth of the Licking River, probably barges belonging to Amos Shinkle, Cameron lashed them together and topped them with wooden planks, creating a deck 24 feet wide. The pontoon bridge was protected by the USS Izetta, a Union ironclad lurking in the shadows of the half-completed piers of the John A. Roebling Bridge and effectively preventing navigation on the Ohio at Cincinnati.

The engineer of the pontoon bridge was George A. Smith (1820–1888), who already had worked on the piers of the Suspension Bridge and later built the Cincinnati Street Railway and inclines.

During the latter part of the first week of September, thousands of troops crossed the rapidly constructed bridge, which stretched from the foot of Walnut St. in Cincinnati to the foot of Greenup St. in Covington. They quickly went to their entrenchments along the Northern Kentucky hilltops from Ludlow on the west to the District of the Highlands (Fort Thomas) on the east. The Confederates, under Gen. Henry Heth, tested the Union lines at Fort Mitchell, but they were repelled and had to retreat southward. As quickly as they had come, the Squirrel Hunters went home, back across the pontoon bridge. General Wallace publicly thanked the people of the region and the volunteers for their help.

The bridge proved especially handy later when the Louisville telegraph line at the bottom of the river broke: a replacement line was quickly laid across the bridge’s planks. The pontoon bridge lasted until mid-November 1862; most importantly, it was this pontoon bridge that convinced leaders that it was vital for the incomplete Suspension Bridge to be finished. In September 2004 a Kentucky State Highway Marker was dedicated near the foot of Greenup St., designating the spot where the pontoon bridge had joined the Kentucky shore. Nearby, a floodwall mural depicts the historic pontoon bridge crossing (see Roebling Murals).

There was another pontoon bridge in the vicinity. It was a few miles up the Licking River, linking what was then Camp King (Meinken Field) in Kenton Co. to the Moock Rd. area in Wilder, Campbell Co., in order to solidify the line of defense across Northern Kentucky. A pontoon bridge was also built at Paducah during the Civil War, by U.S. Army engineers; it took them about three months to construct it.

Adams, Roger C. “Panic on the Ohio,” Journal of Kentucky Studies 9 (September 1992): 80–98.

CDE archives, August–November 1862.

Cornell, Si. “Cameron Bridge—Why Not?” CP, January 10, 1963, 11.

Frank Leslie’s Weekly, September 27, October 4, 1862. Excellent contemporary lithographs of the pontoon bridge.

Ramage, James A. “Panic in Cincinnati,” Blue & Gray Magazine 3, no. 5 (April–May 1986): 12–15.

Roth, David E. “ ‘Squirrel Hunters’ to the Rescue,” Blue & Gray Magazine 3, no. 5 (April–May 1986): 16–18.

POPULIST PARTY

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In 1998 Poore was cited as an excellent role model for students and became one of the “stars” on the Williamstown Independent Schools Board of Education Wall of Fame. He and members of his family have purchased their ancestral farm along Barnes Rd., where they plan to build an upscale residential development centered on the family’s preserved and restored farmhouse. Currently, Poore lives in Florence and practices medicine half-time at Warsaw.

A pontoon bridge over the Licking River near Covington.

“Dr. Poore Moves to Warsaw,” Grant County News, June 15, 2006, 3.

Feldman, Jason. “Big Changes Expected at Barnes Road Interchange,” Grant County News, July 17, 2002, 1.

Kinman, Marlene. “Grant County, a County Whose Time Has Come,” Back Home in Kentucky, January–February 1992, 14.

POPLAR GROVE. Poplar Grove is a commuWalden, Geoff rey R. “The Defenses of Cincinnati,” Blue & Gray Magazine 3, no. 5 (April–May 1986): 19–33.

Workum, Bert. “A Confederate Threat Roused Support for Suspension Bridge,” KP, July 12, 1982, 4K.

Patrick M. Flannery

POOCK, KATHERINE HALL (b. January 28, 1886, Covington, Ky.; d. April 12, 1948, Cincinnati, Ohio). Singer Katherine Hall was the daughter of John and Ida Herndon Hall. The family lived at various locations in Covington but mostly at 644 Sanford St. Katherine’s mother, who was widowed, taught in the Covington Public Schools (see Covington Independent Schools). In 1911 Katherine played the role of Kathyrn Nordyk in Covington playwright Will Smith’s Thanks to Bettina. In that production she sang “Childhood Dreams” before an appreciative audience on the stage at Covington’s Trinity Episcopal Church.

Katherine graduated from the Cincinnati College of Music in Cincinnati, where she was the recipient of the prestigious Springer Gold Medal for outstanding work as a student in music education. She went on to appear as a soloist in the Cincinnati May Festival and with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. A member of Trinity Episcopal Church, she also sang there. She became the president of several musical clubs and societies throughout Greater Cincinnati. In April 1948 she died of cerebral hemorrhage at the Verona Apartments on Park Ave. in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati and was survived by no children. Her husband, Louis Poock, had died in 1923. She was buried in Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

Covington City Directories, 1890–1910.

“Covington Enjoys ‘First Night’ of a Local Author’s Comedy,” KP, December 16, 1911, 3.

Highland Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell, Ky. “Katherine Hall Poock Dies; Symphony Orchestra Soloist and Active in Several Clubs,” CE, April 13, 1948, 6C.

POORE, FLOYD G. (b. August 25, 1937, near Flingsville, Grant Co., Ky.). This prominent Grant

Co. physician, politician, and entrepreneur is the son of G. J. and Pearl Harris Poore. In 1948 the Poores moved to Barnes Rd. in Williamstown, where Floyd graduated from the Williamstown High School in 1955 (see Williamstown Independent Schools). He earned a BA from Georgetown (Ky.) College in 1958 and in 1962 graduated from the University of Louisville Medical School; he was the second-youngest graduate in the medical school’s history. He was first married in 1957 to Shirley Thomas of Louisville; he married Margaret Mayo in 1972. He has six children.

Beginning in 1963, Poore practiced medicine in Florence, Ky., where he was a leader in developing the Florence Medical Arts facilities. From 1992 through 2006, he practiced jointly with Michael Goodman, with whom he developed the Family Medical Center on Barnes Rd. in Williamstown.

A longtime friend of Dr. Bill Collins and his wife, Poore served as secretary of transportation from 1983 to 1985 in the cabinet of Kentucky governor Martha Layne Collins (1983–1987), Bill Collins’s wife. Poore later ran for governor and from 1987 to 1990 was a public liaison officer for Kentucky governor Wallace Wilkinson (1987–1991).

During this period, Poore was credited with bringing into Northern Kentucky $750 million in state and federal moneys; he sometimes flew to Washington, D.C., to lobby for roads, bridges, and interchanges, along with Williamstown mayor Herbert Caldwell. Projects Poore was involved with included the AA Highway through Campbell Co., a new bridge on Ky. Rt. 36 near Cordova, a new Ky. Rt. 22 running west from Falmouth to Williamstown to I-75, and Williamstown’s Barnes Rd. I-75 interchange. Poore turned the first shovelful of dirt in July 2002 for the interchange, which provides faster emergency medical connections with St. Elizabeth–Grant Co. Hospital (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center) on Barnes Rd. He also helped obtain federal funds for development of the Dry Ridge Industrial Park, where Dana Corporation currently provides many manufacturing jobs for Grant Co. citizens.

nity in northern Owen Co. along U.S. 127, just south of where Ky. Rt. 1316 intersects from the north. It is within the Poplar Grove Precinct. Life there centers on the Poplar Grove Baptist Church, located eight miles north of Owenton. Both the church (established in 1827) and the post office (operated from 1838 to 1903) derived their names from the area’s grove of yellow poplar trees. Poplar Grove had a one-room schoolhouse for many years. The community was best known as the home of Rev. John Allie Lee, a hymn writer and a dedicated patriot. He made sure that each boy from Owen Co. who went off to World War I had a dollar in his pocket, and he was the impetus behind the erection of the Soldier’s Monument at the Owenton Cemetery. There have been several businesses at Poplar Grove: grocery stores, a drugstore, a blacksmith, a pool hall, and a bowling alley; and various doctors have practiced medicine there.

Poplar Grove was also the longtime home of Rena Lusby Yancey, a local historian and poet, author of Kentucky Trails, a book of poems.

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

POPULIST PARTY. The Populist Party, also known as the People’s Party, was a short-lived U.S. political organization established during the late 19th century. Never strongly supported in Northern Kentucky, it flourished mainly among farmers in the western and the Great Plains states. The movement grew out of economic discontent over the collapse in farm product prices during the economic Panic of 1873. In the late 1880s, the Farmers Alliance was formed, which had as its goal that collective action would be taken by farmers against commodity brokers, railroads, and eastern banking interests, which were blamed by farmers for their falling income. A Kentucky branch of the Farmers Alliance opened in 1890 and backed independent candidates for office that year. In 1891, the Populist Party was founded in Cincinnati, and its first official political ticket was nominated at Covington that year. In the 1892 state election campaign, the

724 PORK PACKING organization supported the Populist Party, which ran a full slate of candidates in Kentucky. The Populist Party collected 25,631 votes and elected one state senator and 12 state representatives.

In Northern Kentucky, the Populist Party ran many relatively unknown candidates and had limited success. Its local ticket was led by one Professor Crawley, J. J. McDermott, and John Oster.

The Populist Party in Kentucky had its greatest support among farmers residing in the tobacco belt. The national Populist Party adopted a political agenda opposing many capitalist ideologies: it called for abandonment of the gold standard, unlimited coinage of silver, the abolishment of national banks, graduated income tax rates, the direct election of senators, and an eight-hour workday.

In the 1892 presidential election, the Populist Party’s candidate, James B. Weaver, received more than 1 million votes and carried four states, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nevada. During the 1896 campaign, U.S. treasury secretary John G. Carlisle, a Democrat, came back to his native Covington, Ky., to make a speech at the Odd Fellows Hall (see Independent Order of Odd Fellows), at Fifth St. and Madison Ave. During his speech, Carlisle was driven from the stage by an angry mob of Populist Party supporters, railing against his support of the gold standard. By the time of the 1896 election, economic conditions had begun to improve, and the Democratic Party sought to strengthen its base by supporting many Populist ideas.

Those two developments caused serious erosion of Populist support and the ultimate demise of the party. However, the debate over the gold standard and “free silver” continued to rage and was one of the factors leading to the assassination in 1900 of Kentucky governor William Goebel (1900). In later years, many of the Populist Party’s ideas were adopted into law. The country began electing senators directly, instituted a graduated income tax, abandoned the gold standard, and eventually arrived at an eight-hour workday. Some economists, but certainly not all, agree with the Populist Party’s position that remaining on the gold standard often created problems associated with tight money and exacerbated the banking crisis that occurred during the Great Depression.

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

“People’s Party—An Organization Being Perfected in Kenton,” KP, September 3, 1894.

“The People’s Ticket (J. J. McDermott and Professor Crawley Nominated for the Legislature),” KJ, July 14, 1891, 3.

PORK-PACKING. See Meatpacking.

PORTER, WILLIAM S. (b. 1824, Newport, Ky.; d. September 10, 1889, Newport, Ky.). Pioneering American photographer William Southgate Porter was the son of Walter and Mary Stewart Porter.

William S. Porter and his Newport business partner, Charles Fontayne (1814–1901), made a major contribution to the history of American photography with The Cincinnati Panorama of 1848, which was published in September 1848. They

climbed onto a roof in Newport, about where Newport-on-the-Levee is located today, and set up a camera to photograph a panoramic view of Cincinnati’s riverfront. In eight whole-plate daguerreotype images, each 6 1⁄2 by 8 1⁄2 inches, they produced the earliest photo of Cincinnati. It covers a two-mile stretch of the Ohio River riverfront, from the public landing on the west (left) to what was then the village of Fulton, Ohio, on the east (right). Because there were no bridges or floodwalls at the time, and because the level of the river was much lower than it is today, many of the long-lost and forgotten buildings and streets of Cincinnati appear in that photographic panorama. The photograph shows more than 60 steamboats, many of which have been identified as research into the contents of this daguerreotype continues. The picture clearly demonstrates how, because of its river trade, Cincinnati became the sixth-largest city in the United States by 1850 and the nation’s largest inland port; and it suggests how neighboring Newport and Covington also benefited from Cincinnati’s economic fortunes. For some, this panorama depicted the promise and opportunities of an area that during the 1860s was still being viewed as part of the American West. The piece was shown at several exhibitions worldwide during the 19th century, but then it was lost for many years, until Porter’s son sold the plates to the Cincinnati library in 1948. Today, the images from this daguerreotype can be seen as a printed mural on a wall in the library’s circulation department; the original plates are preserved in the library’s fi les. William Porter also crafted another outstanding panoramic view, that of Philadelphia’s Fairmont Waterworks, in May 1848.

Porter’s relationship with Fontayne ended in 1856, when Fontayne moved to Cleveland, Ohio; he returned to the Cincinnati area for a short time again, before leaving for New Jersey. Advertisements for photographic galleries that Porter operated appeared in newspapers in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky until his death. He had photographic shops on Fourth St. in Cincinnati, on Madison Ave. in Covington, and on York St. in Newport. At his death in 1889, his gallery was located on Beech St. in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati; this gallery was inherited by his photographer son, Edward P. Porter (b. 1856). William S. Porter was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati; his wife, Francis P. Porter, survived him. Today, William Porter’s photographs are collector’s items. He produced countless individual and family portraits and became a well-known scene painter for Cincinnati theatrical performances, but unlike many artists, Porter produced his grandest achievement, The Cincinnati Panorama of 1848, near the beginning of his career; he was 24 at the time.

William S. Porter resided in a stately house that is still standing at 1850 Dixie Highway in Fort Wright.

“Another Nonagenarian Gone,” DC, May 22, 1880, 1.

Cincinnati City Directory, 1890–1892.

“The City,” KSJ, September 24, 1889, 3.

Covington Ticket, September 16, 1876, 4. Advertisement.

“Daguerreotype Studio Opens on Madison St.” CJ, January 29, 1855, 3.

Kesterman, M’Lisa, and Keith Kuhn. “The Cincinnati Panorama,” Timeline 18, no. 1 (January–February 2001): 14–25.

“Man First Appears before the Camera’s Eye,” Life, April 26, 1954, 146–53.

“National Magazines Take Note of Cincinnati,” CP, April 23, 1954, 16.

Paschke, Margaret, “If Woods Had Tongues and Walls Had Ears,” KP, January 5, 1970, 6K. Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati.

Williams, Caroline. “A Spot in Kentucky,” CE, September 21, 1969, 2H.

Michael R. Sweeney

PORTER-FALLIS-LOVELL HOUSE. One of Northern Kentucky’s largest single-family homes, the historic Porter-Fallis-Lovell House, at 412 E. Second St. in Covington, was built by Thomas Porter in the early 1850s, originally in the Tuscan Villa style. Porter was a Cincinnati merchant who had been born in Flemingsburg and had moved to Covington in 1849. In 1861 he sold the house to Daniel James Fallis, a native of Fredericksburg, Va., who had moved in 1853 to Cincinnati and had become a prosperous banker. Fallis and his wife, Ann Poage, had two children, John, who died in 1893, and Harriet. After Daniel Fallis’s death of a heart attack on June 9, 1893, he was buried in the Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Ky. When Daniel Fallis’s wife, Ann, died on January 8, 1897, she left the house to her daughter, Harriet, who was married to Charles G. Rodgers.

In about 1900 Harriett Fallis Rodgers hired the Cincinnati architectural firm of Elzner and Anderson to enlarge and remodel the house. At that time, it acquired its present Colonial details, including a massive two-story portico on the Second St. side and a new classical frieze that united the third-floor addition and the new two-story east and west wings. The family lived in the house until Harriet’s death on June 13, 1922.

May F. Rodgers Lovell, the daughter of Howard and Harriet, continued to live in the house until her death on March 6, 1950. She was married to Howell Lewis Lovell Jr., an heir of the Lovell-Buffi ngton Tobacco Company fortune of Covington. After the death of May Lovell, the house became the property of a niece, Annie Pierce Kershaw, the wife of Judge Jacob Kershaw.

In 1950 it was purchased by Mrs. Julius P. Giancola, and later by Dean Howe Jr., who eventually became curator of a nonprofit orga ni zation, Mimosa Restoration Inc., that operated the house as a museum until 1998. The house was purchased by private owners in 1999 and has been completely restored.

Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chicago: John M. Gresham, 1896.

Driehaus, Bob. “Mimosa Curators Leave,” KP, September 1, 1998, 1.

Greve, Charles Theodore. Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens. Vol. 2.

Chicago: Biographical, 1904.

POST & COMPANY Langsam, Walter E. Great Houses of the Queen City.

Cincinnati: Cincinnati Historical Society, 1997.

Jack Wessling

PORTERFIELD, ROSELLA FRENCH (b. December 28, 1918, near Owensboro, Ky.; d. November 6, 2004, Florence, Ky.). Teacher, librarian, and civil rights pioneer Rosella French Porterfield was one of eight children born to a poor farming couple. The family lived about 12 miles south of Owensboro, Ky., on a 40-acre farm that her father had inherited, in a community known as Crane Pond Frog’s Ankle Station. Rosella’s early education was in an all-black one-room schoolhouse about three miles from her home. After she finished there, she attended the all-black Western High School in Owensboro, where she was valedictorian of her graduating class. She then entered Kentucky State College at Frankfort and earned a BA in English in 1940. Rosella married Vernon Porterfield in 1944 and they had one son, David.

The family moved into a home on Chambers Rd. in Walton, where Rosella lived for the remainder of her life.

Porterfield’s first teaching position was at the all-black Dunbar School in Elsmere. She had no automobile, so she traveled to school each morning on a Greyhound bus that operated between Lexington and Cincinnati. One morning, she started to sit near the front of the bus and was told by the driver that blacks had to sit in the back. She sternly informed the driver that she had three brothers in U.S. military ser vice, fighting for their country, and that fact entitled her to sit anywhere she chose. The other passengers all applauded her action, and a white ser viceman, home on furlough, stood up and offered her his seat. Porterfield said that she never considered herself an activist, or even a role model, but she did not appreciate being treated like a second-class citizen. She taught the first three grades at Dunbar School for seven years and then became head teacher at the all-black new Wilkins Heights School, part of the ErlangerElsmere Schools. When she arrived at her new position, she found no books or supplies, not even an encyclopedia. She immediately told the ErlangerElsmere school superintendent, Edgar Arnett, that she needed materials to properly teach, and he saw that they were provided. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1954 made segregated schools illegal, the Erlanger-Elsmere School District, at the urging of Porterfield, became one of the first districts in Kentucky to desegregate peaceably. Porterfield retired from teaching in 1980, and the community honored her by naming an Elsmere playground and a school library for her. For many years she was a member of the Zion Baptist Church in Walton, where she served as Sunday School superintendent, organist, teacher, and choir director. She died at age 85 in the St. Luke Hospital West, in Florence, Ky. Funeral ser vices were held at the First Baptist Church in Elsmere, and she was buried in the Richwood Cemetery in Walton.

“Before Rosa, There was Rosella,” CP, December 18, 2003, 1C.

“Civil-Rights Pioneer Porterfield Honored,” KE, July 25, 2002, C1.

“Rosella French Porterfield,” KP, November 8, 2004, 8A. “Rosella French Porterfield, 85, Helped Integrate Schools,” CE, November 10, 2004, C4.

PORT WILLIAM. Port William, located at the mouth of the Kentucky River where it meets the Ohio River, was originally the county seat of Gallatin Co. The community was established as a town on December 13, 1794. Several Europeans had visited the area much earlier. In March 1751, pioneer explorer Christopher Gist and a companion came down the Ohio River, to the site where Port William was later built, on their way to the Falls of the Ohio (later Louisville). Explorer James McBride came to the area in 1754, while on an expedition on the Ohio River. Port William was named for Col. William Peachey, who received a 2,000-acre tract from the British government for his ser vices in the French and Indian War in 1760. Records indicate that in 1771, explorer Simon Kenton camped on Peachey’s land, and James Harrod camped there with his group of settlers while making his way to establish the first permanent settlement in Kentucky at Harrodsburg in 1774.

The earliest attempts to settle at Port William were not successful. The Ohio River Valley was the home and hunting ground of American Indian tribes, who were not always friendly to settlers. For example, a log house built at Port William by a family named Elliott was burned by Indians in 1785. A Captain Ellison, who built a block house there, also left the area within two years after arriving in 1786–1787. In 1790 Peachey sold land parcels to Benjamin Craig and James Hawkins. In 1791, Gen. Charles Scott, who was later a Kentucky governor, built at the confluence of the rivers a larger block house that was elevated and fortified with picket palisades. The location allowed Scott’s command, the Kentucky Volunteers, to have a view up and down the riverbanks. Although there was still danger, the protection that Scott’s men provided encouraged settlers to move in. Some 613 acres of Peachey’s land grant was used to plat out the town of Port William in 1792. The new landowners advertised lots for sale on Saturday September 20, 1794, in the Lexington Gazette, citing Benjamin Craig and James Hawkins as among the town’s sellers. Another ad in the paper on October 11, 1794, declared: “A new town, mouth of the Kentucky, to be sold.”

The trustees of Port William met at the home of Richard Masterson, naming Percival Butler (Kentucky’s first adjutant general) as town clerk, and John Vanpelt took the oath of sheriff. The court, the church, and the jail were housed in the homes of citizens until proper buildings could be erected. The first courthouse of Port William was made of logs and located along Water St., near the Ohio River. The first tavern was built also along Water St. in 1805; it was the Point House, an establishment visited by Gen. George Rogers Clark.

Port William was already known as a center for

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trappers and traders, but by 1800, it also had a produce market and merchants selling wares. The confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio Rivers proved ideal for importing and exporting goods, and these activities led to the growth and prosperity of the town. Homes and buildings of old Port William are visible today within the historic district of Carrollton. In 1838 the town of Port William was renamed Carrollton and that portion of Gallatin Co. became a part of a newly created county named Carroll Co. Carroll Co. Deed Book A, 1–13; Book B, 1–3.

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

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

Kentucky Gazette, January 10, 1789; September 20, 1794.

Evelyn Welch

POST & COMPANY. Post & Company was a manufacturer of railway supplies, such as passenger-car hardware, lamps, luggage racks, locomotive headlights, and switch locks. Lamps appear to have been a specialty; they were very ornamental and beautifully finished in bright brass or bronze in the Queen Anne and Eastlake styles. The firm also made student lamps for household use. For at least the decade of the 1880s, Post & Company operated in Northern Kentucky.

The founding dates of 1854 and 1863 have been offered for the business, but it is believed the latter date is correct based on biographical details available for the principal partner, Henry Albertson Van Zo Post (1832–1914). Post was a member of an early New York City family. His father was an ironmaster, and Henry worked as a draftsman as a young man. He joined the U.S. Army and was seriously wounded at the Civil War Battle of Antietam, September 1862. Leaving the army as a colonel, he settled in Cincinnati during the following year. He formed a partnership with Charles C. Perkins and Edward Livingston to establish a railway supply company on W. Front St., and the business was incorporated in 1869 with Post as the president. He returned to New York City about two years later to become a banker and remained there until his death.

Post was succeeded by an up-and-coming business leader, Joseph Kinsey (1828–1889), who began his career in the hardware trade as a clerk but advanced quickly to become a partner in Tyler, Davidson & Company. In the early 1860s, he joined the Globe Rolling Mill, located near the present-day I-75 bridge. By 1866 he was president of that firm.

Post & Company had its factory on E. Front St. in Cincinnati. A large office, showroom, and warehouse stood at the corner of Pearl and Elm Sts. In June 1879, the Front St. factory burned. Afterward a large number of employees were sent into the ruined building to salvage whatever could be saved.

Suddenly, the top floor collapsed and fell, taking several other floors with it. Seven people were killed and many were injured. Kinsey was present during this ill-advised search.

726 POST OFFICES Of the post offices that have existed in the region, 143 (40%) were named for local persons or families, and 21 (6%) honored prominent nonlocals; 29 offices (8%) were named for distant places, while 59 (17%) had the names of nearby features (mostly streams); 20 (6%) were given geograph ically descriptive names; 7 were named after local or area activities (usually economic) or the businesses that engaged in them; another 4 referred to the counties themselves; and 9 had other derivations. For the remaining 62 post offices (18%), no name derivation has been determined. A post office does not always bear the same name as the place it serves; in Northern Kentucky, 66 offices (19%) served communities, neighborhoods, rail stations, or landings with other names. And 70 post offices (20%) experienced name changes.

Following is a list of all the post offices that have operated in the 11 counties of Northern Kentucky.

Currently active post offices are designated by italics.

Rather than rebuild the old plant, it was decided to begin anew in Ludlow, Ky. A handsome brick factory measuring 60 by 160 feet was built near the river’s edge just east of the Cincinnati Southern Railway bridge. By 1890 a sizable wing built of corrugated iron and an L-shaped brass foundry with 25 furnaces had been added. There were 50 metal lathes in the lock department alone, and three to six pattern-makers were kept busy turning out wooden patterns for the casting department. In all, 240 workers were employed in this large and crowded factory. In July 1881, the company had abundant orders and shipped to customers around the globe. Post & Company was introducing a new line of lamps, baggage racks, and sash locks. A new 100-horsepower Corliss engine was being readied to boost production.

Meanwhile, a five-story warehouse of the company on Pearl St. in Cincinnati was stocking the wares of other manufacturers, such as Babcox and Wilcox boilers, Krupp tires, Roebling wire rope, Tredegar spikes, and Hicks and Smith doubleburner center lamps. The Pullman sleeping-car company had adopted the latter style of car lamp.

An entirely new product line, telegraph keys, sounders, and relays, had been added in the late 1870s. Telephones were also made, because Cincinnati was a pioneer in adopting this new means of communications.

Yet, Post & Company was hardly the lone railway supplier in the nation; the competition between the rival firms was intense. Price-cutting reduced the profit on many items to a thin margin, and seemingly every large city had its own wholesale railway supplier. Chicago, for example, had two such large businesses, John Crerar and Adams and Westlake. Overshadowing all suppliers was the giant New York firm of Manning, Maxwell, and Moore, established in 1880. This jobber and distributor came to dominate the trade by employing super salesmen, such as Diamond Jim Brady. Post & Company began to break down in the 1880s. In 1886 E. A. Kinsey, the secretary of the company, took over the retail sales part of the business in a new location on W. Fourth St. in Cincinnati. Four years later, George Puchta and F. X. Pund, as part of their Queen City Supply Company, absorbed the wholesale branch of Post & Company. Joseph Kinsey’s death in 1889 hardly helped the fortunes of the business. In April 1892 the Dayton Manufacturing Company took over the manufacturing end of the business and the factory in Ludlow and abandoned the making of railroad car hardware.

Oliver Kinsey, the secretary of Post & Company, organized a new company, the Post-Glover Electric Company, which made electrical apparatus for steel mills and mines. How much longer the Northern Kentucky shop remained in operation is uncertain.

One relic that exists from this long-forgotten business is a locomotive headlight dating from about 1876 that is on display in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

“Col. Henry A. V. Post,” NYT, January 27, 1914, 9.

Kenny, David J. Illustrated Cincinnati. Cincinnati: Geo. E. Stevens, 1875.

National Car Builder 12 (July 1881): 77; 23 (April 1892): 66.

“Works of Post & Co. Located at Ludlow, Ky., near Cincinnati,” Street Railway Journal 6 (February 1890): 70.

“Yesterday’s Horror,” CC, June 6, 1879, 1.

Barrett, Richard C. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Railroad Lighting. Vol. 1. Rochester, N.Y.: Railroad Research Publications, 1994.

U.S. Post Office and Federal Building, Third and Scott Sts., Covington; designed by William Appleton Potter, supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury, with M. P. Smith as the local superintendent; dedicated in 1876 and demolished in 1968.

John H. White

POST OFFICES. Within the 11 counties of Northern Kentucky, there were fewer than four dozen post offices in operation by the turn of the millennium, out of the 354 that have existed at some time over the years. Most of the active post offices were the center of villages with concentrated populations, and nearly all served at least a store or two, a church, a school, a landing, or a rail station.

Not every town has a post office, however. Many of the currently incorporated towns, as well as other communities and rural portions of the Ohio River Valley, are served by branches of active post offices, such as the Covington post office.

The names given to post offices have been richly varied, and although the origins of some names are obvious or have been recorded, other name origins have been lost. Furthermore, post office names have changed for various reasons: Names derived from persons or places known to or admired by their name-givers but having little to do with the place itself or of no significance to later residents, were often changed. So were names associated with abandoned establishments such as stagecoach stops, landings, mills, or rail stations. Names were also changed in response to alterations in the appearance or character of the place or to commemorate some important event that occurred there after the original naming. Some changes were made to improve the community’s public image.

Boone Co. Banes, 1830–1831 Beaver Lick, 1853–1944 Belleview, 1826–1828; reestablished. as Grant, 1826–1974 Big Bone Lick, 1820–? and 1829–1831 Bigbone, 1890–1941 Boon Court House, 1807; name changed to Burlington, 1820–present Bullittsburg, 1813–1814 Bush’s Cross Roads, 1829; name changed to New Lancaster, 1832–1839, reestablished as Grubb, 1877–1879 Carlton, 1879; name changed to Rabbit Hash, 1879–1912

POST OFFICES

Connersville, 1828; name changed to Florence, 1830–present Constance, 1853–present Corneliusville, 1827; name changed to Mitchellsville, 1848; to Bullittsville, 1853–1918 Crescent, 1888; name changed to Devon, 1907– 1909 East Bend, 1856–1856; reestablished, 1876–1877 Elijahs Creek, 1846–1859; reestablished as Taylorsport, 1909–1959; continued as a rural branch of Hebron until 1968 Francisville, 1830–1845; reestablished as Sandrun, 1903–1908 Gaines, 1815; name changed to Gaines Cross Roads, 1823; to Walton, 1840–present Gunpowder, 1883–1907 Hamilton, 1817; closed before 1834, when it was reestablished as Big Bone Landing; it became Hamilton again, 1834; name changed to Landing, 1836; back to Hamilton, 1846–1944 Handysburg, 1828–1829; may never have existed in Boone Co. Hathaway, 1886–1907 Hebron, 1858–present Hume Store, 1891; name changed to Humestore, 1895–1897; reestablished as Hume, 1899–1916 Kite, 1884–1886 Landing, 1882, 1901–1918 Limaburgh, 1885; name changed to Limaburg, 1894–1907 Middle Creek Mills, 1846; name changed to Boone, 1858–1869 Northcutt’s Store, 1858–1870 Petersburg, 1819–present Piatt’s Landing, 1833–1848 Richwood, 1859–1918 Slusher, 1853–1854; reestablished as Berkshire, 1881–1882; reestablished, 1888–1919 Touseytown, 1811 Union, 1830–present Utzinger, 1886; name changed to Idlewild, 1890– 1910 Verona, 1834–present Walnut Ridge, 1842–1846 Waneeda, 1901–1908 Bracken Co. Augusta (or Bracken Court House), 1800–present Belcourt, 1890–1891; reestablished as Waelder, 1901–1903 Bladeston, 1884–1886; reestablished, 1891; name changed to Cumminsville, 1901–1933 Bracken Cross Roads, 1829 Bridgeville, 1857–1861; reestablished, 1875–1877 Browningsville, 1854–1879; reestablished as Rama, 1881–1884 Chatham, 1871–1904 Coleman’s, 1828–1830 Dix’s, 1840–1842

Elmgrove, 1890–1940 Foster’s Landing, 1847; name changed to Foster, 1850–present Germantown, 1817–present Gertrude, 1891–1906 Harmon, 1866–1870 Hillsdale, 1872–1874; reestablished, 1891; name changed to Bethesda, 1892–1894 Holt’s Creek, 1843–1847 Johnsville, 1879–1906 Lenoxburg, 1874–1906 Locust Grove, 1830–1831 Locust Mills, 1839–1873 Metcalfe’s Landing, 1863; name changed to Bradford, 1866–1956 Milford, 1832–present Morris, 1893–1904 Mount Hor, 1871–1904 Neave, 1879–1906 Parina, 1880–1906 Pearl, 1880–1882; reestablished, 1887–1904 Petra, 1864–1904 Pleasant Ridge, 1837; name changed to Berlin, 1859; to Hagensville, 1859; to Berlin, 1859; to Hagensville, 1860; to Berlin 1865; to Hagensville, 1865; to Berlin, 1868–1913 Powersville, 1832–1904 Santa Fe, 1848–1861; reestablished as Santafe 1886–1905 Stanton, 1851; name changed to Hedges, 1853; to Hansonville, 1853–1855 Tietzville, 1870; name changed to Rockspring, 1884–1910 Walcott, 1901–1922 Willowgrove, 1891–1910 Woodwards Crossroads, 1825–1828; reestablished as Brookville (Court House) 1839–1901; name changed to Brooksville, 1901–present Campbell Co. Alexandria, 1819–present Bird Woods, 1852–1854 Brayville, 1886–1903 Brent, 1890–1914 Brooklyn, 1849–1856; reestablished as Dayton, 1867; in 1896 it became a Newport branch California, 1852–present Camp Springs, 1871–1907 Campbell (or Newport) Court House, 1800; name changed to Newport, 1800–present Carthage, 1828–1907 Cold Spring, 1832; in 1958 it merged with Highland Heights to form the Newport branch of Cold Spring–Highland Heights Dale, 1856–1899; replaced by Station A, Newport, later renamed Fort Thomas Flagg Spring, 1870; name changed to Flaggspring, 1895–1907

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Grant’s Lick, 1806–1950 Grant’s Mill, 1817 Guber’s Mill, 1870–1872; reestablished as Gubser, 1881–1906 Hawthorne, 1880–1914 Hayfield, 1845–1847 Indian Spring, 1858–1880; reestablished as Ross, 1880–1918 Johns Hill, 1890–1913 Kennedy’s Ferry, 1813; name changed to Flagg Spring, 1817; moved to California in 1863 Kohler, 1900–1909 Licking River, 1879–1882 Marr, 1881–1882 Melbourne, 1891–present Mentor, 1882–1976 Oneonta, 1890–1926 Persimmon Grove, 1856–1857; reestablished as Kane, 1860; name changed to Schoolfield, 1903– 1909 Pond Creek, 1868; name changed to Clayville, 1876–1919 Pools Creek, 1890–1915 Rouse, 1900–1907 Silver Grove, 1913–present Southgate, 1822–1824 Ten Mile, 1867–1910 Tibbatts Cross Roads, 1840–1875 Trace, 1891–1913 Carroll Co. Adcock, 1894–1903 Carson, 1894–1903 Eagle Creek, 1832–1835; reestablished as Big Lick, 1836–1837 Eagle Station, 1870–1964 Easterday, 1890–1903 English, 1876–1975 Ghent, 1816–1876; a contract post office, 1976–?

Glass Hills, 1837–1858 Lock Number One, 1845–1846 Locust, 1879–1903 Mill Creek, 1847–1851 Port William, 1806; name changed to Carrollton, 1838–present Prestonville, 1844–1876; reestablished as WideAwake, 1880; name changed to Prestonville, 1893–1957 Sandefer’s Store, 1851–1873 Sanders Mill, 1816–?

Tandy, 1882–1903 Worthville, 1847–1861; reestablished, 1867– present Gallatin Co. Beech Park, 1825–1844 Brasher, 1881–1887; reestablished as Brashear, 1895–1931

728 POST OFFICES Castleman’s, 1831–1838 Conners, 1824; name changed to Napoleon, 1841– 1912 Drury, 1900–1903 Ethridge, 1886–1911 Fredericksburg, 1816; name changed to Warsaw, 1831–present Gex, 1898–1906 Glencoe, 1848–present Munk, 1900–1939 South Fork Big Bone, 1831–1842 Sparta Station, 1870; name changed to Sparta, 1882–present Sparta, 1853–1870 Sugar Creek, 1858; name changed to Sugar, 1894– 1906 Walnut Lick, 1866; name changed to Ryle, 1885–1931

Kenton Co.

Grant Co. Arnold’s, 1809–1813(?); reestablished, 1820; closed 1820; reestablished in 1822 as Williamstown Court House; soon became Williamstown Blanchett, 1891–1907 Cherokee Creek, 1830–1831(?)

Clarks Creek, 1868–1898 Cordova, 1849–1906 Corinth, 1868–present Delia, 1890–1903 Downingsville, 1844–1846; reestablished 1847 as Johnson’s; name changed to Downingsville, 1848–1909 Dry Ridge, 1815; name changed to Collins Store, 1855; back to Dry Ridge, 1855–present Elliston, 1870–1976 Flingsville, 1876–1907 Folsom, 1893–1916 Foot of the Ridge, 1840–1841 Goldvalley, 1903–1912 Gouge’s, 1855; name changed to Mason, 1877; closed Hanks, 1898–1916 Hard Scrabble, 1860–1861; reestablished as Cherry Grove, 1891–1906 Heekin, 1887–1903 Holbrook, 1876–1906 Keefer, 1889–1903 Lawrenceville, 1876–1906 Leniton, 1884–1888 Macedonia, 1858–1866; reestablished 1877 as Jonesville Mount Zion, 1869–1871; reestablished, 1889–1913 New Eagle Mills, 1870–1905 Sanders, 1820; name changed to Crittenden, 1834–present Sherman, 1865–1969 Stateley’s Run, 1854–1871 Stewartsville, 1817; reestablished, 1867–1906 Zion Station, 1871–1952

Fiskburg, 1834–1858; reestablished as Fiskburgh, 1877; name changed to Fiskburg, 1894–1903

Atwood, 1890–1908 Bank Lick, 1848; name changed to Latonia Springs, 1858–1874; reestablished as White House, 1876– 1879 Bank Lick, 1870–1905 Barry, 1832–1850; reestablished as Grants Bend, 1879; name changed to Springlake, 1898–1968 Brown’s, 1863–1864 Buffi ngton, 1893–1910 Cloyds Cross Roads, 1830–1835 Covington, 1815–present Crescent Springs, 1891–1918 Cruiser Creek, 1868 Dry Creek, 1825–1866 Everetts Creek, 1837; name changed to Crews Creek, 1837; to Bagby, 1838; to Independence, 1840–present

Fowler’s Creek, 1855; name changed to Scott, 1866– 1917 Greenwood Station, 1877; name changed to Greenwood Lake, 1878; to Erlanger, 1882; became a Covington branch in 1920 Honesty, 1886; name changed to Sanfordtown, 1893–1912 Kenton, 1858–present Key West, 1877–1910 Latonia, 1878–1880 Licking Valley, 1842–1844 Ludlow, 1864–1906; now served by a Covington branch McGill, 1892–1893 McVean, 1911–1913 Morgansville, 1891–1905 Morning View, 1855–present Mullinsville, 1899–1907 New Canton, 1855; name changed to Visalia, 1859– 1934 Nicholson, 1888–1907 Piner’s Cross Roads, 1847–1858; reestablished as Piner, 1891–1903 Pruett, 1887–1907 Ryland, 1873–1879 Sayers, 1832–1835 South Covington, 1872; name changed to Milldale, 1880; to Latonia 1900; became part of Covington in 1909 and post office became a Covington branch St. Johns Asylum, 1876–1894 Staffordsburg, 1850; name changed to Beauford, 1851; name changed to Staffordsburg, 1852–1855 Staffordsburg, 1890–1902 Timberlake, 1829–1835 Towers, 1900–1907 Visalia, 1826–1835 Weaver’s Mill, 1850–1851

Mason Co. Bernard, 1889–1906 Bramel, 1896; name changed to Needmore, 1899– 1907 Chester, 1880–1892; soon incorporated into Maysville Dickey Tanyard, 1830 Dover, 1823–present Ebersole’s Warehouse, 1852–1855 Farrows Mill, 1865–1867 Fern Leaf, 1854–1907 Hamer, 1848–1851 Helena, 1837; name changed to Millwood, 1858– 1861; Helena, 1861–1924 Helena Station, 1878–1937 Howard, 1889; name changed to Sharon, 1905– 1934; reestablished as South Ripley, 1935–1944 Kennard, 1891–1904 Limestone, 1794–1795; reestablished as Maysville, 1799–present Mayslick, 1800–present Mill Creek, 1830–1835; 1886; name changed to Millcreek, 1894–1907 Minerva, 1812–present Moranburgh, 1886; name changed to Moranburg, 1892–1907 Mount Gilead, 1837–1906 Murphysville, 1830–1906 North Fork, 1828–1832 Peed, 1886–1906 Plumbville, 1886–1906 Rectorville, 1873–1915 Shannon, 1830; name changed to Sardis, 1846; became a contract post office and rural branch of Maysville, 1957 Shannon, 1873–1907 Slack, 1850–1884 Springdale, 1865; name changed to Jenkins, 1883; to Springdale, 1883–1964 Tangletown, 1891–1909 Tuckahoe, 1880–1909 Washington Court House, 1794; shortly became Washington, until 1990 Wedonia, 1892–1924 Williamsburg, 1813; name changed to Orangeburg, 1850–1906

Owen Co. Arnold’s, 1854–1857 Avery, 1890–1902 Balls Landing, 1887; name changed to Perry Park, 1932–1941 Beechwood, 1888–1963; existed as an Owenton branch until 1975 Bethany, 1876–1915 Breck, 1881–1904 Bromley, 1881–1906 Canby, 1873–1903

POVERTY

Clay Lick, 1844; name changed to Gratz, 1851–1993 Clegg, 1901–1904 Cull, 1900–1903 Dallasburg, 1850–1863; reestablished as Wheatley, 1886–present Danish, 1900–1906 Eagle Hill, 1859–1913 Eastland, 1900–1901 Elk Ridge, 1879–1881 Ep, 1881–1903 Fairbanks, 1904–1935 Fawnburgh, 1884–1887; reestablished as Teresita, 1903–1938 Greenup Fork, 1876–1878 Hallam, 1883–1904 Harrisburg Academy, 1873; name changed to Harrisburgh, 1875; to Harrisburg, 1892; to Long Ridge, 1909–1966 Hartsough, 1881–1883; reestablished as Moxley, 1886; name changed to Perry Park, 1941–present Haydon’s, 1837–1851 Hermitage, 1862–1865 Hesler, 1880–1904 Heslersville, 1820–1821 Hills, 1869–1875; reestablished as East Eagle, 1875–1912 Jameson’s, 1850; name changed to Harmony, 1852– 1904 Lee’s Mills, 1849; name changed to New Columbus, 1852–1908 Lemon, 1882–1884 Lone Oak, 1873–1875 Lusby’s Mill, 1852; name changed to Lusby, 1894– 1903 Macedonia, 1858; name changed to West Union, 1866–1888 Mallorys, 1888–1903 Margaret, 1892–1898 Marion, 1819–1820; reestablished, 1832–1834 Morgadore, 1901–1909 Mountain Island, 1816(?)–1827 Mouth of Cedar, 1816; name changed to Cedar Creek, 1825; to Monterey, 1847–1965 Natlee, 1898–1905 New, 1895–1938 North Savern, 1871–1876 Owenton, 1822–present Pleasant Home, 1860–1907 Poplar Grove, 1838–1903 Proverb, 1916–1919 Rock Dale, 1852–1864; reestablished 1868; name changed to Rockdale, 1895–1952 Savern, 1849–1863 Scott’s Mill, 1848–1849; reestablished as Stamper’s Mills, 1849–1851 Severn Creek, 1827–1839 Slayton, 1895–1905 Squiresville, 1871–1903

Stamperton, 1860–1863 Sweet Owen, 1873–1902 Swope, 1902–1909 Tackitts Mill, 1891; name changed to Tacketts Mill, 1909–1951 Truesville, 1876–1945 Twin Meeting House, 1816; name changed to New Liberty, 1823–present Pendleton Co. Aspen, 1872 Aspen Grove, 1856–1862; reestablished, 1871–1873 Batchelors Rest, 1870; name changed to Mains, 1887–1903 Brass Bell, 1837–1842 Caddo, 1887–1903 Callensville, 1846–1860 Catawba, 1858–1933 Clayton, 1857; name changed to Butler, 1860– present Dividing Ridge, 1862–1896 Doudsville, 1851–1880; reestablished as Doudton, 1883–1903 Elizabeth, 1862–1903 Emery, 1894–1903 Ezra, 1901–1905 Flower Creek, 1832–1874 Flynnville (or Flinnville), 1867–1869 Four Oaks, 1891–1903 Gardnersville, 1858–1908 Goforth, 1881–1907 Grassy Creek, 1820; name changed to DeMossville, 1854–present Greenwood Hill, 1878–1879 Hightower, 1890–1903 Ivor, 1893 Johnson, 1830–1835 Knoxville, 1848–1849; reestablished, 1860–1906 Levingood, 1866–1909 Licking Grove, 1840–1843; reestablished as Ash Run, 1844–1857 Magoburgh, 1885; name changed to Aulick, 1885– 1893; reestablished as Ernst, 1897–1898 Marcus, 1891–1903 McKinneysburg, 1890–1929 Meridian, 1855; name changed to Boston Station, 1860–1922 Morgan, 1856–1957 Motier, 1839–1872; reestablished 1873; name changed to Carntown, 1891–1920 Mount Auburn, 1879–1902 Ossipee, 1890; name changed to Pindell, 1902–1905 Peach Grove, 1875–1907 Pendleton Court House, 1800; name changed to Falmouth, 1807–present Penshurst, 1887–1903 Portland, 1884–1904; reestablished as Schuler, 1891–1905 Travellers Rest, 1833–1842

729

Tur, 1895–1905 Wampum, 1891–1903 Wright’s Station, 1855–1860 Robertson Co. Abigail, 1883–1913 Alhambra, 1900–1933 Bratton’s Mill, 1865–1875; reestablished as Bratton, 1882–1941 Bridgeville, 1890–1915 Burika, 1890–1916 Hitt, 1897–1910 Kentontown, 1830–1918 Mount Olivet, 1850–present Piqua, 1889–1937 Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1984.

———. The Post Offices of Northern Kentucky. Lake Grove, Ore.: Depot, 2004.

U.S. Post Office Department. “Site Location Reports, 1866 to 1950,” Record Group M1126, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Robert M. Rennick

POVERTY. Perhaps the starkest demonstrations of poverty in Northern Kentucky occurred during the Great Depression. Local political entities were overwhelmed by the need for assistance. By 1935 the situation was so dire that in Newport authorities stopped a mob from stealing food from a local supermarket. In Covington things were not much better: people blocked traffic to draw attention to their desperation. Families were living on only $2 a week. Some were literally starving. Cities and counties had relief committees and commissions but few resources to satisfy the needs of their citizens. Northern Kentucky in these years, and in the years before and after, shared the views of poverty prevalent in the state and the nation.

Poverty existed in America as early as colonial times. In 1720 the New Jersey colony, for instance, passed a law that permitted ships to be searched for old persons, especially aged widows; they were to be sent away so as to avoid the spread of pauperism.

A century later, Liwwat Boke, a pioneer woman, wrote her observations of how the poor, the infirm, and the aged were treated at the end of their voyage from Germany to the United States. Passengers who had not paid for their travel were kept on the ship until someone purchased them, and people who were not young and strong (thus able to work) sometimes lay on the ship for weeks, until they died. Selling the labor of the poor was practiced openly as late as the 1930s.

Throughout U.S. history, public policy has danced between two opposing views: the poor themselves are responsible for their poverty, or the system is responsible. The “blame the poor” premise suggests that the poor must be prodded to change their ways. The “blame the system” argument suggests that one of the purposes of government is to provide for the most vulnerable citizens, as well as to create a system that provides equal opportunity to obtain society’s scarce resources. As a

730 POVERTY nation, the United States embraces the ideology of individualism. Embedded within individualism is the blame-the-victim stance—the belief that one’s success in life is dependent upon individual choices. Individualism means that societal factors matter little in one’s life and that one’s present or past economic status has no bearing on future outcomes. Individualism, then, is compatible with “blame the poor” thinking; according to this view, individuals are poor because they lack ambition and motivation.

Initially, the lands that became the commonwealth of Kentucky were part of Virginia, and thus settlers in Kentucky followed English Poor Laws, albeit through the political and legal fi lter of Virginia. In fact, many of the Revolutionary War veterans of Virginia were given land in Kentucky, often substantial tracts, as payment for their military ser vice. Thus land ownership in Kentucky became concentrated, and wealth was concentrated as a result. After Kentucky attained statehood, the Kentucky legislature decreed that county courts were responsible for the territory’s poor. To discourage pauperism, the county could issue a warrant to anyone importing poor people from other states or nations. A number of statutes and legal remedies aimed at the undeserving poor were instituted. For example, in the early 1800s, workhouses were established for persons declared vagrants as well as for those who broke the law and were too poor to pay their fine. Then in 1821, poorhouses were put in place for those who were unable or unwilling to pay their debts.

There were also attempts to ameliorate the suffering of the deserving poor. For example, Kentucky’s Indigent Widows Act of 1820 allowed widows with less than $100 in assets to be given vacant and nonappropriated state land. Other deserving poor, the “lunatics and idiots,” were given an allowance from the county. A little more than 100 years later, the Mother’s Allowance Act was passed by the state legislature and the Kentucky Child Welfare Commission was established for the care of dependent children who were found to be neglected in some manner.

In the early 1900s, the state acknowledged that the elderly should be cared for but at the same time maintained that the fiscal burden should fall to the state or county only as a last resort. The law held adult children responsible for a parent who could not care for himself or herself owing to old age or illness. Thus, children’s legal obligation for parents superseded that of the county. Yet the elderly and children who were deemed to need and deserve protection were, as late as 1914, housed with the insane and the “feeble minded,” often in intolerable conditions—chained, even caged in pens. Activists and writers implored the Kentucky legislature to provide better care, and eventually children were moved to orphanages. In the 1800s, laws had been enacted that permitted nonprofit organizations to develop institutions to house children and the elderly; however, it was not until 1928 that the Kentucky Children’s Bureau was established to replace the Kentucky Child Welfare Commission and charged with overseeing the care of children who

were considered neglected, delinquent, or disabled in some form.

Other groups of the deserving poor arose as a result of war: widows and orphans as well as badly wounded soldiers who returned home from battle unable to participate fully in society. Even before the Soldier’s Assistance Act of 1912 was enacted to address the needs of persons returning from military ser vice, the legislature was providing material aid. For example, veterans of the Mexican War received artificial limbs paid for by an appropriation from the state legislature.

The Kentucky Old Age Assistance Act of 1926 acknowledged again that care for the elderly was a public duty; however, access to assistance was limited. A successful applicant needed to be at least 70, to have been a resident of the United States for 15 years and a resident of the county for at least 10 years, and to have no other means of support, such as children. Furthermore, any county that was in fiscal crisis was permitted to relinquish support after a year. By 1934, when the state was in the throes of the Great Depression, only 14 counties had a provision for the elderly.

By 1929, in the midst of the Depression, millions of Americans were on their way to financial destitution. Because of the magnitude of human need, most Kentucky counties could not provide adequately for all who were suffering. The federal government had to step in to help and was joined by the American Red Cross and various private groups, such as the American Friends Ser vice Committee, which assisted in the relief efforts.

If there was a bright spot to emerge from the Great Depression, some would argue that it was the passage of the legislation that created Social Security. Because the elderly were hit hardest and had the least time to recover, passage of the Social Security Act, initially vehemently opposed as too socialistic, was assured. Over the years, Social Security, Medicare, and the indexing of Social Security to inflation have been key factors in the declining rates of poverty among the elderly. However, even with those programs in place, 15 percent of Kentucky’s elderly still live in poverty.

After World War II, the nation’s and the state’s economies flourished. Poverty became generally invisible to most people, until Michael Harrington’s best seller The Other America called attention to the continued existence of millions of poor Americans. Harrington’s book helped to inspire President Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969) to begin the War on Poverty; however, the idea of “handouts” was anathema to the U.S. Congress’s notion of individualism. Instead, programs that offered a helping hand were established (including improving education, health care, and urban renewal) for those who had been systematically denied access to societal resources. By the 1970s, President Richard Nixon (1969–1974) viewed the War on Poverty as a huge mistake. Even at that, the U.S. Congress passed legislation to provide supplemental security income for people unable to work.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) was enacted during the same period. EITC is now the largest

federal antipoverty program, considered palatable by policymakers because it purportedly rewards low-income workers. In order to take advantage of EITC, workers have to fi le a specific claim form with their tax return.

The recession of the 1980s had President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) cutting food stamp programs, welfare, child nutrition, and the job corps.

Then in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton (1993–2001) declared war on welfare, he promised the poor that if they “played by the rules . . . [they] shouldn’t be poor.” Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. Jeff rey T. Grogger, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that the nation has made the welfare poor the working poor. At least 10 percent of former recipients of welfare are worse off than before welfare reform. In industries adding the most jobs in the United States, the pay is about 20 percent lower than for jobs being replaced. In the next 10 years, the 20 fastest-growing jobs will pay less than $20,000 a year.

As people are moved into low-income jobs, their housing options decrease. Coincidental with the demise of welfare, more than 1.3 million affordable rental units have disappeared, and less than half of them have been replaced. For every 100 low-income renters, there are only 39 affordable, available housing units. One in 50 of available housing units are substandard. A confluence of factors—gentrification, increased land costs, aging housing stock that continues to deteriorate, and the expiration of federal housing programs—have had a negative impact on housing for the working poor and those in extreme poverty. Of new construction, 80 percent has focused on the middleand top-income groups, while only 20 percent has been constructed to meet the housing needs of those who are at the bottom economic level of the market.

Households with one full-time worker earning twice the minimum wage (about $19,776 per year) spent 50 percent or more of their income on housing. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that an adequate monthly budget in Kentucky would require $2,319 a month—at least $14.50 an hour, or $27,828 a year. EPI’s estimates for Kentucky—a relatively inexpensive state in which to reside, help to explain why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Ser vices reported that about 25 percent of persons who have been removed from welfare are unable to pay their rent.

Yet, 75 percent of those eligible for assistance do not receive any.

The Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC), a nonprofit housing assistance agency, closed access to its waiting list in July 2004. KHC serves four counties in Northern Kentucky: Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, and Owen. Section 8 Vouchers (rental assistance) provide recipients the latitude to rent a house, an apartment, or even a trailer.

However, in Kentucky there can be a two- to fiveyear wait for a voucher. It is no wonder, then, that a survey conducted in January 2005 found almost 20,000 Kentuckians without a home (see Home-

POWER, PATIA

lessness and Homeless Shelters). The poverty rate for children in Kentucky is 1 in 5, and rural areas have higher rates. The most significant concentrations of poverty are in Covington and Newport, two Northern Kentucky cities that have experienced tremendous economic growth and development.

The modern long-term-care industry, which is reimbursed nationwide by Medicaid and Medicare at roughly 72 percent, evolved out of the 19th-century poorhouses. In Northern Kentucky these were run by county government until the arrival of the modern welfare system and Medicaid and Medicare in the early 1960s (see Nursing Homes and Retirement Housing).

In 2000 a community assessment of the needs of the poor in Northern Kentucky was completed, titled “White Paper on Poverty in Northern Kentucky.” Some of its recommendations were these: —Health ser vices, especially for the rural poor, could be improved with the use of mobile units.

—Public assistance for those whose wages are $7.00 per hour or less could boost their income to the level recommended by EPI ($14.50 per hour).

—A War on Illiteracy could be declared and reframed so that people who need instruction would not feel ashamed to come forward.

—Because most of the ser vices for homeless people are concentrated in Kenton and Campbell counties, more ser vices could be instituted in rural areas.

—Head Start could become an all-day program, with after-school instruction opportunities in the arts as well as in sports. Some of the costs could be a trade-off for the funding now used for child care. (The thinking is that less would be needed for child care if children are staying at school.)

—Because transportation is a major issue for those who work at low-wage jobs, multiple solutions are needed: corporations could provide vans to pick up employees without reliable transportation; church vans could be used to assist with transportation needs; and a volunteer bank could be established to provide volunteer drivers to transport people to work or to doctor’s appointments.

—More churches could be used for day care centers.

Economic Policy Institute. “Basic Family Budget Calculator.” www.epinet.org (accessed October 3, 2006).

Fischer, David Hackett. Growing Old in America.

New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.

Harrington, Michael. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Henry J. Kaiser Foundation. The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (Kentucky and the United States), 2006, Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, Washington, D.C. Kentucky Housing Corporation. www.kyhousing.org (accessed September 30, 2006).

Knapke, Luke B. Liwwat Boke: 1807–1882, Pioneer.

Minster, Ohio: Minster Historical Society, 1987.

Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission. “White Paper on Poverty in Northern Ken-

731

tucky,” 2002, Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission, Covington, Ky. PBS. “Frontline: Country Boys: Readings: A Short History of Kentucky/Central Appalachia,” 2005. www.pbs.org (accessed October 3, 2006).

Pear, Robert, and Erik Eckholm. “A Decade after Welfare Overhaul, a Fundamental Shift in Policy and Perception,” NYT, August 21, 2006, A12.

Reis, Jim. “Hard Times in 1935: Food Riots, Mobs Symbolized Severity of Great Depression,” KP, April 21, 1997, 4K. Sunley, Emil McKee. The Kentucky Poor Law, 1792– 1936. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1942.

Swartz, Rebecca, and Brian Miller. Welfare Reform and Housing. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2002.

ten at no cost to patients. He kept the vow he had made for surviving his imprisonment: treatment was always free to veterans. He also authored two books about his war experiences, an autobiography, and several publications concerning the medical history of Northern Kentucky. Poweleit ended his practice in 1987 but remained active in local and national civic causes, especially those concerning the rights of ex-POWs. Ironically, after surviving so many war time ordeals, Poweleit died in 1997 of complications from injuries received in a taxi accident just one block from his home. He was buried in St. Stephen Cemetery, Fort Thomas.

Barbara Arrighi

“Alvin C. Poweleit, 89, Pioneered Cancer Surgery—N. Ky. Doctor Bataan Death March,” KE, July 15, 1997, B4.

“Alvin Poweleit, Noted Doctor Dies,” KP, July 14, 1997, 1.

Poweleit, Alvin C. Kentucky’s Fighting 192nd G.H.Q. Tank Battalion. Lakeside Park, Ky.: Privately published, 1981.

Poweleit, Alvin C., and James C. Claypool. Kentucky’s Patriot Doctor: The Life and Times of Alvin C. Poweleit. Fort Mitchell, Ky.: T. I. Hayes, 1996.

Poweleit, Alvin C., and James A. Schroer. A Medical History of Northern Kentucky to Date. Lakeside Park, Ky.: Privately published, 1989.

POWELEIT, ALVIN C. (b. June 8, 1908, Newport, Ky.; d. July 13, 1997, Covington, Ky.). War hero and medical pioneer Alvin Charles Poweleit was the second of four children of Charles A. and Aurellia Bambock Poweleit. Alvin and his brother were placed in the Campbell Co. Orphanage after their mother died suddenly in May 1917, and life in the orphanage taught Poweleit the self-reliance and resourcefulness that characterized his entire life. Five years later his father, a traveling salesman, remarried and the family was reunited. Poweleit was a star athlete and honor student at Newport High School, graduating in 1926. He attended the University of Kentucky for one year and then transferred to the University of Cincinnati to be near his future wife, Loretta Thesing. After graduating in 1932, he studied surgical medicine at the University of Louisville and received his MD degree in 1936.

Poweleit was a resident physician at Covington’s St. Elizabeth Hospital and in need of money when he joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a captain in 1937. On December 4, 1940, he was called to active duty as the medical officer of Kentucky’s newly formed 192nd Tank Battalion and was sent to the Philippines a year later. In the fighting that ensued, Poweleit became the fi rst U.S. Army medical officer decorated for combat valor: he dived into a river to rescue two soldiers trapped in a burning vehicle. As the only doctor in one column of the Bataan Death March, Poweleit saved several lives during the ordeal and later, while a prisoner from 1942 to 1945, applied his vast knowledge of indigenous plants to keep fellow prisoners alive. Liberated in 1945, Poweleit returned home weighing a mere 99 pounds and with a guard-infl icted back injury that forced him to give up the work of a surgeon. He entered Harvard Medical School in 1946, retrained as an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist, and in September 1949 set up his practice in Northern Kentucky.

He was the fi rst board certified physician for the eye, ear, nose, and throat specialty in the state.

Thus began 39 years of ser vice locally, a period during which Poweleit won acclaim as the nation’s foremost innovator and pioneer in treating cancers related to his specialties. Over the years Poweleit, sporting a trademark bow tie and eyes twinkling, treated many thousands of people, of-

James C. Claypool

POWER, PATIA (b. Helen Emma Reaume, March 1882, Indianapolis, Ind.; d. September 29, 1959, Canterbury, N.H.). Helen Emma Reaume was the daughter of Charles W. and Adelaide Schuster Reaume. From the early 1890s until the 1930s, her family lived in Covington, where they operated schools for the dramatic arts. One of these was the Reaume School of Elocution and Physical Culture. Helen appeared in local theatrical productions; she performed at the Covington Auditorium (in the former Carnegie Library) and at the Colonial Theater, 425 Madison Ave., in Covington. In 1910 she appeared in a play with the famed actor Frederick Tyrone Edmund Power in Cincinnati. In 1912 she married Power in Canada, and the wedding was closely followed in the Northern Kentucky newspapers. She began appearing in Shakespearean plays with her husband, assuming the stage name of Patia Power. On May 5, 1914, Patia gave birth to a son, Tyrone Edmund Power, in Cincinnati. A daughter, Anne Power, was born on August 26, 1915. Because of their son’s poor health, the family moved to San Diego, Calif. After divorcing in 1920, and after a failed second marriage, Helen moved her family back to Cincinnati in 1923. She became the assistant dean at the Schuster-Martin School of Drama at Peebles Corner in Walnut Hills. She taught acting, elocution, diction, breathing, and articulation; and later Madame Patia, as her students addressed her, taught at the Villa Madonna Academy in Park Hills, Ky. Her daughter, Anne, attended Villa Madonna Academy. Her son, Tyrone, who became a Hollywood heartthrob during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, attributed much of his acting success

732 POWER PLANTS to Patia. He won the 1946 International Sound Research Institute’s Award for diction and always thanked his mother for her influence. After he became a noted Hollywood actor, Patia Power moved to California, where she lived for several years. She died in 1959 in New Hampshire at the home of her daughter, Anne Power Hardenbergh.

Tyrone Power, the movie industry’s “Mr. Debonair,” had died while fi lming the movie Solomon and Sheba in Spain the year before, but because of Patia’s declining health, she never learned of her son’s death.

Obituary, CE, September 30, 1959, C6.

Power, Patia, “My Son Tyrone Power,” Hollywood Magazine, March, 1940.

Michael R. Sweeney

POWER PLANTS. Of the nine electric power generating stations along the Ohio River between Mason and Carroll counties, four are in Ohio, two are in Indiana, and three are within the Northern Kentucky region. Most are coal-fired, although the W. H. Zimmer plant at Moscow, Ohio, opposite the Campbell Co.–Pendleton Co. line in Kentucky, was originally planned as a nuclear operation; it was switched to a coal-burning facility during construction. The Ohio River is important to these operations because fuel to operate them is delivered by coal barges, and water from the river is used for cooling purposes. Locally, the area where these nine power plants are located is often referred to as the Little Ruhr Valley of the United States.

The six plants just across the Ohio River from Northern Kentucky are important to the Northern Kentucky region because they dominate the riverscape in their vicinity and because most of them contribute to the electric needs of the region as well.

These facilities are owned and operated by regional electric utilities. Most are joint ventures: their owners share the tremendous costs and risks and maintain interconnection on a regional power grid that can provide backup power when needed.

From the east, moving downriver, the three power plants in Northern Kentucky are —East Kentucky Power’s H. L. Spurlock Power Station, just west of Maysville at Charleston Bottoms, a facility that has been supplying power to Eastern Kentucky since the early 1980s; —the former Cincinnati Gas and Electric (CG&E)/ Cinergy, now Duke Energy’s East Bend plant, at Rabbit Hash in Boone Co., supplying power to Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati; and —the former Kentucky Utilities’ Ghent Generating Station in Carroll Co., now part of the holding company that owns Louisville Gas & Electric and provides electricity for Central Kentucky.

In Ohio the power plants are —the J. M. Stuart Plant, at Manchester, Ohio, opposite Mason Co., Ky., a joint venture of CG&E/ Cinergy (Duke), Dayton Power & Light, and Columbus & Southern Electric; —the William H. Zimmer facility at Moscow, Ohio, opposite the Campbell Co./Pendleton Co.

line in Ky., group-owned by the former CG&E/ Cinergy (Duke), Dayton Power & Light, and Columbus & Southern Electric, starting in the 1980s; —the former CG&E/Cinergy (Duke) Walter C. Beckjord plant at New Richmond, Ohio, opposite Melbourne in Campbell Co., Ky., operating since 1952; and —Miami Fort, at North Bend, Ohio, where the Great Miami River flows into the Ohio River in western Hamilton Co., a joint venture of the former CG&E/Cinergy (Duke), Dayton Power & Light, and Columbus & Southern Electric, opposite Boone Co., Ky., beginning in 1925.

In Indiana there are two power-generating facilities opposite the Northern Kentucky region: —the Tanner’s Creek facility near Lawrenceburg, an American Electric Power property; and —the former CG&E/Cinergy (Duke) Markland Dam hydroelectric plant at Switzerland, Ind. Just outside the region are several other plants both upriver and downriver, such as the Clift y Creek facility and the failed nuclear operation Marble Hill, both near Madison, Ind. A third plant, at Patriot, Ind., for the Indianapolis Power & Light Company, was planned to open during the early 1980s but was not built.

These operations produce enormous amounts of electric power. For example, the Ghent plant, which began in 1973, at one time generated 75 percent of Kentucky Utilities’ power—more than the company’s four other coal-burning stations combined. That station alone consumes, on average, some 14,000 tons of coal each operating day.

At the Beckjord plant, the ash by-product is barged across the Ohio River, to be off-loaded at the new Lafarge plant in Silver Grove, Ky., where it is used in the making of drywall. The new Gilbert Unit in operation at Spurlock has the ability to burn, in addition to coal, more than 1 million car tires and 150,000 tons of sawdust and other wood products annually. In recent years these plants have made improvements with regard to their emissions under new EPA compliance requirements.

These power plants represent the results of consolidation. At the beginning of the electric age, in the 1880s, there were several small powergenerating stations throughout Northern Kentucky cities, such as the one at the Dueber Watch Case Company in Newport, which sold power in its neighborhood, ancillary to its main line of business. Later, the Wadsworth Watch Case Company in Dayton, Ky., did the same. The first street lights in Newport were powered by electricity generated in a Covington station along Madison Ave. and delivered by wires strung across Covington’s Fourth Street Bridge to Newport. In 1901, when the new street lamps in Newport, Bellevue, and Dayton were installed, power for them was switched to the electric generating powerhouse at the foot of 11th St. in Newport, the same building that supplied the Green Line streetcars. Gradu-

ally, as the utilities added generating capacity, these smaller plants closed, because it was easier, less expensive, and cleaner to buy power from the line in the street.

Today these power plants, recognized by their smokestacks that seem to reach to the heavens, are attended by contradictions. Consumers have come to expect convenient, clean, and instantaneous electricity at the fl ick of a switch; yet environmentalists and health officials warn of the environmental dangers inherent in power plants because of the tons of emissions. In the past 30 years, stack scrubbers and other means have been used to reduce the amount of sulfuric and nitrous oxides released, but the northeastern states, as recipients of what blows upwind and out of the Little Ruhr Valley, continue to fi le suits in federal court for acid rain damage.

“Clear the Air.” www.cleartheair.org (accessed May 10, 2006). “ ‘Little Ruhr Valley’ Gets Big Power Plan,” KP, October 16, 1970, 1.

“Power Plant OK’D,” KP, September 14, 2005, A10.

“Pulling the Plug,” KP, May 3, 1977, 4.

POWERSVILLE. Powersville, established in the center of Bracken Co. on the main road between Augusta and Georgetown, may have been named for John F. Power, who in 1833 became the town’s first postmaster. Several of the first settlers were named Blade, Hamilton, Morford, Nesbitt, Power, and Wood. The location of the town was well positioned for an overnight stay on the journey from Augusta to Cynthiana, and perhaps this is why Capt. Phillip Buckner moved to this area when he sought a more remote dwelling than the town of Augusta offered. His lodge and sporting activities involving his fox-hunting hounds became the focus of the remainder of his life. Buckner is buried near the center of town on Goose Ridge, and his Kentucky State Historical Marker is located along Ky. Rt. 19. Since 1884, the Downard family has operated a general store or a hardware store in Powersville. Before the advent of the automobile, Ben Croswell was a prominent blacksmith and wagon maker in town.

Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers. History of Bracken County. Bicentennial ed. Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers, 2002.

Caroline R. Miller

PRESBYTERIANS. Presbyterians have been influential in Northern Kentucky’s history from the earliest years of its settlement. Rev. David Rice (1733–1816), who came to the Kentucky frontier in 1783, is considered the father of the Presbyterian church in Kentucky; he chaired a conference in 1785 to organize Presbyterianism in Kentucky. As a member of the 1792 constitutional convention, which wrote the first constitution for the State of Kentucky, Rice led an attempt to ban slavery from the state but lost by a vote of 26-16. The first antislavery publication west of the Appalachians was written by Rice in 1792.

PRESCOTT, MARIE

Early Kentucky Presbyterians included slaves, freed slaves, slave owners, and non-slave-owners.

The Presbyterian Church in Kentucky reflected the population of the state at that time in having a divided stand on slavery and regional differences.

The proximity of Kentucky, a border state, to free states mitigated the effects of slavery as an institution and kept the question of the abolition of slavery in debate. In 1794 the Kentucky Presbytery passed a resolution regarding the treatment of slaves: they should be taught to read, provided religious instruction, and given vocational training to prepare them for freedom. In 1796 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church voted that slavery was a moral evil but recognized that slave owners were not all alike. Some freed their slaves due to their religious convictions and others obtained and kept slaves out of ethical concerns for them.

The practice of some Presbyterian churches of excluding slave owners from membership was not upheld.

When Kentuckians gathered in 1849 to write a new state constitution, Presbyterians again led the antislavery movement. Presbyterian William Breckinridge gave an emancipation address and Presbyterian Robert Breckinridge wrote the motion. Of the 21 ministers who served as delegates, 13 were Presbyterians, as were many of the lay delegates. The proslavery forces won once again, and Kentucky remained a slave state. When Kentucky failed to abolish slavery, the Presbyterian Church endorsed gradual emancipation. Presbyterians decided their primary mission was evangelism, not social reform. Their efforts were redirected toward conversion of members of both races to Christianity, with the hope that the men in power would, with conversion, have a change of heart and then work to change the law. The thrust of religion became inward rather than outward, individual rather than societal.

Presbyterianism in Northern Kentucky has historical ties to Cincinnati and especially to the Beecher family. Rev. Lyman Beecher and his seven sons were early Presbyterian ministers and leaders in the denomination as well as noted scholars, educators, and reformers. Lyman Beecher was the first president of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. One of his three daughters was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who married a Presbyterian minister and later became the well-known author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that had a profound impact on the antislavery movement in the decade before the Civil War. Her sister Isabella was a national leader in the women’s suff rage movement.

Presbyterian Rev. John G. Fee, a native of Bracken Co., was an outspoken abolitionist and a founder of Berea College. Presbyterian Rev. John Rankin (1793–1886), who moved from Kentucky to Ripley, Ohio, opposite Mason Co., after his life was threatened, was active there in the antislavery movement and the Underground Railroad. He founded the American Reform Tract and Book Society and published more than 200 books and tracts, as well as a newspaper. He founded Iberia College in Ohio in 1854 and was a friend of the Beechers.

The Washington Presbyterian Church in Washington (now Maysville), Ky., established in 1792, is the oldest Presbyterian church in Northern Kentucky. The Sharon Presbyterian Church and the Augusta Presbyterian Church both trace their roots to a Bracken Co. congregation of 1803; the First Presbyterian Church in Maysville dates to 1817; and the Richwood Presbyterian Church in Boone Co. was founded in 1834. The Augusta, Maysville, Sharon, and Washington churches, as well as the Mayslick Presbyterian Church, currently belong to the Transylvania Presbytery of Kentucky. The Community of Faith Presbyterian Church in Covington, the Lakeside Presbyterian Church in Lakeside Park, and the Richwood Presbyterian Church are members of the Presbytery of Cincinnati, as are congregations in Dayton (Ky.), Dry Ridge, Fort Thomas, and Union.

The historic First Presbyterian Church of Newport and Lebanon Presbyterian Church are now closed.

Presbyterians derive their name from the Greek word presbyteros, which means “elder.”

They have a democratic form of government, with leaders, or elders, elected by the members; ruling elders are members of the congregation, and teaching elders are ordained ministers. The ruling elders and the minister convene as a Session and are responsible for the governance and mission of the church. At congregational meetings, each member has a vote. A minister moderates the meetings, and decisions are documented in the Session Books, which are the official church record. The minister is elected by the congregation and approved by the Presbytery, the governing body of several churches in the same geographic area.

Presbyterianism emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Bible, and salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Presbyterians believe in the forgiveness of sin.

Their five primary tenets can be stated as the love of God, the word of God, faith in God, belief in Christ, and glory to God. The roots of Presbyterianism can be traced back to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Luther influenced the French-Swiss theologian John Calvin (1509– 1564), who several decades later developed Reformed Theology. Calvin, in turn, taught those principles to Scotsman John Knox (1505–1572) in Switzerland, and Knox returned to Scotland to join the Reformation in 1560. The Presbyterian Church then arose in Scotland and spread from there to other countries. Rev. Francis MacKemie arrived in Philadelphia from Ireland in 1683 and organized the first Presbyterian church in the United States in 1706. The first General Assembly was convened in Philadelphia in 1789 by Rev. John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence.

The Presbyterian Church has a long history of separations, based on doctrinal differences, and reunifications. The largest Presbyterian denomination is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), created when the “southern” and “northern” branches reunited in 1983; the denomination’s national head-

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quarters are in Louisville. In 2006 the total membership was over 2 million, and there were more than 11,000 churches in all 50 states.

Boles, John B. Religion in Antebellum Kentucky.

Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1976.

Davidson, Robert. History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Kentucky. Lexington, Ky.: Charles Marshall, 1847.

Weeks, Louis B. Kentucky Presbyterians. Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox Press, 1983.

Ruth Wade Cox Brunings

PRESCOTT, MARIE (b. Marie Victor, 1850, Lexington, Ky.; d. July 28, 1893, New York City).

Actress Marie Prescott was the daughter of William B. and Mary Jane Hawkins Davis Victor. Marie attended schools in Lexington, Paris, and Carrollton, Ky. In 1869 her father was committed to the Eastern State Lunatic Asylum at Lexington.

The same year, she married Edward James Burke of Ohio, who built a dry goods and grocery store in Carrollton; the building still exists. They had three sons, Victor, Norbourne, and Edward. The family moved to Cincinnati in 1871, remaining until October 1875; while they were there Norbourne died as a baby. They then moved to Covington, and two months later, Marie’s husband left the family.

Marie transformed herself into an actress, vowing to become a star. She took her brother-inlaw’s middle name, Prescott, and studied acting.

Her first appearance was in 1877 at Cincinnati’s Grand Opera House as Lady Macbeth. Roles as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal and as Nancy Sykes in Oliver Twist followed. Her manager, R. E. J. Miles, next contracted her for a tour, on which she appeared in Chicago with Robert McWade in Rip Van Winkle and in Philadelphia playing roles in Heroine in Rags and How Women Love. She returned to Kentucky, where she appeared in Travels in Germany at Cynthiana, received a testimonial benefit in Covington, and also performed in Lexington.

In fall 1877, she went to New York City, engaged that season by Col. William E. Sinn to perform in Brooklyn. The next season Maggie Mitchell engaged her. She made her New York City debut in April 1878, as John McCullough’s leading lady. The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper described her as a “rising and talented young actress.” Prescott next spent two seasons in San Francisco. Hailed as “one of the most deserving young actresses on the stage,” she returned to New York City to join Dion Boucicault’s company in 1879. After Boucicault closed, she joined Daniel Edward Bandmann’s company, then John Stetson’s. From March through May 1880, she toured New England playing roles in Galley Slave and Mother and Daughter.

By late August 1880, she organized her own company, with Ernest Harvier, her lover, as manager. They traveled south along the Ohio River, stopping in Louisville late in September. The cast expected more touring, but Prescott and Harvier left town, stranding the company. Harvier testified

734 PRESTON, WILLIAM, MAJOR GENERAL in a sensational libel trial two years later that Prescott had needed an abortion.

In December 1880, Tomasso Salvini, the famed Italian actor, invited Prescott to join him in a collaboration that lasted through the 1883 season. As Salvini’s leading lady, she toured from Boston to Atlanta, acting in The Gladiator, Othello, Macbeth, and Ingomar. Recently divorced from Burke, she swore in New York City Superior Court that she had married William Perzel in New York City.

Advertisements announcing her performances proliferated as a result of this relationship. In the fall season of 1881, she embarked on a two-month tour in the Northwest.

In 1882, despite her heavy schedule, Prescott initiated one of the earliest libel trials in the country when she sued the president of the American News Company, charging that a paper it distributed had reported she “had become a certain man’s mistress.” The trial held New York City spellbound for a week; even the New York Times ran lengthy articles about Prescott’s testimony. In the courtroom, she spoke arrogantly, dishonestly, and blithely; in the process, she received a great deal of free publicity, earned the jury’s sympathy, and won the case. The judgment was reversed on appeal, but, as a result of her suit, the American News Company changed its distribution practices for decades, and journalists reported more respectfully about actors.

Through a mutual friend, Steele Mackaye, actor, playwright, and theatrical inventor, she met Oscar Wilde and arranged in 1883 to star in and produce his first play, Vera, in New York City. After finishing the season with Salvini, she put on Vera beginning August 20. Lampooned by critics, it closed after one week. Wilde waited nearly seven years before writing another play, but Prescott, with customary aplomb, moved without delay to a different play, appearing next in Belmont’s Bride.

The years 1884 through half of 1886 were slow, although she did some acting. Her new company disbanded in Cincinnati in January 1884 amid rumors of numerous difficulties. Advertisements appeared in New York City’s drama newspapers announcing that she was “resting,” and “disengaged.”

Early in 1886, she advertised that she was “at liberty” for the season.

Prescott’s life took a dramatic turn in May 1886 when she acted in Pygmalion and Galatea in New Orleans, opposite a handsome young amateur actor, Rezin D. Shepherd (1859–1948). He became successful, taking the stage name R. D. MacLean (also spelled McLean). Reviewers referred to his “physique” and “magnetism.” Listings for “Marie Prescott & Co.” or “Prescott & Co.” became “Prescott & MacLean,” then in 1889, “MacLean & Prescott.”

In February 1887, William Perzel advertised that he had given up managing Prescott “and no longer holds any relations, business or otherwise, with her.” In March 1887, he asserted that he had never married her. Undaunted, in the Bourbon, Ky., Court of Common Pleas, she fi led for divorce in 1889, charging abandonment. When the court decided in Perzel’s favor, she appealed. The Court

of Appeals reversed the lower court’s judgment in 1891, granting her an annulment. No marriage was ever proven; at the trial Prescott had testified that she had no marriage certificate, explaining, “I did not get any.”

From fall 1887 until mid-April 1893, Prescott and MacLean traveled the country to popu lar acclaim; theirs was one of about 286 touring companies. They traveled to grand opera houses as far north as Canada, as far west as Montana, through the South to Florida, and all through the Northeast. They toured about twenty states each month, stopping to perform plays at twenty-five to seventyfive towns. They stayed only a night or two, usually giving evening performances as well as a matinee.

Their repertoire consisted primarily of twenty plays, half by Shakespeare; in Othello, Prescott played Iago wearing tights and a mustache. In February 1888, their performances in Galveston, Tex., introduced audiences to Pygmalion and Galatea, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice.

Spectators, accustomed to a lower class of plays, minstrel shows, or troupes of trained dogs, appreciated the fare.

In 1891 MacLean’s father died, leaving him more than $1 million and a 1,200-acre farm in West Virginia. Prescott and MacLean married in June 1892, planning to retire soon to MacLean’s Wild Goose Farm. Instead, Prescott died in July 1893 in New York City, after abdominal surgery.

She was buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown, W.Va., and her tombstone was engraved “Marie Shepherd,” a name she fleetingly bore.

“An Actress’s Libel Suit,” NYT, October 14, 1882, 8.

Davis, William A. Interview by Lydia Cushman Schurman, August 23, 2003, Carrollton, Ky. Davis, William A., to Lydia Cushman Schurman, e-mail messages, 2002–2007, available in author’s fi les.

“Events in the Metropolis; Marie Prescott on the Stand,” NYT, October 13, 1882, 8.

Johnson, Oscar. Records from the family Bible of Oscar Johnson, Millersburg, Ky. “Marie Prescott,” unidentified news clipping dated November 22, 1879, New York Public Library, Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Locke Collection Folder 1796.

“Marie Prescott in Court,” NYT, October 17, 1882, 8.

“Miss Prescott Indignant,” NYT, October 18, 1882, 8.

“Miss Prescott’s Success,” NYT, October 20, 1882, 8.

O’Dell, George. Annals of the New York Stage. New York: AMS Edition, 1970.

Payrouse, Jack. “Rezin Davis Shepherd, III (R.D. MacLean): He Loved His Shakespeare as His Life,” Magazine of the Jefferson County Historical Society 57 (December 1991): 16–59.

Salyers, Kathryn. Interview by Lydia Cushman Schurman, August 23, 2003, Carrollton, Ky. Victor Family fi le, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky.

Lydia Cushman Schurman

PRESTON, WILLIAM, MAJOR GENERAL (b. October 16, 1816, near Louisville, Ky.; d. September 21, 1887, Lexington, Ky.). William Preston, a politician and a Mexican War and Civil War veteran, graduated from Yale University, New Ha-

ven, Conn., in 1835 and the Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass., in 1838. In preparation for entry into Yale, Preston attended Augusta College in Bracken Co. In 1840 he married Margaret Wickliffe of Lexington, daughter of Robert Wickliffe, the state’s largest slaveholder. They had five daughters. Preston served with the 4th Kentucky Volunteers in the Mexican War, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war he established a successful law practice in Louisville and later entered politics. In 1851 he won a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and a year later he became a state senator. He took a proslavery position in the election of 1855, which contributed to his defeat by Humphrey Marshall. In 1858 he was appointed U.S. minister to Spain, a position he held until 1861. With the start of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army and attained the rank of major general. He saw action in the battles of Fort Donelson, Nashville, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga. At Shiloh his brother-in-law Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, from Mason Co., died in his arms. At the war’s end, fearing retribution by the North, he fled in exile to England and Canada, before receiving a pardon and returning to Lexington. He again won a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1868, representing Fayette Co., and served for two years. Preston spent the remainder of his life managing the large estate that his wife had inherited. He died in 1887 at Lexington and was buried at Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery.

Dorman, J. Frederick. The Prestons of Smithfield and Greenfield in Virginia. Louisville, Ky.: Filson Club, 1982.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Sehlinger, Peter J. Kentucky’s Last Cavalier: General William Preston, 1816–1887. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2004.

PRESTONVILLE. Prestonville in Carroll Co. is located at the confluence of the Kentucky River and the Ohio River directly west of old Port William. Prestonville was named for William Preston, an early Virginia surveyor and land speculator who received a land grant for several thousand acres on the west side of the Kentucky River.

Although Preston never settled at this location, during the early settlement period, Elijah Craig Jr. built a warehouse and used a fleet of flatboats to export merchandise from Central Kentucky up the Kentucky River to Prestonville. As early as February 1, 1795, Craig advertised his capability of exporting and warehousing goods from as far away as the town of Frankfort and the Dix River.

The Kentucky River was an important early route for commerce and settlement, and the ferrymen at Prestonville provided the most important of several ferries across it. Smith’s Ferry was one of the earliest approved for use by the Gallatin Co. Court.

In 1799 two major roads were authorized, one along the west bank of the Kentucky River from Prestonville to New Castle and Frankfort, the other along the Ohio River bank west to the Corn Creek Settlement, in modern-day Trimble Co.

PRICE, JACOB

During the 1820s and 1830s, the town of Prestonville began to grow, but at no time did it ever rival the mercantile prowess of the nearby larger Gallatin Co. city of Port William (Carrollton). The entire hamlet of Prestonville was wedged into two blocks. Darling Distillery and Bonded Warehouse, Wise’s General Store, two hotels, a cooperage, and a gristmill jostled for space in town along the river.

The A. W. Darling Company of Prestonville was selected as the contractor for Lock No. 1 on the Kentucky River just upstream from Prestonville.

Construction based on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designs began in 1836; huge slabs of limestone formed the face of the dam, and great timber logs formed the sides of the locks. On February 14, 1840, the Argo, the first steamboat through Locks No. 1 through No. 4, arrived at Frankfort.

After the War of 1812, Kentucky welcomed back its heroes of battle at the Raisin River in Michigan and the Battle of New Orleans. The euphoria from the victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 translated into wholesale renaming of many of the local place names in what was then Gallatin Co.: McCool’s Creek became Ghent when Kentucky statesman Henry Clay suggested honoring the site of the peace treaty of the War of 1812, Ghent, Belgium. Prestonville named itself Wide Awake, a phrase from the very popu lar contemporary song “The Hunters of Kentucky,” which was used by Andrew Jackson in his presidential campaign of 1828. “But Jackson he was wide awake, and wasn’t scar’d at trifles, for well he knew what aim we take, with our Kentucky rifles.” The postal maps, however, continued to refer to the hamlet as Prestonville. The 1883 Atlas of Carroll and Gallatin County used both names, Prestonville and Wide Awake.

For nearly 100 years, the ferry at Prestonville carried the overland road traffic from Louisville, New Castle, and Bedford across the Kentucky River into Carrollton. The first bridge over the Kentucky River between Carrollton and Prestonville was built in 1898. At that time an interurban line from Covington to Louisville was in the preliminary planning stage, and this bridge was built with sufficient strength to carry the load when it was completed. The interurban was never constructed, but U.S. 42 as the main route from Cincinnati to Louisville changed the dynamics of the village of Prestonville. Slowly over time, U.S. 42 became the main commercial artery, bypassing the hamlet under the bridge. The modern bridge was opened to traffic in 1952 and has been repaired and renovated several times since.

Floods of the Ohio and Kentucky rivers submerged Prestonville numerous times; the greatest damage was the back-to-back punch to Prestonville of 1883–1884 and the great flood of 1913, when all the tributaries backed up. But it was the 1937 flood that impacted the entire town so badly it has never really recovered. All of Prestonville was flooded to its rooftops; the Ohio River was 30 feet above flood stage at Cincinnati, reaching 80 feet. The Great Depression left most people with little cash to rebuild their homes and businesses.

In 1867, under the plan developed by W. B. Gullion and L. B. Wilson, Carroll Co. was divided into common school districts. Prestonville was designated District 10, and the first deed noted for a public school was in 1866, when Henry Lindsay granted to the town of Prestonville land on the road to the Little Kentucky River. The school trustees were B. R. Elston, Samuel Hisle, and H. Wetherall. In 1874 Prestonville held the first election in Carroll Co. to vote on an ad valorem tax of 25 cents per $100 assessed valuation to build a school building. The vote was approved by a vote of 21 to 1. In 1878 Henry Westerill and Fannie, his wife, sold a lot along the Carrollton–New Castle Rd. at the southwest corner of A. W. Darling’s line for construction of a common school. In the 1870s other one-room common schools were built in the Prestonville Precinct: District 14, Hisle’s on the New Castle–Prestonville Turnpike; District 23, Malin’s Branch; Shiloh School, to the west past Carrico’s Landing on the Little Kentucky; District 30, on Kings Ridge; and District 27, Gullions on the New Castle Turnpike. In 1881 the Prestonville Common School District reported having a total of 100 possible students.

In 1891 Rachael Block granted land in Prestonville for a large brick building that would house the grade school. The flood of 1907 damaged the school but did not destroy it. Pressure from the state Board of Instruction to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of rural schools caused a series of consolidations. In 1900 the county school board decided to send high school students to the three Independent Districts, Carrollton, Ghent, and Worthville; the Sanders District was added later. Two-year high schools were established at Locust and English. By 1910 elementary students and high school students in Carroll Co. were attending consolidated schools at Sanders, Worthville, English, Locust, Ghent, and Carrollton. The effects of the Great Depression and low enrollments caused county school superintendent Curtis Shirley in September 1938 to send high school students from Prestonville, Locust, Ghent, and English to the new Carrollton High School. The Prestonville elementary students were consolidated into the new U.S. 42 County Elementary School in 1965.

Bevarly, R. W. “History of Education in Carroll County,” master’s thesis, Univ. of Kentucky, 1936.

Campbell, Justine Tandy. “History of the Carroll County Schools,” 1976, Carroll Co. Public Library, Carrollton, Ky. Carroll Co. Deed Book 9, p. 468, Carrollton, Ky. Gentry, Mary Ann. A History of Carroll County.

Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1984.

Parker, Anna V. “A Short History of Carroll County,” 1958, Carroll Co. Public Library, Carrollton, Ky.

Diane Perrine Coon

PRETLOW, RICHARD (b. November 27, 1811, Southampton Co., Va.; d. February 20, 1894, Covington, Ky.). Physician and banker Richard Pretlow was the son of Samuel and Edna Bailey Pretlow. Richard was educated in the best schools of

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the day. When he was 17, his family moved from Virginia to Springboro, Ohio. At age 21 he came to Cincinnati to attend the Ohio Medical College, from which he graduated in 1837. In the same year, he married Elizabeth A. Lynch of Lynchburg, Va., and they had a son and a daughter. He set up his fi rst medical practice in Richmond, Ind. In March 1843 the family moved to Covington, where he continued to practice medicine.

Pretlow was named president of the Covington Branch of Farmers National Bank in 1867 and held the post for many years. His wife Elizabeth Ann died in 1867, and Pretlow married his second wife, Cassie Prague, on June 1, 1869. Richard Pretlow died at his Covington home at Fourth and Greenup Sts., where he had lived for more than 50 years, and was buried at the Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. Later, his wife, Cassie, had a beautiful stained-glass window installed in his honor at the Presbyterian Church they attended in Covington. The window pictured “Christ as the Great Physician.”

Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chicago: John M. Gresham, 1896.

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

“Last Honors,” KP, February 20, 1894, 1.

PRICE, JACOB (b. April 1839, Woodford Co., Ky.; d. March 1, 1923, Covington, Ky.). Born in Central Kentucky, clergyman Jacob Price spent most of his life in Covington, where for more than 60 years he was one of the city’s leading African Americans. Price, a freeman before the end of slavery, was listed in the 1860 census as a laborer and a minister of the Gospel. He lived on Bremen St., which was renamed Pershing Ave. during World War I, and it was rumored that he was a conductor on the Underground Railroad from that location. Price formed the First Baptist Church, Covington [African American], and, at the church, the first private school for African American children in the city. He was a businessman and was involved in civil, political, and education rights.

Price was the first pastor of First Baptist Church, and after a dispute split the church’s membership, he became the pastor of Ninth St. Baptist Church. While at the First Baptist Church, Price was instrumental in the founding of the Ninth St. Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1869 Price, Isaac Black, and Rev. William Blackburn served as members of a delegation representing Covington at the Freedmen’s Bureau for Education convention in Louisville. After they returned, Price and the other Covington delegates organized a board of trustees for the city’s proposed first two public schools for blacks, one housed in a Baptist church and the other in a Methodist church.

On February 25, 1870, the first statewide African American political convention was scheduled for Frankfort. Some of the newly enfranchised African Americans wanted to vote the straight Republican ticket. However, Jacob Price, Isaac Black, and William Blackburn preferred to vote for anyone

736 PRICE, KENNY

Advertisement for Jacob Price’s lumber yard.

who favored policies in the best interests of the African American community. Th is political position later benefited Covington’s African American community when William L. Grant, a white politician, asked Price and other African American community leaders for their support.

Grant was an influential businessman and Covington city council member seeking the Democratic nomination for the office of Kenton Co. representative in the Kentucky legislature. Grant proposed that if the African American voters supported him for office, he would have the city charter of Covington amended to provide for a public school for black children. William Grant received the nomination, and a new Covington city charter soon provided for an African American school. Price’s political acumen had been demonstrated.

In 1882 Price owned and operated a lumberyard and sheds in the area of Fourth St. and Madison Ave. The sheds occupied an area 60 by 90 feet and had a storage capacity of a half million board feet of lumber. He continued in the lumber business until 1894. In 1899 Price was named president of the Colored Laborers’ Union.

Price died in 1923 at age 84 in Covington and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

On January 26, 1939, the Covington Municipal Housing Commission named the new housing complex for blacks in honor of Price, stating that “no Negro citizen is better known than the late Jacob Price.”

“Colored Labor Union,” KE, March 5, 1899, 3.

“Headquarters for Lumber,” DC, November 28, 1882, 2.

“Housing Project to Be Named Latonia Terrace: Negro Settlement to Be Known as ‘Jacob Price Homes’ in Honor of Leader, Board Reports,” KP, January 26, 1939, 1.

“Negro Pastor Dies,” KP, March 2, 1923, 1.

“Organized First Negro Church,” KTS, March 2, 1923, 37.

“School Opened Oct 14 in Basement of Methodist Church on Madison St. between 2 & 3,” CJ, October 19, 1872, 3.

Theodore H. H. Harris

PRICE, KENNY (b. Covington, Ky., May 27, 1931; d. Florence, Ky., August 4, 1987). Fondly nicknamed the “Round Mound of Sound” because of his six-foot-three, 300-pound frame, country musician James Kenny Price sang equally well in three registers—tenor, baritone, and bass. Although he made an impression with fans in the Greater Cincinnati region on the regionally televised program Midwestern Hayride, he gained his national fame from appearances on the popular Hee Haw television variety show.

Kenny was born at 1311 Holman Ave. in Covington in 1931, and his family moved in the mid1930s to a farm near Florence, Ky., where he spent most of his youth. Country music became a part of his life at an early age. He received his first guitar for Christmas from his parents at age five—it was an auditorium-sized Sears & Roebuck Silverstone, and he played it with other family musicians on the farm. Both parents, William and Mary Clayton Nunnelley Price, sang in their church’s choir.

Kenny attended Florence Elementary School, where he performed in a jamboree-style school play in the first grade.

Price appeared in local musical talent shows, winning prizes with his commanding voice and guitar accompaniment. At age 14 he made his radio debut playing guitar on Northern Kentucky’s WZIP Radio. During his teen years, his family moved frequently. Price played in the school band

at his first high school, in the Boone Co. area. He graduated in 1949 from Morgan High School in Pendleton Co., where he also played basketball for the school team.

Price’s professional music career started in the road houses and honky-tonks of Northern Kentucky during the late 1940s. He later frequently reminisced that this was a time when country music was socially out of favor. However, he played folk and country music at local clubs for square dances in Boone Co., where country music was popu lar. In 1949 he appeared on a WCPO-TV country music show, Midday Merry-Go-Round, in Cincinnati.

In 1952, while Price was serving in the U.S. Army, he performed with the Horace Heidt USO show in Korea. Upon military discharge, he married Donna G. Stewart in 1954. They met at the Kresge fi ve-and- dime store in Covington, where she worked as a clerk. In addition to singing and playing guitar, Price also mastered the drums, the banjo, and the bass fiddle. In 1954 his long association with WLW tele vision in Cincinnati began. He first appeared on the Midwestern Hayride, which became one of the longestrunning country music programs on broadcast tele vision. He also sang lead for a local band, the Hometowners, with Freddy Langdon, Jay Neas, and Buddy Ross. In 1957 the band won a tele vision competition in New York City on the Arthur Godfrey Show. During the 1959– 60 school year, Price studied music, theater, and broadcasting at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

After many years as a regular cast member, in 1970 he was appointed host of the Midwestern Hayride and continued through the end of its long run in 1972. After a few guest appearances in 1973, Price became a regular cast member of the syndicated Nashville tele vision show Hee Haw. Price composed more than 1,000 songs. Of his many recordings, 34 became chart single records.

Kenny Price, mid-1950s.

PROGRESSIVE BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATION

He recorded nearly two dozen long-play albums.

His first hit was “Somebody Told Mary/White Silver Sands” in the early 1960s. His first song that made the top 10 on the country chart was “Walking on New Grass” in 1966, and later that same year he charted in the top 10 country with “Happy Tracks.” From the late 1960s through the 1970s, additional hits by Price included “My Goal for Today,” “California Women,” “Turn on Your Light (and Let It Shine),” “Let’s Truck Together,” “Easy Look,” “Too Big a Price to Pay,” and “Biloxi.” Price’s top 10 country hit “The Sheriff of Boone County” crossed over to the pop charts with the famous lyric “You’re in a heap of trouble now, boy.” It was about this time when he gained national popularity as a regular cast member on Hee Haw. Price also made a few guest appearances on the Grand Old Opry and performed at hundreds of live concerts around the nation. “She’s Leavin’ (And I’m Almost Gone)” was his last chart single, recorded in 1980.

From his fi rst public per for mance at Florence Elementary School through his comedic antics for Hee Haw, Kenny Price was a true musician fi rst; he appreciated all kinds of music, from folk and classical to country and rock. He is generally remembered for his genuine warmth and smiling face. He never turned away from a handshake or an autograph request, and he always found time to spend a few minutes with his fans, treating them as if they were his neighbors or friends.

During his days at WLW television in Cincinnati, fans frequently greeted him on the outdoor steps of Crosley Square, the studio of the Midwestern Hayride. Price died in Florence in 1987 at age 56 and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Erlanger. He was survived by his wife Donna and their three children, Kenny Jr., Chris, and Jennifer.

Clarke, Donald, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. New York: Viking, 1989.

Feiertag, Joe. “Friend Saw Kenny Price as a Happy Family Man,” Boone County Recorder, August 13, 1987, 1.

“Kenny Price: The ‘Mound of Sound,’ ” KP Weekend, March 30, 1974, 1–4.

Kreimer, Peggy. “Kenny Price, a County Boy Who Never Wanted to Lose Country,” KP, August 8, 1987, 1K–2K. Sandhage, Doug. “Kenny Price Down Home,” CE Magazine, November 27, 1983, 6–10.

———. “A Legendary Music Man with a Common Man’s Touch,” KP, March 29, 1982, 8K. Williams, Joel. “Popu lar Star Just a Country Boy from Florence,” Boone County Recorder, November 19, 1981, 6.

Workum, Bertram. “ ‘Hee Haw’ Star Kenny Price Dies,” KP, August 5, 1987, 1K–2K.

John Schlipp

PRINCE OF PEACE LUTHERAN CHURCH. In January 1892, a small group of Bellevue residents persuaded Dr. E. K. Bell, pastor of the First Lutheran Church in Cincinnati, to begin holding church ser vices in their city. The group

met at the Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church building on Sunday afternoons. The Board of Missions of the Lutheran General Synod agreed to assist the new congregation financially. On April 1, 1892, the church hired its first pastor, Rev. George G. Clark. Trinity Lutheran Church was officially organized on April 19, 1892, with 51 charter members present. For the next year, the church held services in the Balke Opera House, at the corner of Berry and Fairfield Aves. in Bellevue. In July 1892, the church took an option to purchase property at the southeast corner of Taylor Ave. and Center St. The General Synod granted an interest-free loan to the church to purchase the site. The cornerstone for a new building was laid on November 13, 1892, and it was dedicated on May 14, 1893. Growth of the congregation was slow, but under the leadership of Rev. John M. Bramkamp, the church reached a membership of 100 by 1902. A parsonage was built on a lot behind the church in 1916.

Rev. C. Myron Danford became pastor of Trinity in 1936, and during his eight years there, church attendance nearly tripled. The church that had struggled financially for many years was now in an improved financial condition, which permitted them to remodel the facility, increase the pastor’s salary, and become self-supporting. In 1950 Trinity added an educational wing and new artglass windows and had the entire church rewired.

In 1957 Col. Harry T. Klein donated about $100,000 worth of Texas Oil Company stock to the church. The congregation used the gift to purchase a duplex next to the church, which was demolished to enlarge the educational wing. Improvements were also made to the parsonage and the pastor’s study. The congregation held their 75th-anniversary celebration in November 1967; a former pastor, Rev. Charles Masheck, served as the featured speaker. Special ser vices were held in July 1970, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the City of Bellevue. On that occasion, the popu lar former pastor Rev. Danford delivered the sermon.

By 1971 the church reached its peak membership of 258.

Trinity suffered the same plight as several other urban churches, with attendance falling dramatically as members moved to the suburbs. To help solve this problem, Trinity and St. Mark Lutheran Church of Newport (at Seventh and Monroe) merged their congregations in 1978 and adopted the name Prince of Peace Lutheran Church.

The Newport location was to be vacated and combined ser vices were to be held in Bellevue. Within a short time, however, friction developed between the two groups, especially over a decision to sell the Newport church building. As a result of this dispute, the merger was rescinded. Newport members reopened the St. Mark Church, and the Bellevue church continued using the new name, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church.

In August 2004, Dr. Timothy Hungler was hired as interim pastor of Prince of Peace. He had been raised Catholic but later embraced the Lutheran Church and became a Lutheran pastor. He was well educated and an excellent speaker and

737

soon became immensely popu lar with the congregation. There was renewed enthusiasm within the church, and the future appeared bright, but tragedy soon struck. After returning from church on February 12, 2006, Rev. Hungler suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, from which he died several days later. The church was devastated but began the search for a new leader. A pastor from Lexington, Rev. Jerry Cantrell, served as interim pastor. Today, the church has 94 members, dedicated to continuing the work begun so many years ago as Trinity Lutheran Church. The congregation is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Davis, Alan Dawson. “A History of Trinity Lutheran Church,” 1962, Trinity Lutheran Church, Bellevue, Ky. Veatch, Norman, and Monika Veatch. Interview by Jack Wessling, Bellevue, Ky., August 6, 2006.

Waltmann, Henry, ed. History of the IndianaKentucky Synod of the Lutheran Church of America: Its Development, Congregations, and Institutions. Indianapolis, Ind.: Central, 1971.

Jack Wessling

PROGRESSIVE BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATION. The Progressive Building and Loan Association, a creation of the African American community of Covington, was formed to provide otherwise scarce home financing and business loans for that community. The association submitted its articles of incorporation to the Kenton Co. clerk’s office in June 1906. The new corporation’s officers were F. L. Williams, principal of Covington’s Lincoln- Grant School, president, and Wallace A. Gaines, a funeral director, secretary. The board of directors included Charles E. Jones, a funeral director, and Lawson Thompson, the owner of Steam Carpet Cleaners. The other incorporators were James C. Campbell, a laborer; Charles Carson, a janitor; Nathan A. Fleming, a teacher at Lincoln- Grant School; Ollie B. Havelow, pastor at Lane Chapel C.M.E. Church; and Robert P. Johnson, the principal of the Latonia Colored School. The corporation’s capital stock of $50,000 was divided into four classes of shares: $400 shares required payments of 80 cents per week, $200 shares required payments of 40 cents per week, $100 shares required payments of 20 cents per week, and $50 shares required payments of 10 cents per week.

Indebtedness of the firm was capped at $20,000.

The office was located at the corner of Seventh and Scott Sts., adjacent to the W. A. Gaines Funeral Home.

The Progressive Building and Loan Association was a milestone for the African American community of Covington. The association drew its leaders from all walks of life, and many of them remained in business locally for three or four decades. The distinguished educators and religious leaders who served with the association were consistently chosen for both their abilities and their dedicated ser vice within Covington’s African

738 PROHIBITION American community. Available records do not indicate what happened to the association after 1910.

“Building Association Will Be Organized,” KP, May 31, 1906, 2.

“Estill Is President,” KP, May 6, 1910, 3.

“Negroes File Papers,” KP, June 12, 1906, 2.

Theodore H. H. Harris

PROHIBITION. Although Northern Kentucky had its share of reformers advocating prohibition, there were plenty of others who, after it was instituted, took advantage of its opportunities.

Strictly speaking, Prohibition began with the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on January 16, 1919, which prohibited the importing, exporting, transporting, selling, and manufacturing of intoxicating liquor; however, enforcement of the amendment did not begin until the passage, on October 10, 1919, of the Volstead Act, a law named for a U.S. representative from Minnesota. For years, social reform groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League had argued for passage of a law making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or dispense alcoholic beverages.

They believed that many of the ills in society were the results of drinking alcoholic beverages and that the solution was simply to eliminate the alcohol.

Reformers viewed the casual and routine consumption of alcohol by new immigrants as only exacerbating the problem.

The fact of the matter was that roughly onethird of the United States was already dry before Prohibition, and some entire states had been dry for a long time, such as Maine, which had gone dry as early as 1851, with seemingly little effect. On the national level, Prohibition clearly demonstrated the inability of government to legislate behavior. It seems that the larger the city and the more wealthy and politically influential its residents, the less likely it was that the decrees of the Volstead Act would be imposed. “Do as we say, not as we do” was what many members of the U.S. Congress in particu lar proclaimed by their actions. In Washington, D.C., “speakeasies” (nightclubs that served illegal alcoholic beverages to customers) thrived, offering illegal drinks to the nation’s leaders openly, while hardworking employees of the Pittsburgh steel mills were expected to go home and drink tea. Elected officials at all levels of government commonly supplemented their incomes by accepting bribes, and cities such as New York City, Chicago, and Cincinnati were rampant with abuse and corruption.

On the local level, the king of corruption was clearly George Remus, who worked primarily out of Cincinnati. Many of the freight cars transporting his illegal liquor were loaded and unloaded along railroad sidings in Covington, however. Remus had moved to Covington after being acquitted in a well-publicized trial for the murder of his wife, Imogene. On a smaller scale, Newport’s John M. Pompilio (see Pompilio’s Restaurant), be-

fore his restaurant days, built and ran several illegal whiskey stills in Campbell Co. Whenever he was caught, he was given veritable slaps on the wrist, and it was the same for hundreds of others like him engaged in the illegal whiskey trade who appeared before Judge Oscar T. Roetken, the Covington-based special Prohibition federal administrative law judge. Eventually Roetken himself fell to the temptation of corruption and accepted bribes. Many fire-department runs of the day were linked to bootleggers and their overheated stills.

Speakeasies abounded in Covington and Newport. In the early 1920s, Carl Weber built his 219 Riverside Dr. bungalow along the riverfront in Covington to conform to contemporary speakeasy standards. The design included separate entrances to the basement and the upstairs, where betting action and drinking took place.

Western Union telegraph wires that brought the horse-racing results for the book upstairs can still be found along the wall inside a fi rst-floor closet.

Weber was later caught and convicted for these illegal activities. Meanwhile, hundreds of restaurants simply shut down with the arrival of Prohibition, and those that remained open frequently served illegal alcoholic drinks on the side. Consumers had less reason to go out to eat, when they could not have an accompanying drink. Prohibition popu lar ized the mixed drink, as a means to disguise alcohol by mixing it with colorful liquids such as orange or tomato juice. In the less urban areas of the Northern Kentucky region, many of which were dry to begin with, low levels of bootlegging continued as before, generally unnoticed. They continue, to some extent, to this day.

Several unintended consequences arose out of Prohibition. Organized crime seized the opportunity to fi ll in the gaps of alcoholic beverage supply lines. The profits were so great that other activities illegal in Kentucky, such as prostitution, the sale of drugs, and gambling, soon were added. The lurid histories of Newport and Covington attest to those developments. Government officials learned that the value of office-holding was not so much the amount of one’s salary, but what could be derived from the take. Often, when officials made raids, little or no evidence of illegal activities was found. For example, in Maysville in January 1925, agents raided the St. James Hotel, a known moonshine joint, and found just a pint of fruit juice. Obviously, the proprietor had been tipped off about this raid in advance. Banal solutions such as near beer were dismal and laughable failures. The great comic W. C. Fields summed it up best when he said, “The man who called it ‘near beer’ was a bad judge of distance.”

By the end of the 1920s, the handwriting was on the wall; even many of the original supporters of Prohibition were acknowledging its lack of success. Although not intrinsically an antiProhibitionist, President Franklin Delano Roose velt (1933–1945) knew where the votes were, and once in office, he approved the passage of the

Beer and Wine Revenue Act in March 1933, allowing the sale of 3.2 percent beer and light wines, even as the states were working on the ratification of the 21st Amendment to repeal Prohibition, sent to them by Congress in February of that year. On December 5, 1933, when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, Prohibition, the so-called noble experiment, died.

Behr, Edward. Prohibition: The 13 Years That Changed America. London: BBC Books, 1997.

“50 Years Ago Today, Beer Prohibition Ended,” Maysville Ledger Independent, April 7, 1983.

“Prohibition Raids Saturday Night Are Fruitless,” Maysville Ledger, January 26, 1925, 1.

Sweeney, Michael R. “Pompilio’s Restaurant: A Centennial History, 70 Years of Spaghetti and More,” NKH 11, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2004): 2–20.

PROSTITUTION. Prostitution has been present in Northern Kentucky’s history since early times. During most of the 19th century, U.S. Army soldiers were stationed at the Newport Arsenal (see Newport Barracks), and prostitution fi ltered into the area around the barracks and near the Licking River. During the Civil War, soldiers came from nearby cities to visit the many brothels located in the river town of Newport. In the 1890s the army moved to the nearby Fort Thomas Military Reservation, but soldiers stationed there continued to visit Newport’s brothels. In 1916 Newport city commissioners fought to keep these “questionable houses” from opening. They tried to prevent Brighton St. property owners in the city’s West End from renting housing to single women. When young women appeared in court and were convicted of prostitution, they were given the option of going to jail or paying a $15 fi ne and leaving town forever.

During this same period, policemen from nearby Covington assisted in raiding rooming houses located on W. Fourth St. in Newport, arresting tenants and their guests, and charging them with disorderly conduct.

Prostitution did not become organized until the 1930s, with the arrival of the “syndicate boys” from Chicago and later from Cleveland, Ohio. In order to accommodate travelers to Northern Kentucky and locals working various shifts at industrial jobs in the area, soon there were “day houses” and “night houses” of prostitution operating in Newport. This quick and convenient ser vice was not the only one available for brothel guests. There were also more upscale prostitution houses that came alive in the late afternoon and stayed open all night. During the 1930s there were about 15 known brothels in Newport. Some of them were houses but a brief walk away from York and Monmouth Sts. in what was known as the more disreputable side of Newport, not far from the police station and the city jail. Streetwalkers were also commonplace in town, overseen by their pimps, who trailed them close by.

Bar girls, or B-girls, were yet another source of prostitution. They were professional dancers,

PURE PRAIRIE LEAGUE

second-rate and often off-key singers, or waitresses, all working the strip clubs operating along Monmouth and York Sts. The girls received a percentage of the club’s take, based on the dollar value of the drinks they sold. The more a patron drank, the more physical attention the B-girls provided. There were about 300 women working as prostitutes in Newport during the 1940s, all within an area of less than one square mile. The numbers of such “working girls” would increase when a convention came to Cincinnati. Visiting out-of-towners were assisted by taxi drivers in selecting a par ticu lar brothel. The driver would receive a kickback or a tip from the money taken in by the operators of the brothel. For years the joke circulated that the population of Newport was “30,000 by day, and 100,000 at night.”

During the mid-1950s, police raids occurred, and arrests were made at Corky’s Café in Newport and at the Haidi Club in Covington, as well as at Big Jim Harris’s notorious Hy-Dee-Ho Club in Wilder. At Corky’s Café on Saturday nights, cars would line up along Southgate Alley. Customers would drive to Newport from as far away as Indian Hill in eastern Hamilton Co., Ohio, for their weekly clandestine trysts with prostitutes. During the late 1950s, a group of local civic leaders and ministers formed the Committee of 500 (see Newport Reform Groups) with the goal of ridding Newport and Campbell Co. of vice, including prostitution.

By the 1960s there were several strip clubs operating openly instead of in back rooms. These places, which usually stayed open until 3:00 a.m., hired well-known dancers, such as “Baseball’s Kissing Bandit,” Morganna Roberts, who kept an establishment full of customers. A darkened booth in the corner was available for any physical activities. Business was brisk, especially after a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.

In 1982 Newport issued a ban on nude dancing as a response to a public outcry, and the town’s image changed as the strip clubs gradually were forced out of business. Today only a couple of adult clubs still operate in Newport, and they no longer feature nudity or topless dancing.

In 1997 nearby Kenton Co. completed an investigation that led to the dismantling of a prostitution ring; charges were brought against the bar owner involved and three of his dancers. In 2004, as a warning to anyone looking for a prostitute in his city, the mayor of Covington sent “Dear John” letters to wives of the men convicted of soliciting prostitutes in Covington. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has prompted many Northern Kentucky cities to adopt a zoning ordinance for the “Regulation of Sexually Oriented Business,” clearly delineating where the clubs may legally operate. Given prostitution’s long-established and persistent history locally, only time will tell how effective such efforts as these will be.

Cathie John. “Gambler Shot Gangland Style in Newport.” www.cathiejohn.com/jp2.html.

Commonwealth of Kentucky, Co. of Kenton Ordinance No. 451.9 as Amended, December 14, 2004.

DeMichele, Matthew, and Gary Potter. “Newport Gambling, Sin City Revisited: A Case Study of the Official Sanctioning of Organized Crime.” In “Open City,” Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond, Ky. Driehaus, Bob. “Bar Owner, Dancers Indicted,” KP, September 20, 1997, 2K. “18 Girls Leave Newport by Tonight or Go to Jail,” KP, August 17, 1916, 1.

Flynn, Terry. “Cincinnati’s ‘Sin City,’ ” CE, July 29, 2003, 16E. Houck, Jeanne. “John’s Letters Target Prostitution,” KP, December 16, 2004, 2K. “Lew Wallace Newport History Collection,” Archives of the W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights, Ky., http://library.nku .edu/mnc/newport.html.

Martin, Chuck. “One Brassy Lady,” KE, May 22, 2005, 1F. “Newport Vice Raid Are Tipped Off—No Arrests Made by Raiders (Empty Beds Found),” KTS, November 30, 1956, 1A. Ramos, Steve. “Everyone Was on the Payroll at That Time: The Police Were Directing Traffic for People Breaking the Law,” City Beat, January 12, 2000. http://citybeat.com/gyrobase/Home.

“Vice Raids Net 4 Arrests,” KP, October 8, 1919, 1.

“Woman, 22, Caught in Vice Raid,” KTS, December 1, 1956, 1.

Jeanne Greiser

PROTECTION AND ADVOCACY. Protection and Advocacy (P&A) is the agency designated by the governor of Kentucky to provide legal advocacy to persons with disabilities. It is independent from the service-providing and funding agencies of the state. P&A has federal and state mandates to gain access to records, conduct investigations, pursue legal remedies, and educate policymakers concerning the rights of individuals with disabilities.

Kentucky P&A functions in three ways: it provides information, referral, and technical assistance to persons with disabilities, their families, and supporters about issues and concerns that are disability-related; it provides training for individuals to become more knowledgeable about their rights as a person with a disability, as well as training for families and the greater community about those rights; and it provides legal advocacy on behalf of individuals whose rights have been violated as a result of their disability. The emphasis on legal advocacy addresses systemic problems, so that the ripple effect from P&A’s representation has influence for many other persons with disabilities. P&A is available to all residents of the Northern Kentucky region.

Kentucky Protection and Advocacy. www.kypa.net (accessed March 24, 2006).

Robin Rider Osborne

PURE PRAIRIE LEAGUE. This rock-influenced country music band was initially known as a bar band playing in and around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Named after a woman’s tem-

739

perance movement depicted in the 1939 Errol Flynn movie Dodge City, Pure Prairie League (PPL) was founded by John David Call, Craig Fuller, George Powell, and drummer Tom McGail at Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1969.

PPL signed a recording contract with RCA following an appearance in Cleveland, Ohio. The band’s self-titled debut album did not sell well, so several changes were made in the band’s composition. Fort Thomas native William “Bill” Hinds joined Pure Prairie League as its third drummer.

In need of a keyboardist, Hinds asked Michael Connor of Latonia also to join. With Hinds and Connor, PPL recorded its second RCA-labeled album, Bustin’ Out, in 1972. The album contained what became PPL’s most enduring hit, “Amie,” which was composed by Fuller. In September 1972 Hinds recruited another friend, Fort Thomas native Michael “Mike” Reilly, as the group’s bass guitarist. This trio from Northern Kentucky, along with Call and Powell, were the members of PPL after Fuller left the group in 1973; he had filed for conscientious objector status when he received his Vietnam draft notice.

While Fuller performed alternative ser vice at a Covington hospital, RCA dropped its contract with the band.

In 1975 the group’s burgeoning popularity on college campuses, including significant radio airtime for “Amie,” caused RCA to re-sign PPL and release “Amie” as a single, which crossed over to the Billboard top 40 pop charts. The band’s third album, Two Lane Highway, followed and included Fort Thomas–born Larry Goshorn. It also climbed to the top 40, as did If the Shoe Fits, PPL’s fourth album. In 1977 Goshorn’s brother Tim, also from Fort Thomas, joined the group, replacing Call, the band’s last founding member. Shortly thereafter PPL again fragmented, leaving only Northern Kentuckians Hinds, Connor, and Reilly as the band’s members.

In 1979 Patrick Bolin and Norman, Okla., native Vince Gill joined with the Northern Kentucky trio. The quintet’s disappointing sales of Can’t Hold Back prompted RCA to drop PPL for a second time. The group subsequently signed with Casablanca Records and replaced Bolin with Kentuckian Jeff Wilson.

PPL’s popularity catapulted as its traditional sounds melded with the influences of songwriter Dan Greer, lead singer Gill’s bluegrass-countryrock sound, and the inspiration of prolific songwriter Troy Seals. The band’s next two albums, Firin’ Up and Something in the Night, became two of its most successful productions. Those albums resulted in five hit singles, including “Let Me Love You Tonight,” which reached the top 10 on the Billboard pop charts in 1980. PPL’s national prominence faded once again following the bankruptcy of Casablanca and the departure of Gill to pursue a solo career. The band’s attempt to recruit former Orleans lead singer Larry Hoppen fizzled, and the group sustained itself through the mid-1980s without a record label. The band dissolved in 1987. In 1998 it resurfaced led by founding member Fuller,

740 PURE PRAIRIE LEAGUE Michael Connor, and Mike Reilly. Pure Prairie League continues performing today at places like the Fort Thomas Fall Festival, although it performs without Connor, who died September 2, 2004, at age 54.

“Country Music Television.” www.cmt.com (accessed November 3, 2005).

“Fort Thomas Fall Festival,” SC, October 3, 2004, 2C. “Michael Connor, ‘Amie’ Pianist—Pure Prairie League Member Was 54,” KE, September 9, 2004, B7.

Pure Prairie League. www.pureprairieleague.com (accessed November 3, 2005).

“Pure Prairie League Reunites, Will Do June 13 Show at Jillians’s,” KE, June 3, 1999, C1.

Ruhlmann, William. All Music Guide to Rock. Austin, Tex.: Frugal Media, 1995.

Whitburn, Joel. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.

New York: Billboard, 1985.

William Morris Agency. www.wma.com (accessed November 3, 2005).

Paul A. Carl Jr.