Chapter S of the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky

SOUTHGATE HOUSE. Located at 24 E. Third St., Newport, the Southgate House (also known as the SouthgateParker-Maddux House and the Knights of Columbus Hall) is one of the city’s oldest and most historically significant antebellum structures... (cont’d on pg. 843)

Chris Bergman/For The Enquirer

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

Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky in partnership with NKY.com

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

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

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

Dave Adkisson, Treasurer Melanie J. Kilpatrick, Secretary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SACRED HEART CATHOLIC CHURCH. Before 1873 the small Catholic population of Bellevue attended St. Stephen Catholic Church (see Holy Spirit Catholic Church) in neighboring Newport.

At that time, the mixed German and Irish Catholic laymen of Bellevue organized a society to raise funds for the erection of a church in their town. In March 1873, they obtained the permission of Covington bishop Augustus Maria Toebbe to proceed with plans for a church. The society bought two lots on Division St., and a one-story brick building that would serve temporarily as both church and school was quickly constructed. It was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Toebbe on November 22, 1874. A year later, the bishop assigned Sacred Heart Parish its first resident pastor, Bernard H. Hillebrand. Another story was added to the building in 1876 as enrollment in the school increased. The Sisters of Notre Dame taught in the school.

The parish grew, and the original building proved inadequate by the end of the 1880s. When Pastor William Cassander approached Bishop Camillus Paul Maes about the needs of the parish, the bishop approved plans for a new larger church.

The stone Gothic-style church that stands today at the corner of Division St. and Taylor Ave., a design of architect Louis Piket, was begun in 1892 and dedicated on October 1, 1893. The old building was used exclusively as a school until a new school, designed by architect J. F. Sheblessey, was completed in 1915. The present exterior of the church was stuccoed in imitation rough-surfaced Indiana limestone in 1923. In the 1930s the parish ran a commercial high school for girls, as did many Catholic parishes.

At a time when national parishes were important to immigrant Catholics, Sacred Heart served as the German parish in Bellevue, and the newer St. Anthony Parish (1889) was the Irish parish.

These two churches stood only a block apart. The need for separate parishes receded as the 20th century progressed. As more Catholics moved out of the inner cities to the suburbs, enrollments in most urban parish schools declined accordingly, and the long-standing goal of a school in every parish became a financial burden hard to justify. To meet this new reality, the schools of the two Bellevue parishes were merged into St. Michael School in 1987. In the early 21st century, the shortage of priests within the Diocese of Covington made it impractical to maintain two separate parishes in Bellevue within a block of each other. The parishes were merged in 2003 to form the new Divine Mercy Parish, utilizing the Sacred Heart structure. In 2002 Bellevue’s Catholic students became part of Holy Trinity School, which serves students of Newport and Dayton, Ky., as well.

“Bellevue Churches Share Faith a Block Apart,” KP, February 24, 1992, 1K–2K. “Cornerstone of the New Bellevue Catholic Church Will Be Laid Tomorrow Afternoon,” KP, September 24, 1892, 8.

Golden Jubilee Sacred Heart Parish: 1874–1924. Bellevue, Ky., 1924.

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

“Sacred Heart Commercial School Graduates,” KTS, June 24, 1931, 3.

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

“2 Bellevue Parishes Will Merge,” KP, June 11, 2001, 2K.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. AGNES CATHOLIC CHURCH. In 1930 Bishop Francis W. Howard established St. Agnes Chapel as a chapel annex to Covington’s St. Mary Cathedral (see Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) for parish Catholics living in Park Hills and its vicinity. From September 1930 until October 1931, Rev. Gerhard H. Geisen, chancellor of the diocese, oversaw and organized this new congregation. On September 8, 1930, St. Agnes School was opened under the care of the Sisters of Notre Dame, with an enrollment of 26. By October 3, 1930, a temporary frame chapel off Old State Rd. in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright) had been built, and on October 5, 1930, the first mass was offered in the new chapel, which was dedicated to St. Agnes. In spring 1931, since St. Agnes Chapel had an 11-acre tract of land available for athletic purposes, Geisen formed a Catholic athletic association at the chapel. On August 28, 1931, a bell formerly located at the 12th St. Fire House was donated to St. Agnes Chapel by the City of Covington and was blessed for use at the chapel by the Very Reverend Joseph A. Flynn, V.G. In October 1931 a resident cathedral assistant pastor was appointed to St. Agnes Chapel to minister under the direction of the pastor of St. Mary Cathedral.

In May 1938, because the St. Agnes congregation of about 200 families had outgrown the temporary chapel, construction of a larger one was begun at a site on the Dixie Highway near its intersection with Old State Rd. in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright). The project was overseen by Walter A. Freiberg, pastor of St. Mary Cathedral.

On Sunday, May 22, 1938, Howard laid the cornerstone for the new St. Agnes Chapel. The new chapel, built of brick and stone in the Italian Lombard style, was completed in less than a year and formally dedicated by Howard on Sunday, February 5, 1939.

In 1941 a new St. Agnes Chapel school, consisting of four classrooms and a large basement for recreational purposes, was built. At that time, it was predicted that this new structure, in conjunction with classrooms in the chapel building, would meet the parish’s educational space needs for a number of years. Howard officiated at the dedication of the new school on Sunday, August 24, 1941.

As the suburbs surrounding it continued to grow,

the school was replaced by a new 16-classroom, three-story school, completed in 1957; 4 more classrooms were added in 1962; and in 1990 a third addition featuring classrooms, science labs, and a gymnasium was completed. By 1968, with an enrollment of 936 students, some of them taught in classrooms in the church basement, St. Agnes School was the second-largest Catholic elementary school in the state.

On August 9, 1954, a decree was signed, by authority of the bishop of Covington, establishing St. Agnes as a separate parish, severing its ties to the cathedral and its parish. The St. Agnes parish was served long and well by the Sisters of Notre Dame, who continued to teach in the school until 1995. Currently, St. Agnes Catholic Church has about 1,600 households and a total of 4,600 people registered in the parish. Five hundred students are enrolled in its grade school, as the inner ring of suburbs has experienced an aging population.

The Church of St. Agnes. “History.” www.saintagnes .com.

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

“St. Agnes Chapel Becomes Parish, Pastor Assigned,” Messenger, August 22, 1954, 1.

Donna M. Bloemer

ST. ALOYSIUS CATHOLIC CHURCH. Formerly one of the largest German American Catholic congregations in Northern Kentucky, the architecturally significant St. Aloysius Church stood on the southeast corner of W. Seventh and Bakewell Sts. in Covington’s West Side, only blocks from the Irish American congregation of St. Patrick Catholic Church. The St. Aloysius congregation was founded in 1865, when a three-story combination church, school, and convent was constructed.

In 1867 the parishioners completed a grandiose Romanesque Revival style church, with a pointed Gothic spire. Designed by noted architect Louis Piket, the church was later embellished with elaborate stained-glass windows by the Royal Institute of Bavarian Glass Painting in Munich, Germany, under the supervision of F. X. Zettler. In 1889 the parish built a facsimile of the famous Grotto of Lourdes of France in its basement, featuring exquisite hand-carved statues imported from Germany that depicted the first miracle at Lourdes.

Bishop Camillus Paul Maes, who had been architecturally trained, encouraged the congregation to rebuild the Gothic spire in 1911–1912 in Romanesque style to match the predominant features of the church. In 1914–1915 the church underwent an interior redecoration that included new plaster arabesque ornamentation. By the early 20th century, the church building was one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical edifices in the city.

St. Aloysius Parish built several school buildings throughout its history. The most recent, still standing on W. Eighth St. and renovated into apartments in 1982–1983, was completed in 1933.

Its construction provided needed work for the unemployed during the Great Depression. At its

776 ST. ANDREW’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH height in the early 20th century, the parish school had the largest enrollment of all of the Catholic elementary schools in the city of Covington. Suburban migration, though, quickly took its toll. In 1923 St. Aloysius School enrolled 707 students; by 1953 the enrollment had dropped to 313. When nearby Mother of God School suspended operations at the end of the 1961–1962 academic year and neighboring St. Patrick Church and School closed in 1967, St. Aloysius School enrolled their students. The mergers and a baby boom following World War II were not enough to stem the tide, however, and enrollment fell to 99 students during St. Aloysius School’s last academic year of operation, 1978–1979. The parish itself did not long outlast the school. On May 16, 1985, lightning struck the church, and a resultant fire destroyed the building. The parish was subsequently closed and merged with Mother of God Church.

“Covington Pastor Announces Parish School Will Close,” Messenger, February 25, 1979, 1.

“St. Aloysius Apartments: Deal Took Time but Finally Closed,” Messenger, April 24, 1983, 7.

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

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

Paul A. Tenkotte

ST. ANDREW’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Founded in 1905, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is located at Chalfonte and S. Fort Thomas Aves. in Fort Thomas. It is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington. In 2005 the church had a congregation of approximately 625 members. The church’s name, St. Andrew’s, is thought to be Scottish in origin. The present church was built in 1909, a parish house was constructed in 1928, and an addition to the main church was constructed in 1995.

The clergy who have served St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church over the years are Rev. Custis Fletcher (1907–1912), Rev. Arthur Seiter (1912–1915), Rev. Arthur Marshall (1915–1918), Rev. William B. Dern (1919–1929), Rev. J. Wilson Hunter (1930–1938), Rev. Allen Person (1938–1968); Rev. David D. Heil (1968–1983); and Rev. Dr. Ronald W. Summers (1984–present). Dern was a popular local speaker, a broadcaster on the Cincinnati radio station WLW, and the author of A Parson Takes a Gander. He went on to serve 19 years at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport.

“Death Takes Rev. Will Dern,” KP, June 2, 1959, 1.

Dern, William B. A Parson Takes a Gander. Newport, Ky.: Beek, 1949.

Swinford, Francis Keller, and Rebecca Smith Lee. Great Elm Tree: Heritage of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington. Lexington, Ky.: Faith House Press, 1969.

John West

ST. ANTHONY CATHOLIC CHURCH. The early history of St. Anthony Catholic Church was tied to the fortunes of the railroad line through

DeCoursey in Kenton Co. With the opening of the Kentucky Central Railroad in the 1850s, many Roman Catholics moved into the Licking River valley to work on constructing the new route between Covington and Lexington. Irish Catholics were fortunate to have Rev. James Smith, pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Covington, come and offer Mass for them in a home they purchased near Spring Lake. Because there was no German-speaking Catholic church in the vicinity, German Catholics had to travel five or six miles to St. Augustine Catholic Church in the Peaselburg neighborhood of Covington to hear sermons in their own language. In 1877 Rev. William Robbers, pastor of St. Augustine Church, received a donation of three acres of land in DeCoursey for a church and school. In 1878 the church was completed and dedicated to St. Anthony the Hermit. A mission of St. Augustine Catholic Church for its first three years, it then was a mission of Holy Guardian Angels Catholic Church in Sandfordtown until 1902, when Bishop Camillus Maes established it as a parish, with Rev. Henry Looschelders as its first pastor.

The Sisters of Notre Dame from Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington conducted a school in the basement at St. Anthony Catholic Church. The sisters rode the train from Covington but terminated their ser vices after four years owing to the lack of adequate funding. During the pastorate of Rev. Bernard Baumeister (1907– 1911), a small frame school was erected. When a house was bequeathed for a convent, the Sisters of Notre Dame lived on-site and again staffed the school for about five years. The parish then turned to the Sisters of St. Benedict to teach at its school.

The railroad continued to affect the growth of the parish. In 1918 the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) built a new railroad yard at DeCoursey and used eminent domain to take part of the parish property, for which the parish was later reimbursed $10,000, following litigation. The smoke and noise produced by the railroad yard made the church’s location undesirable. Furthermore, the parish’s population decreased after the DeCoursey Station rail stop closed in 1917. Therefore it was decided to try to relocate St. Anthony’s Church to a more favorable site. In 1927, when the L&N Railroad acquired the rest of the church property through a condemnation proceeding, Pastor Bernard Nurre chose a new location, in the growing subdivision of Forest Hills (now Taylor Mill), two and a half miles closer to Covington, and a new church and parish plant were built, including a rectory and convent fashioned entirely from white stone. Bishop Francis W. Howard dedicated the new St. Anthony Church on April 14, 1929. The small school built at the time was intended to be temporary. As enrollment increased, a new school building was constructed in 1952.

St. Anthony Parish grew through the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963 Covington bishop Richard H. Ackerman split off part of the parish to create the new St. Patrick Parish. St. Anthony Church underwent a significant remodeling during the early

1970s. The parish continues to maintain its own school.

The Centennial Celebration of Saint Anthony Church, Taylor Mills, Kentucky, 1878–1978. Taylor Mill, Ky.: St. Anthony Catholic Church, 1978.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. AUGUSTINE CATHOLIC CHURCH, AUGUSTA. Because early Catholic residents of Augusta in Bracken Co. did not have a church or the ser vices of a priest, they requested that the Catholic pastor of the church in New Richmond, Ohio, attend to their needs. Rev. Augustus M. Toebbe obliged them and said Mass at Augusta in the home of a layman. Toebbe later became the second bishop of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). Soon, Benedictine priests from Covington took over the care of the small congregation in Augusta. They encouraged their parishioners to raise funds to build a new church, and soon a building lot had been purchased on Fourth St. Bishop George A. Carrell, the first bishop of Covington, laid the cornerstone for the new church on May 29, 1859. The event was advertised in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area; three steamboats carried passengers on the excursion upriver to Augusta for the celebration.

Four months later, on October 7, 1860, Rev. Thomas Butler, vicar general of the Diocese of Covington, dedicated the completed St. Augustine Catholic Church at Augusta.

The Benedictine Fathers continued to minister to the church in Augusta. The first resident pastor, Rev. Alto Hoermann, O.S.B., was appointed in 1866. Rev. Caspar Ostlangenberg, O.S.B., became pastor in 1875. At his request, the Sisters of Notre Dame in Covington started a parish school for St. Augustine Catholic Church that same year.

A shortage of priests in the Diocese of Covington during the 1990s forced a number of local parishes to make adjustments. In 1997 a two-parish, one-priest arrangement was decided for the St. James Catholic Church in Brooksville and the St. Augustine Catholic Church in Augusta. Both retained their status as parishes (rather than one church becoming a mission of the other, the more common arrangement), but one pastor began to oversee both. Rev. Daniel Saner became the first pastor to serve both parishes, with the assistance of Deacon Ernie Hillenmeyer.

“Augusta, Brooksville to Share Pastor,” Messenger, May 8, 1998, 1.

“Corner-Stone Excursion for St. Augustine’s Church, Augusta, Bracken County, Kentucky on Sunday, May 29, 1859,” Cincinnati Telegraph, May, 28, 1859, 8. Advertisement.

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

ST. BERNARD CATHOLIC CHURCH St. Augustine Centennial, 1859–1959. Augusta, Ky.: St. Augustine Catholic Church, 1959.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. AUGUSTINE CATHOLIC CHURCH, COVINGTON. With the German Catholic population of Covington continually growing because of an influx of immigrants, a new German congregation was established in the Peaselburg area of the city in 1870. The parish was established during the tenure of Covington’s second bishop, Augustus Maria Toebbe, and named St. Augustine after his patron saint. A two-story building was constructed to house both a church and a school that was staffed by the Sisters of Notre Dame. The bishop dedicated it on October 16, 1870, and the church’s first pastor was Rev. L. Neumeier.

While Rev. Joseph Goebbels was pastor (1871– 1877), he cooperated with the lay trustees of the parish to form two business ventures that they hoped would be a financial boon to St. Augustine Catholic Church, bringing the parish to selfsufficiency and helping to pay its debts. In the early 1870s, the church started a brick-manufacturing operation with two brickyards in the Peaselburg neighborhood near the railroad tracks. Shortly afterward, Goebbels purchased a nail-making machine from Germany and started a wire nail factory, thought to be the first of its kind in the United States. However, Goebbels proved not to be an astute businessman. He did not supervise recordkeeping for the accounts of the two businesses, and some of the proceeds were diverted from the parish. Matters became further complicated because the trustees made the parish liable for payment of most loan obligations. When the national depression that began in 1873 caused a business decline throughout the country, the St. Augustine Catholic Church business enterprises failed, leaving the parish saddled with an enormous debt. The parish was bankrupt and many parishioners lost the savings they had invested in the parish’s businesses.

After lengthy litigation, the Covington Court ordered the entire property of the parish put up for sale to satisfy creditors.

William Robbers was appointed pastor in 1877. With new trustees, he formed a corporation called the Roman Catholic German Church of Central Covington, Kentucky, which repurchased the church edifice and property that had been lost.

The situation improved enough that by the early 20th century, Pastor Paul Abeln was able to start raising funds for a new church. During the pastorate of Rev. Richard Kathman, the current redbrick Italian Renaissance–style church, designed by architect David Davis, was built on 19th St. between Jefferson and Euclid Aves. Bishop Camillus Paul Maes dedicated the structure on December 29, 1914. A new parish school was constructed in 1916; in 1953–1954, a gymnasium and two additional classrooms were built St. Augustine Catholic Church is one of the few parishes in the urban Northern Kentucky area that has its own school, rather than being part of a clustered school system.

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

St. Augustine Centennial Booklet. Covington, Ky.: St. Augustine Catholic Church, 1970.

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

Trauth, Mary Philip, S.N.D. Unpublished paper, 1988, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Erlanger, Ky.

Thomas S. Ward

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Reder, Dianne. “Jubilee Cross Visits St. Benedict Church, Covington,” Messenger, June 16, 2000, 6.

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

St. Benedict Church Golden Jubilee, 1885–1935.

Booklet. Covington, Ky.: St. Benedict Catholic Church, 1935.

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. BENEDICT CATHOLIC CHURCH. The area of Covington known as Austinburg had been part of the St. Joseph Catholic Church parish since the mid-1850s. Catholics in this predominantly German area wanted to have a church in their immediate vicinity and received permission from Augustus Toebbe, bishop of Covington, to build one. A site was obtained in the early 1880s.

The combination church and school building was dedicated by Bishop Camillus Maes on July 5, 1885, and named St. Benedict Catholic Church.

The new parish was carved out of St. Joseph Parish and was made a mission of it. Rev. Aegidius Christoph, O.S.B. (Order of St. Benedict), the pastor of St. Joseph Church who had overseen construction, was given charge of St. Benedict Catholic Church.

Sisters of St. Benedict from St. Walburg Convent near St. Joseph Church taught in the school.

When a rectory was completed in 1889, the church was made into a parish. Maes put it in the care of the Benedictines of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa., with Rev. Theodore Schmitt, O.S.B., as its first pastor. The parish had long been collecting funds for a new church. In the early 20th century, it acquired property in Covington between 16th and 17th Sts. for a church, and Cincinnati architect Samuel Hannaford designed the large brick building. On December 20, 1908, Maes dedicated the St. Benedict Church that stands today along 17th St. A rectory was soon added. In 1922 a new school with a large auditorium was constructed on 16th St. north of the church. The old combination church and school building was torn down to make room for a new school. Besides providing the usual first through eighth grades, the school also housed the two-year St. Benedict Commercial School, which offered business courses to students of any parish. The parish built a new convent for the Benedictine Sisters in 1926.

Like most urban parishes, St. Benedict began a steady decline in membership by the 1960s. The church underwent a significant renovation of its sanctuary in 1970, but the number of parishioners continued to decrease. In 1988 the parish school was merged into the new Holy Family School, which included the Cathedral and Our Savior schools in Covington. St. Benedict’s school building was used as Holy Family’s facility. Rev. Emeric Phiester was the last Benedictine pastor of St. Benedict, ending nearly a century of the order’s ser vice to its namesake parish. In 1987 Rev. Robert Henderson became the first diocesan priest to serve as pastor.

ST. BERNARD CATHOLIC CHURCH. The Catholic population of Jamestown (today a part of Dayton, Ky.), a town on the Ohio River in Campbell Co., attended Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport during the 1840s. These families, numbering about 40, decided to work toward building their own church. To that end, they formed two societies, one for men and one for women—the St. Joseph Society and the St. Mary Society—to plan and raise money for a church. In 1853 Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville (in the Diocese of Louisville, of which Northern Kentucky was a part before the creation of the Diocese of Covington) led the cornerstone-laying ceremony, and the church in Jamestown was completed and dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi the following year.

When George A. Carrell became the first bishop of Covington in 1853, he had only six diocesan priests in his ser vice and could not appoint the first pastor, Rev. Michael Herzog, to St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church until several months after its dedication. Herzog suffered from poor health and was replaced in 1857 by Rev. Charles Schaff roth. In 1866 Pastor Francis Grome started a new church, designed by architect Ludwig Riedinger, which was dedicated by Carrell on September 23 of that year.

The St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church was rocked by a financial crisis in the 1870s. Because Grome made some unsound business speculations late in his pastorate, which ended in 1877, payments on notes issued in the name of the parish could not be made when they were due. A court ordered the church closed in 1880, though the judge eventually transferred the deed to the bishop of Covington, Augustus Toebbe. The next pastor, Rev. William Cassander, faced an enormous task to put the parish’s finances back in order. He was successful enough that by 1888 Pastor Stephan Schmid was able to build a new school for the parish.

The state of parish finances, however, delayed plans to build a new church. The current church was initiated by Rev. Bernard Greifenkamp, who bought an entire city block in Dayton for the project in 1909. Extensive damage to the old church caused by the flood of 1913 accelerated the process. The new church, designed by Samuel Hannaford and Sons, was dedicated on August 23, 1914, and renamed St. Bernard Catholic Church.

But the church was not fully completed until the

778 ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA CATHOLIC CHURCH construction of its Romanesque facade in 1929. A school at the new site was erected in 1925.

Dayton, like most of urban Northern Kentucky, experienced extensive fl ight to the suburbs after World War I. In spite of a dramatic dwindling of its membership, the St. Bernard Church has remained viable. The parish managed to keep its own parochial school until 2002, when it was merged into the new Holy Trinity School, formed for Catholic students of Dayton, Bellevue, and Newport. St. Bernard Parish now shares a pastor with Divine Mercy Parish in Bellevue.

Caulfield, Patricia. “St. Bernard Church Traces History to 1852: Flood, Fire among Highlights in Background of Dayton Parish,” Messenger, May 10, 1953, 9A–10A. Gallagher, Janice. “Still ‘God’s Acre’: Event Celebrates 150 Years as a Catholic Community,” KP, July 15, 2004, 1.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA CATHOLIC CHURCH. The suburban city of Fort Thomas did not have a Catholic parish until 1902, when St. Thomas Catholic Church was established. A mere 28 years later, Bishop Francis W. Howard established a second parish for the growing population and appointed Rev. John J. McCrystal as its pastor. Howard purchased for the new parish four acres and a small house, which was to serve as a temporary church. After a few months, a small frame church, named for St. Catherine of Siena, was built in 1930 on N. Fort Thomas Ave. In 1949 the parish built its first school, and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Ky., supplied the teachers. To accommodate the growing enrollment, the parish added a second floor to the school in 1957.

In 1962 the parish broke ground for a new church, and by the following year, parishioners celebrated Mass in the basement of the rising structure.

On May 3, 1964, the church was completed and dedicated by Bishop Richard H. Ackerman. The modern structure features a quarter-round front as the base of a triangular shape leading to a point at the sanctuary. At the front stands a bell tower with a relief of the church’s patron saint, St. Catherine, made from stone quarried near her home city in Italy. The parish purchased a new rectory and convent in the 1970s. The parish still has its own school, though without the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

Commemoration Booklet for the Dedication of Saint Catherine of Siena Church. Fort Thomas, Ky.: St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church, 1964.

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

St. Catherine of Siena Parish, 1930–2005. Fort Thomas, Ky.: St. Catherine of Siena, 2005.

Welch, Bettie. “St. Catherine, Ft. Thomas: Parish Celebrates 50 Years of Spirit,” Messenger, May 11, 1980, 2.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. CECILIA CATHOLIC CHURCH. The town of Independence in southern Kenton Co. had a small Catholic congregation long before it had a Catholic church. Priests from St. Paul Catholic Church in Florence attended to the spiritual needs of Catholics in Independence as early as 1860, by saying Mass for the people there in private homes. It was not until 1880 that a church dedicated to St. Cecilia was built for the congregation by Rev. Edward Burke, pastor of St. Paul Catholic Church. The community at Independence bought a parcel of land for a new church, hoping that soon it would be granted the status of a parish. This finally happened in April 1919, when Bishop Ferdinand Brossart named Rev. Henry Heringhaus, an associate pastor from St. Paul Catholic Church, to be the St. Cecilia Catholic Church’s first resident pastor.

His pastorate began just a month after a fire had destroyed the old church. On a previously purchased site near the old church, the parish built a brick church that could hold 250 people. The official dedication occurred on November 30, 1919. A rectory was constructed in 1921, and a school staffed by the Sisters of Divine Providence in 1923.

The town of Independence grew rapidly after World War II as people moved out of the inner cities to the suburbs. In spite of regular enlargements of the instructional space, the old school was proving inadequate by the 1950s, so a larger school was built in 1958. Under the direction of Rev. George Bamberger, the church building was doubled in size in 1965. The back wall was removed and a new section built on from there, so that the altar was midway between the two halves.

Even though two new parishes (St. Patrick in Taylor Mill and St. Barbara in Erlanger) were created within the boundaries of the St. Cecilia parish during the 1960s, the St Cecilia parish continued to grow. The need for a new church became obvious by the late 1980s. Several fund drives were initiated under the leadership of pastors Robert J. Urlage and David Shockey. Ground was broken in 1990, but the church was built only gradually as funds were raised. Finally, Rev. Paul Bershied saw the plans through to completion, and Bishop Robert Muench dedicated the new St. Cecilia Catholic Church, designed by Robert Ehmet Hayes & Associates, Architects, on December 14, 1997. In 2007 a painting of Christ by artist Leon Lippert, which originally adorned Corpus Christi Church in Newport and was thought to have been destroyed, was found at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Independence. It was restored and now hangs in the sanctuary.

Cherishing Our Past . . . Planning for Our Future.

Dedication booklet. Independence, Ky.: St. Cecilia Catholic Church, 1997.

One Hundred Years of Serving God and His People. Centennial booklet. Independence, Ky.: St. Cecilia Catholic Church, 1980.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. CHARLES CARE CENTER. The Sisters of Notre Dame (S.N.D.) founded the St. Charles Care Center in 1961, as a nursing facility for the care of the frail and elderly. Sister Mary Edwin Paetzold, S.N.D., was the center’s first administrator. Notre Dame sisters Mary Dolorita Broering, Mary Jeanette Wess, and Mary Luann Bender served as the center’s administrators in subsequent years. The St. Charles Care Center is located along St. Charles Dr. in Fort Wright.

In 1985 ground was broken for St. Charles Village, a neighborhood of 44 cottages where seniors live independently, with the option of sharing in the ser vices and amenities of the larger campus. In 1986 the St. Charles Care Center initiated its Adult Day Health Program, in which aging members of the Northern Kentucky community are cared for during the day while family members are working or when family caregivers need a respite. The Lodge at St. Charles, consisting of 72 senior living apartments, was built in 1991. There residents live independently in an atmosphere of community, warmth, and wellness. Its presence on the St. Charles Care Center’s campus adds to the center’s continuum of care. St. Charles Care Center has also responded to the needs of the broader community by offering private-duty nursing and case management in the home; inpatient and outpatient physical, speech and occupational therapies; and a wellness program.

“Housing for Elderly in Demand—St. Charles Expands with Expansion Plan,” KP, September 29, 1998, 1K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

St. Charles Care Center and Village. www.stcharles care.org (accessed September 1, 2006).

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

Donna M. Bloemer

ST. ELIZABETH MEDICAL CENTER. Today’s St. Elizabeth Medical Center has its origins with the first hospital in Northern Kentucky, the St. Elizabeth Hospital (“the Sisters’ Hospital”) located along Seventh St. in Covington between Madison Ave. and Scott St. It began in 1861 as a result of the combined efforts of Henrietta Cleveland of Cincinnati, benefactor Sarah Peter, the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, and Bishop George Carrell, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). From its inception, St. Elizabeth has been available to people of all races and creeds.

The first home for the hospital was a former grocery store. The diocese purchased the threestory structure and necessary equipment for $2,272.

ST. ELIZABETH MEDICAL CENTER

St. Elizabeth Hospital, W. 11th St., Covington, late 19th century.

Funds were raised for the acquisition at a Hospital Fair held at the Odd Fellows Hall in Covington during the Christmas holidays of 1860 (December 17, 1860–January 2, 1861). The hospital opened on January 6, 1861, and the sisters assigned to the facility received their first patient around January 22.

Before moving into the building, the sisters stayed at their order’s first hospital in the United States, St. Mary Hospital in the West End of Cincinnati, which they had founded in 1859. St. Elizabeth was truly a charitable hospital in the beginning, for most of the first patients could not pay for their care, and the sisters went out into the Covington community and begged for food. Bread, soup, and coffee were the staples of their diet. Soon the Civil War erupted, and wounded soldiers from both sides found treatment at the hospital. The sisters also began a tradition that lasted into the early 20th century, the care of orphans and foundlings (babies left abandoned). The children of men killed in the war, and foundlings from the immediate area and from Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, where the sisters also had a hospital, were taken in and raised at the Covington hospital. Upwards of 50 children at one time lived at the hospital.

In 1867 a building was purchased that dated from the 1840s and had been part of the Western Baptist Theological Institute, along the north side of 11th St. in Covington. The St. Elizabeth Hospital moved there, opening the facility in spring 1868. The structure, which cost $50,000, plus $12,000 for new equipment, had 50 rooms and space for 110 beds on its four floors; the 11th St. hospital began with 40 patients and 50 orphans (who had been foundlings). It was just east of the railroad, whose constant noise and dirt annoyed both patients and staff, particularly after the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Bridge opened in 1888 and rail traffic increased. At various times be-

tween 1870 and 1900, the City of Covington asked the sisters to help with the care of the people living at the Covington pest house (poorhouse), and the sisters kindly did so. Occasionally, the dilapidated pest house had to be closed for remodeling, and at those times the sisters provided a place for the residents. The hospital received its first X-ray equipment as early as 1895 because the manufacturer, the Kelley-Koett Company, was also in Covington. In 1905 Nicholas Walsh (see Walsh Distillery), a longtime benefactor of the Diocese of Covington, contributed funds to build the first real laboratory at the hospital.

In May 1909 the diocese purchased land at 21st St. and Eastern Ave. in south Covington for a future St. Elizabeth Hospital. A new four-story modern building designed by Samuel Hannaford and Sons was opened on that site in 1914; at the time it was one of the fi nest medical facilities in the state. In December 1915 the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing began, as a means to supply properly trained nurses for the hospital. It became the first nursing school in Kentucky to earn national recognition. Dr. William Gerding, who practiced medicine in Newport for more than 60 years and was a member of the staff of the hospital, taught at the school of nursing from its inception. The nursing school opened in 1915, closed in 1922, reopened in 1929, closed again in 1950 to reorga nize, and graduated its last class in April 1968.

After 1918 children no longer lived in St. Elizabeth Hospital; they were moved to the St. John Orphanage (see Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home) in Fort Mitchell and the Good Shepherd Home in Fort Thomas. Separate departments within the hospital began to form: a maternity department in 1919, an anesthetics department in 1921, and a pediatrics department in 1925.

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The hospital was accessible only by rowboat during the flood of 1937, and special steam engines were brought to the building to keep the heating system intact during that crisis. In 1947 Tarsicia Hall was constructed as a home for 200 nurses. A neurological department and a two-floor contagious disease unit were created within the northwest wing of the building in 1953.

In April 1968 the hospital hired its first lay administrator, Earl Gilrath. In February 1973 St. Elizabeth merged with Speers Hospital (see Speers Memorial Hospital) in Dayton, Ky., and

by September 1 of that year, Speers Hospital had closed. In December 1973 ownership of the hospital was transferred from the Sisters of St. Francis of the Poor to the Diocese of Covington. A parking garage was constructed in 1976, after a long fight with the residents of the neighborhood. In 1978, in anticipation of the opening of St. Elizabeth Hospital South in Edgewood, the name of the orga ni zation became the St. Elizabeth Medical Center.

Suburbanization took its toll on the St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington, and in response a 260-acre parcel of land was purchased in 1969 in Edgewood, near the campus of Thomas More College, where Dudley Rd. meets Thomas More Pkwy. Ground was broken in 1975 and a 182-bed hospital, the St. Elizabeth Medical Center South, opened and accepted its first patient on October 10, 1978. Thus far, several hundred millions of dollars have been expended at the medical village for health-care-related facilities: the general hospital, patient towers, a cancer center, outpatient-care areas, surgery suites, laundries, medical offices, an adjacent rehabilitation hospital, and a hospice.

There is no end in sight, as this general area has clearly become the center of medical care in Northern Kentucky. The Gateway Community and Technical College has begun to teach nursing at its medical village campus, with close ties to both the hospital and Thomas More College. Construction has become almost constant at the Edgewood campus.

Regional expansion has also taken place. In Grant Co., planning began in 1960 for a small 30bed hospital in Williamstown. Dr. Doris Vest Clark, county judge R. Lester Mullins, and Dr. Fred Scroggin were integral parts of the group that opened the Grant Co. Hospital in July 1964, along Barnes Rd. However, as many county governments across the nation have found, it is difficult to operate such a small hospital because of the spiraling costs of modern health care. In 1990 Grant Community Health Ser vices Inc., which leased the Grant Co. Hospital, signed a management agreement with the St. Elizabeth Medical Center for operation of its facility; and in 1993 the Grant Co. Hospital became St. Elizabeth Medical Center– Grant Co. as the St. Elizabeth Medical Center took ownership of the Williamstown facility. With the increasing population of Grant Co., the St. Elizabeth Medical Center has tripled the size of its hospital there while bringing several medical specialists into the county for weekly office hours. In turn,

780 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES ACADEMY St. Elizabeth in Edgewood gains those referrals that cannot be attended to in Grant Co. Both the Edgewood and the Williamstown facilities have heliports for critical patient transport.

The St. Elizabeth Medical Center has not forgotten its historical hometown as it enters the 21st century. While occupancy rates and the number of hospital beds decreased at the North Unit in Covington, St. Elizabeth made plans to build a new Covington facility on an 11-acre site, south of 12th St. and just east of I-75, where the former Jefferson Ave. northbound exit of the interstate led into Covington. The three-story facility will include an emergency room to replace the one at St. Elizabeth North, along with diagnostic, outpatient, and medical offices. Groundbreaking was in April 2008, and completion is scheduled for 2009.

In 2006 St. Luke Hospitals expressed its intent to withdraw from the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati. Thereafter, in October 2008, St. Elizabeth Medical Center and St. Luke Hospitals completed a merger agreement, under the sponsorship of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington. The merger will include five major facilities in Covington, Edgewood, Fort Thomas, Florence, and Williamstown, with a total of 1,068 beds, 31 primary care offices, and 4,638 full-time employees.

A Century in Covington. Brochure. Covington, Ky.: Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, 1961.

Diamond Jubilee, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Brochure. Covington, Ky.: Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, 1935.

One Hundred Twenty-Five. Brochure. Covington, Ky.: St. Elizabeth Medical Center, 1987.

Peale, Cliff. “St. E, St. Luke Finish Merger,” KE, October 29, 2008, B1.

Reis, Jim. “St. Elizabeth: Old Grocery to New Center,” KP, August 13, 1984, 10K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

“The Sisters’ Hospital,” CDG, October 30, 1867, 9.

Steitzer, Stephenie. “Medical Center on the Horizon,” KP, September 13, 2005, 2K. “St. Elizabeth Has Served Sick since 1861,” Messenger, August 1945, 3.

“St. Elizabeth Purchases Land for New Covington Facility,” Messenger, January 26, 2007, 23.

“St. E Moving North’s Beds,” KP, January 31, 2004, 1K. Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

“A Visit to the New St. Elizabeth Hospital, of Covington,” Christian Year, March 7, 1914, 7.

Weathers, Rosemary. “St. Elizabeth Goes Regional with Hospital,” KP, April 10, 1993, 1K.

Michael R. Sweeney

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES ACADEMY. Operated by the Roman Catholic Visitation order of nuns, this Maysville educational institution provided day classes and boarding for women from 1865 to 1899. In 1864 Rev. Peter McMahon asked Bishop George Carrell to invite the

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

“St. Francis de Sales Academy,” Computer File and Collections, Museum Center, Maysville, Ky. St. Patrick’s Church: 150 Years of Faith. Maysville, Ky.: St. Patrick Church, 1998.

John Klee

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES CATHOLIC CHURCH. Founded in 1912 as a mission of St.

St. Francis de Sales Academy.

Visitation Order into the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). That same year, McMahon purchased property on Third St., not far from St. Patrick Church, for a school, and on June 6, 1865, Carrell canonically established the order at Maysville. Photos of the academy show a five-story building that was home to the convent and school. The prospectus used to attract students from 1890 describes “a commodious range of buildings . . . advantages of ample grounds,” and ”a beautiful view of the Ohio.”

The “good rail and river communication” were important for pupils coming to the academy from other states. Practical instruction was emphasized, but the “ornamental” branches of instruction were not ignored. Such instruction included, for example, elocution, embroidery and chenille work, guitar, harp, and painting on china and slate. In photos from the academy, groups such as the Mandolin Club can be seen; the students are shown in high-necked, longsleeved, f loor-length dresses, the sisters are pictured in black habits that reveal only their faces and hands. Practical instruction at the school included common subjects such as botany, history, and mathematics. Students also were taught Christian doctrine, object lessons, orthography, and rhetoric.

Boarding students were not encouraged to go home during the year, and visits by parents were limited. Students were given a list of items to bring with them, such as a napkin ring, a shawl, and six table napkins. Fees varied depending on the extra courses taken. Board and tuition for a session of five months was $75, according to the prospectus.

Students of other religions were welcomed to the school, and it was stated that “daughters of the best families of the State” were among the pupils. Sister Mary Gonzaga Carragher was noted for her leadership as the first superior of the Visitation Order in Maysville. The academy building no longer stands, and the Visitation Order left its Georgetown convent in Kentucky in 1987.

“Prospectus of the Young Ladies, Academy of the Visitation,” Museum Center, Maysville, Ky.

Stephen Roman Catholic Church in Newport, this church and school are now closed. Rev. Stephen Schmid recognized the need for a church in the part of Newport known as Cote Brilliante. Peter Ridder, who lived nearby on Chesapeake Ave., donated three lots at the corner of Chesapeake and Grand Aves. toward the church’s establishment.

The St. Francis de Sales Church, designed by Cincinnati architect Anton Rieg, was dedicated on October 13, 1912, and construction of a grade school building was begun. The first pastor was Rev. Edward Klosterman. In the mid-1920s, for a brief period, the parish operated a commercial high school that met at night in its school building. In 1949 a replacement school was completed

by Rev. John Bankemper, and in 1976 an addition to it was fi nished. For several years during the 1960s and 1970s, because classroom space was limited, some grade school classes of the St. Frances de Sales School were held in an old, rundown two-story brick building that was once the Cote Brilliante School of the Newport City School System (and before that, a part of the Campbell Co. Public Schools). Th is school building at the corner of Park and Grand Aves. was torn down in 1978.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the peak enrollment for the school and membership for the parish.

Soon thereafter, the ravages of suburban development turned on St. Francis. In 1982 the completion of I-471 removed households from the parish and somewhat isolated it from nearby Woodlawn.

For years, the pastors of St. Francis de Sales Parish had recognized how important it was for them to keep the people of Woodlawn in the parish fold.

Now, families began to move away to the southern parts of Campbell and Kenton counties. New residents of the area were generally not owners, but renters, and most of them were not Catholics. The last full-time pastor was Rev. James P. Gerrety.

Declining numbers at the church eventually led to its closing in July 1999, but the school building continued to be used until 2005 as part of the combined Holy Spirit School. In 2003 the City of Newport purchased and tore down some 90 homes in the area as part of its Pavilion development project. With the closing of St. Francis de Sales Church and its school, a memorable chapter of Newport’s history ended. The church and the school were torn down during the last week of February 2007.

Ryan, Paul R. History of the Diocese of Covington.

Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern,

ST. HENRY DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Michael R. Sweeney

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CATHOLIC CHURCH. The first Roman Catholic Church in Pendleton Co. was founded in Falmouth as a mission in 1857. Missionary priests visited Falmouth from Frankfort and Lexington as early as 1851, and tombstones in the St. Francis Xavier Cemetery on Woodson Rd. in Falmouth date as far back as 1849, indicating that there were Catholic families in the county earlier. The cornerstone for the first Catholic church in town, along Main St., was laid in 1857, under the direction of Rev. H. G. Allen. On October 4, 1860, the first bishop of Covington, George A. Carrell, dedicated the brick structure as St. Francis Xavier Church. Rev. James McNerney became its pastor in 1873.

By that time, the number of Catholics in the community had grown, and the parish, under the guidance of Rev. August Gadker, began construction of a new and larger church and rectory. The new cornerstone was set at the intersection of Second and Chapel Sts. in Falmouth in 1877, and dedication ser vices were held on September 12, 1880.

Every other Sunday, Gadker delivered his sermon in German, a practice that displeased many of the Irish members. The early congregation was mostly Irish immigrants who had come to Pendleton Co. to work for the railroad. Gadker was also in charge of three missions: one at Butler, St. John on the Dividing Ridge, and St. Patrick at Double Beach (along Kincaid Creek). The 1884 Lake atlas includes all three of these churches.

About 1888, Gadker had bells from the Catholic churches at Butler and Double Beach placed in the tower of the church in Falmouth. Rev. Joseph M. Lelen, a respected author and literary figure, widely published in newspapers and magazines, came to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in 1918 and was pastor there for 35 years. The flood of 1997 did severe damage to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church building, but it has since been restored.

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

1994].

Falmouth Outlook, September 26, 1980, 20.

Ott, James. Seekers of the Everlasting Kingdom: A Brief History of the Diocese of Covington. Strasbourg, France: Éditions du Signe, 2002.

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

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

Mildred Belew

ST. HENRY CATHOLIC CHURCH. St. Henry Catholic Church in Elsmere was begun as a mission of St. Paul Church in Florence, Ky., by about 10 families. In the late 1800s, lots in Elsmere were being sold for homebuilding, and several of these

new homeowners were Catholics who needed a church. A small brick church was built for them at the corner of Garvey and Shaw Aves. in South Erlanger, now Elsmere, at the direction of a Rev. Gorey. The parish was named after Henry II, emperor of Germany from 1003 to 1024, who was made a saint in 1152; the name reflected the predominance of German families in the area. In 1893 the parish erected a small school opposite the church, where 60 children were to be taught by lay teachers. However, one month before the beginning of the school term, the church burned to the ground. It was decided to move the church and school to a more central location, at Garvey Ave. and the CovingtonLexington Turnpike, now known as Dixie Highway, a dirt path at the time. Having received only $1,000 of insurance money from the burned church, parishioners hauled rock for the foundation of the new church. The parish rented a nearby cottage for a schoolhouse, which opened in 1899, when the Sisters of St. Benedict were invited to take charge of the children’s education. From 1899 through 1988, 147 Benedictine nuns served as teachers in the St. Henry parish. The new church building, opened in 1901, included living space for the sisters and classrooms for the children. Over the next 20 years, additional lots nearby were purchased for a school playground.

In 1929, with the congregation growing and the numbers of children increasing, a two-room frame schoolhouse was built between the church and the rectory. Another two rooms were added in 1933 to accommodate increased enrollment. This building was used until 1967, when it was razed to make room for a new high school. Also in 1933, the pastor and the congregation saw the need for a new church and began making construction plans.

Bishop Francis W. Howard dedicated the new St. Henry Church in May 1936.

A high school was begun with one grade in 1933 and had increased to four by 1936. The first high school graduation (12 students) was held June 8, 1937. In 1949 a building was constructed that included a gymnasium and kindergarten classrooms; at the same time a separate playground was provided for older students. In 1950 St. Henry was the only parish in the Covington Diocese offering K–12 Catholic education. In 1965, its peak year, the school had 1,426 students, 1,099 in grades K–8 and 327 in high school.

The years 1960–1964 saw more improvements, including a school expansion and a new rectory. A new high school was built in 1967; because it was outgrowing its space by 1998, the school was relocated to a larger facility on Donaldson Rd. in Boone Co. The old high school building became a grade school building. In 2004 parishioners financed a major renovation of the church interior.

The hallmark of St. Henry Parish has always been its support for Catholic education, which continues today. The parish supports the grade school annually in the amount of $400,000, keeping tuition as affordable as possible.

By 2005 St. Henry Catholic Church had 1,454 registered parishioners and nearly 450 school children in grades K–8. From 1890 to 2005, the parish

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had witnessed 8,153 baptisms, 2,342 weddings, and 2,225 funerals.

“Saint Henry Church Centennial Celebration, 1890– 1990,” 1990, St. Henry Catholic Church, Elsmere, Ky. Saint Henry Church Golden Jubilee Celebration, 1890– 1940. Elsmere, Ky.: St. Henry Catholic Church, 1940.

St. Henry Parish Records, 2005, St. Henry Catholic Church, Elsmere, Ky.

Larry Klein

ST. HENRY DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL. Th is school, with extensive modern educational facilities and sporting venues and an enrollment of 520, sits on 33 acres of land across from the Marydale Retreat Center on Donaldson Rd., in Boone Co. The school began in 1933 as a one-grade high school. Rev. Edmund Corby took on the task of beginning a high school to serve the children of the St. Henry parish in Elsmere. In each succeeding year, a grade was added, requiring more space, so that by the time the first class of 12 students graduated in 1937, the high school had expanded into the former church building. Despite early struggles, by 1939 the State of Kentucky awarded the St. Henry High School a Class A school rating.

By 1966 enrollment had reached 327 students.

This continuing expansion placed a strain on the older school buildings of the parish. Over the years, the high school operated out of a variety of structures on the St. Henry campus, at one point utilizing four different buildings. A new $700,000 high school building was completed in 1968, featuring 13 classrooms, a library, laboratories, offices, and a cafeteria.

In 1984 St. Henry became a district high school, serving seven parishes: All Saints, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mary Queen of Heaven, St. Barbara, St. Henry, St. Paul, and St. Timothy. At that time a plan was suggested to the Diocese of Covington for a gradual move of the school to a parcel of diocesan land, opposite the entrance to the Marydale Retreat Center in Boone Co. This was considered advisable because Boone Co. had no Catholic high school of its own, and the majority of the parishes served were in that county. However, Bishop William Hughes and his advisers rejected the plan owing to the costs involved.

After a dip in enrollment to 238 students for the 1989–1990 year, enrollment climbed, straining the school building’s resources and requiring creative space management; even the cafeteria was used as a classroom. Coupled to the student body increase were the inadequacies of the sporting venues at the high school. Indeed, to provide adequate seating, many home basketball games were scheduled at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills.

In 1991 a recommendation was made again to move the high school to Boone Co., preferably to the Marydale site. After a brief start and stop because of funding issues, in 1994 a fund drive was begun with the intent of raising $4.5 million to

782 ST. JAMES A.M.E. CHURCH relocate the high school to the Donaldson Rd. site, on land donated by the diocese. Construction on the new campus began in late 1997 and was completed in time for classes to begin in September 1998. The $5.27 million school features a 600-student capacity, a 1,100-seat gymnasium, more than 30 classrooms and laboratories, and onsite athletic facilities.

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

St. Henry District High School Archives, Boone Co., Ky.

Tim Herrmann

ST. JAMES A.M.E. CHURCH. The St. James African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church of Covington began in 1869, only a few years after the Civil War ended. The church was started by Martha Ann Taylor, a devoted local Christian woman, who for years conducted numerous church services, taught weekly Sunday school classes, and orga nized nightly prayer meetings from her home in Covington. With the growth of church membership, Taylor moved the congregation to a newly built school house located in the Austinburg area of Covington. Several years later the congregation moved to a building in Covington on Maryland Ave., near Oliver St., and later to a structure on Ninth St., between Greenup and Prospect Sts. Two subsequent moves took the congregation to downtown Covington (see Covington, Downtown), at the corner of Seventh St. and Madison Ave., and to the Domestic Science Department at the Lincoln Grant School. Finally, in 1922, under the leadership of Rev. J. A. G. Grant, the congregation developed a plan to construct a permanent structure on several acres of land, located in Covington at 120 Lynn St., which the church had purchased in 1918. Under the direction of Grant, donations and pledges were collected from hundreds of local African Americans for the construction of a new church. Grant also gained the support of Bishop A. J. Carey, who appealed to A.M.E. church members throughout Kentucky and Tennessee to invest in this venture. The first phase of the building program, which included a large sanctuary and several meeting rooms, was completed in late 1922.

After the departure of Grant, each subsequent pastor contributed substantially toward guiding the continuous construction at St. James A.M.E. Church. For instance, Rev. S. R. Reid, who served as the church’s pastor for only one year (1925–1926), created a church building fund, which later was used to acquire furniture and a new furnace for the church. By the late 1950s, most of the building was completed with the use of these funds. Today, St. James A.M.E. Church continues to serve the spiritual and community needs of hundreds of African American Northern Kentuckians.

“Diamond Jubilee Celebration and Mortgage Burning of St. James A.M.E. Church—September 10th to 16th, 1945,” Northern Kentucky African American Heritage Task Force Collection, W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Kentucky Univ.

Reis, James. “Black Churches Offered Stability in Troubled Times,” KP, January 20, 1997, 4K. “St. James A.M.E. Church—118th Anniversary 1987—Covington, KY,” Northern Kentucky African American Heritage Task Force Collection, W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Kentucky Univ.

Eric R. Jackson

ST. JAMES CATHOLIC CHURCH. Catholics in Bracken Co. had only intermittent visits from priests during the first half of the 19th century. In the 1840s, priests from St. Mary Parish in Covington visited Catholics in Bracken Co. and at the mission at Maysville in Mason Co. After St. Patrick Catholic Church in Maysville was established with a resident pastor, Rev. John McSweeney began to attend a small station (a congregation without a church) at Milford in southern Bracken Co. Catholics at Brooksville were served occasionally by missionary priests who celebrated Mass in private homes. Some Catholics traveled from Brooksville to Augusta, which since 1860 had its own church attended by Benedictine fathers. Finally in 1866, Rev. Alto Hoermann, O.S.B., of St. Augustine Catholic Church in Augusta, organized the congregation in Brooksville and oversaw construction of a church there. In 1868 a priest of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics), Rev. James McNerney, was appointed as the first pastor. The following year the church was expanded and named for St. James. The parish included a mission church in nearby Minerva in Mason Co., also named St. James.

While Rev. James Redmond was pastor, St. James Parish started a school. Redmond also hoped to build a new church, but the plan was discarded after Rev. Thomas Kehoe took over as his successor. It was not until Rev. Thomas Coleman arrived as pastor that the parish decided to build the new church. Bishop Camillus Maes dedicated it on December 16, 1914. Rev. Edmund Corby initiated a small four-year parish high school. In spite of its small size (in 1956 it was noted for having the smallest enrollment—16 students—of any high school in the county), St. James High School managed to remain open until 1962. The grade school closed in 1968 owing to the low enrollment. A new St. James Catholic Church in Minerva was constructed in 1941, a year after the prior church building burned. The pastors of St. James continued to have Mass in both the parish and mission St. James churches.

Because of the shortage of priests in the Diocese of Covington beginning in the 1990s, new arrangements were made for many parishes. A twoparish, one-priest arrangement was settled upon for St. James in Brooksville and St. Augustine in Augusta. Both retained their status as parishes (rather than the more usual situation of one church being made a mission of the other), but one pastor oversaw the two parishes. St. James in Minerva remained a mission of St. James in Brooksville but without weekly Sunday Mass.

Rev. Daniel Saner served as the fi rst pastor in the two-parish arrangement, with the assistance of Deacon Ernie Hillenmeyer.

“Augusta, Brooksville to Share Pastor,” Messenger, May 8, 1998, 1.

“Bracken County Parish Has Rich 125-Year History,” Messenger, August 6, 1993, 10–11.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. JOHN, VINCENT (b. July 6, 1876, Newport, Ky.; d. June 21, 1929, San Francisco, Calif.). Vincent St. John, a socialist and a labor leader, was the only surviving son of New York native Silas St. John and Irish immigrant Marian “Mary” Cecilia Magee. By 1888 the family had moved to the West, where Silas abandoned his wife and children, forcing 13-year-old Vincent to work to help his mother and sisters survive. When he was 17, he started a career in the mining industry, becoming deeply involved in the labor movement as a member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). In 1900, at age 24, he was elected president of the WFM’s Telluride, Colo., Local 63. A year later he led a successful strike against the Smuggler-Union Mining Company for its recently implemented wage system that reduced miners’ wages to starvation levels. However, before the strike had come to a conclusion, hired strikebreakers shot at union pickets, causing a riot at the mine. St. John was instrumental in quelling the riot. His friends called him “Saint” or “the Saint.” A man of integrity who inspired hundreds to join the union, St. John was persecuted the rest of his life by the mining corporations. He endured several attempts on his life, numerous arrests, and illegal incarcerations in Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.

Because of persecution, St. John quietly went to Idaho and worked under an alias in 1905–1906; he was unable to attend the founding meeting of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Chicago in 1905. He joined the IWW, or “Wobblies” (as the members were later called), for the first convention and soon became an orga nizer. In 1907 he was instrumental in the successful organi zation of Goldfield, Nev.: the entire town was unionized, from the paperboys on up. Nevada industrialists were alarmed at St. John’s ability to attract large numbers of workers to the radical IWW. They threatened to lynch him, vilified him in the press, and publicly suggested that someone should shoot him. In 1907 an assassination attempt resulted in permanent serious damage to his right arm. He recovered and, at the end of that year, was elected general secretary of the IWW, its highest position. The Wobblies, whose motto is “An injury to one is an injury to all,” were steered away from political action during St. John’s tenure (1908–1914). Advocating “direct action” and “industrial democracy,” he led the union during the height of its most successful strikes. The IWW waged campaigns for free speech, living wages, the rights of workers, and the end of child labor.

ST. JOHN LUTHERAN CHURCH

Owing to its antiwar views, the union was targeted by the U.S. Government in 1917. Although St. John had retired in 1915 from the “one Big Union,” as it was called, and was mining in New Mexico, he was arrested during the sweeping government raids on IWW offices across the country. With hundreds of others, he was convicted under the Espionage Act, despite the lack of evidence. Imprisoned at Leavenworth in 1918, he served only a portion of his 10-year sentence but contracted tuberculosis while in prison. In 1923 President Warren G. Harding freed him and many other political prisoners, which included hundreds of Wobblies, Socialists, and military conscientious objectors. Upon his release, St. John attempted mining in the hills of Arizona, yet his health was shattered. In 1928 he moved to California, where his sisters lived. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage June 21, 1929, at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, having spent his last years in relative anonymity. He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, Calif., without a marker; but in 1992 a group of Bay Area labor activists gained permission to place a memorial at “the Saint’s” final resting place. The simple red-granite stone honored his lifelong commitment to the cause of labor.

“Attacks Labor Leaders: Western Federation Officer Calls Mitchell and Gompers Traitors,” NYT, August 4, 1907, C5.

California Death Certificate No. 34491, for the year 1929.

“Inner Circle Man Tells of Arrests,” KP, July 30, 1907, 3.

Martin, MaryJoy. The Corpse on Boomerang Road: Telluride’s War on Labor, 1899–1908. Montrose, Colo.: Western Reflections, 2004.

Reis, Jim. “Union Trailblazer Once Called Newport Home,” KP, September 1, 2003, 3K. St. John, Vincent. The I.W.W.—Its History, Structure, and Methods. Chicago, 1911.

“Vincent St. John: Associate of ‘Big Bill’ Haywood Dies in San Francisco,” NYT, June 24, 1929, 16.

“Vincent St. John, I.W.W. Aide, Dies,” San Francisco Examiner, June 23, 1929, 16.

Patrick M. Flannery and MaryJoy Martin

ST. JOHN CATHOLIC CHURCH. The original Roman Catholic St. John Church was at the corner of Leonard and Worth Sts. in the Lewisburg neighborhood of Covington. The cornerstone for the church, an offspring of the Mother of God parish, was laid on Palm Sunday, April 8, 1854. The solemn dedication took place December 27, 1854, at the feast of St. John the Evangelist.

The establishment of St. John Church predated the founding of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). It was the third Catholic church in Covington, the other two being Mother of God and the St. Mary Cathedral Parish (now the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption). The first pastor of the St. John Catholic Church was Rev. Joseph Gezowsky, who had been an assistant pastor at Mother of God. The first school building, a frame structure, was begun on the site of the church in 1849; the second school building, a brick structure, was built in 1861.

In 1909 Rev. Anthony Goebel became the pastor of St. John Catholic Church. By this time, the school and church on Leonard and Worth Sts. needed repair so badly that they were in jeopardy of being condemned as unsafe. On Labor Day 1913, ground was broken for the new church at the present-day site of the school, in Covington along Pike St. Construction moved quickly, and the new combination church-school, designed by architect J. F. Sheblessey, was dedicated on December 27, 1914, 60 years to the day after the first dedication.

This new church building became the present school building. It contained the church, the rectory, the convent, and a school accommodating 400 students. Mass was celebrated in the auditorium, which seated 600 people.

In 1922 ground was broken for a new church adjacent to the combination church and school.

Designed by Frank Ludewig and Henry Dreisoerner of St. Louis, Mo., it was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1924, and remains in use today. Goebel remained pastor of St. John Catholic Church until his death on January 6, 1954. His nephew, Rev. Henry Hanses, whom he had helped to raise, was named the next pastor of St. John on January 18, 1954. Hanses remained pastor until 1971, when he retired to Carmel Manor, Fort Thomas. Hanses died on January 19, 1982.

In 1945 St. John Catholic Church had more than 2,500 registered parishioners. By 2000 that number had fallen to fewer than 300. The biggest impact on the parish was the building of I-75, which eliminated many nearby homes. Yet the parish has survived. St. John School, which became known as Prince of Peace School in 1986, serves the parishes of St. John, St. Ann, Saints Boniface and James, and Mother of God. Hartman, Ralph C. Fr. Henry Hanses—How Handsome before the Lord: A Brief Diary of a Kentucky Mountain Missioner. Covington, Ky.: Katherine Landwehr, 2000.

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

Schmitz, Raymond A. St. John’s Catholic Church, Covington, Kentucky, 1854–2004: 150 Years. Covington, Ky.: T and W, 2006.

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

Nancy Due Bloemer

ST. JOHN CEMETERY, FORT MITCHELL. The St. John Cemetery is a Roman Catholic Cemetery in Fort Mitchell that was opened by the St. John Catholic Church of Covington in 1867. The St. John Catholic Church, the third Catholic congregation established in Covington, is now located on Pike St. in Covington, although it was first located at the corner of Leonard and Worth Sts. Andreas Michel, the pastor at the church, arranged to purchase a tract of land to the west of the Covington and Lexington Turnpike (Dixie Highway) in early 1867, recognizing the need for a cemetery for the parish. The parish held a consecration cere-

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mony on May 19, 1867, but burials had already begun before that date. An older man, name unknown, was buried sometime that spring, and his grave was marked only by a large wooden cross.

On April 19, 1867, Anna Borgelt was buried. These first two interments were later moved. According to Diocese of Covington records (see Roman Catholics), the church did not take title to the land until 1869. Use of the cemetery began slowly, with few burials before 1870.

During the last several decades of the 19th century, the St. John Catholic Church made improvements and landscaping changes at the cemetery.

For example, William Tappert (1873–1879) oversaw the construction of a permanent road system and significant landscape improvements. The cemetery is designed with winding, narrow lanes and natural landscaping in the rural style. Sometime during this period, A. M. Meyer, pastor of the St. Boniface Church (see Saints Boniface and James Catholic Church) in Ludlow, built a frame chapel dedicated to the “Comforter of the Afflicted” (the Virgin Mary). In the late 19th century, additional changes were made near the entrance to the cemetery.

The ownership of the St. John Cemetery was transferred in the 1960s to the Diocese of Covington Cemetery System. In 1968 the diocese dedicated a new chapel to replace the original frame building. A small mausoleum for aboveground interments has been added since. The cemetery retains its rural landscape character although it is surrounded by residential development today.

“Consecration of a Cemetery,” CE, May 20, 1867, 3.

“Memorial Day Stirs Interest in Civil War,” KP, May 26, 1986, 4K. Reis, Jim. “Cemeteries,” KP, April 21, 1986, 4K. Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Jeannine Kreinbrink

ST. JOHN LUTHERAN CHURCH. Early in the 19th century, many German immigrants came down the Ohio River by flatboat from Pittsburgh, Pa., and a number of them settled along the river near what are now Melbourne and Camp Springs in Campbell Co. To serve their spiritual needs, a Lutheran missionary, Rev. Christian Dingeldey, came to the area in 1860. He began holding church services in a schoolhouse on the John Weidinger farm.

In 1861, Dingledey organized St. John’s Church as a German Evangelical Protestant Church. The congregation built a stone house of worship in 1866, similar to the many other stone buildings that they were constructing at Camp Springs. The land for the church was donated by Peter and Catherine Schreier and was located next to a cemetery that dated back to 1847. After the church was completed, the cemetery became known as the St. John Cemetery. In 1879 the church acquired additional land adjoining its property and built a parsonage and a school that the congregation operated for about 11 years. In 1903 the parsonage was torn

784 ST. JOHN MISSION down and a new frame one built on the site. The stone church was renovated in 1917 by installing new furniture and stained-glass windows. For the first 53 years of its existence, St. John Church’s services were held in German, but in 1914, worship in English was begun. Between 1860 and 1912, the church had 21 pastors, all supplied by the German Evangelical Protestant Church organization.

In 1922 the members of St. John Church decided to leave the German Evangelical fellowship and unite with the Evangelical Lutheran Church; the name subsequently became St. John Lutheran Church. That move permitted them to hire their own pastors and therefore to choose pastors more compatible with their beliefs. The fi rst pastor hired under the new affi liation was Rev. Clemens Schirmer, who remained for eight years.

From 1922 to 1992, the church had six pastors, with Rev. Otto Emmelhainz serving for about 35 of those years. Emmelhainz also spent many years teaching at Campbell Co. High School.

When he died in 1991, he was buried in St. John Cemetery.

Extensive remodeling and repairs were done to the church in 1933. Before the church’s centennial in 1961, further improvements were made to the facilities. The following year, a Sunday school addition was attached to the side of the church.

After serving the needs of the congregation for more than 95 years, the old stone church was torn down in 1962 and was replaced by a beautiful modern brick and glass sanctuary with a seating capacity of 250. Today, the church has many outreach programs, including summer camp, a vacation Bible school, quilting classes, a visitation program for the sick and elderly, and a food pantry. In a recent year, the congregation sent 25,000 pounds of food to the needy in McCreary Co., Ky. The present pastor is Rev. Phillip Garber, who is a 1994 divinity graduate of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. The congregation is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

100th Anniversary, 1861–1961: St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Melbourne, Kentucky. Melbourne, Ky.: St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1961.

Waltmann, Henry G. History of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the Lutheran Church in America. Indianapolis, Ind.: Central, 1971.

ST. JOHN MISSION. Since the 1850s, Roman Catholics have worshipped at St. John Mission, Dividing Ridge, in northwestern Pendleton Co. The mission is located along Ky. Rt. 457 within the Portland community, an area first settled by Irish Catholic immigrants. The present church building was completed in 1882. The congregation is small, and since 1912 it has been a mission of St. William parish in Williamstown. It was in that year that Rev. James J. Taaffee, a popu lar priest who had served at St. John Mission for 18 years, was transferred to Williamstown. After he died, Taaffee was buried in the St. John Mission Cemetery. In recent years, there has been a slow growth in attendance at the mission of St. John.

Meiman, Karen. “Church’s Community Spirit,” KP, August 12, 2000, 6K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Mildred Belew

ST. JOHN’S COMMUNITY CHURCH. This architecturally significant church, built of stone, is located at 1411 St. John’s Ln., formerly the Licking Pk., in Wilder. Founded in about 1876 by 24 German families in the Poole’s Creek area of Campbell Co. near the Licking River, the church was originally known as St. John’s German Protestant Church. The stone church building, dedicated in June 1877, included a room that was originally used for a public school. The church’s first minister was Rev. August Mueller. In about 1925 the congregation became known as St. John’s Evangelical Congregational Church, and in 1957, when the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Church merged to form the United Church of Christ, it adopted the name St. John’s United Church of Christ. During the pastorate of Rev. Edward C. Sinning (1951–1969), an educational building containing six classrooms and an assembly room was added to the rear of the church, as well as a new covered entrance to the front of the church. In May 1975 the church officially terminated its ties with the United Church of Christ and became St. John’s Community Church.

Beginning in 1990, Bonny and George Kees operated a private religious school called Churchill Academy in the educational wing of the building; the academy moved and was renamed in the early 21st century. In 2008 the small congregation was still holding a Sunday worship ser vice.

Reis, Jim. “St. John’s Homecoming: Church Marks 120 Years, Faces Uncertain Future,” KP, September 25, 1995, 4K.

Paul A. Tenkotte

ST. JOHN’S UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST. On April 26, 1847, a group of 31 German families met to organize a church in Newport.

They wanted to worship in their own language and according to their religious traditions, but they did not wish to continue traveling to the Over-theRhine section of Cincinnati to do so. This group organized the First German Protestant Evangelical Church in Newport. On May 20, 1847, they purchased a lot at 139 Rickey St. (now Dayton St.) in Newport from Gen. James Taylor. Taylor donated another parcel to the church. Construction was completed and the new church was dedicated in December 1847. The congregation’s first regular pastor was Fredrich Boettcher, who served from June 1848 until June 1849, when he died of cholera.

On June 7, 1857, the members of the congregation purchased property at Seventh and Mayo (now Columbia) Sts. in Newport and built a church there that they dedicated on January 30, 1859. In 1860 a

pipe organ was installed in the balcony, and in 1861 a Sunday school program was initiated. Children of the congregation learned German at a daily school conducted by the church. At this time, there were no public schools in Newport. In 1863 the church’s school had 200 pupils; it operated until 1873. In 1874 the congregation decided to change its name to First Evangelical Protestant St. John’s Church of Newport, removing German from the name of the church. At the same time they began to hold bilingual (English and German) worship ser vices.

On December 21, 1892, a number of members left the church to form St. Paul’s Evangelical Church (see St. Paul United Church of Christ, Fort Thomas). Around 1924, another group of the congregation departed and formed a church known as St. Mark’s German Lutheran Church. In 1957 the worldwide United Church of Christ was formed in Cleveland, a merger of evangelical and reformed congregations, and St. John’s changed its name.

St. John’s United Church of Christ has had a strong commitment to social issues; for a long time it has supported the Campbell Co. Protestant Orphans Home, which now is located in rural Campbell Co. along Washington Trace Rd. Harold Barkhau was installed as the 21st pastor of St. John’s on April 2, 1933. During his pastorate, the congregation grew from 300 to 1,454 members.

Barkhau was also the chairman of the Committee of 500 (see Newport Reform Groups) during the reform movement that cleaned up vice in Newport during late 1950s and early 1960s. On January 10, 1939, a fire of undetermined origin destroyed the church building. The only item salvaged was one stained-glass window, which was reinstalled in the current church. Having decided to move away from the city’s flood area, the congregation obtained a lot in the eastern part of the city at Park Ave. and Nelson Pl., which was known as the Col. Henry Nelson homestead. Until their new church building was completed, the church met at the Newport High School, on Eighth St., for almost two years. On Sunday, April 21, 1940, the new structure was dedicated. Ten years later, a Christian education building was added. William Schraer was elected to serve as a full-time director of Christian Education, and he faithfully served in that capacity for 33 years.

“90th Anniversary Celebration of Evangelical Church Planned as Tribute to Pioneer Germans,” KP, April 23, 1937, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Church Owes Much to Rev. Barkau,” KP, April 7, 1997, 4K. ———. “Through Fire, Name Changes, St. John’s Survived,” KP, April 7, 1997, 4K. Souvenir of Ninetieth Anniversary Celebration, 1847– 1937: St. John’s Evangelical Protestant Church (Congregational), Newport, Kentucky. Newport, Ky.: H. Otto, 1937.

Donald E. Grosenbach

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST CATHOLIC CHURCH. The St. John the Baptist Catholic Church had an early beginning as one of several

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST CATHOLIC CHURCH

churches created to serve the needs of German Catholics in rural Campbell Co. The German Catholic settlers of the John’s Hill vicinity sought to have a priest in their community. In 1847 they built a small log church at the top of John’s Hill (a small, gated St. John’s Cemetery still remains) that was then attended as a station by the priests of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport.

Rev. John Voll celebrated Mass there every fourth Sunday of the month. The log church burned down in 1857 after being struck by lightning, so the congregation began to plan for a new church. The Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) offered land next to St. Joseph Cemetery on John’s Hill Rd. in Wilder. The modest stone two-story structure was completed the following year and dedicated under the patronage of St. John the Baptist by bishop of Covington George A. Carrell on November 25, 1858. The first floor was used as a school and the second as the church.

The rather remote location of the new site allowed St. John Parish to avoid being swallowed up by the development in southern Campbell Co. during the latter 20th century. But the parish did grow. The first resident pastor, Rev. Anthony Athmann, arrived in 1877. In 1891 the church was forced to revert briefly to its former mission status, again attached to the Corpus Christi Catholic Church, owing apparently to a shortage of priests.

St. John the Baptist Catholic Church had Mass only twice a month during this mission period. A new pastor for the church was appointed in 1894.

The education of children in the parish was at first provided by the parish itself, but in 1909 the Sisters of Notre Dame were engaged to teach in the parish school, which remained in the 1858 building until the mid-1960s. At that time the parish bought a bar and dancehall near the church property and converted it into a school. In 1980 the school was closed because there were too few students in attendance. Afterward, the school was used as a home for four young women of the Children of God community who provided music for St. John’s Sunday liturgies.

The 1858 St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on John’s Hill Rd. remains to this day the oldest church building standing in the Diocese of Covington. The rectory next to it was built in 1907. The church building survived in part because the Great Depression scuttled plans to build a new one. Today, the church retains the atmosphere of a rural church, even though it is encircled by a rapidly expanding suburban area that is just barely out of view behind woods and hills.

125th Anniversary of Dedication of the Present Church Building, 1983. Wilder, Ky.: St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 1983.

Reis, Jim. “Rural Church Untouched by Nearby City,” KP, November 22, 1982, 4K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

St. John Centennial booklet, 1858–1958, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, Wilder, Ky. Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern,

Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST ANGLICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. Established during the early 1870s by Episcopalians living in Bellevue and Dayton, Ky., this church has, since 1978, served as the parish church of Anglican Catholics from southwestern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, as well as Northern Kentucky. The church was founded as a mission of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport. After being granted full parish status by the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington in 1873, its members built two churches. One of them, consecrated in 1899, was erected at Eighth and O’Fallon Aves. Because this location is the dividing line between Bellevue and Dayton, and since the growing congregation was composed of residents of both communities, the church became known as St. John Episcopal Church, Bellevue-Dayton. A parish hall was added to the original building in 1924, and the church’s first rectory, on nearby Ward Ave. in Bellevue, was purchased during the 1940s.

During the 1950s, Rev. Eugene Lefebvre introduced an Anglo-Catholic influence that has been a hallmark of the church ever since. Among the traditional, or high-church, practices that were adopted were the celebration of the Holy Eucharist every Sunday, the creation of a Tabernacle on the main altar, and the use of holy water fonts.

Like many inner-city churches, this church was confronted by the challenge of suburbanization in the post–World War II years, as longtime members moved to new communities in Campbell and Kenton counties. Despite the distances involved, many of these families continued to attend the St. John church, especially during the rectorship of Rev. John Philip Storck, from 1963 to 1976.

The church maintained a thriving Sunday school, directed by Wesley Branch, a teenage youth group, and an adult fellowship organization called Manawi.

A critical phase in the church’s history began with the tenure of Rev. James Bjorkman, who was the rector from 1976 until 1982. During this period, the national Episcopal Church underwent dramatic changes that, in the view of church traditionalists, constituted a fundamental departure from the Anglican Communion’s Catholic heritage. In the mid-1970s a crisis in the Episcopal Church erupted over two issues: the ordination of women to the priesthood and a radical revision of the Book of Common Prayer. In a nearly unanimous vote held early in 1978, the St. John church’s congregation severed its ties with the Episcopal Church and was officially received into the Anglican Catholic Church. There ensued a 10-year court battle with the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington for control of the parish’s property and assets. Although this upheaval led to the departure of a few members, most of the local church’s parishioners remained. In the midst of this situation, Rev. William Neuroth was named rector in June 1983. A

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Northern Kentucky native, he had been previously ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Covington.

The church’s protracted court battle with the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington was finally settled in October 1988, when the Supreme Court of Kentucky unanimously decided to grant all properties and assets to the present members of the church.

Following that victory, the church undertook a series of projects that had been delayed, pending the court’s decision. A complete renovation and creation of four Sunday school rooms took place in the parish hall in 1990; a new front porch and handicap ramp were constructed later in the decade; and a state-of-the-art electronic organ was purchased in 1996. The following year, the church purchased and demolished the structure on the adjoining property and created a church garden, where members of the community as well as members of the church may find a place for reflection.

In the early 21st century, the congregation at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Catholic Church was thriving with approximately 125 members. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the 1940 Hymnal continue to guide the church in its worship, and it is a leading parish in the Anglican Catholic Diocese of the Midwest. Its members also are involved in a variety of activities that benefit the wider community, including a Thanksgiving and Christmas meals program for low-income families in Dayton and the making of handcrafted quilts for drug-addicted infants born at St. Luke Hospital in Fort Thomas and Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati.

Reis, Jim. “ ‘Spirited’ and ‘Spiritual’ Defi ne St. John’s in Dayton,” KP, May 25, 1998, 4K.

William C. Neuroth

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST CATHOLIC CHURCH. Before the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) was established in 1853, the town of Carrollton, on the Ohio River, was part of the Diocese of Louisville. Catholics in Carrollton asked the diocese to provide the ser vices of a priest.

In 1850 Franciscan Rev. Leander Streber came from Louisville to offer Mass once a month in the home of Catholic layman Henry Grobmeyer.

Streber helped the people prepare to build a church.

Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville presided at the laying of the cornerstone for the new church in Carrollton on July 30, 1853, the day after the creation of the new Diocese of Covington was decreed in Rome. Carroll Co., where Carrollton is located, was the western limit of the diocese. When the church was finished, it was dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. Bishop George A. Carrell, Covington’s first bishop, appointed Rev. Charles Schaff roth as St. John’s first pastor in 1855. Because Schaff roth celebrated Mass only once a month, the bishop approved a layman, Anthony Rudolphy, to read the Gospel in German for the mostly German congregation and to lead the saying of the Rosary on the other Sundays.

The Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg, Ind., arrived in 1863 to staff the small brick parish

786 ST. JOHN UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST school. When these sisters were recalled by their congregation, Bishop Augustus M. Toebbe replaced them with Sisters of Notre Dame who had left Germany during the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf of the 1870s.

The parish grew significantly during its first half century. By the early 20th century, the congregation planned to build a large red-brick Gothicstyle church, designed by Leon Coquard, who also was the architect of Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption. The parish trustees promptly began to raise funds, and the cornerstone was laid on October 5, 1902, while Rev. Ignatius Ahmann was pastor. He continued construction of the church, as funds were made available, until the exterior was complete in 1907. But construction had to be suspended at that point until more funding could be secured. The parishioners and pastors did all they could to reduce expenses for the parish as work resumed at a slow pace. Bishop Ferdinand Brossart dedicated the new St. John Church on June 25, 1916.

By the late 1950s, the old school had deteriorated and a new one was clearly needed. Bishop William Mulloy wanted Pastor John T. Walsh to build a large enough school to accommodate future growth, and a $100,000 school and convent were built. However, by the late 1960s school enrollment was dropping as young adults were leaving the community for urban areas. This factor, coupled with a decreased number of sisters available to teach in Catholic schools, prompted the closing of St. John School in 1973.

Ahmann, Ignatius Mary. Forget-Me-Nots of Past and Present. Carrollton, Ky.: Ignatius Ahmann 1902.

Bishop William Mulloy to Fr. John Walsh, September 14, 1957, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky. Grant, Frederick Stanhope. “Golden Jubilee Celebration of St. John,” CC, September 28, 1902, 21.

“Pastor Plans New Buildings at Carrollton,” Messenger, January 18, 1959, 16A. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. JOHN UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST. On September 12, 1887, a small group of local residents held a meeting in a tailor shop at 77 Ross Ave. to organize what became the St. John Evangelical Protestant Church of Bellevue. The group began holding German-language ser vices in a rented room at the Balke Opera House at Fairfield and Berry Aves. Early in 1888, representatives of the church met with members of the St. Paul Evangelical Church in Dayton, Ky., at which time it was decided to hire one pastor to serve both congregations. The churches selected a man named Gerber to serve in that capacity. Several months later, the Bellevue church purchased two lots on Foote Ave.,

where the congregation planned to build their first house of worship. Construction began in 1890, and the building was completed and dedicated on February 8, 1891. During the next 30 years, 11 different pastors served the congregation. St. John purchased a parsonage at 234 Foote Ave. in 1915. The church had grown to a membership of 327 by 1921.

Property was acquired on the southwest corner of Fairfield and Ward Aves. in 1932, where a new, larger church was built at a cost of $63,500. In 1934 the Evangelical Synod of North America and the Reformed Church of the United States merged, so the church name was changed to the Evangelical and Reformed Church of Bellevue. It retained that name until 1957, when the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church merged, resulting in yet another name change, this time to the St. John United Church of Christ of Bellevue.

Until mid-1964 the church thrived. It held two Sunday morning ser vices and had a vibrant music program, a Women’s Guild, a Quilting Group, adult and youth fellowship meetings, and a women’s evening circle. The church also sponsored several bowling teams. However, about that time, church membership began to decline, as the “flight to the suburbs” began. In 1964 the church started holding a Lenten Quiet Hour and, shortly thereafter, an annual Easter Breakfast, both of which became quite popular. In 1997 Pastor Eriksen began a computer training class called “GHN—Geeks, Helping Nerds,” where interested individuals could learn to operate a computer. When Eriksen resigned as pastor in 1999, a party was given in his honor on Super Bowl Sunday, which later developed into an annual event known as the Souper Bowl. Funds raised at that affair were used to help support local soup kitchens.

St. John also formed a partnership with the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in helping to collect grocery items for the Bellevue Food Pantry. Rev. Keith Haithcock, from Dayton, Ohio, became the interim pastor of St. John United Church of Christ in 1999 and was installed as its 18th permanent pastor on February 25, 2001. Under his leadership, the church encouraged diversity in the congregation and opened its doors to a broader spectrum of society. Haithcock continues as pastor of the church.

“Church of the Week,” KP, July 29, 2004, 8K. St. John United Church of Christ. “History.” www .stjohnchurch.net (accessed June 6, 2007).

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, CAMP SPRINGS. The early 1840s witnessed the first influx of German Roman Catholic settlers into a region of Campbell Co. known as Four Mile Creek (later called Camp Springs), about 12 miles south of Newport. The settlers’ closest Catholic church was Holy Trinity Church, across the Ohio River in Cincinnati; attending there involved making a difficult journey mostly on foot or by horse. Priests from Holy Trinity Church occasionally visited the small community at Four Mile Creek. By 1844, Rev. Charles Boeswald, stationed first in Coving-

ton and later in Newport, was ministering to the community. At the instigation of Boeswald, the Camp Springs community began to plan for a church, and in 1846 they built a small log church in Camp Springs dedicated to St. Joseph. At first, St. Joseph Catholic Church was a mission of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport, visited monthly or semimonthly by priests of that parish.

In 1851 members of the community petitioned Bishop Martin John Spalding of the Diocese of Louisville, of which most of Northern Kentucky was then a part, to provide the St. Joseph Church with a resident pastor. The bishop appointed Rev. John Voll, who soon started a small parish school in another log cabin built for that purpose. But in 1853, Voll was transferred to Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and St. Joseph Catholic Church reverted to mission status.

The Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) was established in 1853. By then, the congregation at St. Joseph Catholic Church had grown from a few parishioners to 65 families. In 1855 Covington’s fi rst bishop, George A. Carrell, deemed St. Joseph Parish to be ready for a resident pastor again, and he appointed Rev. Andrew Schweiger. By the end of the 1850s, St. Joseph Parish was serving an extensive area of Campbell Co. St. Joseph proved to be the mother parish of many other Campbell Co. parishes, most of which became larger than it. In 1863 Pastor Lawrence Spitzelberger determined that a larger church building was warranted. The task of building it was left to his successor, Rev. Eberhard Schulte, who oversaw the completion of a Roman-style structure and its dedication by Bishop Carrell on June 15, 1865. A new school was added in 1868 and an addition to the church in 1888. In 1890 the Sisters of Divine Providence, who had just arrived in the diocese the year before, took charge of the school. Rev. Joseph Haustermann faced strong opposition from parishioners in the 1890s when he wanted to move the church to a new location; instead, a separate parish, St. Philip, in Melbourne, was split off in 1910. Rev. Charles Woeste became the St. Joseph Church pastor in 1909.

During his tenure, the church acquired three large oil paintings by artist Leon Lippert, which remain in the sanctuary of the church.

In the 21st century, St. Joseph continues as a parish, one of the oldest in the Diocese of Covington, though it no longer has a resident priest as pastor. The parish continues to operate its school, though the Sisters of Divine Providence left in 1978.

The school is the longest-operating Catholic school in the Diocese of Covington.

Bach, Jean. “Through 150 years, Some Th ings about St. Joseph, Camp Springs, Haven’t Changed,” Messenger, July 7, 1995, 12–13.

Doyle, Patrick A. “Catholicism in Campbell County,” Messenger, December 16, 1973, 12A (Our Sunday Visitor supplement).

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

Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern,

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, WARSAW Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, COLD SPRING. The St. Joseph Orphanage (currently the site of the Disabled American Veterans; see Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home), was founded in 1869 on Alexandria Pike and predates the Catholic parish established in Cold Spring in Campbell Co., by one year; it seems likely that the parish itself developed out of the orphanage. On land adjacent to the orphanage, a small frame church was built in 1870 and dedicated by Covington bishop Augustus M. Toebbe. The parish soon started a school, which was staffed by the Brothers of Mary from Dayton, Ohio. The Sisters of Notre Dame replaced the brothers in 1877. By the 1880s, St. Joseph Parish was ready to build a more substantial church. Rev. Herman Kramer, appointed pastor in 1881, oversaw the construction of a brick church; a site near the church provided clay for the bricks, which were baked in a kiln on the church premises. Toebbe came to dedicate the new church on October 8, 1881.

The St. Joseph Parish built new schools as it outgrew its previous ones. The original frame school building was replaced in 1892 with a two-story one.

This school served the needs of the parish’s children until a more modern brick building was constructed in 1929 on land purchased a quarter mile south of the church itself, not far from St. Joseph Orphanage. After World War II, a new subdivision called Vets Village was created to offer housing to returning veterans. This signaled the beginning of an era of uninterrupted growth for Cold Spring, with a corresponding need for more classroom space for the increasing number of Catholic children. Under Pastor Lawrence Leinhauser, the parish built a new, larger school near the spot where the 1929 school stood. Bishop William T. Mulloy dedicated this structure on May 14, 1951. Before long, extra classrooms had to be added.

The same demographic exigencies that demanded more classroom space also figured into Leinhauser’s decision to build a new church. He wanted to build the church on the same location as the school so that children would not need to hike down busy U.S. 27 to go from school to the church.

Mulloy approved a new contemporary church, which was not completed until after his death in 1959. Bishop Richard H. Ackerman dedicated the new St. Joseph Catholic Church on April 9, 1961. A new parish hall was built at the back of the church in the early 1980s. St. Joseph continues to grow along with suburban development, so that at the beginning of the 21st century, it is one of the largest parishes in the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics).

Dedication Booklet of St. Joseph Church, April 9, 1961. Cold Spring, Ky.: St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1961.

Dedication Booklet of St. Joseph School, May 14, 1951. Cold Spring, Ky.: St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1951.

Rev. Lawrence Leinhauser to Bishop William T. Mulloy, December 29, 1957, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

“Vision Crowd Small but Fervent,” KP, August 31, 1992, 1K–2K.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, COVINGTON. The parish of St. Joseph in Covington was established in 1853, the same year the Diocese of Covington was founded (see Roman Catholics). The southeastern section of Covington was largely German, and the 80 families who showed interest in the church were all recent immigrants who had moved into an area of Covington known as Helentown. In 1854 ground was broken for a new church at the northwest corner of 12th and Greenup Sts., designed by Anthony Piket and Son (see Louis Piket). Construction was halted, however, for lack of funds. Eventually a much smaller combination church and school were dedicated. In 1855 Bishop George Carrell was so short of German-speaking priests that he was unable to supply the parish with a full-time pastor. He approached the Very Reverend Boniface Wimmer, abbot of St. Vincent Monastery, in Latrobe, Pa., to take charge of the new St. Joseph parish, and the Benedictine order agreed to staff the congregation.

The Romanesque St. Joseph Church building, surmounted by a 128-foot tower, was blessed by Bishop Carrell in 1859. The church’s massive reredos altars, dedicated in 1865, were the work of the Covington Altar Stock Building Company, and murals in the church were painted by Johann Schmitt. Benedictine Sisters from Erie, Pa., were invited to take over the parish grade school. Men lay teachers were hired to teach the older boys. A three-story building was constructed on 12th St. for use as a boys’ school.

The parish council decided to invest in some moneymaking ventures, with mixed results. The real estate investments turned out to be a mistake, and the subsequent financial panic of 1880 saddled the church with a heavy debt. The pastor at the time, Aegidius Christoph, managed to save the parish by tight budgeting. He replaced the lay teachers with the Brothers of Mary, a Catholic religious order from Dayton, Ohio. In 1915 a devastating tornado struck the church and dropped the church tower into the middle of Greenup St. It was rebuilt with the design of Samuel Hannaford and Sons, with a giant clock added, by Christmas Day 1915.

The parish purchased lots along Scott St. from 12th St. to Bush St. for construction of a new school, which opened in September 1927. The church was renovated in 1952, and its new Permastone outside coating gave it a distinguished appearance. But by then the number of families in the parish had dropped to 325. The membership continued to decline during the next decade, and by the mid-1960s the parish was merged with the St. Benedict Catholic Church. The newly

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decorated St. Joseph Church was demolished in 1970.

“Growth of Covington,” CJ, September 10, 1959, 2.

Reis, Jim. “Saint Joseph Church,” KP, December 11, 1995, 4K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Joseph F. Gastright

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, CRESCENT SPRINGS. One of the largest suburban Roman Catholic churches in Northern Kentucky, St. Joseph was established in 1916 in Crescent Springs, then a “railroad” suburb along the Cincinnati Southern. After World War II, the parish grew substantially, especially following the opening of I-75 in 1963, bringing new suburban development to Crescent Springs, as well as to the neighboring suburb of Villa Hills (incorporated in 1962). Architect Charles Hildreth designed a new brick school, completed in 1952, for the parish and also a contemporary church and rectory, dedicated in 1962. Growing school enrollment led the congregation to remodel parts of the old church and school for its elementary classes, to construct a second floor for the new school building in 1976, to build a 10-classroom addition to the school in 1986, and to add 10,000 square feet to the school and 4,000 square feet to the church in 1995.

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

Paul A. Tenkotte

ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CHURCH, WARSAW. In the early 19th century, Catholics in Warsaw in Gallatin Co. could attend the infrequent masses offered in private homes by priests from St. Francis Mission in White Sulphur, the oldest church (1794) in what later became the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics), or from St. Mary Cathedral Parish in Covington (see Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption). Not long after the establishment of the Covington diocese in 1853, Bishop George A. Carrell started the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Carrollton, down the Ohio River from Warsaw, and Warsaw became one of its stations (a station was a congregation without a church or a pastor). Although ser vices in Warsaw became more frequent, local Catholics still wanted their own church. In 1868 they built a small brick church that they dedicated to St. Joseph. It became a mission of St. John the Evangelist Church in Carrollton at that time, though later it was transferred to the care of the St. Patrick Parish, which was created in Verona in 1878.

The population of Warsaw grew slowly in the post–Civil War 19th century. Yet by the turn of

788 ST. LUKE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH the century, the parish priests in the surrounding areas supported St. Joseph Church’s claim that Warsaw should have parish status. The Catholics in Warsaw took the optimistic step of purchasing a house near the church in the hope that it would serve as a rectory. Rev. Edward Donnelly, pastor of St. Patrick Church, asked Bishop Camillus P. Maes to make St. Joseph Church a parish and St. Patrick Church its mission, reversing their current status. On March 11, 1904, Maes appointed Donnelly as the fi rst resident pastor of St. Joseph Church. The church underwent some remodeling in the 1920s during the pastorate of Hubert Schmitz, especially after the structure was damaged in a fi re. Because of its relatively small population, the parish at Warsaw did not build a school.

In 1962 St. Edward Mission was created in Owenton and attached to St. Joseph Parish. The parish population in Warsaw and Gallatin Co. grew during the 1980s and 1990s. Because of recreational amenities for boating and fishing in the region, St. Joseph Church experienced fairly large gatherings for Sunday masses that strained its seating capacity. It was time for a new church, and Pastor George Schumacher started a fund drive in 2000. The plan utilized part of the old structure, including a bell tower built in 1920. Bishop Roger J. Foys dedicated the new structure on November 10, 2002.

Ruschman, Albert. The Church in the Smallest County: History of Gallatin County and the Catholic Church, Warsaw, Ky.: Self-published, 1967.

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

“St. Joseph, Warsaw—Celebrating New Church Symbolizing New Growth,” Messenger, November 15, 2002, 11.

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

“Towering above Warsaw,” Messenger, February 15, 2002, 3.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. LUKE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH. Several Northern Kentucky Lutheran churches sent members to canvass the Cold Spring area in November 1950, in anticipation of starting a new Lutheran work in central Campbell Co. Because of that outreach, some of the persons contacted began holding ser vices in the Cold Spring School gymnasium. St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church was officially organized as a United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) Synod congregation on November 8, 1953, with 63 adults and 36 children listed as charter members. The organizational meeting was officiated by synod president Dr. Gerard D. Busch and Dr. A. M. Knudsen of the Board of American Missions. During that early period, Rev. George Derrick, Rev. Charles Masheck, and Rev. Day B. Werts assisted in directing the activities of the new congregation. The church also received some financial program support from the synod in its early years. St. Luke continued to hold

ser vices in the Cold Spring School gymnasium for about 10 years.

The fi rst pastor was Rev. Frank L. Barcus, who stayed for two years. During his tenure a parsonage was purchased at 24 Terrace Ave., in nearby Crestview. The second pastor was Rev. Bernard W. Crocker, who served for about 15 months.

During his term, the church purchased 1.33 acres of land at 3917 Alexandria Pk. (U.S. 27), on which they planned to build their fi rst house of worship.

After Crocker resigned, St. Luke was without a regular pastor for about a year. At such times, a succession of seminary students often fi lled the pulpit. The next pastor was Rev. John W. Kerrick, who led the congregation for about seven years.

During his tenure, the church purchased an additional .66 acre of land adjoining their property.

He also instituted a building program and had plans drawn for the proposed church. Ground was broken for the new edifice on May 15, 1960, and it was completed and dedicated on February 12, 1961. The facility had a sanctuary with a seating capacity of 130, a kitchen, an office, and several meeting rooms and was built at a cost of $96,500.

St. Luke joined the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the Lutheran Church of America in 1963 and soon became a self-supporting congregation. Membership as of December 31, 1970, was 192 baptized, 119 confirmed, and 115 communing.

In 1996 the church purchased a 12-acre tract on U.S. 27, about a mile and a half south of their building, at a cost of $167,000, and opened a new, larger edifice on that site in 2008. The present pastor is Rev. Anne R. Benson, who is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Trinity Lutheran Seminary. The congregation is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

“Church Anniversary,” KP, November 8, 2003, B6.

“Churches Welcome Pastors,” KP, June 24, 1995, 9K. Waltmann, Henry G., ed. History of the IndianaKentucky Synod. Indianapolis, Ind.: Central, 1971.

ST. LUKE HOSPITALS INC. The St. Luke Hospital of Campbell Co., at 85 N. Grand Ave. in Fort Thomas, began with a $1 million bond issue passed by the citizens of the county on November 2, 1948.

Under the leadership of board chairman Daniel D. Schwartz, board member Dr. Ervin G. Heiselman, and hospital administrator R. Arthur Carvolth, the building was dedicated on a warm Sunday afternoon in July 1954. The new structure, built on a portion of the former Gaddis family’s estate, had 128 beds on three floors and featured state-of-theart equipment, including oxygen piped into each room. When additional space was needed, citizens again passed a bond issue, so that in 1963 two more floors were added to the structure and the number of hospital beds was increased to 201. The location, on the boundary line between Newport and Fort Thomas, was a compromise between what were the two most populated cities in the county; the present site of the Newport Shopping Center had been previously considered as a site for the hospital.

John Hoyle became assistant administrator in 1968. Hoyle later replaced Carvolth and served as the hospital’s administrator until he retired in 1997. A well-conceived and practiced disaster plan was already in place at St. Luke Hospital when the nearby Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate caught fire on May 28, 1977. The hospital and its staff went into action immediately, working around the clock to treat the 75 injured persons admitted to the hospital. Off-duty personnel responded to aid families of the injured and to help at the temporary morgue set up in the Fort Thomas armory gymnasium. The situation received worldwide attention, and the hospital was praised for its efficient response.

In 1980 the Pendleton Co. Hospital (28 beds) at 512 Maple Ave., in Falmouth was purchased by St. Luke Hospital, which, with this transaction, became St. Luke Hospitals. The Falmouth facility was converted into an inpatient alcohol and drug treatment center. St. Luke Hospitals next purchased the Booth Memorial Hospital (177 beds) at 7380 Turfway Rd. in Florence, Ky., from the Salvation Army in 1989. The purchase price of $23.9 million was financed through the sale of revenue bonds.

The newly acquired hospital was named St. Luke Hospital West, making it part of St. Luke Hospitals Inc., under one management. Over the years, St. Luke Hospitals Inc. has continued to add other facilities: the Pediatrics Center, at 103 Landmark Dr. in Bellevue; the Sports Health and Wellness Center, at 5874 Veterans Way in Burlington; a hospital laundry; an ambulance ser vice; three other medical facilities; and a partnership in three MRI centers. In 1995 St. Luke Hospitals Inc. became part of the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, which also includes the Christ Hospital, the University Hospital, the Jewish Hospital, the Fort Hamilton Hospital, and Alliance Primary Care.

The St. Luke Community Foundation, a nonprofit support organization, began with a resolution from the Hospital Board of Directors in December 1983. The first meeting of the St. Luke Community Board of Directors was held in February 1984. The foundation raises funds to help provide equipment and supplies for many hospital departments so that St. Luke Hospitals Inc. will remain on the cutting edge of technology and to serve Northern Kentucky communities with information for healthy living. Caring and concerned individuals and businesses support these efforts through donations, sponsorships, and special events.

Both the St. Luke East Hospital in Fort Thomas and St. Luke West in Florence have introduced a number of medical firsts. In 1958 Northern Kentucky’s first Regional Poison Information Center was opened by the St. Luke system and the first myocardial pacemaker was implanted. Fiber-optic instrument use in surgery, the single-channel blood analyzer, and the Coronary Care Unit were in place in St. Luke hospitals by 1970. St. Luke hospitals also introduced the region’s first birthing suites, along with Kid Kare, a sick-child day care ser vice; started the formal outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation Program–Phase II and the Children’s Advo-

ST. MARY CEMETERY

cacy Center; added the YAG Laser to the Argon and Cot Laser; and opened a joint-venture MRI technology site. Elderlife, the hospital system’s senior membership program, was introduced with the advent of the Gerontology Unit and a Sleep Disorders Clinic in 1988. St. Luke hospitals sponsored a Disaster Medical Ser vice Team for the U.S. Public Health Ser vice in 1989 and now have a specially equipped Medvan on call for use in disasters.

Moreover, the area’s first Souter Strathcycle Elbow Replacement was introduced in 1990 by a St. Luke hospital. In 1991 the hospital system’s first Hyperbaric Oxygen Center was opened and the first Diabetes Center was accredited. OccNet, the corporation’s first hospital-based Industrial and Corporate Health Ser vice, was opened in 1994. Pediatric Urgent Care for treatment after doctors’ hours began in 1997. The tri-state area’s first hospital-based Medical House Call program for seniors began in 2002. In 2003 St. Luke Hospitals Inc. began a procedure with Patients First Physicians Group to use the M2A Capsule Endoscope for certain small intestinal disorders. In 2004 its west facility opened the Vascular Institute of Northern Kentucky, the Outpatient Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program, and the Tristate Surgical Weight Loss Center.

The full spectrum of hospital care now available for women throughout the region at St. Luke hospitals includes the Center for Breast Health, Birthing Centers, the Perinatal Center, the Center for Diabetes and High-Risk Pregnancy, the Center for Reproductive Health, the Physicians for Women OB/Gyn care, and the nationally recognized Women’s Heart Advantage program. Because 90 percent of the women in Northern Kentucky are at risk for a heart attack, this vital program at St. Luke hospitals offers education, screenings, and prevention opportunities.

In 2004 the St. Luke Hospitals Inc. had 515 licensed beds, 659 physicians treating 275,000 patients annually, and more than 1,100 full-time staff members as it celebrated 50 years of quality medical care. The emergency rooms of St. Luke Hospital East, which is close to I-471 and I-275, and St. Luke Hospital West, near I-71–I-75, treat some 70,000 patients annually. Among the specialized departments administered by St. Luke Hospitals Inc. are the Anticoagulation Clinic, the Burlington Pharmacy Health Care, the Cardinal Hill Long Term Acute Care Facility, the Health Ministries, the Hospital-Based House Call Program, the Mental Health Program, the Midwife Program, the Northern Kentucky Cancer Treatment Center, the Nutrimed Weight Loss Center, Orthopedic Programs, Radiology Treatment, Reproductive Health Treatment, the Skilled Nursing Center, the Adolescent OB/Gyn Center, and the Wound Treatment Center. As of 2008, St. Luke Hospitals was negotiating a withdrawal from the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati and a merger with St. Elizabeth Medical Center.

“Booth Price—$23.9 Million,” KP, June 14, 1989, 1K. “Hospital ‘Defend in Place’ Disaster Strategy SelfContained,” SC, October 23, 2005, 2A.

Kingsbury, Gilbert, Sr. “Booth Hospital—From War Camp to Hospital,” Boone County Recorder, June 7, 1979, 18.

“St. Luke Celebrating 50th Anniversary,” KP, May 27, 2004, 5K. The St. Luke Hospitals: The History, 1954–2004, Celebrating 50 Years of Serving Northern Kentucky. Fort Thomas, Ky.: St. Luke Hospitals, 2004.

“St. Luke—The Hospital Is Where It Is Today Because So Many People Helped,” KP, October 21, 1985, 4K. “St. Luke Tower Is Complete,” KP, July 6, 1984, 1K.

Betty Maddox Daniels

ST. MARK LUTHERAN CHURCH. In 1894, 28 people who had been members of St. John’s United Church of Christ in Newport relocated to a building at Seventh and Orchard Sts. and adopted the name Independent Martini Evangelical Protestant Church. When the Vesper Printing Company purchased the property where the church was located, the congregation moved temporarily to Seventh and York Sts. on property owned by Charles Wiedemann, president of the George Wiedemann Brewing Company. Later, the members purchased property at Eighth and Monroe Sts. in Newport, where the church now stands. On October 20, 1897, the St. Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church of Newport was officially orga nized.

Architect John Banderman was hired to design and oversee construction of a Victorian Gothic edifice at a cost of $15,000. It was built 30 feet by 60 feet, two stories high, with an attic. The south tower has a pyramidal roof, an east tower has a conical roof, and the southeast bell tower is over a double-door main entrance with a stainedglass transom. Because of economic hardships experienced by the church, no bell was ever purchased for the tower. The original sanctuary had curved pews with two aisles, and a manually powered pump organ.

Falling into unmanageable debt, the church sought help as a Lutheran congregation and was admitted to the Miami Synod of the General Synod in 1898. Rev. Frank C. Longaker was the first called pastor. By 1905, there were 189 communicant members and the church was selfsupporting. Rev. H. W. Hanshue succeeded Longaker at that time. In 1907, 12 women of the congregation founded the Women’s Missionary Society. Pastor Lewis J. Motschman served for seven years beginning in 1912 and helped the church reduce its debt despite the disruption of World War I. Rev. Cornelius J. Kiefer assumed pastoral duties in 1919 and served until his death in 1927. During his tenure the church eliminated its original debt, built a parsonage at 730 Park Ave. for $8,500, and also completed renovations for $25,000; the construction projects were dedicated on May 27, 1927.

Rev. David M. Funk guided St. Mark’s during the Great Depression and the early months of World War II, until 1942. In 1934, Funk was elected as the first secretary of the newly formed Kentucky-Tennessee Synod, while also conducting

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an aggressive evangelism program, which brought many new members to St. Mark’s. From late 1942 until early 1963, there was a succession of six pastors, including Rev. Day B. Werts, a former military chaplain, who served for six years. For many years during the 1950s and 1960s, St. Mark’s Church was home to a very popu lar weekly teenage dance, or “canteen.” In 1963 St. Mark’s was assigned to the new Indiana-Kentucky Synod and became involved in the Board of American Missions urban church program in 1969.

As many members moved to the suburbs in the 1960s and after, attendance fell. To help solve this problem, St. Mark and Trinity Lutheran in Bellevue merged their congregations in 1978 and changed their name to 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, 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 St. Mark Church, and the Bellevue church continued using the new name, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church.

In 1981 the Commonwealth of Kentucky designated the St. Mark Church building a historic landmark. St. Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1997.

St. Mark Lutheran Church Records, Newport, Ky. Waltmann, Henry G., ed. History of the IndianaKentucky Synod. Indianapolis, Ind.: Central, 1971.

Melinda G. Motley

ST. MARY CEMETERY. St. Mary Parish in Covington, established in 1837 as an Englishspeaking parish, later became the cathedral parish of the Diocese of Covington. In 1850 the parish bought 10 acres of land outside the city limits for a cemetery. St. Mary Cemetery was originally located near what is now the Behringer- Crawford Museum in Devou Park. Because of the poor roads accessing the cemetery and the inability of poorer parishioners to purchase plots, few persons were interred in the cemetery; the last burial took place in 1864. Bishop Camillus P. Maes sold this cemetery to the Devou family in 1900 and moved the graves to the newer St. Mary Cemetery. In addition to the 10 acres in what became Devou Park, the diocese in 1857 fi led a plat for a new cemetery of 168 lots, called “St. Mary’s Burying Ground” and located on Prospect St. in Covington; it is not known whether any interments were made there.

The current St. Mary Cemetery on Dixie Highway began in 1870 with the purchase of 41 acres adjacent to Highland Cemetery. Maes did what he could to improve the new cemetery, having a fence erected between it and Highland Cemetery and building a sexton’s house on the grounds.

But the cemetery was not self-sustaining. Its plots sold for considerably less than those in Highland Cemetery.

In 1968 Bishop Richard H. Ackerman established the Cemetery Office for the Diocese of Covington. St. Mary Cemetery was the first cemetery

790 ST. MARY OF THE ASSUMPTION CATHOLIC CHURCH to be placed under the new office as a diocesan cemetery rather than a parish cemetery. When the old cathedral along Eighth St. in Covington was torn down in 1904, the bodies of former bishops George Carrell and Augustus Toebbe, which had been buried beneath the floor, were removed and re-interred at St. Mary Cemetery. Since then, all of the deceased bishops of Covington have been buried at St. Mary Cemetery, with the exception of Bishop Ferdinand Brossart, who was buried at St. Anne Convent in Melbourne, where he spent his final years in retirement.

Gorey, James L. “Letter to Patrons of St. Mary’s Cemetery,” June 11, 1907. Archives, Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Trauth, Mary Philip. Unpublished sketch of the History of the Cemetery Office, 1985, Archives, Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. MARY OF THE ASSUMPTION CATHOLIC CHURCH. The first Catholic church in southern Campbell Co. was St. Joseph Catholic Church at Camp Springs (Four Mile). Priests of this small parish served the congregation of Catholics in Alexandria, who gathered there to form a station (a congregation without a church) of the St. Joseph Church. In 1860 the congregation of about 30 families bought four acres of land fronting Jefferson St. after Rev. Lawrence Spitzelberger, pastor of the St. Joseph Church, convinced Bishop George A. Carrell that Alexandria should have a church of its own. Members of the congregation at Alexandria subscribed $700 and quickly built a church.

Spitzelberger dedicated the church on November 25, 1860, in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The St. Mary of the Assumption Church was now elevated to the status of a mission of the St. Joseph Church. Then the St. Mary Church became an independent parish after the congregation bought a house to serve as a rectory and Carrell appointed Rev. D. Beck as its first pastor in 1865. The new parish built its first school in 1867 and began building a second school in 1875, and the Sisters of Notre Dame came to staff it the following year.

By the time the parish celebrated its silver jubilee, parishioners were ready to build another church. Under Rev. Herbert Thien, a new brick church was erected. Rev. Ferdinand Brossart, vicar general of the Diocese of Covington and future bishop, dedicated it on October 25, 1891. A new rectory was built in 1928 and a parish hall in 1935.

During the long pastorate of Rev. Francis DeJaco (1932–1966), the parish in 1949 purchased a nearby public school. The renovated building became home to a parish high school that opened in 1950.

The St. Mary parish high school was converted into a diocesan program in 1961 and renamed Bishop

Brossart High School. A new parish grade school opened in 1963.

Suburban growth brought great changes to Alexandria and the St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in the second half of the 20th century. Near the end of Msgr. Otto Hering’s term (1968–1981) as pastor, the means for building a larger church became available when in 1978 a $220,000 estate was given to St. Mary of the Assumption Parish. The parish raised additional money through a fund drive and bought property west of the school for the new church; it also had a new road, St. Mary Dr., built to provide access from Main St. A modern design by the local firm of Robert Ehmet Hayes and Associates was chosen, and groundbreaking occurred in 1982, soon after Rev. Joseph Boschert became pastor. The modern church structure was dedicated on December 11, 1983.

Church of St. Mary of the Assumption, Alexandria, Kentucky: A Story of Faith, booklet printed for centenary of the church, 1960.

Dedication Booklet of St. Mary Church of the Assumption, December 11, 1983.

Historical Sketch of St. Mary Church, Alexandria, Kentucky, booklet printed for Diamond Jubilee Celebration, 1935.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. PATRICK CATHOLIC CHURCH, COVINGTON. Formerly one of the largest Irish American Catholic churches in Northern Kentucky, the architecturally significant St. Patrick Church stood at the northwest corner of Philadelphia and Elm Sts. in Covington’s West Side, only blocks from the German-speaking St. Aloysius Catholic Church. Founded in 1870, the congregation completed an impressive church building in 1872, designed by noted local architect Louis Piket. The church opened an elementary school in 1876, which was housed at first in the rectory and later in a two-story frame building constructed in 1891. In 1913 the parish completed a large brick school building, designed by architect David Davis, at the southwest corner of Fourth and Philadelphia Sts. In 1917 the exterior of the brick church was covered with an imitation stone finish, and in 1921 the interior was embellished with murals above the main altar by Charles Svendson and frescoing by Nino Passalaqua. In 1928 the congregation built a brick convent for the teaching sisters of the school (the Sisters of Charity).

Damaged extensively by the Ohio River flood of 1937 and suffering from the financial exigencies of the Great Depression, the parish incurred indebtedness that finally was erased by 1946, under the direction of longtime pastor Rev. Thomas J. McCaff rey (pastor 1913–1957). However, the congregation could not overcome the effects of the 1963 opening of I-75 and its Fift h St. exit-entrance

St. Patrick Catholic Church, Covington.

ramp, cutting a swath through the city’s West End. More of the neighborhood disappeared in the city’s unsuccessful urban renewal efforts. St. Patrick School closed at the end of the 1966–1967 academic year, as many West End residents were migrating to the suburbs, and the church itself held its solemn closing on Sunday, August 27, 1967. The congregation was merged with that of St. Aloysius Church. In October 1968 the church was demolished, making way for a gasoline station.

“Six North Kentucky Schools in Merger,” Messenger, March 5, 1967, 1A. Tenkotte, Paul A. A Heritage of Art and Faith: Downtown Covington Churches. Covington, Ky.: Kenton Co. Historical Society, 1986.

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

“Then There Will Be None,” KE, October 4, 1968, 22.

Paul A. Tenkotte

ST. PATRICK CATHOLIC CHURCH, MAYSVILLE. St. Patrick Catholic Church in Maysville is located downtown on the corner of Limestone and Third Sts. The church marks its beginning as 1847, when the first permanent Catholic church building opened in Maysville. It was dedicated to St. Patrick, recognizing the Irish descent of most of its early members. Catholic worship in the community had begun much earlier, when the community was still called Limestone. Rev. Stephen Badin passed through Limestone (Maysville) in 1793, and he and others held ser vices for Roman Catholics in Maysville and the nearby county seat of Washington over the next few decades. St. Francis Catholic Church in White Sulphur, west of Georgetown, was charged with the care of Catholics residing in the Maysville area.

In the 1840s several Catholic families, including the Browns, the McCarthys, the McLains, and the O’Neils, asked to have a resident priest ap-

ST. PAUL A.M.E. CHURCH

pointed and a parish established in Maysville.

The land for the fi rst St. Patrick Church building, on Limestone St., was purchased by Rev. Edward McMahon, who had traveled from Lexington to minister to the Catholics of the area. That church, which faced Limestone St., was a sturdy structure in the Romanesque style with some pointed-arch features and a sanctuary on the second floor. John Joyce was the church’s fi rst pastor, serving from 1847 to 1852. In the 1880s, the German members of the parish petitioned for their own church and pastor. No separate German church was built, but some ser vices continued to be conducted in German.

An important mission of St. Patrick Catholic Church is education. The parish’s fi rst parochial school held classes in the rectory of the church during the early 1860s. In 1864 the Visitation nuns accepted an invitation from Bishop George Carrell to come to Maysville to teach, and the St. Francis de Sales Academy was established for that purpose in an imposing structure located on Th ird St. The Visitation nuns ran this combination day and boarding school and the St. Patrick Girls School and also taught classes for boys in the church basement until 1899. The boarding school closed in that year. The Sisters of Loretto taught at the school operated by St. Patrick Catholic Church briefly, and then the Sisters of St. Francis of Clinton, Iowa, provided much of the instruction at the school from 1910 into the 1980s. From 1989 to 1995, the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker provided the personnel that ran the school. From the 1970s onward, lay teachers carried out most of the instruction, and after 1995 there have been no sisters teaching at the school.

The St. Patrick School is the only one in the Diocese of Covington supported by a single church that has a complete school system from preschool through high school. St. Patrick Catholic Church also provides religious instruction for those schoolchildren not enrolled in the parochial system.

The present St. Patrick Catholic Church, facing Th ird St. and running along Limestone St., is an impressive Gothic-style building in a cruciform shape with large stained-glass windows. It was built on the site of the previous church building during the pastorate of Rev. P. M. Jones. The initial architect was Leon Coquard, architect of Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, but as in the case of the cathedral, Coquard became disenchanted with the diocese, and architect David Davis completed the plans for St. Patrick. The church was dedicated on June 26, 1910. The two large stained-glass windows feature St. Patrick along Limestone St. and St. Boniface on the other side of the building. The main altar, constructed in Austria, was a special feature of the sanctuary.

Rev. Leo B. Casey, who was pastor from 1941 to 1965, oversaw the construction of the church’s new school building, designed by Howard McClorey of Cincinnati and completed in 1949. In 1956 the parish finished an addition to the school building, which was used by St. Patrick High School. Rev.

Casey also decorated the church with Gothic motifs and oil paintings of the Evangelists and of St. Patrick. These paintings were the work of Leo Mirabile of Louisville in celebration of the centennial of the church in 1947. Mirabile’s oil paintings were eliminated in fall 1972, and in spring 1973 remodeling removed the ornamentation and the original altars and communion rails. St. Patrick Catholic Church did not escape the scandal that began in the 1990s regarding abuse by priests.

Some former associate pastors of the church were accused and, in the case of Earl Bierman, convicted of abuse that occurred while serving at the Maysville church.

During the pastorate of Rev. William Hinds (1996–2008), needed maintenance at the church provided the opportunity to remodel the sanctuary once again, and a recreated main altar based on the original one was installed. In addition to the work inside and outside St. Patrick Catholic Church, a new school addition nearly doubling the size of the St. Patrick School was built in 1999.

Hinds oversaw the raising of the millions of dollars necessary for these projects.

St. Patrick Catholic Church is currently home to more than 600 Catholic families. Special ministries to Latino families (see Latinos) grew under Hinds, who conducted a Spanish-language mass weekly. The church’s support of the school provides an educational alternative to the community. The St. Patrick Catholic Church Cemetery is located three miles south of the church, in the community of Washington.

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

St. Patrick’s Church: 150 Years of Faith. Maysville, Ky.: St. Patrick Church, 1998.

John Klee

ST. PATRICK HIGH SCHOOL, MAYSVILLE. St. Patrick High School, located on the corner of Limestone and Fourth Sts. in downtown Maysville, has operated there since 1926. St. Patrick Catholic Church had supported education in Maysville since the 1860s, and a day and boarding school, St. Francis de Sales Academy, also in Maysville, served Catholic girls from 1864 until 1899. St. Patrick High School was an extension of a parochial school system established by the St. Patrick Catholic Church in 1902. Rev. P. M. Jones was the pastor who oversaw the expansion of the school’s offerings into high school, and the Sisters of St. Francis of Clinton, Iowa, operated the school until 1988. From 1926 to 1995, the principal at the school was a religious or a priest.

The first high school class enrolled in 1926, and four years later three boys and six girls graduated.

Since that time the high school has enrolled between 60 and 100 students annually. The high school shares a building with the other grades offered by the school. That school building was first constructed in 1948, and sizable additions were completed in 1956 and 1999. St. Patrick High School offers a complete program of study, although it is

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best known for its ability to prepare students for college. From its beginning in 1926 until the 1970s, the Sisters of St. Francis provided art, piano, voice, and other specialized training for students. Since fewer and fewer sisters have been available to teach at the school from the 1970s on, the high school has faced recurring fi nancial challenges. On several occasions, particularly in the early 1980s, during the pastorate of Rev. Cyril Eviston, serious discussions were held about closing the high school. The school has attempted to maintain a balance of student accessibility, quality, and expenses. Th is challenge is somewhat unusual because St. Patrick High School is the only high school in the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) completely supported by a single parish. In the 1990s the high school began to enroll Latino students whose parents are migrants to the area (see Latinos). Nearly all students participate in extracurricular events, either academic or athletic.

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

St. Patrick’s Church—150 Years of Faith. Maysville, Ky.: St. Patrick Church, 1998.

John Klee

ST. PAUL A.M.E. CHURCH. The St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church of Newport was formed in 1901 and changed its name in 1914. An A.M.E. Church had existed in Newport since 1880, and on several occasions it was confused with the Colored Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) denomination, of which there was at least one congregation in Newport; however, there is a difference between the two denominations. In February 1880 the A.M.E. congregation, under the leadership of Rev. Henry Harris, dedicated the recently leased and repaired church previously pastored by Peter H. Jeff ries, a Lutheran minister. The building was in Newport at the corner of Mayo St. and Central Ave. In April 1884, at the Kentucky Methodist conference held in Covington, Rev. H. G. Jenkins was appointed pastor of the A.M.E. Church in Newport.

In June 1901 a new A.M.E. church was dedicated in Newport along Saratoga St. The following year, the famous singing group African Missionary Singers was engaged by Rev. J. H. Clark, formerly of the Payne Theological Seminary, Wilberforce, Ohio, pastor at the A.M.E. church. The singers performed at the camp meeting held at Nelson Place in East Newport. In July Tanner’s Chapel was the name first given to the A.M.E. church at 714 Saratoga St. In August Rev. J. W. Frazier, presiding elder of the Lexington district A.M.E. church, preached and served Communion at the Saratoga St. church. In September the church’s annual festival was held at Memorial Hall next to the church.

In December 1905 the A.M.E. church negotiated to purchase the former Corpus Christi Catholic Church on Chestnut St. in Newport.

The church had been abandoned for several years after the Catholics opened a new church in town at

792 ST. PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCH Ninth and Isabella Sts. The A.M.E. congregation purchased the property for $2,000. Rev. J. R. Rooks, who had served as pastor of Tanner’s Chapel for less than a year, was instrumental in this purchase, completed in January 1906; afterward the church building on Saratoga St. was abandoned. In April a large celebration and formal opening of the newly acquired church building was held, with Rev. J. W. Frazier in town again to deliver the sermon.

From 1908 to 1917, church ser vices continued to be held at the A.M.E. church on Chestnut St. By 1914 the congregation’s name had changed from Tanner’s Chapel to St. Paul A.M.E. Church. By 1923 St. Paul A.M.E. Church had moved to 210 W. Seventh St. in Newport, and Rev. Elmer Reid was pastor. On October 4, 1925, at the Kentucky Conference of A.M.E. Churches held in Danville, Ky., Rev. D. C. Carter was made pastor of St. Paul A.M.E. Church. Carter died in 1926, and Rev. Edward J. McCoo was appointed his successor. In 1942 W. M. Mitchell served as pastor and from 1944 through 1946, Rev. J. L. Madison served. In the eight years between 1948 and 1954, various ministers attended to the spiritual needs of the congregation.

On Sunday evening, March 28, 1954, the Wright Gold musical ensemble from Cincinnati was brought by the St. Paul A.M.E. Church’s current pastor, Eugene Russell, to perform. On October 14, 1959, the Kentucky Annual Conference of A.M.E. Churches held in Lexington appointed Rev. F. L. Durden as pastor at St. Paul A.M.E. Church. The following year, on October 16, at the same conference held again in Lexington, Rev. M. H. Johnson was appointed pastor at St. Paul and served until replaced in late 1963 by Rev. Edgar L. Mack.

Mack was one of the most active pastors within the local African American community.

He helped orga nize and led the Northern Kentucky delegation from Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties in the 1964 Civil Rights March on Frankfort. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson led an estimated 10,000 persons in the march. In 1971 Mack led a delegation of Northern Kentucky clergy to attend the funeral of Whitney M. Young Jr., a Kentucky native who had been executive director of the National Urban League. In 1983 Rev. R. Mitchell arrived at St. Paul A.M.E. Church as its last pastor. In the late 1980s, the church was dissolved owing to a lack of members. A vacant lot now occupies the space where the church once stood.

“Church Notes,” KSJ, February 28, 1880, 1.

Covington and Newport City Directories, 1894.

“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” KE, March 6, 1964, 2.

“Kentucky Rites Set for Young,” KE, March 16, 1971, 16.

“King Marched in Frankfort in 1964,” KP, January 20, 2003, 4K. “Newport News,” KTS, August 25, 1902, 3.

“Sale Is Under Way; Old Corpus Christi Church Is to Become Africa M.E. Church,” KP, December 6, 1905, 5.

Theodore H. H. Harris

ST. PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCH. During 2004 the St. Paul Catholic Church in Florence, Ky., celebrated its 130th anniversary. However, the first Catholic presence in Florence actually dates from nearly a quarter of a century before St. Paul Catholic Church was founded. A Catholic stonemason, Cornelius Ahern, volunteered his house in 1851 as a place where local Catholics could meet. Thomas Butler, the pastor at St. Mary Church in Covington, traveled to the Ahern house once every three weeks to celebrate Mass. In September 1855, construction began on a church building at Shelby and Center Sts. in Florence, with Ahern as the primary builder. Members of the Know-Nothing Party, a virulently anti-Catholic political group, tried to stop construction of the church, but various parishioners guarded the construction site during evenings. The church was dedicated in June 1856, and a Catholic mass was held once per month. The church was a mission church until Rev. Joseph Bent became its first resident priest in 1874. Bent also started a parish school and taught all of the classes.

St. Paul Catholic Church served a wide geographical area, including Elsmere, Independence, Verona, and Warsaw as well as Florence. In the early 1900s, the church had 47 families, 33 of them English-speaking and 14 German-speaking, for a total of 185 parishioners. A brick Gothic Revival church was completed in 1911 on the Dixie Highway, and the old frame church building was converted into a parish meeting hall. In 1921 a parish festival was held for the first time; the festival proved to be a popu lar annual event.

The parish school closed in 1913, but reopened in September 1923 with 25 students. Sister Mary Irene Schwartz, OSB, a member of St. Paul Catholic Church and the first parishioner to enter religious life, was the school’s first principal. Sr. Irene, an excellent teacher, was so forceful a presence that she made the Ku Klux Klan back down from threats they had been making to other teachers.

She served as the principal until 1935 and returned to serve the school again from 1964 to 1972. The Benedictine order provided the entire faculty for the new school in its early years, and 72 sisters worked for St. Paul’s parish school over the years.

Thirteen other nuns from the order succeeded Sr. Irene as school principals. By 1929 the school had 43 students, a number that remained constant over the next decade.

St. Paul Catholic Church’s parish experienced a period of growth during the post–World War II period. For 30 years Msgr. Edward Carlin served as pastor, from 1940 until 1970. School enrollment increased, and a modern new school building was added to the original building in 1951.

The church community and Carlin saw the need for the church to expand. Carlin was also a good, tightly focused fi nancial manager. When money was needed for the new church, he was able to put down half of the cost before construction started by selling land that the church owned. The new church, dedicated on May 5, 1963, featured an assembly hall, five classrooms, and a hand-carved Italian crucifi x, as well as a wooden ceiling and

terrazzo floors. The old church building was demolished, and a plaza area was created in its place.

The St. Paul School also went through changes.

The first lay teachers hired by the school were Helen Kiff meyer, in 1958, and Rita Zint, in 1959. Additional lay teachers joined the faculty as the decade of the 1960s progressed. A school board was set up for the school during the mid-1960s.

St. Paul Catholic Church continued to grow in the 1970s, and so did the areas it served, as the new Florence Mall opened. The facilities of the parish grew also: a new addition was added to the school, which included a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and a kitchen. The school also doubled as a parish center, named for Msgr. Carlin, and was dedicated as such on November 2, 1980. The school continues to grow and flourish.

In 1987 Angie Adams was hired as St. Paul Catholic Church’s first youth minister. The youth ministry grew steadily, and in 1991 it joined with St. Henry Catholic Church in Erlanger to form a combined prayer-centered youth group known as the Youth Knights. In 1992 the Youth Knights reached its peak membership, attracting close to 100 teenagers per week. For many years following, it was not uncommon to see 50 teenage youths inside the Carlin Center in Florence on Thursday nights. In 1989 a number of St. Paul Catholic Church parishioners joined the newly formed St. Timothy Catholic Church in Union but continued to send their children to St. Paul’s School. St. Paul’s parish, at that time, had 1,700 families.

Thomas Sacksteder became pastor of St. Paul’s in January 2000. In August of that year, a new addition to the school was dedicated that added three classrooms and three meeting rooms.

Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Catholic Center, Erlanger, Ky. Diamond Jubilee Celebration, St. Paul Church, Florence, Kentucky, 1856–1931. Covington, Ky.: Matt. J. Crolley, 1931.

St. Paul Parish Records, St. Paul Catholic Church, Florence, Ky., boxes 1, 2, 3, 5.

Rob Langenderfer

ST. PAUL CHRISTIAN CHURCH. On May 1, 1847, a small group of German Protestants met in Covington to form the St. Paul German Evangelical Church. Several weeks later, the group purchased a lot at 11th and Banklick Sts. in town for $150. A small frame house of worship was soon constructed on the lot, and their first ser vice was held there on August 29, 1847. The church’s first pastor was a local resident, Rev. Henry Christian Dolle; he conducted ser vices in German. The new church was quite successful and within a few years outgrew its building. A large, impressive brick edifice was then built on the same site and was dedicated on April 26, 1868. Over the years, several additions were made to the building, and it served the needs of the congregation well for the next 100 years.

In 1923 the church purchased a parsonage in Covington at 1521 Holman St. for their pastor at the time, Rev. Philip Wiggerman. He served faithfully

ST. PAUL’S UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

ST. PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH. The St. Paul

St. Paul German Evangelical Church, 11th and Banklick Sts., Covington.

at the church for the next 35 years. When he resigned as pastor in December 1958, the parsonage was sold to him for a nominal sum. St. Paul joined the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1934 and changed its name to St. Paul Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1957 the church affiliated itself with United Church of Christ. In 1959 a new parsonage was purchased at 23 Buttermilk Pk. in Lakeside Park, for $18,500.

By the 1960s, the neighborhood around the Covington church building had begun to decline and many of the members had moved away to the suburbs. In 1962 the congregation purchased a 7.2acre site on Fort Henry Dr. in Lookout Heights (now Fort Wright), where they intended to build a new, modern church. In 1966 architects from William F. Brown and Associates of Newport drew plans for a new structure. Ground was broken on May 21, 1967, and the completed building was dedicated on October 28, 1968. The sanctuary, which has exposed-brick walls, can seat 350, and there is also a large fellowship hall. Plenty of parking space is available. By 1977 the active membership of the church was about 275. In December 1964 the parsonage on Buttermilk Pk. was sold, and the church began providing the pastor with a housing allowance, which permitted him to live anywhere he chose.

In 1998 the congregation withdrew from the United Church of Christ. It subsequently joined the Disciples of Christ and changed its name to St. Paul Christian Church.

Hundredth Anniversary, 1847–1947: St. Paul Evangelical Church, Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: St. Paul Evangelical Church, 1947.

Reis, Jim. “Northern Kentucky Protestant Churches,” KP, August 11, 1986, 4K. “St. Paul Burns Mortgage,” KP, November 21, 1978, 8K. “St. Paul Has Survived Plenty in 130 Years,” KP, May 21, 1977, 6K.

Lutheran Church at Chatham in Bracken Co. traces its roots back to the last quarter of the 19th century when an itinerant minister, a Rev. Andes, traveled to one-room schoolhouses throughout the county. The people he served called a permanent minister, William Roper, and constructed a church near Locust Creek where Ky. Rt. 9 (the AA Highway), and the Augusta-Berlin Rd. intersect today. Twenty-seven families, primarily of German heritage, dedicated the building in 1884 as the First German Protestant Church. In about 1900, the church joined the Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio with the name Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Under the pastorate of H. W. Foster, a new church building was built in the Chatham area near the parsonage. It was dedicated, along with a new name for the church, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, on December 23, 1928. By 1930, the “old” church building on the Augusta-Berlin Rd. had been sold and the congregation had joined the American Lutheran Church Synod.

Over the next 40 years, the St. Paul Lutheran Church’s members not only made numerous changes and improvements to the building; they also altered the church’s customs. One striking addition to the new church building was the stainedglass window at the front, depicting the Good Shepherd. Donations from the profits of the women members’ egg sales helped to purchase it.

Over the past 75 years, the women of the congregation have played important roles in the small church community. During preparations for the first ser vice at the new St. Paul Lutheran Church, members broke with custom and agreed that men and women should no longer sit separately on opposite sides of the church, but should sit together during ser vices. In 1999 the first woman member of the church council was named.

By the 1970s, St. Paul Lutheran Church was finding it difficult to keep a full-time pastor. It joined into an agreement with Trinity Lutheran Church in Maysville, whereby they share one pastor between the two parishes, an arrangement that has been successful in rural Mason and Bracken counties. St. Paul became a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in January 1988. The church celebrated its 125th anniversary in September, 2000. Many descendants of the families that established the church in 1875 continue as members today.

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

Millie Bush

ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Founded on Easter Sunday in 1844, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is located at the corner of Court and York Sts. in Newport. It is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington. The present Gothic Revival church building, of stone construction with a soaring bell tower, was designed by J. R. Neff. Its cornerstone was laid in June 1871; the church was completed in

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August 1873, and a parish house was added in 1929. In 2005 St. Paul’s Episcopal Church had about 90 members.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was the place of worship for Newport’s founding family, the Taylors. Col. James Taylor Jr. donated the land on which it was built. This is also where members of the prominent Wiedemann family attended church, and George Wiedemann Jr. was deeply involved there until his death at the young age of 35 in 1901. From this church many of Newport’s leaders were buried, such as the lawyer Col. George Washington, in 1905; a son-in-law of Taylor, Col. James Abert; and Taylor’s wife, Lucy Taylor. It was the first Episcopal church in the United States to have a vested choir, and when the Episcopal diocese of Lexington was formed in 1896, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport was its largest congregation. For the past 35 years, it has been home to the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Child Care Center. The church also has provided a meeting place for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Over the years, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has been an important part of the vibrant Episcopal community in Northern Kentucky, consisting of St. Paul’s, Trinity Episcopal Church in Covington, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Fort Thomas, and Grace Episcopal Church in Florence.

Barr, Frances Keller. Ripe to the Harvest: History of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington, 1895–1995. Lexington, Ky.: Diocese of Lexington, 1995.

Kreimer, Peggy. “St. Paul’s to Get Facelift,” KP, May 21, 2001, 1K. Swinford, Francis Keller, and Rebecca Smith Lee. Great Elm Tree: Heritage of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington. Lexington, Ky.: Faith House Press, 1969.

John West

ST. PAUL’S UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST. Opened in 1850, this church was originally located about 500 feet from the southeast corner of Jefferson and Main Sts. in Alexandria. The German Protestants who constructed the log meeting house also built a school and a parsonage on Greenup St. The fi rst pastor was Rev. Sinnig, who helped the congregation petition the neighboring residents for money to build the church.

The membership grew quickly, and in 1899 the Lydia Verein, or Ladies Guild, was established.

The name was in German, as were all records and ser vices held at the time. The transition into using English for the guild’s name did not begin until 1909.

The church’s membership increased to exceed the facility’s capacity, so in 1900 a new building was constructed on the northwest corner of Main and Jefferson Sts. In 1906 a new parsonage and school building were constructed behind the church, and the old buildings were sold.

An argument between the pastor and the congregation over funds exploded in 1922 into a legal battle. The court fight was top local news for the months that it lasted, and a suspicious fire in 1923 destroyed all of the church’s documents. Rev. Paul

794 ST. PAUL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, DAYTON Roediger, who was the pastor under scrutiny, eventually resigned, and after a time the church resumed normal activities.

St. Paul’s Church had been an independent church, but in 1931 it joined the Evangelical Synod of North America. It was because of a subsequent series of mergers undergone by that body that the name of the church became St. Paul’s United Church of Christ.

The church building of 1900 was remodeled during the early 1970s, and St. Paul’s United Church of Christ still holds its ser vices there. As of 2000 the church had approximately 375 members.

The congregation continues to participate in various philanthropic activities; it works with the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, and members volunteer to work at a local soup kitchen.

“Answer Filed in Church Litigation,” KTS, March 22, 1923, 33.

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

“Church of the Week,” KP, September 16, 2004, 8K. “17-Year Mission Seeks Volunteers—Church Members Hand Out Food,” KE, June 13, 2005, 3B.

Elizabeth Comer Williams

ST. PAUL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, DAYTON. The St. Paul United Church of Christ opened in 1863 so that Dayton, Ky., residents could attend ser vices closer to home than Newport. The first church meetings were held at the home of Frank Tinneman, one of the three men who helped bring the church into being. Later, the meetings were moved to the public school, then to the Presbyterian Church on Th ird St. in Dayton.

Th is site, rented for $25 a year, was used from 1863 to 1869.

In 1864 the congregation elected its first pastor, Carl Clausen, who served until 1880. That same year, the Ladies’ Aid Society, also known as the Frauenverein, was organized. Construction began on a new church building along Third St. in 1868.

This building was used until 1915, when a new church, needed to accommodate church growth, was built on nearby Fourth Ave. The St. Paul Church joined the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1885, which merged with the Reformed Church in 1938, causing the local church’s name to be changed to the St. Paul Evangelical and Reformed Church Dayton. In 1961 a denominational merger with the Congregational Christian Churches changed the church’s name again to the current one, St. Paul United Church of Christ Dayton.

In 1993 the St. Paul United Church of Christ Dayton celebrated its 130th anniversary with many activities and church ser vices. The current pastor, James Hill, who has served the church since 1990, reports that although the St. Paul Church continues with its ser vices each week, the membership is struggling as people move away from Dayton.

DeVroomen, Sacha. “St. Paul’s Marks 130th Anniversary,” KP, October 30, 1993, 9K.

St. Paul United Church of Christ. One-Hundredth Anniversary: October 6–13, 1963. Dayton, Ky.: St. Paul United Church of Christ.

Elizabeth Comer Williams

ST. PAUL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, FORT THOMAS. In 1862, 31 members of the St. John’s Evangelical Protestant Church at Seventh and Columbia Sts. in Newport (see St. John United Church of Christ) left to form a new church. On December 27, 1862, they organized the St. Paul’s German United Evangelical Protestant Church. The congregation acquired a vacant frame Methodist church in Newport at 24 E. Eighth St. as their new home and held their first ser vice on February 3, 1863. A new pipe organ was purchased a few months later for $550. Later, they erected a parochial school building to instruct their children about their faith and to teach them the German language. Th is school was continued until public school education became available in Newport.

By 1882 the congregation had built and dedicated a new church building at the same site. In 1884 a new pipe organ replaced the original organ, and in 1892, the church purchased a residence at 805 Monroe St. in Newport to be used as a parsonage.

The church celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 6, 1913. The church and parsonage were repainted, the organ was rebuilt and enlarged, and new art-glass windows were installed in the sanctuary. At that time the congregation numbered 550 families. The Bible school had an enrollment of 938 students, the choir had 30 members, the Ladies’ Aid Society had 203 members, and the Young People Society had 80. In 1918 the word German was removed from the church’s name, and German ser vices were discontinued. One year later, after a peace between the United States and Germany had been signed, ending World War I, the German-language ser vice was reintroduced on a monthly basis; beginning in 1942, it was held only once a year, on Good Friday, and then two years later it was eliminated entirely. The church became affi liated with the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1923. The church’s steeple, which had been weakened during a storm in 1891, was removed in 1925. A new parsonage was purchased nearby at 801 Overton St. in Newport. On June 14, 1931, the church’s present threemanual Kilgen organ, costing $9,000, was acquired. Along with other churches in Newport, St. Paul’s assisted in aiding the homeless during the flood of 1937. Later that year, the church became an active partner in the development of Camp Sunshine for the underprivileged, located near Mentor in eastern Campbell Co. In 1943 St. Paul’s Church merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. That was when St. Paul’s joined with other Newport Protestant churches in orga nizing the Week Day School of Religion. In 1957 the congregation laid the cornerstone for a new building on 13 acres of property located half in Newport and half in Fort Thomas.

Today, the church is positioned between Grand and Newman Aves., at 1 Churchill Dr. The prop-

erty in Newport at 24 E. Eighth St. was sold and currently is used as a parking lot. In 1957, at the national level, the Evangelical and Reformed Church merged with the Congregational Christian Church to form the United Church of Christ.

Thus, the name of the local church became St. Paul United Church of Christ.

United Church of Christ. “St. Paul United Church of Christ.” www.uccwebsites.net/stpauluccftthomasky .html (accessed May, 2005).

Donald E. Grosenbach

ST. PETER LUTHERAN CHURCH. Located in the rural area known as Hunter’s Bottom on Ky. Rt. 36 in Carroll Co., four miles from Milton (in Trimble Co.), this church can be traced to 1848, when the Detmer family moved down the Ohio River from Rising Sun, Ind., to Hunter’s Bottom, Ky., and found John Obertate and other recent German immigrants living nearby in Carroll Co. The Hopewell Methodist Church gave permission for a Lutheran congregation to use their meeting house at Hunter’s Bottom for Sunday afternoon ser vices, and the congregation hired Rev. Mueller, pastor of the German Evangelical and Reform congregation that dated back to 1841 at Madison, Ind. When Hopewell Methodist moved its building to high ground at Locust in 1895, the German American community worshipped at the Hopewell School at Hunter’s Bottom, and within a year the group purchased land and built a church adjacent to the Hopewell School. The building committee included Johann Obertödler (Obertate), C. Fred Th iemann, and Frank Th iemann.

The 1896 church constitution written under supervision of the committee—Friedrich Detmer, Heinrich Hotfi l, and Karl Walkenhorst—declared the congregation at Hunter’s Bottom to be an independent German Evangelical Protestant Church; it required that pastors preach in German and that the school teach children the German language. The church was completely congregational in structure; the pastor did not have voting privileges, and only males were official members. A three-person executive committee ran the church, with a new person elected to the committee each year. All decisions were made by congregational vote, usually after church on Sundays. In June 1928 a new constitution required church minutes to be written in English and church ser vices to be held in English. It also extended the right to vote in congregational matters to women.

The original church building, constructed on a grassy knoll by members of the congregation, was funded by a $400 loan from Ernst Thiemann at 5 percent interest. Each month there was a slight surplus used for debt repayment. During the 1990 renovations, which required resetting the doors, it was discovered that there was no true square in the original building; all measurements in 1896 were apparently eyeballed. The church has a bell tower equipped with the original 1896 brass bell from Germany; the constitution required the sexton to

ST. PIUS X CATHOLIC CHURCH

toll the bell one hour before and again just before Sunday ser vices; on the feast days of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Whitsunday; and for funerals. The roof is slate, and the 33-foot-high interior ceiling has 12-inch decorative tin squares; the Gothic windows along both sides of the church had late Victorian tinted glass, which in the 1950s was changed to clear glass. One stained-glass window, still intact, was placed high above the altar, and a smaller round window was mounted above the entrance door. A deep balcony was constructed above the narthex. The original carved church pews were painted white with black trim in the 1990 renovation. Ornately carved 36-inch altar candlesticks came from Germany. The pulpit originally was deeply carved and raised high above and behind the altar. The high pulpit was lowered and the altar moved against the back wall in 1928. The original sanctuary had intricate Victorian sets of gaslight globe chandeliers suspended from the center rafter down the center aisle. A drawing from 1946 shows two rows of neo-Gothic electric cathedral lights suspended over the pews rather than the center aisle.

The church was built perpendicular to the Ohio River and now lies close to Ky. Rt. 36; however, the original Hunter’s Bottom turnpike hugged the Ohio River bank several hundred yards away.

During the flood of 1937, the water rose to the eaves of the church and did extensive damage to the building; the congregation restored the building and furnishings by 1940. The flood of 1997 reached the top of the steps leading into the sanctuary. The basement of the education building also flooded that year. Through a grant from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, St. Peter Lutheran Church underwent a major restoration in 1990.

The original church cemetery was located on the farm of August Raker. In 1931 a cemetery association was established, with grounds on the hill above the church. Graves were moved from the Raker farm to the new site, and in the 1940s the cemetery association became an independent community group.

Although the congregation received most of its pastors from the Indiana Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA), St. Peter maintained its independence until June 1956, when it joined the Kentucky-Tennessee Synod of the ULCA as the St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hunter’s Bottom. In April of that year, the new education building was dedicated. And in 1958 the congregation adopted the Lutheran Ser vice Book and Hymnal. St. Peter joined the Indiana-Kentucky LCA (Lutheran Church in America) Synod when that synod was formed in 1962 and from 1976 to 1990 formed a two-church parish arrangement with Resurrection Lutheran at Madison, Ind. In recent years, St. Peter has used the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship Ser vice but has received its pastors from Lutheran, United Church of Christ, and Episcopal traditions. At least seven current members of the church are descendants of the original charter members.

Buhlig, Dorothy. “History Notes of St. Peter Lutheran Church,” August 1977, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky. Daubendis, Frederick. 50th Anniversary Bulletin of Hunters Bottom Lutheran Church, June 30, 1946, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky. “The 1896 Constitution of the German Evangelical Protestant St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunters Bottom, Ky.,” translated from original German, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky. St. Peter Lutheran Church Minutes, March 8, 1896, to June 1901, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky. Thiemann, Mrs. Martin. “History of St. Peter Lutheran Church,” ca. 1986, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky. Vedell, Robert. 75th Anniversary Bulletin of St. Peter Lutheran Church, June 27, 1971, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Hunter’s Bottom, Ky.

Diane Perrine Coon

ST. PHILIP CATHOLIC CHURCH. For many years, the Catholics of Melbourne were part of St. Joseph Parish in Camp Springs. With the permission of Covington bishop Camillus P. Maes, Rev. Joseph Haustermann, pastor of St. Joseph, began building a small church in Melbourne to meet the needs of the people there. The cornerstone was laid on November 8, 1908, but construction was halted when Maes decided that costs had become too high for the already-indebted parish to bear. A year later, under the new pastor of St. Joseph, Rev. Charles Woeste, the congregation again took up the work. The church was completed in 1910, and the dedication occurred on May 16 of that year.

The church was named St. Philip and was made a separate parish with Rev. Charles Rolfes as its first pastor. A rectory for the pastor was completed in 1912. The Sisters of Divine Providence from nearby St. Anne Convent staffed a small school that was conducted in a room partitioned off in the back of the church. A separate school building, including living quarters for the teaching sisters, was built in 1925. Parishioners built a wooden parish hall in 1923, and the students began a tradition of staging school plays there. St. Philip remains a small parish today and maintains its own school.

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

St. Philip Church Diamond Jubilee. Melbourne, Ky.: St. Philip Catholic Church, 1985.

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. PIUS X CATHOLIC CHURCH. The predecessor of this modern-day church in Edgewood was the Holy Guardian Angels Parish. In 1856, early settlers built a log cabin for a Catholic school near Horse Branch Creek in Sanfordtown, near what is currently the intersection of Dudley Rd. and Madison Pk. Because there was no church building, Mass was offered in homes of the parish-

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ioners by priests from other churches. A cemetery was attached to this site, which remains in use today. A former sisters’ convent remains on the site also. In 1869 a rectory was built, and the first resident priest, Rev. John Beck, came to the parish. In 1877 he helped begin construction of a new church foundation, which was completed three years later.

Under the leadership of Bishop Augustus Toebbe, the Sisters of St. Benedict came to staff the parish school in 1882, and a convent was erected.

Under Rev. Joseph Schaefer, renovations and new constructions continued during the late 1800s and early 1900s. A new and larger school replaced the previous school building. Additions and renovations occurred at the church and at the pastor’s house. More land, about 2.5 acres, was added to the cemetery property.

During the early 1950s, a new church was needed to accommodate the growing membership.

However, the Holy Guardian Angels Parish experienced frequent flooding, so a new site was desired. In 1954 the brothers Lawrence and Bernard Gripsover donated to the parish 23 acres on the upper rise of Dudley Rd. in Edgewood, for a new church site. This is the current location of the church. Bishop William T. Mulloy issued a decree of establishment, allowing the parish to move from the former Holy Guardian Angels parish in Sanfordtown to a new location. Bishop Mulloy requested that the parish change its name to St. Pius X, in recognition of the newly canonized saint, a famous pope who lived at the turn of the 20th century. A groundbreaking was held May 29, 1955, for the combination church-school now named St. Pius X. Bishop Mulloy appointed Rev. Hugh Milligan as the pastor of the new St. Pius X parish when the pastor of the Sanfordtown Guardian Angels parish, Father Jobst, retired. The new churchschool construction began on March 15, 1956, and was completed in 1958. On May 31, 1958, the last mass was offered at the Holy Guardian Angels church. The next day the first mass was said in the new church. The new school opened September 3, 1958, with an enrollment of 355 students. The new parish plant, which consisted of the church, 14 classrooms, a convent area, and a rectory, was blessed and dedicated on November 2, 1958, to St. Pius X. Father Milligan retired in 1981, and Father Paul Tenhundfeld was appointed the new pastor.

He implemented the idea of “shared responsibility,” whereby the parishioners assumed leadership roles in the parish community through formation of various committees. In 1982, when Vatican II called for spiritual renewal, Father Tenhundfeld started the Renew program, and more than 1,000 parishioners participated. In 1983 the Parish Council was formed and began to integrate all parish activities. The council planned for a new church and for renovations and additions to the parish.

On March 1, 1987, ground was broken for the present freestanding church, which was completed in 1988.

Rev. Douglas Fortner was appointed the new pastor in 1990, following Father Tenhundfeld’s retirement. In 1999 Rev. Robert Wehage was

796 SAINTS BONIFACE AND JAMES CATHOLIC CHURCH appointed pastor. Under his guidance, the church membership grew rapidly. A large addition to the school and parish facilities, along with other repairs and renovations, was completed on June 6, 2004, more than doubling the parish school, administration, and recreational space. Today St. Pius X Catholic Church is a community of about 7,700 persons.

Ott, James. Seekers of the Everlasting Kingdom: A Brief History of the Diocese of Covington. Strasbourg, France: Éditions du Signe, 2002.

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

St. Pius X. www.stpiusx.com (accessed April 3, 2006).

St. Pius X Church, 1955–2005. Chattanooga, Tenn., 2006.

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

Steven D. Jaeger

SAINTS BONIFACE AND JAMES CATHOLIC CHURCH. The Saints Boniface and James Catholic Church resulted from the 1980 merger of two Ludlow parishes, one with a German heritage and the other with an Irish heritage.

Catholics of German and Irish descent began establishing homes in the city of Ludlow in Kenton Co. during the 1850s. German Catholics were also farming along the Pleasant Run Turnpike (presently Bromley-Crescent Springs Rd.) south of the city. In 1870 the German-Catholic population of the area petitioned Bishop Augustus Maria Toebbe of the Diocese of Covington to establish a new parish, and in spring 1872, ground was broken on Adela Ave. in Ludlow for the new St. Boniface Church.

The building, housing a school and a priest’s residence on the first floor and a church on the second, was dedicated on November 3, 1872.

Herman J. Kramer became pastor of St. Boniface Parish in 1884. Under his guidance, the parish flourished. Lay teachers staffed the parish school from 1872 to 1890; then in 1890 Kramer arranged for the Sisters of Divine Providence to teach in the parish school. Classes were conducted in both English and German for many years, and the use of the German language was not entirely discontinued until 1920. Kramer also guided the construction of a new Romanesque Revival St. Boniface Church. Bishop Camillus P. Maes dedicated the new edifice, designed by architect John Boll, a Ludlow resident, on August 13, 1893. The building was extensively damaged by a tornado in 1915, but parishioners raised the necessary funds and repaired the structure, which was rededicated by Bishop Ferdinand Brossart in 1916. In 1928 the parish purchased a home in Ludlow on Church St. for use as a residence for the pastor. Other developments during this era included the complete renovation of the parish school, the establishment of a parish drama society, and the creation of a St. Vincent de Paul society. Enrollment in the parish school reached a peak during the 1930s with nearly 200 students.

The English-speaking Catholics of Ludlow initially attended either St. Ann Parish in nearby West Covington or St. Boniface Church. In 1886 James Kehoe, pastor of St. Ann Parish, began organizing these people into a second Ludlow Catholic congregation, made up primarily of people of Irish ancestry. The parish purchased the Armory Hall on Carneal St. in 1887 and renovated the building for use as a church. Bishop Maes dedicated the new St. James Church on May 1, 1887. St. James School was established in 1893 in the old Odd Fellows Hall on Oak St., and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth agreed to staff the school. During its first year of operation, it enrolled 125 students.

Thomas D. Kehoe was appointed pastor of St. James Parish in 1894 and remained in that position until his death in 1921. Under his guidance, a new Gothic Revival–style church was built on Oak St. in 1903–1904 and dedicated by Bishop Maes on October 9, 1904. A new St. James School was constructed in 1911 and dedicated on March 18, 1912.

Both the church and the school were designed by local architect Walter Sheblessy. A new parish rectory followed in 1922. Between 1928 and 1948, St. James Parish operated the coeducational St. James High School, which was housed in a small addition to the church, a nearby cottage, and on the first floor of the parish rectory. During its early years of operation, lay teachers and diocesan clergy staffed the school. For many years, Ruth Kelley held the position of principal. In 1942 the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth took over the staffi ng of the high school. Leo Egbring, who served as pastor of St. James Parish from 1947 until his retirement in 1977, renovated the church, the school, and the rectory and purchased additional nearby property for the parish.

During the post–World War II era, as the population of Ludlow declined, enrollments at both St. Boniface and St. James Schools also declined. In 1967 the diocese merged the city’s two Catholic educational facilities to form St. James– St. Boniface Elementary School. Because of low enrollment, the combined elementary school closed its doors in 1984. The two Ludlow parishes were merged in 1980 under the guidance of copastors Robert J. Reinke and John Wordeman. The new parish of Saints Boniface and James was housed in the former St. James facility. This church was completely remodeled in 1981–1982.

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

Schroeder, David E. United in Faith: A History of the Catholic Church in Ludlow, Kentucky. Ludlow, Ky.: Saints Boniface and James parish, 1997.

David E. Schroeder

ST. STEPHEN CEMETERY. In 1854, the same year that St. Stephen Parish in Newport began, the St. Stephen Benevolent Graveyard Society was incorporated. In 1855 the parish bought a plot of land for a cemetery on Alexandria Pk. about four miles south of the city. St. Stephen Cemetery remained in parish hands and remained financially

dependent on the parish, although in 1941, bishop of Covington Francis W. Howard ruled that the cemetery account had to be kept separate from the regular parish account. St. Stephen Parish tried to maintain “perpetual care” of the cemetery. By the 1950s, the cemetery was virtually operated as a diocesan cemetery. In 1968 Bishop Richard H. Ackerman established the Cemetery Office for the Diocese of Covington, and St. Stephen Cemetery was placed under its care as a diocesan cemetery. In the 1970s, the diocese constructed, in stages, a large garden mausoleum. The new Communion of Saints Chapel at the cemetery was dedicated by Bishop Robert W. Muench on September 24, 2000.

Rules and Regulations of the Roman Catholic St. Stephen’s Cemetery of Newport, Kentucky, 1903. Available at the Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Erlanger, Ky. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Trauth, Mary Philip. Unpublished sketch of the history of the cemetery office, 1985, Archives, Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. THERESE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Soon after Southgate in Campbell Co., between Newport and Fort Thomas, was established as a city in 1907, Catholic residents in Southgate desired to have their own parish. Bishop of Covington Francis W. Howard acceded to their wishes and in 1927 created a new parish out of portions of St. Thomas Catholic Church in Fort Thomas and St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul parishes in Newport. For the first pastor, he appointed Msgr. Borgias Lehr, who continued in the position until his death in 1957. Property on Alexandria Pk. (U.S. 27) that had belonged to the Wiedemann Brewing Company was purchased. A large resort known as Old Heidelberg on the property was converted into a church, a school, and a rectory. On August 21, 1927, the parish celebrated its first mass in its new worship space. Howard dedicated the church, officially named St. Therese of the Infant Jesus, and the school on October 2, 1927. The following day, St. Therese’s Feast Day, the bishop declared the new church to be a diocesan shrine to the 19th-century saint popularly known as “The Little Flower.” The school began classes that fall under the direction of the Sisters of St. Benedict. Howard visited Lisieux, France (hometown of the saint), in 1929 and obtained relics of St. Therese from a blood sister who was still alive.

The Old Heidelberg was not intended to be a permanent facility for the St. Therese church. Lehr planned to develop a full parish plant incrementally. Architect Edward J. Schulte’s design for one large interconnected structure was chosen, and the first stage was the construction of the schoolconvent section, which was dedicated on January 4, 1953. Lehr did not live to see the completion of

ST. TIMOTHY CATHOLIC CHURCH

the new parish plant. He died on February 5, 1957, and his successor, Rev. Paul Brinker, saw the project through to completion. The spacious, modern church with attached rectory was completed in 1964 and dedicated by Bishop Richard H. Ackerman on June 7, 1964. The old parish building was demolished. The Sisters of Notre Dame took over the school in 1967. The parish has grown to around 1,000 families under Rev. Clarence Heitzman, the current pastor.

Reder, Diane. “Jubilee Cross Visits St. Therese in Southgate,” Messenger, April 14, 2000, 6.

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

St. Therese Church dedication booklet, June 7, 1964, St. Therese Catholic Church. Southgate, Ky. Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Thomas S. Ward

ST. THOMAS CATHOLIC CHURCH. Today St. Thomas Parish, named for St. Thomas the Apostle, is located at E. Villa Pl. and S. Fort Thomas Ave. in Fort Thomas. The parish was founded in 1902 to serve the Catholic population at and around the Fort Thomas Military Reservation.

Previously, Catholic ser vices had been provided at various locations nearby, including at the Convent of the Good Shepherd along Highland Ave. in Fort Thomas.

In 1901 the Catholics in southern Fort Thomas, under the leadership of Rev. Mathias Leick, took the first steps to form a church. They chose four lots at Grand and Tremont Aves., and the lots, owned

by Newport attorney Leonard J. Crawford and the members of the Fitch family, were donated to the parish. Here, on December 21, 1902, Bishop Camillus Maes dedicated St. Thomas’s first parish church, built at a cost of $6,500, and blessed the elementary school located within the church. In 1921 the parish moved to its present location along S. Fort Thomas Ave. From 1921 until 2005, the former church building was used for apartments; then in 2005 the first church was razed as construction began on the existing multiunit condominium project at that site.

The first church at E. Villa Pl. and S. Fort Thomas Ave. was a combination church and school structure, much like the previous one. This building served St. Thomas Parish until 1939, when the present church was opened. The 1939 parish church was built under the direction of Rev. Herbert Hillenmeyer at a cost of $250,000 and was dedicated by Bishop Francis W. Howard on March 23, 1939. The new church was built in the Romanesque style: massive, loft y, and cruciform, with round arches, recessed portals, and a wooden roof.

In 1952 the church’s glass windows were replaced with stained-glass windows; in 1969 the altar area was remodeled; and in 2002 the grounds were newly landscaped.

St. Thomas Parish has prospered over the years, and in 2004 it served 900 families. Many of these

present parishioners trace their family’s Catholic heritage to the former Catholic parishes of Newport and Bellevue. As the social and economic well-being of these second- and third-generation Catholics improved during the 1950s and 1960s, many of them moved from Newport and Bellevue to the hills overlooking the Ohio River.

St. Thomas Elementary School was founded by the Sisters of Divine Providence in 1902 and provided instruction in grades 1–8. Kindergarten instruction was added in 1985. Starting in the 1960s, with the decline in religious vocations among the teaching order of nuns, more teaching duties at St. Thomas School were turned over to lay instructors. In 2004 St. Thomas School was totally staffed by lay instructors and served 240 K–8 pupils and 44 preschool children. In 1961, when St. Thomas School reached a high of 1,105 students, all teachers were nuns. In 1945 the parish founded the St. Thomas High School. In 1956 a new high school building was built to house a projected 400 students. High school enrollment, however, never reached that level, and in 1976, with enrollment down to 180 students, the high school was closed.

In 1978 the original St. Thomas church and school building, on E. Villa Pl., were renovated.

The building continued to house classrooms, but it also became a multipurpose social and activity center for the parish.

St. Thomas has had 10 pastors during its first 102 years: Mathias Leick, 1902–1906; Aloysius J. Roell, 1906–1917; Martin R. Delaney, 1917–1918; Thomas Coleman, 1918–1919; Otto Hafen, 1920– 1925; Herbert F. Hillenmeyer, 1925–1968; Thomas B. Finn, 1968–1981; Charles J. Hoffer, 1981–1989; John J. Riesenberg, 1989–1999; and William B. Neuhaus, beginning in 1999.

A History of St. Thomas Parish, 1902 to 1977. Fort Thomas, Ky.: St. Thomas Church, 1977.

Knapp, Paul T. Ft. Thomas Kentucky—Its History.

Fort Thomas, Ky.: Fort Thomas Centennial Committee, 1967.

St. Thomas Church, 1902 to 2002. Fort Thomas, Ky.: St. Thomas Church, 2002.

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

Charles H. Bogart

ST. THOMAS HIGH SCHOOL. The St. Thomas High School, which opened just as World War II ended, was the vision of Msgr.

Herbert F. Hillenmeyer, pastor of St. Thomas Catholic Church in Fort Thomas. Hillenmeyer wanted to reverse the flow of parish students who were opting to attend Highlands High School in Fort Thomas. He secured Bishop William Mulloy’s permission to initiate only the fi rst year of the high school, with another class to be added each year until the program extended to four years. It officially opened on September 10, 1945, with an enrollment of 20. By 1949 the student body consisted of 59 with a staff of 10 teachers. A new high school facility was dedicated on September 9, 1956, and served the parish for 20 years.

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St. Thomas High School continued to prosper in the 1960s, reaching its peak enrollment of 297 students in 1964. Its largest graduating class was 81 students in 1968. Enrollment began to decline during the early 1970s, mostly due to changing demographics. With the decreasing number of religious sisters to draw from as instructors, more lay teachers had to be hired. The increase of costs, along with a declining study body, forced the school to close in 1976. The last class of 40 seniors graduated in St. Thomas Church on June 1, 1976, and St. Thomas High School concluded 31 years of operation. The St. Thomas grade school has utilized the high school facility since. Although small by most standards, the St. Thomas High School was known for academic excellence and accomplishments in athletics. Most notable was the boys’ basketball program under future multiple Hall of Fame coach Ken Shields, who began his storied career at St. Thomas and whose teams won 199 games over his 10 seasons (1965–1974) as coach.

“Cornerstone Laid at St. Thomas Site,” KTS, February 20, 1956, 1A. Reis, Jim. “Changing Times Bypassed Schools,” KP, July 15, 1992, 4K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Rick Meyers

ST. TIMOTHY CATHOLIC CHURCH. St. Timothy Catholic Church is located in thriving western Boone Co. along U.S. 42 at Union, near Larry A. Ryle High School, on 15 acres belonging to the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). In 1989 the diocese established this parish, which included the former western and southern areas of St. Paul Catholic Church in Florence. In March of that year, Bishop William Hughes appointed Edward Brodnick as the first pastor. At first, since there was no church building, the parish used the YMCA facility on Camp Ernst Rd. and later accepted the Union Presbyterian Church’s offer of space. Ground was broken on August 27, 1989, for the parish’s new multipurpose building, and on Pentecost Sunday, June 3, 1990, 300 people dedicated the new structure. Immediately, the parish began to reduce its indebtedness as a prelude to funding construction of a new church.

The St. Timothy parish had begun with 375 families; by 1999 more than 700 families were parish members. As the growth continued, the multipurpose center soon became overcrowded. By May 1997, $1 million had been pledged to a church building fund and the parish had also retired its recent debt.

In 1996 the parish began a capital campaign, which resulted in a new church building, dedicated in September 1998. Bill Hub was the architect and Hanson Millay Inc. was the construction manager.

798 ST. VINCENT DE PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCH, NEWPORT “Boone County Parishes Experience Growing Pains,” Messenger, November 1, 1996, 1.

“New Union Parish Holds First Mass at Camp Ernst,” Messenger, July 16, 1989, 1.

“New Union Parish to Be ‘St. Timothy,’ ” Messenger, April 23, 1989, 1.

“Parish Center Dedicated at St. Timothy,” Messenger, June 17, 1990, 1.

St. Timothy: The Dedication of St. Timothy Church Program Booklet, September 27, 1998. Union, Ky.: St. Timothy Catholic Church, 1998.

John Boh

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCH, NEWPORT. In 1913 Catholic residents of Clifton (now part of Newport) asked to have their own parish. Bishop Camillus P. Maes gave his permission for a church and school, but he died in 1915, before it was built.

Although the people of Clifton had begun raising funds and had purchased property, it was not until 1916 that Rev. Herman Wetzel, associate pastor at St. Stephen Catholic Church, was given charge of the building project. St. Stephen was the parish that had previously included Clifton in its purview. Wetzel then became St. Vincent de Paul’s first pastor. Construction of a small brick combination church and school began with a cornerstone-laying ceremony on June 11, 1916, and was ready for dedication by Bishop Ferdinand Brossart on September 17 of that year. The school opened that same fall under the care of the Sisters of Divine Providence. During the 1920s, an addition was built onto the school and a separate rectory and convent were constructed.

A new church was dedicated on September 25, 1960.

In the early 1980s, as the number of Catholic school children in Newport began to decline, the Diocese of Covington’s Board of Education decided to merge the four Newport parish schools into a new interparish school named Holy Spirit.

The new plan went into effect for the 1984–1985 school year, with elementary classes to be conducted at the St. Stephen School and junior high classes at St. Francis de Sales in Cote Brilliante; the St. Vincent de Paul and Corpus Christi schools were closed.

The four Newport parishes merged in the next decade. With the pastors of three of the parishes retiring, and not enough priests available to take their places, Bishop Robert W. Muench decided to close the individual parishes and combine them into one new Holy Spirit Parish in 1997; the four churches continued to be used, but as missions to the one parish. In just a few years, however, the bishop closed all but St. Stephen Church, which became the one church for the consolidated parish. The other three were relegated to “profane, but not sordid use.” Th is meant that St. Vincent de Paul Church was closed. For several years, Sr. Judith Niewahner, S.N.D., used the church for a preschool and day care program until the program was moved to the renovated Holy Trinity Ju nior High School. Afterward, the old St. Vincent de Paul School was sold and converted into apartments.

“Decree of Bishop Robert W. Muench,” Messenger, April 25, 1997, 1.

Minutes of the Diocesan Board of Education meeting, March 8, 1984, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Covington, Ky. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Thomas S. Ward

ST. WILLIAM CATHOLIC CHURCH. Catholicism grew slowly at Williamstown in Grant Co. Priests of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) from St. Stanislaus Seminary in White Sulphur ministered at Williamstown for a time. Bishop Augustus M. Toebbe himself sometimes attended to the small station at Williamstown, administering the sacraments in the homes of area Catholics, though the town also allowed the courthouse to be used for ser vices. In 1893 Bishop Camillus P. Maes made Williamstown a mission of St. Luke Parish in Nicholasville. St. Luke’s pastor, Rev. George Bealer, decided that his parish should build a church in Williamstown, so St. Luke Parish purchased property in Williamstown on Main St. in 1900. There, a small church dedicated to St. William was built. It was not until 1912, however, that St. William Catholic Church became a parish with the appointment of Rev. James Taaffe as its first resident pastor. At that same time, St. John Mission, at Dividing Ridge, became a mission of St. William Parish.

During his tenure as pastor, Taafe did his best to enhance the interior of the church with the small amounts of money available. One highlight of the interior was a painting of St. Joseph by artist Johann Schmitt. The church building deteriorated over the years, but the lack of financial resources delayed the building of a new church with a school until the 1950s. Rev. George Donnelly at that time received permission from Bishop William T. Mulloy to buy property for a parish complex that would include a school for the growing population of children, a convent, a rectory, and a new church.

The construction was done in stages, beginning with the school. The new St. William Catholic Church, a 300-seat-capacity Bedford stone structure, was built last. Bishop Richard H. Ackerman dedicated the new church on November 26, 1961.

This church served well until the population increased in the Williamstown area as a result of the opening of I-75 between Cincinnati and Lexington. A dramatic change came to St. William Church and Parish in 1995. St. William retained its status as a parish, but because there was a shortage of priests to staff all the parishes of the diocese, Bishop William A. Hughes appointed Sister Carol Leveque, S.C., to serve as administrator, a position that can be fi lled by a noncleric. A priest, Rev. Roger Kriege, was appointed as sacramental administrator to preside at weekend masses. During Sr. Carol’s time, the parish began a capital cam-

paign to build a larger church to fit its growing needs. The old church and some of the other buildings of the old complex were incorporated into the new one. Bishop Roger J. Foys dedicated the new church on October 6, 2002.

“History of St. William Parish, Williamstown,” Messenger, October 25, 2002, 7A–8A. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

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

Thomas S. Ward

SALEM UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. The building at 810 York St. in Newport, now the Stained Glass Theatre, was once the home of Salem United Methodist Church. This church was one of Northern Kentucky’s German Methodist Churches. It belonged to the Central German Conference of the Methodist Church, a conference of churches made up primarily of German immigrant families and their descendants; their ser vices were often conducted in the German language in the years before the United States entered World War I. Members of the Race St. Methodist Church in Cincinnati moved to Newport and began to meet in homes in the area as early as 1842. As the group increased in number, it began meeting in the old Campbell Co. Courthouse at Newport. At first, class leaders William Borcherding, Peter Margue, and Frank Nuelson, originally from the Race St. Methodist Church, ministered to the assembly. In November 1842, the church was organized as the Newport and Covington Mission with 22 charter members.

The first home of what became the Salem Methodist Church was on Todd St. (now Sixth St.), between Columbia and Central Sts. in Newport. It was started as a congregation of German immigrants in 1847 under the direction of Rev. Peter B. Becker and with help from members of the Race St. Methodist Church in Cincinnati. The frame building on Todd St. was constructed at a cost of $700.

The second location was the corner of Mayo (now Seventh) and Orchard Sts. in Newport, where a lot was purchased in 1854 for $1,500. The following year, under the leadership of the Rev. H. Henke, a new brick structure was constructed at a cost of about $5,000, and Rev. Peter Moelling dedicated the new church building. During 1861–1862, the church gave up using the ser vices of a full-time pastor in order to save money. Instead, the church relied on local preachers John Hueneke and Henry Roettinger.

After the Civil War, the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church had many revivals and was marked by a spirit of thankfulness, perhaps gratitude for the termination of that bloody confl ict. Because of growth in membership, plans were made for construction of a new church building. A Queen Anne Gothic–style church building, which is

SALVATION ARMY

listed on the National Historic Register, was designed by Samuel Hannaford and Sons and built at York and Ringgold Sts. (now Eighth St.).

The building was dedicated on June 22, 1883, and accounts of the time said that it was “one of the fi nest buildings in the city.” Rev. D. D. Bayless and Rev. C. G. Fritsche spoke at the dedication. At that time, the church membership comprised 247 members in full standing and 27 probationary members; there were 192 members of the Sunday School. The church had a Ladies Society, Merry Workers, Earnest Workers, an Achrenleset, and a Choral Society.

During fall 1884, the congregation of the Salem Methodist Church hosted the Central German Methodist Conference, which included all the German Methodist Churches in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, as well as parts of Tennessee and Illinois.

The four-day conference or convention in the new church building featured meetings conducted in both German and English.

During the ministry of Rev. J. J. Baechtold, a revival in 1896 resulted in adding 335 members to the church. It was also during this period that the church building was completely remodeled at a cost of $3,600. In early 1905, the church installed a new pipe organ and made other improvements at a cost of $7,700. Rev. Richard Plueddemann was the minister from 1905 until 1907; during his term the English language was used in the Sunday evening ser vices. Salem Methodist Church celebrated its 60th anniversary as a congregation in June 1908. A Kentucky Post article stated that the interior of the church was covered with flowers. The church’s pastor then was Rev. J. P. Whitehead.

As a church with German roots, Salem Methodist Church was under pressure to give up the use of the German language in its ser vices during World War I. In response, the church board in September 1918 voted to remove the sign in front of the church, “Salem Kirche.” It was replaced with a sign in English, “Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.” At the same time all signs and symbols inside the church written in German were removed. By then, all ser vices were being conducted in English rather than German.

Salem Methodist Church’s centennial was celebrated in May 1947. In July 1978 the church celebrated its 130th anniversary with a Homecoming Celebration attended by many former members.

The church had been damaged by storms in September 1930 when lightning struck. On March 11, 1986, the church building was hit by another storm, which damaged the steeple, the roof, and the foundation of the church so severely that estimates for repairs were $215,000. The congregation, which had dwindled to 45 and had insurance coverage for only $150,000, voted to merge with the Grace United Methodist Church and sold the church building to the Footlighter Theatre Group, which operates the Stained Glass Theatre in the structure.

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

Reis, Jim. “Historic Salem Church Now Used as Theater,” KP, August 13, 2001, 4K. “Salem M.E. Church a Bower of Beauty,” KP, June 11, 1908, 5.

United Methodist Archives, Asbury Theological Seminary Library, Wilmore, Ky.

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Salin: A Converted Jew. Louisville, Ky.: Caperton and Cates, 1877.

Waldrop, J. W. History of Concord Association.

Owenton, Ky.: News-Herald Print, 1907.

Margaret A. Murphy

Paul L. Whalen

SALIN, LEWIS HENRY (b. July 2, 1829, Bavaria, Germany; d. May 12, 1897, Owen Co., Ky.).

Lewis Henry Salin, who became a Baptist pastor, was born to Jewish parents (see Jews). His father was Rabbi Henry B. Salin, a Levite, and his mother was a descendant of the Aaronic priesthood. Lewis attended school for 12 years in Bavaria, Germany. In his youth, a rebellion broke out in Bavaria, and he joined the rebels. Supporters of the uprising drilled daily in preparation for battle. Salin was selected as a standard-bearer, but the movement quickly collapsed and the revolutionaries disarmed. Many of the rebels were severely punished after the rebellion ended; Salin, being a minor, was sentenced to only 12 hours of imprisonment.

On September 7, 1849, Salin, at age 20, sailed on a vessel for the United States, where his brother S. H. Salin had already emigrated. Lewis Salin landed at New Orleans, La., on November 4, 1849.

He then took passage on the steamer Ohio headed for Cincinnati. However, someone advised him to go to Owen Co., Ky., suggesting that he might find hospitable ethnic Germans there. The Benjamin Kemper family, who lived near New Liberty, Ky., accepted him into their home. When Salin soon became critically ill with typhoid fever, the Kemper family sent for his brother, who was living in New Castle in Henry Co.; S. H. Salin nursed his brother back to health, with the help of neighboring families.

Lewis Salin subsequently became a merchant in Owenton and began to study beliefs held by the various Christian denominations. Influenced by Baptist elder Lewis D. Alexander of New Liberty, Salin was eventually drawn to that denomination’s religious beliefs. He was ordained a Baptist minister on the third Saturday of March in 1857. At age 30, he married the former Mrs. Warren Foster (Barbara Ann Bourn) on November 15, 1859. The Salins were parents of three sons. Lewis Salin served as pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Owen Co. for about 22 years. At the same time, he pastored nearby at Greenup Fork Baptist Church, dividing his time between the two churches. He was a half-time pastor at Monterey Baptist Church in Owen Co. from 1885 to 1886, and again from 1892 to 1895. His autobiographical book The Converted Jew chronicles his conversion and personal struggles. He died in 1897 at his home near Ep (Greenup) in Owen Co and was buried at the Monterey Cemetery in Owen Co. Israel in Prophecy. “A Brief List of Most Famous Messianic Jews.” www.israelinprophecy.org.

Murphy, Margaret A. History of the Monterey Baptist Church and Community. Frankfort, Ky.: Roberts, 1976.

Salin, Lewis Henry. A Condensed History of the Experience and Church Relations of Eld. Lewis Henry

SALVATION ARMY. The Salvation Army (SA) has functioned in Northern Kentucky for more than 100 years. Its foremost presence was clearly the Booth Memorial Hospital, which it owned and operated along E. Second St. in Covington from 1914 to 1979; the hospital moved to Florence, Ky., and was sold to the St. Luke Hospital in 1989.

The Booth facility was the first general hospital in the United States for the SA. Northern Kentuckian Maj. Glenn Sieler’s parents worked at the Booth Hospital during his youth; later in life, he returned to help administer the same facility.

The SA was formed by William Booth in England in 1865. He took religion out into the streets of London, ministering to prostitutes, derelicts, the homeless, and the destitute. With food, housing, and concern, he converted the bottom of society. The orga ni zation was called an army because of the dress uniforms worn by his staff, in the pattern of the British Army. In the United States, the SA was present in Philadelphia by 1883, in Louisville and Cincinnati by 1885, and in Newport, operating out of the former Red Men’s Hall, by 1888.

Although the SA is best known for fundraising with red kettles and ringing bells during the Christmas season (first used in San Francisco in 1891), other means of raising funds were implemented before the modern United Way (United Appeal) was established. In 1921 Harry H. Gardiner, the “human fly,” was climbing bank buildings and courthouses in front of crowds of 15,000 in Covington and Newport as a means of encouraging donations for the SA. Society ladies’ groups often held teas, bridal shows, and luncheons for the benefit of the SA. In Newport, the SA operated over the years in several locations. In the 1940s and 1950s, the SA had a store where it sold restored furniture and appliances and other used items at 500 W. Sixth St. That store was part of the Adult Rehabilitation Program, in which clients being helped by the SA went around picking up used furniture and the like and restoring it before it was sold in such outlets. In 1978 the SA dedicated a new 15,000-squarefoot community center at W. 10th and Patterson Sts. in Newport. Costing $650,000, the facility featured a gymnasium, meeting rooms, a chapel, offices, and an apartment for an SA staff member family. Later, an adult day care program for seniors was added. When the new facility opened, the SA family ser vices group at 202 Garrard St. in Covington, where juveniles were counseled, moved to 10th and Patterson. The 10th and Patterson operation continues to this day, and in order to appeal to the neighborhood youth, a game room has been added recently. This SA facility works closely with the Brighton Center in helping the people of Newport’s West End.

800 SALYERS, KATHRYN For many years, beginning in 1929, the SA had a building at 14 E. Eighth St. in Covington. Before that time, the SA was housed in several other locations in the city, such as 129 Pike in 1904 and 513–515 Madison Ave. in 1911. Today, its Covington headquarters is at 1806 Scott St., the former St. John Episcopal Church, where it moved in 1980 from the Eighth St. facility.

The SA has gone to war with U.S. troops, making doughnuts near the battlefields, comforting soldiers and sailors, and entertaining them as much as possible. It was a cofounder of the United Ser vices Organization (USO). Stateside, the SA provided grief counseling to the survivors of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate in 1977, and in 1940 the SA was on the scene of the Latonia Theater fire, where many Covington firemen were injured. The organization has also been on hand during disasters such as the hurricanes Hugo in 1987 and Katrina in 2005.

The SA has sponsored summer camps for inner-city children, and it has arranged for Santa Claus to hand out Christmas gifts to children who otherwise may not have received any. At one time, itinerant SA bands crossed the nation providing free concerts, as music has always been an important medium for the SA. Each Sunday, the Covington location conducts Sunday school and a worship ser vice.

“Army Celebrates Booth Victory,” KP, June 7, 1979, 1K. Farrell, Mike. “Reveille,” KP, September 23, 1978, 5K. “Harry H. Gardiner—Human Fly,” KP, April 16, 1921, 1.

Murdoch, Norman H. “A Protestant Hospital for Covington: Booth Memorial Hospital,” JKS 3 (October 1986): 107–49.

———. The Salvation Army in Cincinnati: 1885–1985.

Cincinnati: Salvation Army, 1985.

“Salvation Army Bldg. Is Cleared of Debt,” KP, July 14, 1939, 14.

SALYERS, KATHRYN (b. September 12, 1914, near Dry Ridge, Ky.). Born in Grant Co., Carroll Co. historian and genealogist Sara Kathryn Salyers is the youngest daughter of William Tandy and Emma Price Dunlap Salyers. In 1929 the family moved into the Carrollton home of Kathryn’s grandmother, Sarah Spoonmore Salyers Haggard; this brick house on Seventh St. in Carrollton has remained Salyers’s home for more than 77 years.

Salyers became a bookkeeper in Gex Diuguid’s tobacco warehouses and held the position until her retirement.

Following Kathryn’s 1943 marriage to Paul Godman, her mother-in-law, Mayme Bowie Godman, awakened in her an interest in genealogy and local history, and she turned her meticulous attention for detail into compiling fi ling cabinets full of historical and genealogical information, which is frequently sought out by genealogists, reporters, and historians. In 2004 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) microfi lmed her genealogical collection. The Kathryn Salyers History Room at the Carroll Co. Public Library will house her records upon her death.

Bill Davis

SANDERS. This sixth-class city is in the southeastern corner of Carroll Co., 10 miles eastsoutheast of Carrollton, where Ky. Rts. 36 and 47 meet. The site now known as Sanders was once a salt lick along the buffalo trace that ran from the mouth of the Licking River at Covington to Drennon Springs in Henry Co. First called Rislerville, after a local storekeeper, the town was renamed Sanders for the Sanders family who operated a gristmill there on Eagle Creek; Sanders has also been called Sanders Mill. For a time it was called Liberty Station, because the community was an important shipping point along the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington Railroad. The town of Sanders was incorporated in 1871, and at that time it was located within Gallatin Co. A year later, when the county boundaries were redrawn, it became part of Carroll Co. The 1883 regional Lake atlas shows that the town once included a hotel (the Northcutt), doctors’ offices, livestock corrals, a large railroad depot, clothing stores, a sawmill, a tobacco warehouse, and a post office, all located near the railroad. Frank Jacobs and his wife Ella Cannon Jacobs ran the Blue Lick Springs Hotel during the 1880s. Sanders was once the secondlargest city in Carroll Co. In 1891 the railroad through town became part of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Late on Wednesday evening, October 18, 1899, Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s train stopped at Sanders, and Bryan, renowned as perhaps the nation’s greatest orator, delivered one of his famed speeches to a crowd estimated at between 2,500 and 3,000. The well-remembered Sanders Covered Bridge remained standing until it burned in 1948.

At one time there was a high school in Sanders, before county schools were consolidated; and for many years the Sanders Fair was a favorite summer event. Today, freight trains on the routes between Cincinnati and Louisville rumble through town, stopping now far more seldom than in the past. A Christian church and a Baptist church continue to hold regular ser vices in town. In 1980 Sanders’s population was 332; by 2000 it had declined to 240.

The shifting of automobile traffic from the two state highways that converge at Sanders to I-71, to the north, has significantly contributed to the town’s decline.

An Atlas of Carroll and Gallatin Counties, Kentucky.

Philadelphia: D. J. Lake, 1883.

“Liberty Sta. or Sanders Was Sizeable Town Back in 1883,” Carrollton News-Democrat, May 16, 1963.

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

SANDERS, GEORGE N. (b. February 21, 1812, Lexington, Ky.; d. August 12, 1873, New York City).

George Nicholas Sanders, an entrepreneur, a political organizer, and a Confederate agent, was the son of Lewis and Ann Nicholas Sanders. In 1823 Lewis Sanders moved his family to their new Grass Hills estate near Ghent, in what is today Carroll Co. George Nicholas Sanders lived there until 1845. His early education was in private schools, including Dr. Joseph Buchanon’s Select School, and later he attended Georgetown College

in Georgetown. Until he was in his early thirties, Sanders worked on the Grass Hills estate, primarily involved in horse racing and animal breeding.

Reading was also a popu lar pastime at Grass Hills, and it was through the family’s subscription to the magazine Passion Flower, published in New York City by Samuel C. Reid and his daughter Anna Johnson Reid, that Sanders became acquainted with his future wife. When he wrote to Anna Reid to express how much he enjoyed reading the publication, a correspondence ensued. Then, without ever having met her, he asked Anna to marry him, and she accepted. They had four children together: Reid, Virginia, Lewis, and George Jr. Sanders emerged on the national political scene in 1843 when he organized a nonpartisan meeting at a tailor shop in Ghent, in order to promote the annexation of Texas to the United States.

Because these proceedings were never published, the group became known as the Mystic Thirteen.

After a second meeting in 1844, the Mystic Thirteen requested the opinions of notable politicians on the Texas issue. Several persons responded, including Tennessee politician James K. Polk. Polk published his response, which was strongly in favor of annexation, and subsequently won the 1844 U.S. presidential election.

In 1845 the Sanders family moved to New York City, where George could engage in the larger world of politics and business. He served as an agent for the Hudson’s Bay Company, attempting to negotiate the sale of the Oregon Territory to the U.S. government, but his contract lapsed before the sale was completed. He became better known as the leader of Young America, a progressive faction within the Democratic Party. Symbolizing youthful nationalism, Young Americans advocated capitalistic development, intervention in foreign affairs, and manifest destiny, and they supported the 1852 presidential bid of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas. In 1851 Sanders bought the United States Magazine and Democratic Review and made it a Douglas and Young America political organ. Although Sanders was known to possess a certain charm, he was not always reliable, and the articles in the Democratic Review during the campaign demonstrated his propensity for extreme behavior.

When he called the Democratic Party regulars “old fogies,” “nincompoops,” and “vile toads,” he alienated potential Douglas supporters as well as opponents, much to the consternation of Douglas. Ultimately, Gen. Franklin Pierce won the Democratic nomination. Sanders switched his support to Pierce, and in 1854 President Pierce (1853–1857) appointed Sanders as the consul to London, England. The Senate, however, refused to confirm Sanders, primarily because of his highly visible and controversial relationship with notable European revolutionaries. Sanders was later made navy agent of New York after promoting the successful 1856 presidential campaign of James Buchanan (1857–1861) .

When the American Civil War erupted, Sanders became a Confederate agent; he attempted to procure various army supplies, from shoes to ironclad warships. He and his sons Reid and Lewis also

SANDERS, LEWIS

ran a courier ser vice between the South and Europe. In 1864 he joined a secret ser vice operation in Canada on behalf of the Confederate government. Sanders was instrumental in organizing the St. Albans raid into Vermont and the abortive Niagara peace conference, two seemingly contradictory projects, though both were designed to achieve a favorable end to the war for the Confederacy.

Then, on May 2, 1865, President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) announced a $25,000 reward for Sanders’s arrest in connection with President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Sanders’s numerous activities in Canada, including a possible meeting with John Wilkes Booth, were shrouded in secrecy. Although the charges were eventually dropped, Sanders spent seven years of self-imposed exile in Europe following the war. In 1872 he rejoined his family in New York City but lived only a year more. He died in 1873 and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in New York City.

Curti, Merle E. “George N. Sanders—American Patriot of the Fift ies,” South Atlantic Quarterly 27 (January 1928): 79–87.

The Papers of George Nicholas Sanders, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Parker, Anna Virginia. The Sanders Family of Grass Hills. Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1966.

Melinda Senters

SANDERS, LEWIS (b. 1781, Virginia; d. 1861, Carroll Co., Ky.). Lewis Sanders, the originator of the agricultural county fair in Kentucky, was the son of John and Jane Craig Sanders, members of the Traveling Church of Baptists, who before 1782 migrated from Spotsylvania Co., Va., to Fayette Co., near Lexington, Ky. Lewis Sanders was related to the large Craig family that pioneered the settling of much of north central Kentucky. In 1795 his father, John Sanders, sold his farm in Fayette Co. and moved north to a farm on McCool’s Creek, near Ghent, in what was then Gallatin Co. His mother, Jane Craig Sanders, died when Lewis was five years old, and apparently he was raised by his married sisters, who resided in Fayette Co. So that Lewis could learn a trade, John Sanders placed his young son with Patrick McCullough, a leading early merchant in Lexington. Lewis acquired mathematical and accounting skills at the store. In about 1800, John Sanders gave Lewis his inheritance, the equivalent in cash of 200 acres, two horses, two cows, two slaves, and starter furniture, the same value of inheritance that he gave his other children. From those funds, in 1805, Lewis and A. B. Burton purchased the Lexington store where Lewis worked. Lewis also built three or four large three-story stores and a dwelling on his property between Mill and Broadway Sts. in Lexington and started a cotton spinning mill in one of the new buildings.

In 1806 the young entrepreneur, along with other Lexingtonians, became caught up in the Aaron Burr–Blennerhassett scandal, a scheme to populate huge tract of lands in the far west. Lewis, chiefly because Burr used Gen. James Wilkinson’s name as an associate in the project, bought $16,000

of Burr’s financial notes, most of them unsecured.

His investment was a total loss, since Burr used the funds to purchase flatboats and supplies for a project that never developed.

In 1807 Lewis Sanders married quite advantageously. His wife was Ann Nicholas, daughter of George Nicholas, a politically powerful attorney with significant landholdings in Kentucky and an early supporter of Lexington’s Transylvania College.

Sanders became infatuated with manufacturing. He opened a cotton thread mill in Lexington and then purchased a 500-acre estate just outside of Lexington on the Georgetown Rd. A half mile from his home, Lewis constructed a nine-story steam mill just off the Frankfort Rd. that produced woolen and cotton products. He built 4 large brick multifamily structures and 20 frame single-family homes to house up to 300 workers, a church, a school, and two brick homes for supervisory employees, thus starting an early company town, which he named Sandersville.

On May 31, 1816, Sanders advertised a “Cattle Shew,” the first agricultural fair in Kentucky history, at his homestead farm two and a half miles outside Lexington. He recruited five well-known landed gentlemen as judges, representing five counties from the Bluegrass region of the state. Offering silver cups as prizes, the first fair featured cattle and sheep. One of the top prizes went to Buzzard, a bull owned by Capt. William Smith of Fayette Co. A single category, almost an afterthought, was opened for linen. A hand-woven, bleached cloth won the prize over a manufactured cloth.

Shortly after the Sanders fair, the first Kentucky Society for Promoting Agriculture was formed July 25, 1816, with retired Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby (1792–1796 and 1812–1816) as the first president. The call for a fair in 1817 included categories for cheese, domestic woolen cloth, homemade linen, and distilled whiskey and added more classes for cattle and horses to the list of exhibits. Sheep were to be shown with a sample of their fleece. A saddle show was added in the 1818 event. By 1819 the Kentucky fair had been moved to September to permit more farmers to attend and show, and the number of classes of domestic products and livestock had tripled. Six women were exhibitors.

Horses moved into a premier position, and soon a horse trotting track was added to the fair. The concept that Lewis Sanders pioneered soon expanded into counties around the Bluegrass region. Sanders recalled in a letter in 1856 that Bourbon, Franklin, Mercer, Jefferson, and other counties had begun to hold annual fairs.

Shortly after the first agricultural fair, in 1817, Lewis Sanders imported a herd of 12 blooded cattle from England, thus infusing Kentucky’s cattle stock of the 19th century with Durham and Teesdale shorthorn and English Longhorn stock.

That same year Henry Clay imported two British cattle. The Sanders and Clay stock were called the Seventeens.

At that very moment of success in 1817, Lewis Sanders lost his merchant and manufacturing businesses, his land, his home, and all of the im-

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ported cattle herd plus 100 of his Merino sheep to private and public auction in a major financial loss.

The loss was due partly to his loss of funds in 1806 in the Burr speculation fiasco and partly to an economic bank panic that swept the western states.

Sanders was far too overextended, and his creditors demanded payment. Sandersville went bankrupt, and Sanders’s partially constructed home, with two oval and two octagonal rooms, was purchased by his father-in-law. George Nicholas also aided the young Sanders family, which had six children at the time, by giving his daughter, Ann Nicholas Sanders, 900 acres of upland in Gallatin Co. from the 17,000 acres he had purchased there between McCool’s and Eagle Creeks.

In 1819 Lewis Sanders, a nephew, and the Sanders slaves, Georgi, Black John, Black Jim (Jem), old Christian, and Lewis, headed for the lands along McCool’s and Eagle Creeks and began the long process of building a showcase agricultural farm out of the wilderness. Sanders believed the uplands were ideal for orchards and for pastureland for his Merino sheep, cattle, and horses. Large pear and apple orchards were planted at the site, and later a horse trotting track was built. The large house on the plantation was not finished until 1823, because Sanders insisted on soaking the timber in the farm pond for several months to cure it before constructing the homestead (see Grass Hills). Sanders built a long, rambling house with very large rooms. Anne Sanders finally moved the family to Grass Hills in 1823 and in 1827 gave birth to Jane Craig Sanders. Sanders leased other slaves, Zilla, Lottie, Manerva, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Emmey, the gardener, to help make continuous improvements to the farm.

Once again Sanders, having invested heavily in the farm, was in financial trouble. And once again the Nicholas family came to his aid. Judge Samuel Smith Nicholas of Louisville; Ann Nicholas Sanders’s brother, Richard Hawes, of Winchester; her brother-in-law, Dr. William D. Richardson; and Robert Scott of Lexington purchased one-third of Sanders’s original imported herd of cattle from the estate of William Smith and gave it to Lewis Sanders at Grass Hills, easing the financial strain.

Ann Nicholas Sanders died in 1830, and she and her young daughter Jane Craig Sanders, who died in 1831, were the first of the family buried at Grass Hills. During the early 1830s, George N. Sanders, a son of Lewis and Ann, took over as farm manager and purchased the cattle portion of the business. Lewis Sanders began to write extensive diaries; develop written pedigrees of Grass Hills cattle, horses, and sheep; and encourage other Kentucky breeders also to keep meticulous records. He wrote learned and somewhat opinionated articles for publication in several agricultural journals and newspapers throughout the Midwest.

Both Lewis Sanders and George Nicholas took a lively interest in politics. In 1843 they were instrumental in starting the first national rump caucus in favor of the Texas Annexation, at a meeting held at Ghent. Afterward, a firm resolution in support of annexation was sent to all presidential candidates. James K. Polk was the only presidential

802 SANDERS, SAMUEL candidate to respond favorably. Much of the population residing in Carroll Co. was supportive of a war with Mexico, and Sam Sanders, the family’s third son, enlisted along with several of his cousins. He was massacred by Santa Ana’s Mexican troops on March 27, 1836, as were all the others under U.S. Colonel Fannin’s command. Also serving in the Mexican War was the family’s second son, John Sanders, who had made the army his career. He married a Pittsburgh, Pa., socialite and rose from the rank of captain to major during the Mexican War. Lewis Sanders became an expert in hemp production and in 1843 was appointed as the agent for the U.S. Hemp Agency in Louisville at a salary of $1,000 a year. In the days of sailing ships, hemp was important to the state’s economy. But the secretary of the navy had been advised that Russian hemp was superior to the hemp subjected to the watersoaking process used in Kentucky. In 1849 Sanders conducted a series of experiments proving that the Kentucky process for making hemp produced stronger, more durable rope and that this hemp was cheaper to manufacture into rope.

In 1847 George N. Sanders moved to New York City with his young family and left the active farm management of Grass Hills in the capable hands of his youngest brother, Joseph Hawkins Sanders, who lived there with his family until 1862. In that year Grass Hills passed out of the control of the Sanders family. Lewis Sanders died in 1861. As his inheritance, his son John Sanders took the 2,580 raw acres in Texas that had been given to the family by the U.S. government because of Sam Sanders’s death in the Mexican War. The Sanders daughters had already received their inheritance when they married. That left Grass Hills to George N. and Joseph H. Sanders.

However, George N., a former consul to London, England, was serving the Confederacy in highprofile negotiations with European countries and had to stay in Europe for years until it was safe to return home to New York City after the Civil War. The Sanderses were afraid the government would confiscate their property, so they sold the entire estate in 1862 to James Frank of Ghent, who in turn sold it to John Montgomery, whose son Curtis Montgomery lived there well into the 20th century.

The Kentucky State heritage historical marker that was placed at Grass Hills in 1965 calls attention to Lewis Sanders’s founding the state’s agricultural fairs. Grass Hills was placed on the National Register in 1975, and when I-71 was constructed, 91 acres of the original estate were taken for highway rights of way.

Green, Karen Mauer. The Kentucky Gazette, 1787– 1800. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1983.

———. The Kentucky Gazette, 1801–1820. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1985.

Henlein, Paul C. Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley, 1783–1860. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1959.

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

Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1966.

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

Diane Perrine Coon

SANDERS, SAMUEL (b. April 16, 1813, Franklin Co., Ky.; d. March 15, 1902, Franklin Co., Ky.).

The son of Peter and Sarah “Sally” Byrns Sanders, Samuel Sanders was the owner of a large amount of land in Owen Co. and a well-known riverboat pi lot. He married Penelope Duvall on January 26, 1852.

Sanders was mate and pi lot on the Blue Wing, a vessel constructed in Louisville in 1845 that ran the local Louisville-Frankfort trade. During the Civil War, he was master of the Blue Wing #2 (built in 1850), the only steamer then in regular ser vice on the Kentucky River. The vessel was commandeered during the Confederate occupation of Frankfort in October 1862. Union forces confiscated the Blue Wing #2 in December 1862, because it had been trading with the Confederates, and converted it into a military transport on the Lower Mississippi River. There, Confederates captured and burned the boat later that same month.

Next, Sanders pi loted the Wren, constructed in 1862 for the Louisville-Frankfort trade, amid periodic Confederate sniper fire. The City of Frankfort, built in 1881, was the last steamboat commanded by Sanders. In July 1882, a newspaper named the Yeoman reported that “Capt. Sanders, age 69, landed the boat at Frankfort, with the Madison Indiana Brass Band aboard, drawing 1,000 spectators to the Kentucky River Landing.”

Sanders’s wife, Penelope, died November 6, 1887. Sanders then began selling his Owen Co. land and moved to Frankfort on September 14, 1891. At age 78, he sold land to the W. G. Simpson Masonic Lodge 472 for a cemetery in Monterey that is still in use. He also sold land in Monterey for a new brick school on June 17, 1901. Sanders died in 1902 at his home on Ann St. in Frankfort at age 89, after only a few days of illness caused by a fall.

He was buried in the Frankfort Cemetery.

Coleman, J. Winston, Jr. Steamboats on the Kentucky River. Lexington, Ky.: Winburn Press, 1960.

“Frankfort’s Oldest Citizen Passes Away,” Frankfort Newspaper Roundabout, March 22, 1902, 4.

Murphy, Margaret Alice, and Lela Maude Hawkins.

The History of Historic Old Cedar Baptist Church and Community. Frankfort, Ky.: Lynn, 2004.

Way, Frederick Jr., comp. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1983. Athens: Ohio Univ., 1983.

dieval history, and physical geography at the Northern Kentucky Academic Tournament held at the Dry Ridge High School. Weldon, along with Minor Hunter, Katy Ransdall, and Amanda Tandy, graduated from Sanders High School in 1914.

A succession of principals and high school teachers were hired to serve the school between 1914 and 1926, and the enrollment in the high school ranged from 12 to 23 during those years. In 1925 a large brick school was built to house both the grade and the high schools. A year later, Sanders High School, now housed in a brand new brick building with classrooms and a gymnasium, became part of the Carroll Co. School System. In 1926 A. M. Setzer was hired as principal, and Sanders High School obtained a Class B accreditation from the state in 1927. William Harris was hired as principal in 1928 and organized the upper levels on a 6-6 plan (six months of school, six months off ), with three teachers assigned full-time to the junior high and senior high school students.

In 1938 R. B. Cartmell served as principal of the Sanders Consolidated School, which had 228 students enrolled. Cartmell was superintendent of Carroll Co. Schools from 1940 to 1965. The consolidated elementary school, first known as U.S. 42 School, was renamed Cartmell Elementary School in his honor.

With the construction by the Works Progress Administration in 1938 of the large addition to the Carrollton High School and its new 1,000-seat gymnasium, there was now room for all the county high school students. Sanders High School was the last of the county high schools to be consolidated into Carrollton High School. By World War II, all the county high school students were being bused into Carrollton.

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. Carrollton News Democrat, December 1, 1938, 1.

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

Margaret A. Murphy

SANDFORD, THOMAS, GENERAL (b. 1762, SANDERS HIGH SCHOOL. The combined Sanders grade school and four-year high school in Sanders was organized in 1909, and Everett Gregg, a graduate of Eastern State Normal School (Eastern Kentucky University) at Richmond, was hired as the first principal of Sanders High School.

Emma O. Sanders and Rudy D. Smartt were teaching assistants.

By 1911 there were high schools operating in Carroll Co. at Carrollton, English, Ghent, Sanders, and Worthville. From 1912 to 1914, R. W. Haskins of the Western Kentucky Normal School (Western Kentucky University) at Bowling Green was the principal at Sanders High School. In 1912 J. Elmer Weldon took gold medals in English, history, me-

Westmoreland Co., Va.; d. December 10, 1808, Cincinnati, Ohio). Thomas Sandford, a Revolutionary War general, a politician, and a farmer, was described as a man six feet three inches tall who was bold and muscular and stood as straight as an arrow. General Sandford married Peggy Bell on November 10, 1805, and they had one son.

The general also had two sons by a previous marriage. He came to Kentucky in 1792 and settled on the highlands south of Covington. He was a Kentucky state senator (1800–1802) and a state representative (1802). He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms (1803 to 1807).

Sandford appeared to have a bright future in politics, but those dreams were dashed on Saturday,

SANFORDTOWN

December 8, 1808. Sandford and two of his servants had gone to Cincinnati to sell some wheat they had grown on Sandford’s farm, which was about three miles below the mouth of the Licking River. Sandford considered the price he was offered for the wheat too low, so he decided to take it to a mill up the Little Miami River and have it ground into meal. The weather was very stormy and both the Ohio and the Little Miami rivers were running high and swift . Sandford and his two servants battled against the current on the Ohio River and somehow managed to start the trip up the Little Miami River. The wheat was very heavy, and with the weight of the three men, the boat was barely afloat. Seeing that it was impossible to continue, Sandford turned around and returned to the Cincinnati landing on the Ohio River. When the boat struck the shore, Sandford was thrown into the river and drowned. He was 46 years old at the time of his death. Because the river was covered by ice near the shores, his body was not recovered until six weeks later. Sandford was well respected by his colleagues; at his death a resolution was passed asking members of the Kentucky General Assembly and their officers to wear black armbands for 30 days in mourning.

Sandford was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

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.

SAND RUN BAPTIST CHURCH. The Sand Run Baptist Church, located in the Hebron area of Boone Co., was constituted on March 20, 1819, with 78 members: 55 whites and 23 African Americans. Among the prominent founding members were Chichester Matthews, who became the church’s first pastor; William Montague, an ordained minister; Landen Robinson, a licensed preacher; and Lewis Webb, the former clerk of the Bullittsburg Baptist Church. Cave Johnson (see Cave Johnson House) and Jeremiah Kirtley, along with their families, also joined in founding the Sand Run Baptist Church.

The Sand Run Baptist Church was a strong church from its inception and increased in strength as a number of influential local Baptists transferred their memberships to join the congregation. By the end of 1819, the Sand Run congregation had decided to build a suitable building for worship, which was going to cost $2,100.

Of this amount, $1,000 was raised by subscription, and the remainder was apportioned among the free male members of the church. This was done by dividing the church’s members into classes ranked according to their ability to pay.

The first class was to pay $76 each, the second class $56, the third class $35, the fourth class $18, and the fifth class $11. One man was appointed to collect from those who could pay in cash, and another man was to collect from those who paid in tobacco. On Sunday, February 20, 1820, the Sand Run congregation worshipped in their new

meeting house, although it was unfinished and without stoves. Until then, they had worshipped in private homes.

During the 19th century, three ministers at the Sand Run Baptist Church served for long periods: the church’s first pastor, Chichester Matthews, served for nearly 10 years; William Whitaker, the second pastor, served for 41 years; and Robert E. Kirtley, the eldest son of Rev. Robert Kirtley and a brother of Rev. James A. Kirtley, pastored at the Sand Run church for 26 years. Robert E. Kirtley wrote the first history of the church in 1876. The church met one Saturday a month for business and one Sunday a month for worship during most of the 19th century. In 1870 the church purchased ground for a cemetery.

Barnabas, an enslaved African American who was member of the church, was recognized for his preaching ability and was encouraged to preach among the church’s other slave members. He was one of only two slave preachers in the Baptist churches then operating in Boone Co. During the 1830s, the Sand Run Baptist Church’s pastor, William Montague, became influenced by the teachings of Alexander Campbell, who taught that baptism was necessary for salvation. The congregation at the Sand Run Baptist Church believed that salvation was “by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.” They held a hearing, and shortly afterward Montague left the Sand Run church and joined a group that followed Campbell’s teachings.

The Sand Run Baptist Church’s building was damaged by fire in 1941 and subsequently repaired.

In 1961 the Hebron Baptist Church was established by members who had previously belonged to the Sand Run Baptist Church; 97 members were granted letters of recommendation to the new Baptist church in Hebron. A new Sunday School building was dedicated by the Sand Run Baptist church in 1976.

Pastors during the 20th century who served for long periods at the Sand Run Baptist Church included C. J. Avery, Roy A. Johnson, Everett C. Walters, and J. R. Armstrong. Presently, the Sand Run church’s pastor is Rev. Steve Cable.

Sand Run Baptist Church directories, Sand Run Baptist Church, Hebron, Ky.

James R. Duvall

SANFORDTOWN. Sanfordtown (Sandfortown) was a small community located on the Three-L Highway (Ky. Rt. 17) near its intersection with Dudley Pk. in Kenton Co. The eastern portions of Horsebranch and Orphanage Rds. were also considered part of this community. Early references to Sanfordtown, which was a few miles south of Latonia and Covington, were appearing in local newspapers by the 1850s. The settlers in the vicinity of Sanfordtown included English, German, and Irish immigrants as well as local residents moving from Covington. Many were Catholic, and they soon organized what became the Holy Guardian Angels parish, which began as a mission of the St. Benedict Catholic Church in Covington in 1856. As

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they outgrew their original quarters, the parishioners built a series of church and school buildings during the later 19th century.

The community was named for one of its most prominent citizens, B. F. Sanford, who lived along Ky. Rt. 17 in the early 1850s and served a variety of roles in local and national commerce and in politics. He apparently was a clerk in the U.S. State Department during the Civil War and by 1864 became a commercial agent in Haiti. Sanford was also a bank president and a newspaper editor. He resided in Sanfordtown until his death in 1883.

It was reported that local residents were involved in a Civil War visit by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan during August 1862. Confederate cavalry moved into the Sanfordtown area, said to be led by Morgan himself. John Dinser saw the Confederate troops remove a Union flag from the home of John Weisenberger and destroy it. He also reported a skirmish between the Union Home Guard and the Confederates, although no one was injured. As the Confederates retreated, they apparently captured several local Home Guardsmen, including Dinser’s uncle Marcus Beach, who lived in Sanfordtown. Beach was released farther south in Crittenden.

Sanfordtown had its own post office from 1893 to 1912, and John Weisenberger was its first postmaster. The community also included at least one hotel, a grocery store, and other small, familyowned commercial enterprises through the mid20th century. Other local family names associated with the community include Argo, Arlinghaus, Berkemier, Bilz, Boemker, Breiner, Carney, Dobblehoff, Duncan, Elam, Eubank, Farmer, Fernandes, Fey, Franxman, Goedde, Goodhew, Gripshover, Harmeling, Hellman, Hillman, Hunter, Jump, Kahmann, Krebs, Kunkel, List, Luke, Mattingly, Meiman, Merkle, Moormann, Mueller, Nageleisen, Reed, Rousch, Speaks, Wendling, and Works.

Both the 1897 flood and the flood of 1937 caused damage to homes and to the Holy Guardian Angels Church. The church remained part of the community until it was closed in 1958, upon the completion of St. Pius X Catholic Church on Dudley Pk. at the top of the hill. That church served as the successor to the Holy Guardian Angels Church. At this time the Sanfordtown community was becoming less residential and more commercial and industrial.

Sanfordtown had its own fire department in the mid-20th century, until the department’s merger with Edgewood’s during the late 1990s.

Many families had already moved away by then; the flood of 1937 and the Great Depression seemed to mark the beginning of the end for this small farming community. After World War II, most residents sold their farms. By the 1970s, much of the original farmland had become industrial or commercial property. The construction of I-275 in the 1970s fi nished the demise of the area as a residential and farming community. Part of Sanfordtown is now in Fort Wright and part in Edgewood.

804 SANITATION “Postmaster Now,” KP, September 11, 1893, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Golden Time for Edgewood: Upscale Suburb to Celebrate 50 Years as Incorporated Area,” KP, January 12, 1998, 4K. Ryan, Paul E. History of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Diocese of Covington, 1954.

Jeannine Kreinbrink

SANITATION. In towns throughout Northern Kentucky, as late as the mid-20th century, it was assumed that waste of all kinds could safely be discharged into the Ohio River, via the nearest stream or creek. Today residents of the region understand that appropriate wastewater facilities and infrastructure are essential to help prevent widespread epidemics and to protect the natural environment.

Acknowledgment of the need for formalized sewage disposal dates back to 4000 b.c. in the Mesopotamian Empire. The need for proper disposal of human waste was associated then with benefits such as odor reduction and other practical conveniences; the public health risk arising from exposed, untreated waste was not yet fully understood. From this time period until the collapse of the Roman Empire early in the first millennium, public storm-water drainage and aqueduct systems were already in place throughout many of the civilized societies, such as those in Greece, Egypt, and Rome. Some homes were directly connected to the storm-water system as a means to carry waste away from their property; however, the use of cesspools was more common.

Cesspools were covered pits underneath an opening in the floor of a home or a public latrine; the cesspool had a perforated lining into which raw sewage was fi ltered and discharged into the soil. Aside from direct connections to the stormwater system and the utilization of cesspools, public streets served as disposal sites for most garbage and excrement. It was common practice to dump jars of human waste out of windows and into the street. Extensive street-washing programs periodically cleaned the waste from the streets and moved it into the storm-sewer system. Communities throughout the United States, including the municipalities established in Northern Kentucky in the late 1800s and early 1900s, used these procedures as forms of sewage disposal. Privies, or outhouses, were also quite common in Northern Kentucky.

It was not until midway through the 19th century that efficient sewage systems developed in the United States. After the onset of cholera and typhoid epidemics, citizens began to establish the link between sewage disposal and public health, and this new association prompted the development of improved sewage disposal systems. The primary motivation at the time was to divert sewage away from sources of water, such as private wells; the environmental implications of dumping raw sewage onto land and into waterways had not yet become a major concern.

Two options were considered when communities wished to construct a sewage collection and disposal system—a combined system and a sepa-

rate system. A combined sewer system carries sewage and storm water in the same pipe. A separate sewer system carries only wastewater; storm water is conveyed in a completely separate system. The sewer systems constructed in the early 1900s along the river cities of Northern Kentucky, including Bellevue, Covington, Dayton, Newport, and Southgate, were combined sewers. Storm water and sewage from these communities was collected in the already existing storm-water system and discharged into local waterways, which all eventually drained into the Ohio River. It was not until the 1960s that separate sanitary sewer systems were constructed in the region.

During the time when combined sewer systems were an acceptable means of sewage disposal, “dilution as the solution to pollution” was a common practice within many communities and was endorsed by many engineers and sanitarians. The concept was to dispose of sanitary sewage through dilution by discharging wastes into rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. Engineers of the time concluded that it was less expensive to obtain good drinking water by fi ltering river water fi lled with sewage than to treat sewage before discharging it into the rivers. Communities did not want to face the fiscal burden of funding both sewage treatment facilities and water fi ltration facilities, and they did not believe both were necessary.

It was not until the development of more stringent environmental regulations in the mid1900s that communities in Northern Kentucky were required to implement a method of sewage treatment. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, which preceded the Clean Water Act of 1977, established the basic structure for regulating the discharge of pollutants into the waters of the United States. Because of the growing amount of residential, commercial, and industrial waste that accompanied the development of the Northern Kentucky region, it was no longer an acceptable practice to dump raw sewage into the environment.

After recognizing the ever-increasing role that municipalities must play in the design and construction of sewers, most cities, by this time, had acquired ownership of the sewer systems within their communities. Although each municipality owned and maintained its own system, the need to establish a regional sanitary district to treat the sewage collected from each municipality was recognized, and in 1946 Sanitation District No. 1 was formed. In 1954 Northern Kentucky’s first wastewater treatment plant began operation in the city of Bromley. Over the ensuing years, Sanitation District No. 1 has grown into a regional stormwater and wastewater utility that owns and maintains more than 1,500 miles of sanitary sewer line and serves 33 communities within Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties.

Smaller package treatment plants throughout Northern Kentucky serve counties outside of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton. The areas of Northern Kentucky that are not served by a public sewer system utilize on-site disposal systems, or septic systems. Septic systems are self-contained sewage

treatment systems that distribute wastewater to an underground storage area and rely on bacterial action to decompose solid waste. Failing septic systems can lead to surface water contamination and groundwater pollution, causing a potential health hazard. As a result, assessment projects continue to take place throughout the region in order to extend public sewer ser vice into the rural communities of Northern Kentucky.

“District Flush with Upgrades,” SC, September 25, 2005, 3A. Dunn, Megan. “After the Flush,” KP, June 20, 1994, 4K. “$880M Sewer Solution,” SC, October 9, 2005, 1A. “Sewer Merger Closer,” KP, September 10, 1991, 1K–2K. Tracking Down the Roots of Our Sanitary Sewers. www.sewerhistory.org (accessed July 19, 2006).

Wolfe, Pamila. “History of Wastewater.” In World of Water 2000—The Past, Present, and Future.

Tulsa, Okla.: Pennwell Magazine, 1999.

Maggie Mulshine

SANITATION DISTRICT NO. 1. Sanitation District No. 1 was established in 1946 by the Division of Sanitary Engineering of the Kentucky Department of Health, pursuant to an amendment of Chapter 220.00 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 220.00). Before 1946, a small system of sewer lines already existed in Northern Kentucky; however, the region was still in need of proper wastewater treatment. KRS 220.00 provides the Sanitation District with the authority to prevent and correct the pollution of streams, regulate the flow of streams for sanitary purposes, clean and improve stream channels for sanitary purposes, and collect and dispose of sewage and other liquid wastes produced throughout the established service area. It also granted the Sanitation District authority to construct sewers, trunk sewers, laterals, intercepting sewers, siphons, pump stations, treatment and disposal works, and other appropriate facilities. The Sanitation District’s authority under KRS 220.00 also includes responsibility for the maintenance and operation of these structures and facilities.

The original area served by the Sanitation District included 17 municipalities and covered 25 square miles. It was the Sanitation District’s responsibility to construct a sewage-treatment plant and a large interceptor sewer system that would collect and convey sewage from the various municipalities to a treatment facility. At that time, each community maintained ownership of its own sewage collection system. In 1954, after many years of planning, the Sanitation District completed construction of Northern Kentucky’s first wastewater treatment plant in Bromley, along the Ohio River in northern Kenton Co. Serving Campbell and Kenton counties, the Bromley Wastewater Treatment Plant provided primary treatment of wastewater before discharging it into the Ohio River.

The Bromley Wastewater Treatment Plant eventually became outdated due to increasingly stringent water-quality regulations, advancements in wastewater technology, and the area’s growing

SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS

population. In 1970 the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission adopted requirements for secondary treatment of sewage for all waters that feed into the Ohio River. In 1977 the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act, granting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority further to regulate the discharge of pollutants into the waters of the United States. The original Bromley plant provided minimal treatment and could not comply with these new regulatory standards.

Therefore, the Sanitation District constructed the Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, which began ser vice in 1979. This project also included the construction of new interceptor sewers and pump stations. Located in Villa Hills, the treatment plant was designed to treat 30 million gallons a day (mgd). In 1993, because of the continued population growth of Northern Kentucky, the plant was upgraded to a design capacity of 46.5 mgd.

In 1994, because of pending changes in environmental regulations and increased public interest in consolidation of ser vices, KRS 220.00 was amended, allowing the Sanitation District to assume ownership of the cities’ sewage and drainage systems located within its jurisdictional boundaries. On July 1, 1995, 28 cities in Northern Kentucky turned over ownership of their sanitary sewer systems to the Sanitation District. On December 31, 1995, Boone Co. officially merged its sanitary sewer system with the Sanitation District, and subsequently the cities of Independence and Alexandria transferred ownership of their sewer lines to the District. As a result of these consolidations, the Sanitation District assumed ownership and operational responsibility for approximately 900 additional miles of sanitary sewer lines and related pump stations.

Legislation adopted in 1998 by the Kentucky legislature granted the Sanitation District authority to regulate and finance storm-water facilities within its designated ser vice area. In response to requests from 35 Northern Kentucky communities, the Sanitation District accepted the responsibility to develop and implement a regional stormwater management program to comply with U.S. EPA’s 1999 Federal Stormwater Phase II Regulations. This role was formalized in 2003, through the development and adoption of interlocal agreements to provide Kentucky Pollutant Discharge Elimination System storm-water discharge permit ser vices and other storm-water-related ser vices in Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties. The cities and counties agreed to maintain ownership of the storm-water collection systems, with the understanding that the Sanitation District would assume responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the public storm-water systems.

Today, the Sanitation District is the secondlargest public sewer utility in Kentucky, with ownership and maintenance responsibilities for all of the sanitary sewer systems in Northern Kentucky, with the exception of Florence and Walton. The Sanitation District maintains more than 1,600 miles of sewer line, 127 pump stations, 15 flood pump stations, 8 package treatment plants, and one major wastewater treatment plant. It employs more than 200 persons and serves approximately

90,000 customer accounts. The three judge executives of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties provide governance of the Sanitation District. The judge executives appoint a total of eight directors to serve staggered four-year terms on the Sanitation District’s board.

In 2004 the Sanitation District opened Public Ser vice Park at its administrative office site in Fort Wright. Featuring environmental bestmanagement practices and formalized educational programming, the park provides an interactive means to learn about the impacts of polluted stormwater runoff. The Sanitation District has also created a water-quality curriculum that is taught in nearly every elementary school in Northern Kentucky and in addition offers classroom presentations and tours of its treatment facility.

In April 2007 the Sanitation District entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the U.S. Department of Justice, requiring an estimated $1.1 billion investment over the next 20 years to address sewage overflows in Northern Kentucky. Included in the consent decree is the requirement to construct two new regional wastewater treatment plants, a 4 mgd plant in Campbell Co. and a 20 mgd plant in Boone Co. The Campbell Co. facility began operation in September 2007 and the Boone Co. facility is scheduled to be completed in 2013. In making future improvement plans, the Sanitation District will take a watershed approach, holistically evaluating the cumulative impacts of pollution sources on receiving waters. Adopting a watershed approach will lead to more rapid improvements in water quality in critical areas and more efficient and costeffective solutions for the region.

Kentucky Revised Statutes, Chapter 220.00.

Sanitation District No. 1. www.sd1.org (accessed April 1, 2006).

“State Approves New Treatment Plant in Boone,” KP, December 21, 2005, 2K.

Peggy Casey

SARDIS. Sardis is a town of about 150 people in the southwest corner of Mason Co., along the Robertson Co. line. It was incorporated on February 14, 1850. The town’s first trustees were Luke Dye, John Murphy, Isaac Reid, James Vanderburg, and Peyton White. During the Civil War, the community was ransacked by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan’s men on June 12, 1864. The Bank of Sardis opened in 1904, with Louden Grover as its president, but the enterprise failed in 1912. J. M. Wheatley’s opera house was built in 1907 and had seating for 500. Elementary grade schools were established in the community from its beginning, and a high school began in the years between 1910 and 1920. The girls’ basketball team at the high school was the state tournament runner-up in 1922. A fine brick school was dedicated in 1931. The high school remained until 1936, and earlier grades were taught there until 1967. Sardis had both proslavery and antislavery Methodist churches, which united after the Civil War. The United Methodist Church in town has worshipped

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in its present building since 1941. A small picturesque post office serves the community.

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

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

John Klee

SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS. Savings and Loan Associations, which were referred to as Building and Loan Associations until about 1930, enabled many Americans, including Northern Kentuckians, to own their homes. The first building and loan association (B&L) in the United States was opened in Philadelphia in 1816.

Other B&Ls soon followed, and there was modest growth in the industry before the Civil War. Those early associations were primarily small local lenders, to whom working-class people could entrust their savings and from whom they could borrow funds for the purchase of a home. The number of B&Ls grew from just a few hundred, many located in the eastern and midwestern states in 1850, to many thousands spread across the nation by 1900. There were two types of institutions. One was a nonprofit mutual company, in which depositors became part owners, with voting rights; in the other type, stock was issued, and the company operated as most other for-profit businesses did.

There were both advantages and disadvantages in operating a B&L. The federal government granted preferential treatment, by allowing B&Ls to offer higher savings interest rates than commercial banks. This enabled B&Ls to attract more deposits and thereby provided them with the ability to grant more home loans. The disadvantages were that they were not permitted to offer checking accounts and other bank ser vices; as a result, many of their customers also had to deal with a commercial bank. The B&Ls became a strong economic force during the 20th century, and offices were found in most Northern Kentucky cities. In 1900 there were about 5,300 associations nationwide, and by 1925 the number had grown to 12,000. Many B&Ls had their origins in local ethnic neighborhoods. The Austinburg district of Covington had the Burnett Perpetual Building and Loan Association at 1607 Eastern Ave., with strong German ties to its nearby patrons; the city’s African Americans organized the Progressive Building and Loan Association as a means to bring home ownership to a population not readily served; since 1880 Ludlow has had the Home Savings Bank at 216 Elm St., an organization that has helped to bring roots to the many railroad workers of that Kenton Co. river city; and in Campbell Co., firms such as the Clifton-Southgate Federal Savings and Loan Association, at 10th and Monmouth St. in Newport, financed numerous homes in the area.

After 1930 most of these institutions were called savings and loans (S&Ls). In 1932 the Federal Home Bank System was created to oversee the operation of S&Ls and to provide their customers

806 SAWMILLS with FSLIC (Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation) insurance on deposits. The number of S&Ls decreased during the Great Depression, primarily because of poor economic conditions and widespread unemployment. During World War II, the S&Ls continued to suffer, and by war’s end their number had decreased to about 6,100.

The post–World War II housing boom was the most financially successful period ever for S&Ls. By 1965 they controlled more than one-fourth of all personal savings accounts and nearly half of all single-family mortgages. Real estate developers owned a controlling interest in many S&Ls, as they made loans to themselves and their affi liated companies. As a result, many S&Ls became insolvent, and their numbers had dropped to 4,000 by 1980.

The federal government, in an attempt to allow the institutions to “grow out of their problems,” gave them the right to make both secured and unsecured loans and to grant commercial credit. The government also relaxed accounting rules, which permitted the associations to begin listing intangible assets, such as goodwill, on their balance sheets, making their financial condition appear better than it actually was. As a result of those changes, many loan officers who lacked the lending experience, knowledge, and integrity to properly evaluate loan risks made numerous bad loans.

For many years, the state with the most S&Ls was Ohio, and more than half of Ohio’s S&Ls were in Hamilton Co., Ohio. In Cincinnati, German Americans sponsored many S&Ls, and that tradition spilled over the Ohio River into Northern Kentucky. Known as bauvereins, meaning “building societies” in German, they were an important means of home ownership in the metropolitan area. In the early 1980s, when it merged with another institution, Covington’s General Savings and Loan was the longest-operating S&L in Kentucky, having remained in business just over 110 years.

During the 1980s, more than 500 S&Ls failed, and the FSLIC insurance fund was depleted. To protect depositors, the federal government intervened and financially bailed out many of the insolvent companies. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which oversaw the Federal Home Bank System, was abolished and replaced with the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the FSLIC was replaced with the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) deposit insurance. Laws were changed to allow S&Ls to offer checking accounts and other banking ser vices. As was typical of what was happening across the country, many Northern Kentucky S&Ls ceased operating, merged with other financial institutions, or became virtually indistinguishable from commercial banks. Some inserted the word bank in their company’s name.

Because of those factors, only about 1,100 savings and loan institutions survived to the year 2000.

However, many of the survivors had grown very large, and the industry still controlled nearly $900 billion in assets. At the present time, the Kentucky Federal Savings and Loan, Citizens Federal, and the Guardian Savings Bank are among the few that remain in the Northern Kentucky counties of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton.

“Cincinnati’s Th rift s Seem About to Lose Old German Flavor,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1985, 1.

Eckberg, John. “Neighborhood Tradition Started Savings Industry,” KE, March 24, 1985, A1.

EH.net. “Savings and Loan Industry (U.S.).” www.eh .net/encyclopedia (accessed December 21, 2005).

“Grand Opening Saturday for Home Building,” Ludlow News Enterprise, September 17, 1959, 1.

Infoplease. “Savings and Loan Association.” www.in foplease.com (accessed December 21, 2005).

Wikipedia. “Savings and Loan Association.” www .wikipedia.org (accessed December 21, 2005).

SAWMILLS. Sawmills were established in Northern Kentucky during the 19th century as settlers began to build frame structures rather than handhewed log buildings. The lumber turned out by sawmills was needed to build not only houses but also outbuildings, public buildings, factories and businesses, boats, wagons, and bridges; additional needs for lumber included the making of furniture and other items.

The early sawmills were water powered and located along streams with adequate water flow.

Permission had to be secured from the county court system, since millponds could flood the properties of adjacent landowners. It was not uncommon for gristmills and sawmills to be operated at the same location. Dams built of logs or stone provided the water supply to power these mills. A millrace or flume (an elevated wooden trough) was constructed to convey the water from the dam to the mill, where the water was converted into power by using water wheels or turbines that turned a main shaft. Steam engines later permitted the construction of mills in small communities far from streams and in urban contexts. By the early 20th century, water-powered sawmills had nearly disappeared from Northern Kentucky, replaced by sawmills powered by steam engines.

Most sawmills were simple buildings equipped with saws and a carriage for pushing the logs to the saw blade. Later sawmills had more complex equipment and performed other tasks beyond rough sawing.

The technology for producing lumber changed through the years. The earliest method utilized a whipsaw that two men operated by pushing up and down to cut one board at a time. Early machinepowered saws were sash saws that moved up and down to saw boards. Muley saws (with heavy iron blades and no wooden frames) followed these and were faster than the sash saws. The subsequent circular saws were 10 times faster than the muley saws but were much more wasteful.

Northern Kentucky once had numerous sawmills. Little information is available regarding the earliest ones. By the mid-19th century, statewide gazetteers and city directories became available that listed these businesses. These sources, along with city directories, permit a partial listing of mills that were active in Northern Kentucky.

Boone Co. At Petersburg, a 19th-century manufacturing center, were the sawmills of J. C. Jenkins & Company

(1865–1866), Grant & Riggs (1876–1877), J. Frank Grant (1879–1884), and Merit Lening (1887–1888).

In Walton, Rouse Brothers (1879–1888) and Walton Lumber (1930–1949) were important producers of lumber.

Bracken Co. Most of the county lumber producers were located in Augusta. They included G. W. Moneyhon and Brother (1876–1877), G. W. and H. Moneyhon (1879– 1880), W. B. Allen’s saw and planing mill (1884), George T. Kearns’s saw and planing mill (1884), G. W. Moneyhon’s saw and planing mill (1884), the G. W. Moneyhon Company (1896–1906), and Moneyhon, Kearns & Company (1881–1883).

Campbell Co. Among Campbell Co. lumber producers were John Gubser’s steam sawmill (see Gubser’s Mill). At Bellevue, lumberyards were operated by Phillip Lewis on Fairfield Ave. at the corner of Patchen Ave. (1878–1880); McHenry & McGuire, at the southeast corner of Popu lar St. and Lafayette Ave. (1892); the Bellevue Planing Mill Company, at the foot of Van Voast Ave. (1894–1900); the Bellevue & Dayton Planing Mill Company, at the foot of Van Voast Ave. (1897); the J. A. Brownfield Company, at the foot of Van Voast Ave. (1898); the Kentucky Manufacturing Company, at 52 Fairfield Ave. (1898–1900); and the G & F Hardware & Builders Supply Company, at 155 Fairfield Ave. (1923).

Newport was the largest center of the lumber industry in Campbell Co. and the second-largest producer of lumber in Northern Kentucky. Only Covington had a larger lumber industry. The numerous companies and individuals sawing and selling lumber in Newport included many with locations on Monmouth St.: John Taylor & Sons, at the northeast corner of Monmouth and Ringold Sts. (1861–1869); J. C. Gaddis & Company (1869– 1874); James K. Stone (later Stone & Miller) (1878– 1905); Joseph Weingartner, whose firm became Weingartner Lumber Company Inc. and later moved to John St. (1880–1924); Eagle Planing Mill & Star Lumber Company (1888–1891); Philip J. Veith (1892–1894); Veith & Rashe (1895); Fred Miller (1906–1917); and the Cincinnati Poplar Company (1910–1911).

The community of Dayton was the secondlargest lumber center in Campbell Co., after Newport. The many sawmills and lumberyards in Dayton included Meade & Cibber (1873–1874); George Maxey, at the southwest corner of Sixth and Main Aves. (1884–1885); Maxey & Harris, at the southeast corner of Third and Berry Aves. (1884–1885); Willison & Wilmer, at the northwest corner of Fairfield Ave. and McKinney St. (1886–1887) and then at 67 Fairfield Ave. (1888–1891); Wilmer Bros., at 67 Fairfield Ave. (1892); the Dayton Lumber Company, at the northwest corner of Fairfield Ave. and McKinney St. (1894); Kennedy & Bevland, at the northwest corner of Walnut and Popu lar Sts. (1894); Hugh Kennedy, at the corner of Walnut St. and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (1895–1897); the Newport and Dayton Lumber Company, at 212 Lindsey St. (1904–1905) and at

SAWMILLS

214 Lindsey St. (1906–1907); the W. J. Wilmer Lumber Company, at 120 Sixth Ave. (1908–1911); the G & F Hardware & Lumber Company, at 214 Lindsey St. (1928–1929); and the G & F Lumber Company (1945).

Carroll Co. Carrollton had the greatest concentration of lumberyards in Carroll Co. They included P. Hunley (1859–1860), Samuel Johnston (1859–1860), T. F. Landers (1859–1860), John Meier (1873–1877), F. J. Miller & Company (1873–1874), Ebenezer Hafford (1876–1887), Baker & Gin (1879–1880), Baker, Ginn & Company (1881–1883), G. F. Bannock (1883), J. G. Ginn (1883), Adkinson Brothers (1896), Ginn & Stanton (1896), the Grobmeyer Coal and Lumber Yard (?–1948), Howard B. Rich Inc., on Sixth St. (1949), and the East End Lumber Company (1955–1958).

Gallatin Co. Sawmills and lumber mills at Warsaw were D. B. Dailey (1873–1874), James A. Howard (1876–1888), the Sparta Lumber & Manufacturing Company (1949), and the Wilson Manufacturing Company (1949).

Grant Co. John Collins (1883–1884) sold lumber in New Eagles Mills, while John R. Shigger (1879–1882), Benjamin Burkley (1887–1888), and Thomas Carter (1887–1888) sawed lumber in Stewartsville. At Williamstown, lumber was produced and sold by Frank Carder (1879–1884), Hudson (1887–1888), R. H. Elliston & Company (1906), and James Lummis & Company, located four miles east of Williamstown.

Kenton Co. Covington, which supported more sawmills, lumberyards, and related businesses than any other area of Northern Kentucky, had a major lumber industry during much of its history. Over the years, some of the companies changed their names and underwent changes in ownership. There were companies with long histories and others that existed only briefly. A couple of businesses appear to have sold recycled lumber; one group of businesses sold lumber but did no sawing. Among the companies involved in lumber production and sales were these: the Licking Valley Saw Mill, on the Licking River between 12th and 13th Sts. (1851–1855); E. T. Rusk & Company (1855); Rusk & Carithers’s steam sawmill, on the bank of the Ohio River just below Willow Run (1855–1897); Ezra Baily & Son, on the river between Main and Johnston Sts. (1861), at the northeast corner of Second and Main Sts. (1866–1867), at the corner of Seventh and Main Sts. (1868), at the foot of Main St. (1871–1872); C. A. and W. C. Culbertson, south side of the Seventh St. Market (1861); W. C. Culbertson, on the north side of Pike St. opposite the depot (1861), on Seventh St. between Washington St. and Madison Ave. (1866), on Eighth St. between Madison Ave. and Washington St. (1871– 1872); the Covington Saw Mills, on the south side

of Second St. between Main and Johnston Sts. (1866–1867); John Harremeier, on the north side of Pike St. between Craig and Greer Sts. (1866); J. D. Shutt and Company, on the west side of Scott St. between Second and Third Sts. (1866– 1867), 225 Scott St. (1868–1877); Culbertson & Alexander, 23 Seventh St. near Depot (1868–1869); Creen, Culbertson & Company, at the corner of Second and Main Sts. (1876–1877); D. C. Culbertson & Brother, Main St. at northwest corner of Second St. (1878–1897), at the northeast corner of Second and Main Sts. (1880–1894); J. A. Culbertson & Company, 16–32 W. Eighth St. (1878–1881), 22 W. Eighth St. (1888–1889); C. C. Hagemeyer & Company (1881–1882); Jacob Price, 412 Madison Ave. (1884–1885), 428 Madison Ave. (1886–1889), 426 Madison Ave. (1890–1896), 425 Madison Ave. (1897–1903); J. T. Hatfield, 111 Powell St. (1886– 1887); Clemens Hellmann, 165 W. 12th St. (1886– 1905); the Ohio Scroll & Lumber Company, at the northwest corner of 12th and Washington Sts. (1886–1895), at the northeast corner of Russell Ave. and Stewart St. (1900–1901), on the north side of Stewart east of Russell Ave. (1918–1921, 1951–1954); the Covington Lumber Company, on the west side of Madison Ave. near the Kentucky Central Shops (1892–1902), Madison Ave. near the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Shops (1902–1906), at the southwest corner of Madison Ave. and Hicks St. (1908–1911); the Covington Saw Mill Company, at the northeast corner of Second and Main Sts. (1895–1897), at the foot of Main St. (1898–1903); W. Jas. Salter, 225 Scott St. (1897); George Lubrecht, at the northwest corner of Pike and York Sts. (1904–1905); Heilmann Lumber Company (1906); Hellmann Lumber & Manufacturing Company, 165 W. 12th St. (1906–1919), 321 W. 12th St. (1920–1932), 321 W. 12th St. (1936– 1958); Veith & Zweigart, 22 W. Eighth St. (1908– 1915), at the southwest corner of 16th St. and Madison Ave. (1916–1919), at the southwest corner of Madison Ave. and 24th St. (1920–1921); the Beets Lumber Company, at 32nd St. and DeCoursey Ave. and Union St. (1916–1932); the A. M. Lewin Lumber Company, at the southwest corner of Madison Ave. and 24th St. (1923–1954); the Yates-Lahner Company Inc., Southern Ave. and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (1923– 1937); Ray Price, 103 W. 10th St. (1926–1927); the Advance Millwork Company, on Garrard at the southeast corner of Eighth St. (1929–1958); the Yates Lumber Company Inc., Southern Ave. and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (1929– 1939), 34th St. and DeCoursey Ave. (1940–1956); and Kelly Brothers Lumber Company, Latonia Ave. at the southeast corner of 35th St. (1948– 1995).

The three lumber producers at Erlanger included the Boone-Kenton Lumber Company Inc., at 219 Crescent Ave. (1931–1966); the Erlanger Lumber Company, at Dixie Highway and the Southern Railway (1931–1941), at Dixie Highway near corner of Crescent Ave. (1943–1956); and Bass & Company, Kenton Lands Rd. (1957–1958). Still operating is the Independence Lumber and Supply Company in Independence.

807

Lumber producers operating in Ludlow were H. Barr and Company, on Ash at the northeast corner of Carneal (1878–1879); James H. Barr, on the northeast corner of Ash and Carneal Sts. (1879–1887); R. H. Fleming, at 83 Elmond St. and the foot of Carneal St. (1888–1889), on the northeast corner of George and Elm Sts. (1890–1893), at the foot of Kenner St. (1894–1896), 92 Elm St. (1897–1899); Ludlow Lumber Company, at the foot of Carneal St. (1902–1903); and the Ideal Supply Company Inc. (J. J. Weaver, president; Williams S. Ludlow, vice president; Ulie J. Howard, secretary), at 312 Adela Ave. (1928–1929), 512 Adela Ave. (1931–1948).

Mason Co. Maysville was the center of the lumber business in Mason Co. Sawmills and lumberyards included R. W. Thompson, lumberyard on Second St. below Fish St. (1829); Morris A. Hutchins (1831); Rueben Case (1833); F. McLanahan (1859–1860); W. B. Mathews (1876–1880); Charles Phister (1876–1877); Collins, Rudy & Company (1881–1884); W. B. Mathews & Company, at 341 E. Second St. (1881– 1914); J. L. Manker (1881–1882); Collins & Rudy Lumber Company (1887–1896); Ohio River Lumber Company (1902–1914); H. H. Collins Lumber Company (1906); Mason Lumber Company Inc., at E. Second St., northeast corner of Limestone St. (A. A. McLaughlin and L. N. Behan) (1913–1918); Limestone Lumber Company, 329 E. Second St. (1916–1921), Second St. and the northwest corner of Commerce St. (1922–1935); and Maysville Lumber Company, at 139–143 E. Second St. (1922–1934).

Owen Co. Bart Mason (1886) had a lumber business at Lusby’s Mill. Sawmills in Owenton included the Roland Brothers (1876–1884), C. G. Kenney (1883– 1888), I. F. Mundy (1883–1884), the Kenney Brothers (1896), James Johnson (1906), and C. W. Kenney (1929).

Pendleton Co. Many small communities participated in the lumber industry in Pendleton Co. B. F. Hume placed an ad in the May 10, 1851, issue of the Covington Journal offering for sale a steam sawmill about eight miles from Falmouth. The mill was warranted to saw 4,000 feet of lumber in 12 hours. The county seat of Falmouth had the following saw and lumber mills: J. E. and J. W. Thompson, at Main and Cross Sts. near the Licking River (1874–1880); J. E. Thompson (1881–1884); J. W. Ashbrook (1883– 1884); Bidge Bishop (1883–1888); William Fardo (1883–1884); G. W. Galloway (1883–1884); George Myers (1896); and T. M. Shoemaker & Company (1887–1906). At Gardnersville, R. McNay (1879– 1888) sawed lumber.

Clark, Victor S. “Manufactures of Wood.” In History of Manufactures in the United States, vol. 3. New York: Peter Smith, 1949.

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

Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol. 1. Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

808 SCHAFFER, ROBERT J. Hawes, George W. George Hawes’ Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1859 and 1860.

Louisville, Ky.: George W. Hawes, 1859.

Hodgman, George H. Hodgman & Co.’s Kentucky State Gazetteer, Shippers’ Guide, and Business Directory, for 1865 and 1866. Louisville, Ky.: Hodgman, 1865.

———. Kentucky State Directory, Travelers and Shippers’ Guide, for 1870–1871. Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton, 1870.

Ohio Valley Publishing Company. Kentucky State Directory and Shipper’s Guide for 1873–1874.

Louisville, Ky.: Ohio Valley, 1873.

Purvis, Thomas L., ed. Newport, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. Newport, Ky.: Otto Zimmerman, 1996.

Seiller, Edward F. Kentucky Natural Resources, Industrial Statistics, Industrial Directory, Descriptions by Counties. Kentucky Bureau of Agriculture, Labor, and Statistics, Bulletin 34.

Frankfort, Ky.: State Journal, 1929.

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

T. J. Smith and Company. Covington City Directory.

Cincinnati: T. J. Smith, 1868, 1871.

Williams and Company. Williams’ Covington and Newport city directories, 1861–1948.

Worrel, Stephen W., and Anne W. Fitzgerald. Boone County, Kentucky County Court Orders, 1799– 1815. Falls Creek, Va.: Privately published, 1994.

Young and Company. Business Professional Directory of the Cities and Towns of Kentucky. Atlanta, Ga.: Young, 1906.

Charles D. Hockensmith

SCHAFFER, ROBERT J. (b. December 12, 1921, St. Bernard, Ohio). Robert Joseph Schaffer, the son of John Jacob and Mary Ann Gerwin Schaffer, has contributed much to the musical life of Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati in his roles as music director at Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, series director and founder of the Cathedral Concert Series, and music professor at Thomas More College and at the former Seminary of St. Pius X. In addition, he helped to establish the transition in Roman Catholic music for the liturgy after the vast changes of the Second Vatican Council (1963–1967).

Robert was educated in Cincinnati at St. Clement Elementary and Roger Bacon High School.

During World War II, he served in a U.S. Army band in Coventry, England; after several years the band moved to London, to fi ll the place of the Glenn Miller U.S. Army Air force band, which had been transferred to Paris, France. After the war, Robert returned to Cincinnati to work as an organist and as a freelance trombonist-pianist. He studied Gregorian chant at the Atheneum of Ohio in Cincinnati and earned a BA in music (organ performance) with Parvin Titus at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

It was at the organ department of the conservatory that Schaffer met Rita Avram, a fellow organ student, whom he eventually married. Both completed graduate degrees in New York City.

Robert Schaffer entered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University in New York City and studied musicology. Among his

professors were noted scholars Curt Sachs and Gustav Reese; Schaffer’s focus was the polyphonic masses of the Renaissance masters. Rita earned an MA in sacred music at Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music in Cincinnati, studying organ with Vernon de Tar. The couple’s three children have worked solely in music: Mark (d.

1993) earned a PhD in musicology from the Cincinnati College– Conservatory of Music; as a Fulbright Scholar in organ at Hamburg (Germany), he studied with Heinz Wunderlich. At the time of his death, he was director of music at the Hyde Park (Ohio) Community Methodist Church.

Gregory (b. 1956), associate organist–choral assistant at the Covington Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, is an improviser and a freelance keyboardist. Rebecca Schaffer Wells (b. 1960) earned her BA from Thomas More College and studied music as a graduate student at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. During the first years of marriage and children, Robert Schaffer continued his education at Columbia University in New York City, in doctoral composition.

Schaffer’s longest professional association has been as music director for the Covington Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption. He was hired as organist in 1949, left to complete his graduate work, and returned in 1952. His role was expanded to music director under Bishop William Mulloy in 1958 (see Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption Choral Music; Pipe Organs).

When the Second Vatican Council opened the way for liturgy in the vernacular, that is, the local language of each country, Schaffer composed numerous masses, including For American Martyrs, Chorale, American Wedding Program, and choral works. His former Cathedral colleague, Omer Westendorf, of the World Library of Sacred Music, published these works. For American Martyrs and Chorale are used currently in many dioceses in North America.

Schaffer taught in Covington at the Cathedral Lyceum (the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption’s parish elementary school) and at La Salette Academy. Eventually, he was asked to assist Sr. Marcella Fedders, O.S.B., in her teaching duties at Covington’s Villa Madonna College (now Thomas More College), and upon her retirement Schaffer assumed the faculty position, teaching music history and chorus. Schaffer still relishes teaching music history there. Several of his Thomas More students, as well as students from the other institutions where he has taught, have participated in the Bishop’s Choir at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption. In 1998 Thomas More College awarded him the honorary degree LittD. Schaffer was concurrently professor of music at the diocesan seminary, St. Pius X Seminary, where he taught many priests of the Diocese of Covington and other dioceses (see Roman Catholics).

Schaffer is a member and former dean of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and a member of the American Guild of Organists and the Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians. He has been a faculty member at sacred music workshops throughout

the United States and Canada and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Composer’s Forum for Catholic Worship. He was an organist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under music director Max Rudolf (1958–1970) and has worked with conductors of world stature, such as Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, and Robert Shaw, and with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera, and the Cincinnati May Festival.

“Blessed by Music—Covington Cathedral Has Been the Concert Home for the Schaffers,” KP, January 13, 2005, 4K. Business letters of Msgr. Francis Mielech and Bishop William Mulloy, June 1955–September 1958, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Erlanger, Ky. “Cathedral ‘Maestro’ Has Heavenly Touch,” KP, March 22, 1994, 1K–2K. “Organists Conduct Special Concerts,” KP, July 17, 1990, 8K.

Rebecca Schaffer Wells

SCHMITT, JOHANN (b. 1825, Heinstadt, Baden, Germany; d. June 10, 1898, Covington, Ky.).

One of Covington’s most illustrious residents of the second half of the 19th century was the German immigrant painter Johann Schmitt. As a young man, Schmitt lived in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, where he absorbed the lessons of contemporary German religious art without having to attend an art school. In 1848 he came to the United States and settled in Melrose, Westchester Co., N.Y. He called himself “a painter of real Catholic art” in his 1861 advertisement in the weekly Catholic newspaper Der Wahrheitsfreund. Johann Schmitt’s first commission in the United States was to paint murals for the church of St. Alphonsus in New York City. Other commissions for murals in churches along the eastern seaboard followed.

In 1862 Schmitt joined the Covington Altar Stock Building Company, where he became a painter of altarpieces as well as murals. With his first wife, Margaret Reichert, he settled in a house along Covington’s Greenup St., near the company’s workshop. Devout Catholics, Schmitt and his wife worshipped at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Covington, and Schmitt became a member of the Cincinnati-based Society of Christian Art. The couple adopted a daughter, Mary, who was her father’s model for the Virgin Mary in many of his paintings. The daughter died in 1885, at age 23. After Schmitt’s first wife died in 1891, he married again. His new wife, Elizabeth Scheper Meyer Racke (twice a widow), had six children. One of them, Frank Meyer Jr., assisted Schmitt in his later years with mural paintings.

Schmitt quickly became the leading painter of the Altar Building Stock Company. Examples of his work may be found in several Northern Kentucky churches and in chapels, monasteries, convents, and cathedrals across the Midwest and the East. The first commission Schmitt fulfi lled after his arrival in Northern Kentucky, in 1862, was a decoration of St. Francis Seraph Church, at Liberty and Vine Sts. in Cincinnati. He painted the four theological doctors of the Western, or Roman

SCHRODER, WILFRID ALBERT “WIL”

Johann Schmitt, ca. 1892–1893

Catholic, Church: St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and St. Jerome, on a gold-leaf background. In the same year, Schmitt began creating seven paintings over the main and side altars at the Immaculata Church (today’s Holy Cross– Immaculata Church) on Cincinnati’s Mount Adams. They depict scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and occupied the artist until 1870.

Church decorations by Schmitt can be found in rural Northern Kentucky in many places where German Catholic immigrants had erected small churches. Seventeen miles south of Covington, on a hillside above Morning View, Schmitt painted Mary’s Assumption in a church by the same name.

In nearby Alexandria an identical composition is displayed in the local Catholic church, and at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Camp Springs, Schmitt painted St. Joseph with the Christ Child, a favorite image among local German Catholic settlers.

The painter charged from $500 to $800 for his massive murals and $100 to $200 for the smaller ones. For his altar paintings, the number of faces determined the price. But when he painted for poor mission churches, he frequently donated his artworks.

Schmitt specialized in certain religious topics, including the Holy Family and St. Joseph, but occasionally he dealt with less-well-known images. In 1868 he began an ambitious project of decorating the Chapel of the Ursuline Sisters in Louisville with the legend of the martyred St. Ursula, who was killed by Attila the Hun outside the walls of the city of Cologne in Germany. Th ree other Louisville churches also received paintings

by Schmitt: St. Martin of Tours, St. Peter Claver, and St. Boniface.

At the St. Joseph Church in Covington, the artist created two large murals between 1875 and 1879, The Death of St. Joseph and St. Joseph, Protector of the Universal Church. The latter has

been called Schmitt’s artistic masterpiece. It recalled the triumph of the Roman Catholic Church over the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who had instigated the so-called Kulturkampf, intended to curtail the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. In Schmitt’s composition St. Joseph hovers above St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, blessing Pope Leo XIII and numerous cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots, who kneel in adoration. Each of the men portrayed in the gathering was an accurate portrait of a contemporary church dignitary. Schmitt created a silver-point drawing of the painting for the pope, which remains in the collection of the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately, when the St. Joseph Church was razed in 1970, Schmitt’s murals were destroyed.

At Covington’s Mother of God Catholic Church, Schmitt painted five large murals titled Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary in 1890, late in his life. The first Mother of God Church in Covington had been dedicated in 1842. The second, larger building, was erected in 1870–1871, and in 1890, its interior received entirely new decorations.

In addition to murals and altar paintings, Schmitt created easel paintings with religious themes. The Sisters of St. Benedict in Covington received several such artworks. The largest shows St. Walburga, the founder of the sisters’ order, blessing Covington’s St. Joseph Church, St. Joseph School, and the St. Walburg Monastery (see Sisters of St. Benedict).

The painter left works in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, in addition to his paintings in New York and along the East Coast. His largest mural is a 35-by-50-foot depiction of the Crucifi xion above the high altar in St. Xavier Cathedral at Green Bay, Wis. Johann Schmitt has been called “the first Christian artist of America.” He died in 1898 at his Covington house along Greenup St. and was buried in the Mother of God Cemetery in Latonia.

During his early years with the Covington Altar Company, Schmitt became the first teacher of a young boy, Frank Duveneck, who was born in Covington to German immigrant parents. After years of study at the Munich Royal Academy of Art, Duveneck became one of the most famous American impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Pohlkamp, Diomede, O.F.M. “A Franciscan Artist of Kentucky, Johann Schmitt, 1825–1898,” Franciscan Studies 7 (June 1947): 147–170.

Scheessele, Mary Kenneth, O.S.B., and Annemarie Springer. “German-American Religious Art in Southern Indiana,” Indiana German Heritage Society 2 (1998): 54–57.

Springer, Annemarie. Nineteenth Century GermanAmerican Church Artists. www.ulib.iupui.edu/ kade/springer/index.html (accessed November 17, 2005).

Ven, Sister Hilary, C.S.B. “Johann Schmitt’s Masterpiece.” In Souvenir of the Golden Jubilee Celebration in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the St. Joseph Boys’ School, 1870–1920. Covington, Ky.: Alban Wolff, 1920.

Annemarie Springer

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SCHOOLFIELD, FRANK E. (b. October 28, 1861, Foster, Ky.; d. January 2, 1939, Covington, Ky.). Poet Frank Schoolfield was the son of Benjamin and Lora Boss Schoolfield. His father died when Frank was two years old, and he was sent to live in Newport with his maternal grandfather, Alexander Boss. Frank received only an eighth-grade education, yet he became known as the poet laureate of Northern Kentucky, composing more than 100 poems. Most of the poems are about his life experiences, such as the horrors of the Civil War, the joy of riding in a mule-drawn cart, and the thrill of walking across the John A. Roebling Bridge for the first time. He wrote extensively about Kentucky’s natural beauty and its abundant wildlife. When Schoolfield was about 50, he wrote a poem titled, “Dedicated to Governor James B. McCreary,” which spoke about his great love for Kentucky and about its fantastic scenery. Schoolfield sent the poem to the governor and was thrilled to receive a letter back, encouraging him to keep writing and to make a book of his poems. However, he never attempted to capitalize on his talent but instead earned his living as a foreman with the Houston, Stanwood & Gamble Company, manufacturers of steam engines and boilers in Covington. He married a girl whose name was Missouri, and they had two sons and two daughters. Schoolfield died of stomach cancer at age 77 at his home at 123 W. Fourth St. in Covington. He was buried in the Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. His wife preceded him in death, but his four children survived him.

“Covington Poet Shuns Acclaim,” KP, April 15, 1938, 9.

“F. E. Scoolfield Succumbs at Age 78,” KP, January 3, 1939, 1.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 1802, for the year 1939.

SCHRODER, WILFRID ALBERT “WIL” (b.

April 19, 1946, Cincinnati, Ohio). Wilfrid Albert Schroder, who became a Kentucky Supreme Court judge, is a resident of Fort Mitchell, Ky., the son of Wilfrid R. and Mary Magdalen Arlinghaus Schroder. He received both his BA (1968) and his JD (1970) from the University of Kentucky and also holds an advanced law degree, the LLM, from the University of Missouri in 1971. He was admitted to practice law in Kentucky in 1970 and in Missouri in 1972. He married Susan Marie Wahlbrink in 1993.

In 1971, while completing his LLM, Schroder worked as an attorney for the Kansas City Legal Aid Society, and then as a corporate attorney for the St. Paul Insurance Company (1971–1972), before returning home to Kentucky. He was an assistant law professor at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law for its first three years in Kentucky, 1972–1975. From 1975 to 1983, he was in private practice in Covington with his brother Robert. Wil Schroder was appointed Newport city attorney when the reform commission was elected and served at the onset of Newport’s early riverfront development (1982– 1983). He spent 22 years as a judge before his election to the Kentucky Supreme Court, including a term as trial court judge (Kenton District Court) for

810 SCHUELER, ROGER nearly eight years (1983–1991) and ser vice on the Kentucky Court of Appeals for more than 15 years (1991–2006). In November 2006 Schroder was elected a justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. He was the fourth person elected to serve there for the Sixth Judicial District since it was created by a 1975 Amendment to the Constitution of Kentucky. He succeeded Justice Donald Wintershiemer as Northern Kentucky’s representative on the court.

Kentucky Court of Justice. “Justice Wil Schroder.” http:// courts .ky .gov/ courts/ supreme/ justices/ schroder.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

Paul L. Whalen

SCHUELER, ROGER (b. July 16, 1921, Buffalo, N.Y.; d. March 5, 1994, Decatur, Ill.). Jazz artist, composer, trumpeter, and band leader Roger Edward Schueler received a BA from Indiana Central University in Indianapolis, Ind., in 1943 and an MM from the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music in 1949. He did further graduate work at the Berkeley School of Music and the University of Illinois in Urbana. He also studied for six summers with Pierre Montreux, the French-born internationally renowned conductor, and was the recipient of a Ford Foundation grant to study with Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Thor Johnson.

Schueler taught at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood for 10 years, ending in 1964. In 1963 he lived at 25 Beechwood Rd. in Fort Mitchell. He married Northern Kentucky native Alma Welsh, whom he met while teaching at Dixie Heights.

While at Dixie Heights, Schueler created a dance band–jazz ensemble that he named the Cool Colonels. This group produced four albums, and the third, Cool Colonels on Tour (1963), contained all original compositions by Dick Fenno, a Californian.

The On Tour album, recorded at King Records in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Evanston, which was then the home of James Brown, is listed as a jazz classic and a collector’s item. Shueler created the Cool Colonels as a regularly scheduled hour-long daily course, unusual even now in a public school.

In addition, the group rehearsed every Wednesday evening, and section leaders were expected to conduct after-school sectional practices weekly. Schueler’s intense and uncompromising rehearsals produced a stream of talented musicians, including Ted Piercefield, who played trumpet with Bill Chase, and Barry Campbell, an alto saxophonist who performed with Stan Kenton.

After his departure from Northern Kentucky, Schueler taught at the University of Wisconsin– Green Bay for one year and then became the director of jazz and commercial music at Milliken University in Decatur, Ill., where he remained for some 23 years, leading that school’s awardwinning jazz band. The group toured internationally. During the Milliken years, Schueler’s reputation grew as an influential jazz educator, rehearsal technician, director, and author. Jazz educator Jim Culbertson, in the April 2005 International Association of Jazz Educators Journal, wrote 11 years after Schuler’s death, “He was a strong task-

master, but so full of music. He approached music in such a cool way in that it was a very attractive way to learn about life. I learned a lot about how to rehearse. It was about not settling for anything less than possible.”

One of Schueler’s students at Milliken was Thomas Rotondi, the leader of the U.S. Military Academy’s band, who also described Schueler as a major influence in his musical life. Schueler died of a brain tumor in 1994. During his career, he produced several records and wrote one book. A number of music awards have been named in his honor.

As recently as 2003, the Illinois unit of the International Association for Jazz Education presented its prestigious Outstanding Jazz Educator Award to Roger Schueler, nine years postmortem.

The Cool Colonels. The Cool Colonels: Dance Time.

Directed by Roger Schueler. LP-U., n.d. Musical Americana Collection, 1930–1960, Record Series 12/9/50, Univ. of Illinois Library (MAC).

———. The Cool Colonels: On Tour. Directed by Roger Schueler. LP-U., 1963. MAC. Dixie Heights Concert Band. Dixie Heights Spring Concert. Directed by Roger Schueler. LP-U., 1963.

MAC. Schueler, Roger. So You Want to Lead a Jazz Band.

Winona, Minn.: Hal Leonard, n.d.

The Sousa Archives, Center for American Music, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, Ill.

Gary Lynwood Johnston

SCHUETZEN CLUBS. Northern Kentucky had several schuetzen clubs, target shooting clubs modeled after early European, especially German, groups of shooters. In Covington there were the Deutsche Schuetzen Gesellschaft of Covington, Kentucky, organized in 1882, and the Lewisburg Schuetzens, organized about 1883. At least one other club existed in the region, based in Bellevue in Campbell Co. The Covington group maintained shooting grounds at Highland Pk. and the ThreeL Highway. The Lewisburg group met at Turner Hall on Pike St. and did their shooting at the Alpenrose Schuetzen Park on Amsterdam Rd. near Montague Rd., just outside the Covington city limits, now within Park Hills. Heidel Hall, on the northeast corner of 21st and Russell Sts., where many of the Covington schuetzen balls were held, stands today; the building is now in the Peaselburg neighborhood of Covington and is used for apartments. Just across the Ohio River in Cincinnati, a schuetzen ground was located in what is today the English Woods section, just south of WestwoodNorthern Blvd., on the first hill west of the Mill Creek Valley.

The German word schuetzen has no exact literal English translation, but in this context the word means shooting, as in target shooting. The practice of schuetzen brought with it from Europe many colorful ethnic social customs. During the last half of the 19th century, most cities and towns of any size in the United States that had a significant Germanic population hosted one or more schuetzen clubs. In the larger cities, the clubs often had indoor shooting galleries. However, where possible, the competitions were held

outdoors at shooting grounds. Schuetzen clubs were copies of similar clubs in Germany. They celebrated shooting prowess, good fellowship, good citizenship, and camaraderie. The membership included Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and Democrats, common laborers, entrepreneurs, and corporate officers. A good lager beer was seldom far from the schuetzen club’s social activities and may have helped knock the sharp edges off of any social, religious, or political differences among members. Discussion of religion or politics, as well as quarreling with peers at meetings, was strictly forbidden, on pain of immediate expulsion.

The whole movement was oriented toward defensive shooting and harked back to mostly Germanic origins. The emphasis was on defense of the home against wild animals and human intruders.

Targets used by the groups often featured an Adler (eagle), which, it was supposed, might carry off one of their small children. There were annual competitions at which an eagle figure made of wood was placed on a tall pole and shot at with rifles until no vestige of the eagle remained. The shooter knocking the last piece down was declared the Koenig (king). He would select a Koenigin (queen) and a court and would reign at an elaborate ball. Shooting at conventional targets occurred at other meetings. Such shooting can be dated back as far as the 10th century in Europe, when bows and arrows were employed. It came to a sudden halt in Germany with the 1934 Schuetzenfest in Germany, which was taken over by Hitler, who disbanded the peaceful schuetzen clubs.

The Old World customs made their way to Northern Kentucky with German immigrants. In addition to monthly shooting occasions, the pageantry of king, queen, court, uniforms, parades, and balls was continued in the United States. Photographic evidence reveals that schuetzen clubs’ paramilitary uniforms had sashes, medals, and walking sticks or swords. About every four years, national shoots were held in the United States, and prizes up to $5,000 in gold were awarded.

The demise of the schuetzen movement in the United States was due to the anti-German sentiments that arose after the United States entered World War I (see Anti- German Hysteria). Citizens with Germanic names who owned guns were not to be trusted or allowed to exercise their right of assembly. Alien women were required to register with the police. The Covington schuetzen clubs were disbanded and their remaining assets turned over to the American Red Cross. Based upon pro-Germany statements they had allegedly made, some of the Covington schuetzen clubs’ prominent members, who were also prominent members of the community, were tried for sedition and sent off to prison for five to seven years at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Georgia. The local prosecutor publicly stated that free speech was not an issue in these cases.

Today there are scattered fragments of schuetzen organizations surviving in the United States. One club operates in Texas, and a few revival clubs exist elsewhere, but none survive in Northern Kentucky.

SCOTT, JOHN

Locally, the schuetzen clubs were swept away by the wave of patriotism accompanying World War I and never reconstituted.

“Only 3 Dress Part but Thousands Look Good at Keg,” KE, September 25, 1977, B2.

Schiffer, T. D. Muzzle Blasts: The Deutsche Schuetzen Gesellschaft of Covington, Kentucky. National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association, 1984.

Souvenir Program of the Deutsche Schuetzen Gesellschaft of Covington Kentucky. Covington, Ky., 1910.

“Spectacular Incidents Mark Summoning of Latonia Men in an Alleged Sedition Inquiry,” CTS, July 4, 1918, 1.

Thompson, Jesse, and Tom Rowe. Alte Scheibenwaffen (Old target arms). Vol. 1. Maynardville, Tenn.: Tom Rowe, 1999. In English.

Thomas D. Schiffer

SCHULKERS, ROBERT F. (b. July 21, 1890, Covington, Ky.; d. April 6, 1972, Cincinnati, Ohio).

Author Robert Franc Schulkers, son of Covington policeman Henry Herman Schulkers and Maria Elizabeth Wueller, was born at 120 E. 13th St. in a section of Covington known as Helentown. His mother was born in Germany, and his father was of German parentage. Robert attended St. Joseph parochial grade school in Covington and was an altar boy at St. Joseph Catholic Church. After graduating from St. Joseph High School (today’s Covington Catholic High School) in 1906, he studied architectural draftsmanship. In 1915 he married Julia Buckley Darnell, a distant relative of President Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809); they lived at 1012 Park Ave., Latonia. Schulkers loved horses and betting on horse races and for a time worked at the Latonia Racecourse. He and his family lived in Cuba for a time. In 1934 they moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, later to Ault Park in Cincinnati, and in 1936 to Tremont Rd. in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. During that time Schulkers was secretary to Ohio governor John Bricker, in charge of publicity and development for the state of Ohio. In 1942 The Schulkerses returned to Cincinnati. Schulkers died in 1972 and was entombed in a mausoleum at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Schulkers is best known as the author of the Seckatary Hawkins series of children’s books. In 1911 he became the secretary to the publisher of the Cincinnati Enquier, W. F. Wiley. He began to write stories for children in the paper. In 1918 he was asked to contribute a weekly story, and on February 3, 1918, the first Seck Hawkins story, “The Snow Fort,” appeared. His father’s songs and stories were the stimulus for these mysteries for young boys, which were set primarily in the Covington area. The author hoped to promote, through his stories, tolerance and fair play for all, including people often branded as different because they were, for example, overweight. The character Seckatary Hawkins himself was portly.

In addition to the books that resulted from the newspaper column, Schulkers wrote the text for a newspaper comic strip series from the 1920s. Until 1928 it was illustrated by Carll B. Williams (father

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of Caroline Williams), long-time director of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s art department. The Seckatary Hawkins book series also led to the establishment of the Seckatary Hawkins Fair and Square clubs. Anyone who promised to live up to the club rules of morality, decency, and honesty could join.

Among the rules were “Always be fair and square,” “Tell the truth,” “Never give up,” and “Try to learn one new thing each day.” The club colors, blue and white, may relate to Catholic vestments, Schulkers’s German ancestry, or the U.S. flag. At the height of its popularity, the club had several million members. Seck Hawkins Days were popu lar at the Cincinnati amusement park Coney Island; there were parades, picnics, and other entertainments associated with the clubs. The Seckatary Hawkins books had an influence on Harper Lee, who used a quotation from one of them,The Gray Ghost, at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird to reinforce the moral ending of the novel. Hawkins’s grandson states, “To everyone he ever met, he was a righteous champion of justice for any that might be slighted, maligned or misunderstood.” The club is still in existence.

greatest collegiate basketball players in history, the Big “O,” Oscar Robertson. For a few years, Schwarberg also served as head baseball coach at UC. He retired from UC in 1985. He was the recipient of many awards during his career and was inducted into several sports halls of fame. He was a member of the Covington School Board. Schwarberg always thought of himself not as a successful athlete, not as a great coach, which he was, but first and foremost as a teacher. Schwarberg died in 2001 at his home in Kenton Hills, overlooking his beloved Covington. He was married to Ruby Lovell, a longtime teacher in the Cincinnati and Kenton Co. public school systems, who had died in 1992.

“Artist’s Brush Is Laid Aside; Carll Williams Called by Death,” CE, February 11, 1928, 12.

“Robert Schulkers,” CE, April 9, 1972, 6B. Seckatary Hawkins. www.seckatary.com/ (accessed April 3, 2006).

Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati, Ohio.

SCOTT, JOHN (b. May 8, 1767, Londonderry

Danny Miller

SCHWARBERG, WILLIAM “BILL” (b. August 25, 1912, Newport, Ky.; d. September 13, 2001, Covington, Ky.). Athletics coach and administrator William “Bill” D. Schwarberg was the son of William F. and Mary Cunningham Schwarberg.

He played on Covington’s undefeated 1931 Holmes High School football team and graduated in 1932. He entered the University of Cincinnati (UC) in Cincinnati, where he played halfback and quarterback in football and shortstop on the baseball team. He graduated from UC in 1936 and became the quarterback of the first Cincinnati Bengals professional football team in 1937. That team played at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, in the original American Football League, which folded in 1941. Schwarberg coached and taught at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood and later at Holmes High School; his undefeated 1942 football team won the Kentucky state championship.

Meanwhile, he completed an MA and then spent two years in the U.S. Navy, beginning in 1944. After the war Bill became an assistant football coach at UC and also was in charge of intramural athletics. In 1952 he became UC’s golf coach; no less than 15 of his golfers entered the professional ranks during Schwarberg’s 29 years in that position. He became “Dr. Bill” in 1956 when he received a PhD from Columbia University in New York City. Over the years he held various positions within the administration of UC’s athletics program. Schwarberg later often talked about how, as UC’s assistant athletic director, he had to arrange special segregated hotel arrangements in the South for one of the

Billman, Rebecca. “UC Legend Bill Schwarberg Dies,” CE, September 15, 2001, B14.

“Bill Schwarberg, 1st Bengals’ Quarterback, UC Coach, Teacher,” KP, September 14, 2001, 17A. “Northern Ky. Hall of Fame Will Induct Four Members,” KP, December 10, 1996, 6K.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS. See Archaeology; Geology; Glaciers; Pharmacy; Weather and Climate; names of specific scientists.

Co., Ireland; d. November 12, 1846, Carroll Co., Ky.). In 1788 John Scott, who became a Baptist minister and a surveyor, immigrated to the United States, carry ing a letter of recommendation that stated he was a member of the Presbyterian Church, entitled to all its privileges. He arrived in Lexington in November 1789, where he converted to the Baptist faith and united with the Town Fork Baptist Church in September 1790. He later moved to Franklin Co. and became a member of the Forks of Elkhorn Church. Scott was ordained a minister on the second Sunday of March 1802. He served as pastor of the Twins Church (now the New Liberty Baptist Church) in Owen Co. from 1802 to 1833; his was the longest pastorate in the history of that church. He is also generally regarded as the first minister to arrive in what is today Owen Co. In 1803 Scott was also called to the Ghent Baptist Church, where he served as its second pastor and donated the land on which the present church building now stands at Ghent in Carroll Co. Kentucky governor Christopher Greenup (1804–1808) appointed Scott the Gallatin Co. surveyor, and while he served in this capacity (from 1808 to 1813), he surveyed the original boundaries for the town of Ghent. He moved to a site within present Carroll Co. in 1825 and helped to establish the Sharon Baptist Church. He remained a member there from its establishment in 1825 until his death in 1846.

In 1795 Scott married Jane Sneed. After she died in 1832, he married Mrs. Mary Adams Whitehead Bailey. His second wife died in 1840, and in 1842 he married Maria Alexander. He had 13 children in all.

Darnell, Ermina. Forks of Elkhorn Church. Baltimore: Genealogical, 1980.

“The History of the New Liberty Baptist Church, New Liberty, Kentucky,” 1951, New Liberty Baptist Church, New Liberty, Ky.

Sandra Thomas

812 SCOTT, PATRICIA A. “PAT” SCOTT, PATRICIA A. “PAT” (b. July 14, 1928, Covington, Ky.). Pat Scott is the daughter of Wilfred and Irene Patrick Scott of Burlington and one of only about 600 women to play baseball professionally in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).

A natural athlete, Scott began playing baseball when she was age eight. The family farm included a baseball field where semipro teams played and held practice sessions, and the ballplayers playing at this field took Scott under their wings. During her high school years, she became known as a particularly fine fast-pitch softball player in the Cincinnati area.

Scott graduated from St. Henry District High School in Elsmere, Ky., in 1948. During her senior year, her father called her attention to a newspaper notice about tryouts for the AAGPBL to be held at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The AAGPBL was a professional baseball league for women that operated from 1943 to 1954. In 1942 the owner of the Chicago Cubs, Philip K. Wrigley of the Wrigley chewing gum empire, became concerned that a loss of ballplayers (due to the draft of men for World War II) would mean no baseball would be played in Wrigley Field during the war.

He set out to devise a plan to prevent that from happening. With the help of Ken Sells, the general manager of the Cubs, the idea of a baseball league for women was born. The AAGPBL debuted in 1943 with four teams and quickly grew in popularity; by 1948 the league had 10 teams, and 1 million fans were paying to attend its games in parks around the upper Midwest.

When Scott traveled to Wrigley Field in 1947, she was 1 of 90 women to try out that day and 1 of 35 players selected for the league. She began the 1948 season with the Springfield (Ill.) Sallies but returned home early in the season when her mother became sick. While helping out at home, Scott returned to pitching for local softball teams, even playing a stint for the Covington Belles, a professional softball team that existed briefly in 1950. In 1951 Scott was asked to return to the AAGPBL, and she pitched for the Fort Wayne Daises from 1951 to 1953. In 1952, under manager Jimmie Foxx, a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Scott was the pitcher when Fort Wayne defeated the Rockford Peaches to win the season championship.

In 1954 Scott was offered a chance to go to Austria as a 4-H agricultural exchange student. Unable to turn down the opportunity, she finished her pitching career with 48 wins against 26 losses, a 2.46 ERA (Earned Run Average), 187 strikeouts, and an outstanding .977 fielding percentage. When she returned to the United States, she enrolled at the University of Kentucky (UK) at Lexington, graduating in 1959 with a major in zoology. At UK she played on the basketball, volleyball, and field hockey teams and was president of the women’s athletic association for a year.

Following college, Scott became a medical technologist and research assistant and worked for Hamagami Labs in Cincinnati for 32 years before she retired in 1993. In 1988 the National Baseball

Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., honored the AAGPBL, unveiling a permanent exhibit called “Women in Baseball,” which includes a photo of Scott pitching for the Fort Wayne Daisies. The exhibit spawned the idea for the 1992 hit movie A League of Their Own, starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, and Madonna, among others, and brought the AAGPBL to increased modern-day attention and fame. Scott and some of her former teammates were present on the set when the movie fi lmed in Evansville, Ind. Since 1965 Scott has lived in Walton, Ky. Before she retired, she trained and showed registered Appaloosa horses. Today, she walks up to two miles per day, bowls, plays golf, and enjoys oil painting and other hobbies. In 1997 Scott was selected as the torchbearer for the 12th Annual Northern Kentucky Senior Games. She has participated in these games many times—including the softball toss, discus, shot put, golf, and bowling—and is a frequent medal-winner in her events (in 1993 she took home five gold medals, three silver medals, and a bronze medal). In 2002 the baseball diamond at Walton Community Park was named Pat Scott Field in her honor, and in 2006 Scott became the first woman to be inducted into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame. She had broken new ground previously at her high school alma mater, when she became the first woman to be inducted into St. Henry High School’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Growing up in Boone Co., she was a babysitter for the famous Northern Kentucky international jockey champion Steve Cauthen, who was her neighbor.

Flynn, Terry. “Field Named for Pro Pitcher,” CE, March 9, 2002, 1B. Friedberg, Mary. “Pitching the Senior Games: Walton Woman, 67, Played Pro Baseball,” KP, April 2, 1997, 1.

Madden, W. C. The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997.

Scott, Pat. Telephone interview by Verna L. BondBroderick, December 18, 2005.

“Scott Heads Hall of Fame Inductees,” KP, January 16, 2006, 7K.

Verna L. Bond-Broderick

SCOTT, RAY (b. January 17, 1917, Junction City, Ky.; d. July 3, 2001, Florence, Ky.). Longtime WNOP disk jockey Ray L. Scott grew up in western Pendleton Co. listening to his father strum the banjo. He was the son of Raymond H. and Catherine Crabtree Scott. He learned to love music of all types and easily made the transition to jazz from country music when the Newport station changed its format in 1961. For 40 years Scott worked there. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, and upon returning in 1948, he began his radio career at WZIP in Covington. On the radio at WNOP, he became known as “the grey wolf,” because his hair had grayed prematurely. He died in 2001 from complications of Alzheimer’s and was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. He was survived by his wife of 55 years, Jean.

Highland Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell, Ky. “Ray Scott, 84, Retired Radio Announcer,” KP, July 5, 2001, 9A. “ ‘Ray’ Scott, 84, Was Veteran Jazz Announcer with WNOP,” KE, July 5, 2001, B4.

SCOTT HIGH SCHOOL. Scott High School, at 5400 Old Taylor Mill Rd. in Taylor Mill, is the newest of the three high schools in Kenton Co. It received accolades for its many design innovations when it opened in 1978. The school’s name honors Robert Riggs Scott, who was a strong supporter of education in Kenton Co. When illness compelled Scott to sell the farm his family had operated in Crescent Springs, he used $1 million of the proceeds to fund college scholarships for graduates of Kenton Co. schools and for members of his church.

Scott also served on the Kenton Co. Board of Education from 1952 to 1976, including 16 years as chairman.

Local architect Robert Ehmet Hayes’s stunning design for the new school, a 150,000-square-foot brick structure, contained several modern amenities. Completed at a cost of $13 million, Scott High School featured interior brick walls and staircases, carpeting, tile kitchen and restroom floors, an auditorium with coliseum seating, an indoor swimming pool, and central heating and air conditioning. Budget-minded critics questioned the choice of interior brick walls and tile floors over less expensive building materials; however, Hayes insisted that their lower maintenance costs made them a wise investment. The two-story library and cafeteria are central, communal spaces, designed in accord with the school’s open-classroom concept.

Scott High School’s 78-acre campus, which it now shares with Woodland Middle School, features an impressive athletic complex with lighted baseball, football, and soccer fields; tennis courts; and a crosscountry course. Robert Konerman served as the high school’s first principal, retiring in 1993. Students voted to name their athletic teams the Eagles.

Scott High School’s colors, blue and gray, come from the school colors of its “parent” schools in the county—blue from Simon Kenton High School and gray from Dixie Heights High School.

On two occasions Scott High School students shared facilities with another Kenton Co. high school. Scott High School did not open until the middle of the 1978–1979 academic year, so its students attended evening classes at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood while construction continued on the new building; two years later, Simon Kenton High School students attended Scott High School in the evening while their own physical plant underwent repairs after a gas-leak explosion (see Simon Kenton High School Explosion).

Scott High School’s students, athletes, and marching bands have won several honors. In 1992 Scott High School merited recognition as a Tier One Model School by the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, an honor bestowed that year on only three schools nationwide. The high school’s alumni include Doug Pelfrey, a former kicker for the NFL Cincinnati Bengals. Pelfrey founded Kicks for Kids, a charitable organization

SEBASTIAN, ALEXANDER

that strives to provide area at-risk children with opportunities to pursue their dreams. Scott High School’s current principal is Clay Dawson, and its enrollment is approximately 1,160.

Church was one of many local churches that closed during the influenza scare from October 1918 until January 1919. In 1974, all the Methodist black conferences were united with the white conferences.

“Kicks for Kids Scoring Big,” KP, November 24, 2005, 1B. “Robert Riggs Scott, Provided Scholarships,” KP, April 19, 2004, A4. “ ‘Turn Over’ New Scott High,” KP, December 1, 1978, 2K.

Emerson, Chas. Maysville City Directory, 1884–1885.

Fields, John D. Scott United Methodist Church 100th Anniversary, 1884–1984. Maysville, Ky.: Scott United Methodist Church, 1984.

Alex Hyrcza

Greg Perkins

SCOTT’S LANDING/REDSTONE /GAINES HOUSE. One of Carroll Co.’s few remaining antebellum Ohio River homes marks the site of the county’s worst steamboat disaster. This elegant two-story brick home was built by Boone Co. natives Squire G. and Harriet Huey Scott, who had purchased the land three miles east of Carrollton in 1847. On the afternoon of April 2, 1852, the steamboat Redstone pulled over to Scott’s Landing to pick up the Scotts’ son Rev. Periander “Perry” Scott, a popu lar young Baptist minister and educator from Boone Co. As the steamboat was backing away from the landing, its boilers exploded, “tearing the boat to atoms, and causing her to sink in less than three minutes in 20 feet of water.” The upper part of Scott’s body was reportedly found more than a half mile away from where the explosion took place. At least 14 persons, and perhaps as many as 35, were killed. Some believed the Redstone was in an informal race against another steamboat and that irresponsible behavior by the crew caused the explosion.

Squire G. Scott died in 1867, and in 1870 his heirs sold the home to another native of Boone Co., Benjamin Logan Gaines. Gaines died in 1917, and his wife Eugenia Brady Gaines remained there until her death in 1947, at the age of 101. In 2006 the home continued to be owned by Gaines heirs.

Reis, Jim. “Blown into Eternity: Popu lar Minister among Several to Die on Fateful Day in 1852,” KP, August 17, 1998, 4K.

Bill Davis

SCOTT UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. Rev. Henson Talbert organized this Mason Co. church as the Scott Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864 in downtown Maysville. In 1869 the church joined the Lexington (Methodist) Conference; Rev. Adam Nunn was the Maysville church’s pastor in 1869–1870. The present site of the church was purchased for $800 in 1881, when Rev. John Moreland Sr. was pastor. Construction on the building continued from 1884 until it was completed and dedicated in 1890. In 1884 the church became known as Scott Chapel Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church. Construction oversight passed on to Rev. John Moreland Jr. The Maysville City Directory in 1884–1885 lists Scott’s Chapel M.E. Church under the heading “Colored Churches.” At the time, there were three major African American Methodist Church denominations in the South: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church, and the A.M.E. Zion Church. The Scott United Methodist

SCROGGIN, FREDERICK R. (b. January 24, 1916, Grant Co., Ky.; d. December 11, 2000, Edgewood, Ky.). Physician Fred R. Scroggin graduated from Mason High School at Maysville, the University of Kentucky at Lexington (1940), and the University of Cincinnati Medical School. He married Jane Wiegman in 1942. Scroggin served in World War II as a fl ight surgeon in the 339th Fighter Group, U.S. 8th Air Force, in Eu rope. Returning home in late 1945, he opened a physician’s office in Dry Ridge. He was noted for his willingness to make house calls. Sroggin was active in the League of Kentucky Sportsmen, serving on its board, and was instrumental in the founding of the Grant Co. Hospital in Williamstown (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center).

Later, he served for three years as president of the National Wildlife Federation, which had 3.5 million members. He also owned the local Ponderosa Stock Farm, where he bred prize cattle. Scroggin died in 2000 at the St. Elizabeth Medical Center South in Edgewood and was entombed at the Williamstown Mausoleum.

“Dr. Fred R. Scroggin, 84, Doctor with Many Talents,” KP, December 13, 2000, 14A. “North Kentucky U.K. Graduates,” KP, August 24, 1940, 1.

John B. Conrad

SEABOARD COAST LINE. The Seaboard Coast Line operates rail lines in Northern Kentucky. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) owned 35 percent of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N). The ACL allowed the L&N to operate as an independent company. However, when the ACL fell under the ownership of Seaboard Coast Lines (SCL) in 1967, the situation changed. The SCL began to acquire additional L&N stock, and by 1971 it controlled 99 percent of the L&N. The 1970s saw L&N cars and locomotives being painted with the SCL “The Family Lines” logo, operational authority having been transferred from Louisville to the SCL headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla. In 1982 the L&N ceased to exist as a separate corporate entity. Later, the SCL was folded into the CSX. Drury, George H. The Train Watcher’s Guide to North American Railroads. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Books, 1992.

The Historical Guide to North American Railroads.

2nd ed. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Books, 2000.

Hoff man, Glenn. A History of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Jacksonville, Fla.: CSX Corporation, 1998.

Charles H. Bogart

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SEBASTIAN, ALEXANDER (b. 1795, Garrard Co., Ky.; d. 1856, Indiana). Alexander Sebastian, an antislavery preacher, was the son of William and Sarah “Sally” Embry Sebastian. The Sebastian family came from Wake Co., N.C. They were associated with Shubal Stearns’s Separate Baptists of the old Sand Creek Association, who joined the traveling church migration from Spotsylvania, Va., into frontier Kentucky. As a young boy, Alexander certainly knew that in 1804 the proslavery leaders of the Elkhorn Baptist Association expelled antislavery leader Rev. David Barrow from the unified Baptist Association. As a result, Barrow formed the Baptized Licking-Locust Association, Friends of Humanity, with member churches from Barren, Bracken, Fleming, Garrard, Harrison, and Lewis counties. In 1808 Barrow and Carter Tarrant formed a statewide Abolitionist Society comprising 15 preachers and 19 laymen, an organization dedicated to the immediate emancipation of Kentucky’s slaves. A Presbyterian, John Finley Crowe, who later became president of Hanover College in Madison, Ind., edited the society’s antislavery newspaper, Abolition Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine, out of Lexington and later Shelbyville, Ky. As a young man, Alexander Sebastian preached against slavery both in Northern Kentucky and in southern Indiana. At that time the southern Indiana Separate Baptists were part of the Kentucky associations. In about 1820 Alexander married an Indiana native, Malinda, and accepted a call to be pastor of a Freewill Baptist congregation of about 70 people that met in a log church at Bryant’s Creek, near Florence, Ind., across the Ohio River from Warsaw, Ky. On the surface, it appeared that Freewill Baptists and Separate Baptists shared a common emphasis on immersion, an Arminian tradition opposed to Calvinistic predestination.

They tended toward an antislavery position, and both Baptist denominations had grown out of the First Great Awakening in New England.

However, the northern Freewill Baptists demanded very strong antislavery planks in local church constitutions and insisted on strong association covenants; they believed intrinsically in an educated, ordained clergy and adhered to relatively standard associational bonds. Separate Baptists, and particularly Alexander Sebastian, welcomed local lay ministry; they were less concerned about education and resisted association control. But of most concern, the Separate Baptists practiced distinctive revival fervor in their Sunday ser vices. The differences led to an eruption and eventually a split in the Bryant’s Creek Church.

At first Alexander Sebastian was welcomed warmly. The Bryant’s Creek congregation was noted for the outspoken antislavery position written into its charter. Kentuckians crossed the river to heckle Sebastian’s preaching. Sebastian and an older man, Rev. Benjamin Leavitt, from New York, who lived in Madison, Ind., served as Freewill Baptist evangelists in the river counties for three years. Although Sebastian was ordained as a Freewill Baptist minister in 1823, at the 1826 Freewill Baptist yearly meeting in Maineville, Ohio (northeast of

814 SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH, CARROLLTON Cincinnati), he was excluded. He refused to surrender his Freewill Baptist credentials, though. For the next 30 years, Sebastian continued to preach and found new churches in southeastern Indiana, the most notable ones being Separate Baptist congregations at Centre Grove, East Enterprise, and Cross Plains. All of those congregations had leaders active in aiding runaway slaves. Sebastian’s congregation at East Enterprise merged with the Freewill Baptists and formed New Liberty Baptist at Quercus Grove, a strong station on the Underground Railroad.

The Regular Baptists in the region objected to Sebastian’s performing marriages, claiming that his ordination was not proper. A district court sided with Sebastian, who claimed that if a church called him and he was ordained by them, then he could legally perform marriages. Although they agreed with his antislavery and Arminian stance, the Freewill Baptists from Ohio and New England were always uncomfortable with Sebastian’s extreme independence from associational oversight and with his emphasis on revival-type preaching.

Sebastian moved inland and purchased a farm between Bryant’s Creek and Quercus Grove; he founded a Separate Baptist church between East Enterprise and Quercus Grove in Cotton Twp. At Cross Plains, Ind., in Ripley Co., Sebastian founded a second Separate Baptist church about 1832. He is also believed to have been associated with congregations at nearby New Marion and Olean and in the Indian-Kentuck Creek Valley. In 1834 he ran for the Indiana Third District state senate seat as an unaffi liated antislavery candidate, losing by a wide margin; he ran again in 1844 as an antislavery candidate for the Indiana legislature and lost again. In October 1841 Sebastian preached strongly against slavery in Warsaw in Gallatin Co., Ky. Forced by angry townsmen to leave, Sebastian once again fled north across the Ohio River. After Sebastian died in 1856, some of his churches, now without his leadership, began to follow Barton Stone and became Church of Christ or Christian Churches.

The Cross Plains congregation later became the Salem Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Barrow, David. Slavery Examined, on the Principles of Nature, Reason, Justice, Policy, and Scripture. Lexington, Ky.: D. and E. Bradford, 1808.

January 27, 1825, Hugh Buntain, sec. 27, 160 acres, Ripley Co. Tract Book, Versailles, Ind. Marriage Record Book 5: 160, Ripley Co., Versailles, Ind. McDonald, Larry S. “Frontier Thunder: Principles of Evangelism and Church Growth from the Life of Shubal Stearns,” PhD diss., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000.

November 25, 1835, 39.52 acres, NEQ sec. 19, York Twp., Switzerland Co., Ohio Land Records, Cincinnati.

Powell, Josh. “Shubal Stearns and the Separate Baptist Tradition,” Founders Journal, Spring 2001, 16–31.

Sparks, John. The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life and Legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Diane Perrine Coon

SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH, CARROLLTON. The Second Baptist Church at Carrollton was constituted in April 1872 in the basement of the town’s white First Baptist Church. The names of early members of the Second Baptist Church can be found on the membership roles of the white First Baptist Church in the antebellum period, as slaves and as free people of color. On August 10, 1875, Smith and Lavinia Reed gave part of in-lot 285 in town to the trustees of Second Baptist Church, which was at the time under the leadership of Rev. S. P. Lewis. The brick church at 611 Sycamore St. was built on that site and continues in use. At the time the church was erected in 1875, the deacons were Oscar Bradford, Alley Clay, James W. Harris, and Smith Reed. The Harris family has been active in this congregation for more than 100 years. Although the early church records are gone, Maggie Stone and other parishioners recalled that early officers included Oscar Bradford, Jim Harris, Henry Jones, Elic Myers, and Washington Stone. In 1898 Oscar Wood gave an additional part of lot 285 to the Second Baptist Church. A structure on that property served as a parsonage and later as a pastor’s study and fellowship hall.

During the 1980s a number of renovations were accomplished: a new floor and carpet were installed, the exteriors of the church and the parsonage were painted, and new furnishings in the Fellowship Hall and new commodes were acquired. In addition, new songbooks and new Bibles were purchased and a ceiling fan was installed. In March 1993 a new roof was placed on the church building and the pastor’s study. The church is active today, although most of the original families have moved away from the area or have died. Several African American families who have moved into Carroll Co. and are Baptists have replaced them. In 2006 the pastor was Rev. Howard Potter and the deacon was Tim Brightwell.

Second Baptist Church of Mayslick. For more than a decade this congregation met in homes, barns, and whatever other places could be found.

After William Mitchell donated land to the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Company for a school and a church for the African American Baptists of Mayslick, Andrew M. January, as the authority of the turnpike company, deeded the property on August 27, 1868, to the trustees of what was termed the “Colored” Baptist Church and their successors. Those first trustees were Stephen Breckinridge, Henry Jackson, and John Middleton. A church and a school were built on the property. A Rev. Natis, the first pastor in 1855, was there for the building of the first church. The original deed stated that other black congregations should be allowed to use the church for services when it was not being used by the local black Baptists.

The first church burned, and the structure built to replace it in 1913 continues to serve the congregation. The first black school in the town was replaced by a larger structure next door, and the original school building is used by the church. In 1889 the Second Christian Church opened in Mayslick, giving the community two predominately African American churches. The Second Christian Church closed in the 1990s, and the Second Baptist Church congregation has declined to around 30 members. Approximately 30 pastors have served the Mayslick Second Baptist Church since its beginning.

American Association of University Women (Maysville Branch). From Cabin to College: A History of the Schools of Mason County. Maysville, Ky.: G. F. McClanahan, 1976.

Ramsey, William, elder of the Second Baptist Church.

Interview by John Klee, October 2, 2006, Mayslick, Ky. Vertical fi les of the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, Ky.

John Klee Carroll Co. Deed Book, book 12, p. 448; book 24, p.

415, Carrollton, Ky. Gentry, Mary Ann. A History of Carroll County.

Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1984.

Todd, Deacon Clifford. “Second Baptist Church,” typed manuscript in author’s fi le.

Diane Perrine Coon

SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH, MAYSLICK. Mayslick in Mason Co. is home to an African American church congregation that dates back to 1789. Records exist indicating that in that year slaves were holding worship ser vices and that the white Baptist church ministered to the black population. Elisha Green, a Mayslick slave who became a founder of African American churches and a Republican leader, was a member of the church. According to oral tradition, black worshippers at the town’s Baptist church sat along the walls and in the back of the church during services. Th is segregated but united system of worship continued until June 17, 1855, when permission was granted by the white congregation for the 175 black members to form their own church, the

SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH, NEWPORT. On December 28, 1945, the Second Baptist Church of Newport was formed as a mission of the Ninth St. Baptist Church in Covington. Albert Lowe served as pastor of this mission, and the congregation purchased a lot at 315 Isabella St. for the sum of $250. In 1947 the mission became the Second Baptist Church, with Rev. Edward Smith serving as moderator. After Pastor Lowe died, on April 16, 1950, Robert J. Brown became pastor; at the time, the church had only six members and $6 in the treasury. In 1951 the Housing Authority of Newport purchased the church’s property on Isabella St., and the congregation decided to relocate to 112 Central Ave in Newport, where Brown constructed a church building himself. In 1957 the Housing Authority of Newport took the church’s property on Central Ave., and the church was forced to look for yet another home. Land was purchased at the church’s current location, 713 Brighton St. in Newport, and another building was built, again without needing to obtain a loan. Rev. Brown again, along with friends, did the work. The name of the

SEGER, DANIEL

church was changed to Mount Zion Baptist Church with this move. Brown remained pastor until 1976.

From 1976 to 1979, several ministers served at the church: James Streeter, James Crawford, Elmore Morris, and Herman L. Harris. In 1979 the church’s name was changed back to Second Baptist Church. In March 1980 Rev. Paul D. McMillan was called to lead the Second Baptist Church. Under his leadership, the church became involved in many community and civic activities, such as the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration held at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center on January 16, 2001.

Historical notes on fi le at Second Baptist Church, Newport, Ky. Installation Ser vice for Rev. H. L. Harris, Sunday, May 20, thru Sunday, May 27, 1979, Mount Zion Baptist Church, Newport, Kentucky. Newport, Ky.: Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1979. Pamphlet.

“Simpson Recalls Rights Struggle,” KP, January 16, 2001, 3K.

Theodore H. H. Harris

SECOND METHODIST CHURCH. There were two locations of this congregation at Carrollton, the Sycamore Chapel on Sycamore St. and the Wilkerson Chapel on Eighth St. African Americans who were Methodists in Carrollton can be traced back to 1824, when the George Boorom Class for Methodists had four slave members.

Membership lists of the Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church–South provide slave names along with the names of their white masters.

In 1850 Christian Gangelback deeded part of lot 288 on Sycamore St. to be used as the Second Methodist Church, a congregation comprising slaves and free people of color. The building, owned by the white M.E. Church, was completed in 1852 and used by the African American Methodists until 1890, when a new church building was built in town on Eighth St. The deed for the Sycamore St. property was turned over to the trustees of the Colored Methodist Church in 1872.

Two deeds, one from Mary Harris in 1899 and another from J. A. Donaldson in 1906, refer to the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of Carrollton. This church’s last deed for the Eighth St. location was dated 1923, and it named Kitty Keene, an African American member of the church. This new brick church was named Wilkerson Chapel in honor of Rev. Prentice Wilkerson, who copastored a church in Bowling Green, Ky., and at Carrollton for many years. Eventually the congregation became too small to sustain itself and the church closed. The building was sold as a residence but later was destroyed.

The Carrollton Women’s Club purchased the old church building on Sycamore St. and used it as a meeting place and public library until 1950, when a new library was built in the downtown area. The Sycamore St. building was then sold as a residence.

Gentry, Mary Ann. A History of Carroll County.

Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1984.

Diane Perrine Coon

SECOND TWELVE MILE BAPTIST CHURCH. The Second Twelve Mile Baptist Church, located in the northeastern Pendleton Co. community of Peach Grove, along Ky. Rt. 159, near the intersection of Ky. Rt. 10, was established on May 8, 1841, when 33 former members of the Flagg Springs Baptist Church, with favorable letters of dismissal from that church, met at the home of John Ellis to form a new church. The congregation began as the Fellowship Baptist Church but soon changed its name to Second Twelve Mile Baptist Church, for the Twelve Mile Creek that flows into the Ohio River nearby. Ser vices initially were held in a local school and neighboring homes.

At the first business meeting, which took place on June 5, 1841, at Ellis’s home, Fergus German and John Cutter were elected as the first deacons. Five trustees were elected and instructed to purchase land for a church. John Ellis offered 14 acres, which included the Ellis Graveyard, now called the Old Cemetery, located across the road from the church. At the August 14, 1841, business meeting, William Morin was called as the church’s fi rst pastor. The congregation joined the Campbell Co. Association, today’s Northern Kentucky Baptist Association. Ser vices were to be held twice a month, and an annual revival was to be held each year on the second Saturday in November, after the harvest. A brick building, 34 by 44 feet in size, was built to serve as the congregation’s fi rst house of worship. The church fi rst met on December 13, 1845, in their new meetinghouse. In 1860, owing to increasing attendance, the fi rst church was torn down and its material was used in building a larger church, which was 35 by 55 feet and cost $1,500. The second church building was completed in summer 1861. The Second Twelve Mile Baptist Church worships today in its third building.

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

1994].

Mildred Belew

SEGER, DANIEL (b. ca. 1856, Iowa; d. 1927, Sigourney, Iowa). Daniel T. Seger, “Covington’s popu lar architect,” lived and worked in Covington during the late 19th century. He secured numerous commissions from the local German American community and from the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics); he was commissioned for projects in Cincinnati as well. The buildings he designed have been described as having “a somewhat distinctive, if provincial late Queen Anne– Richardsonian Romanesque character.”

A laudatory 1893 account labeled Seger Covington’s “leading architect and superintendent of building construction.” During his six years of work in Covington, he drew plans for some of the fi nest buildings that were built in that period, including several in what is now Covington’s West Side–Main Strasse Historic District. He also designed numerous small dwellings and storerooms in Covington and some fine houses in Cincinnati and its suburbs.

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Seger began his architectural practice in Covington in 1886 and is listed in local city directories from 1890 to 1900. For several years German American architect William A. Rabe, later a member of the firm of Schofield & Rabe, worked in his office. Seger was married and lived with his wife and child in a house he designed and had built in 1893 at 1553 Holman St. in Covington’s Peaselburg neighborhood. It is a two-story, gable-fronted edifice with an encircling spindle-work porch.

Among Seger’s leading works was the former Fire Station No. 1 at Sixth and Washington Sts. in Covington, which is a Richardsonian Romanesque edifice in rock-faced sandstone and pressed brick.

An innovative “iron truss,” capable of bearing 154 tons, supported the roof and the second floor. The firehouse has been adaptively reused as a bar and restaurant (Tickets Restaurant). Seger also designed two imposing commercial Queen Anne– style edifices, both of pressed brick, at the prominent corner of Pike St. and Madison Ave., for many years the center of downtown Covington. One was the Eilerman Building (1896), which housed the clothing store of the same name (see Eilerman & Sons, Men’s Clothiers). The building’s canted corner, with an arched stained-glass window, addressed the intersection. The other was the Pieper Block, with a circular corner turret, which was home to Covington’s Citizens National Bank and several storefronts. When the Pieper Block was “modernized” in the 1960s, the turret was removed and the walls wrapped with metal screening, which has since been removed.

In 1920 Seger, his wife Ellen, and his son Charles J. were living in Sigourney, Keokuk Co., Iowa, where the federal census indicates that he was employed as an architect building schools and residences. Seger died there in 1927 and was buried in the West Cemetery in Sigourney.

Other buildings in Covington identified as Seger’s work include the Catholic Orphans’ Home, Dixie Highway, 1889 (demolished); John R. Coppin’s residence, Madison Pike, the LatoniaLakeview (demolished); the Henry Grisan Building, 18 W. Seventh St., 1896; the Holy Cross Catholic Church rectory, 1892 (demolished); the Phoenix Furniture Factory, Fourth and Russell Sts., ca. 1890 (demolished); the St. Aloysius Catholic Church parsonage, 716 Bakewell St., 1890; Fred Schmitz’s “Swiss Cottage,” Rosedale section of Covington, 1896; the Frank Wegman house, W. Covington, 1896; and the J. B. Worsham house addition, 84 Martin St., 1896. In addition, the following buildings have been attributed to Seger: Covington Fire Station No. 2, on the west side of the 400 block of Greenup St., 1890s (Richardsonian brick with stone trim); an unknown house, 611 W. Seventh St., 1890s; and the Wood Property Remodeling building, Madison Ave, probably on the west side in the 500 block.

Burns, Christopher. “Northern Kentucky Architects Provided Unique Character,” Ludlow News Enterprise, July 12, 1989, 1–2.

Covington and Newport city directories, various years.

“Daniel Seger,” KP, March 18, 1893, 6.

816 SEGOE, LADISLAS Langsam, Walter E. “Biographical Dictionary of Architects Who Worked in the Greater Cincinnati Area prior to World War II,” 1986, Cincinnati Preservation Association, Cincinnati, Ohio.

“Outlook Good, for a Lively Building Season in Covington,” KP, February 26, 1896, 5.

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

Margaret Warminski

SEGOE, LADISLAS (b. August 17, 1894, Debrecen, Hungary; d. April 4, 1983, Cincinnati, Ohio).

Ladislas Segoe was a Hungarian immigrant who helped to make professional planning an indispensable part of city government. As the son of Adolph and Leana Segoe, he grew up in a well-todo Jewish family, attending the Royal Catholic Gymnasium and later the Royal Technical University (now the Technical University of Budapest). World War I interrupted his education, as he fought in the horse artillery for the Hungarian Army. Returning to his studies at the Royal Technical University after the war, he graduated in 1919 with a degree in civil engineering and architecture. Segoe immigrated to New York City in 1922 and accepted a position with the Technical Advisory Corporation (TAC), a cutting-edge engineering firm that was interested in expanding into the uncharted field of city planning. In 1923, on behalf of TAC, which had just contracted with Alfred Bettman’s United City Planning Committee for a plan of the city of Cincinnati, Segoe came to Cincinnati. The resulting 1925 Cincinnati plan was the first comprehensive document of its kind for a major American city. It reflected a lateProgressive-movement effort to reform city government by including as many experts as possible in the city’s governance. The comprehensive plan combined land-use projects, like zoning, with long-range planning for roads and mass transit.

Segoe believed that professional planners should develop plans and present them to the city manager for approval.

In 1926 Segoe’s fiancée, Vilma Czittler, also of Debrecen, Hungary, came to the United States and the two were married. In 1928 he founded his own planning consulting firm, Ladislas Segoe and Associates, in Cincinnati. Segoe’s pioneering efforts in the field of city planning were increasingly marked by extensive consulting, teaching, research, and publishing.

After working for a time as the Covington zoning coordinator, Segoe wrote a comprehensive plan for Covington, which was approved in 1932.

The plan was remarkable for its complete vision for the city and its environs. Industry, recreation, and education were among the areas Segoe meticulously covered. He made himself available to explain the planning process, frequently answering questions posed to him in newspapers and in live forums sponsored by organizations such as the local Chamber of Commerce (see Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce). Segoe worked with the Covington City Planning Commission on a plan that called for the development of infra-

structure such as roadways, railroads, and even an airport near the city. Reprinted in 1974 by Arno Press as a volume in Richard C. Wade’s “Metropolitan America” series, the Comprehensive Plan for Covington, Kentucky and Environs has become a textbook example of model city plans for its period. Segoe also served as consultant for Newport’s Planning and Zoning Ordinance of 1949.

Segoe continued a successful private planning practice in Cincinnati and completed planning documents for several regional and national cities. He was involved with plans for Madison, Wis.; Dayton, Ohio; Charleston, W.Va.; and Detroit, Mich., among others. In addition, his firm did work for the cities of San Francisco, Calif.; Toronto, Canada; Louisville, Ky.; Richmond, Va.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Tulsa, Okla. A well-respected author, Segoe wrote two of the most important early texts on city planning. In 1937 he headed the research for a landmark report, Our Cities: Their Role in the National Economy, by the Urbanism Committee of the National Resources Committee. By 1941 Segoe had composed another work, Local Planning Administration. The International City Management Association named the latter as its first “Green Book” selection as a manual for city planning.

Segoe worked in his private practice until 1968. Scholarships in his name are given at the University of Cincinnati’s school of planning.

Professor David J. Edelman of that school says that Segoe’s successful career “was due to the strength of his personality, the coherence of his vision of planning as an encompassing process, consistent and conscientious follow through, and an insistence that planners be responsible, reasonable, and honest professionals.” A foundation was set up in honor of Segoe and his wife, Vilma, and funds from it have been used for support of planning projects as well as arts and parks development. Ladislas Segoe died in 1983, and Vilma died in 1990; both were cremated, and their ashes are buried at the United Jewish Cemetery in Walnut Hills, Cincinnati.

Cornell, Si. “You Drive? Lad’s Your Friend,” CP, March 8, 1968, 11.

Covington Planning and Zoning Commission. Comprehensive Plan for the City of Covington, Kentucky and Environs. Cincinnati: L. Segoe, 1932.

Reprinted as a volume of the Metropolitan America Series, ed. Richard C. Wade (New York: Arno Press, 1974).

Edelman, David J., and David J. Allor. “Ladislas Segoe and the Emergence of the Professional Planning Consultant,” Journal of Planning History 2, no. 1 (2003): 47–78.

Harper, Brett. Ladislas and Vilma Segoe: A Visionary Couple and Their Love for Life. Cincinnati: Ladislas and Vilma Segoe Family Foundation, 2001.

“Ladislas Segoe, City Architect,” CP, April 5, 1983, 9B. “Ladislas Segoe, ‘Visionary’ Planner, Riverfront Advocate,” CE, April 5, 1983, C2.

Planning and Zoning Ordinance of the City of Newport, Kentucky. Newport, Ky.: Michaels, 1949.

Chris Meiman

SEGREGATION. The Union’s victory in the Civil War, the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution (abolishing slavery, granting African Americans citizenship, and giving them the right to vote), and the gains made during Reconstruction (1865–1877) were seen by African Americans in Kentucky as steps toward the fulfi llment of the promises of freedom, full citizenship rights, and human dignity. But these promises were broken and betrayed a few years after emancipation, when new laws were passed that, along with continuing social customs, maintained white supremacy, racial oppression, and a segregated society.

The Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, which sanctioned the removal of federal troops from the South, and the various U.S. Supreme Court rulings that essentially gutted the 14th and 15th amendments brought Reconstruction to an end and laid the foundation for the American version of racial apartheid, or segregation. Encouraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), legalizing “separate but equal,” the Kentucky legislature, step by step, year after year, passed “Jim Crow” laws that both disenfranchised blacks and separated them from whites in most aspects of life.

These state segregation laws, founded upon the principle of states’ rights, along with a rigid social code that developed, were meant to ensure that African Americans would never forget “their place” in Kentucky’s social, economic, and political hierarchy.

In Northern Kentucky separate facilities were always unequal, and in many cases they were nonex istent. Segregation meant that African Americans were denied access to public parks, such as Devou Park and Goebel Park; movie theaters; bowling alleys; restaurant lunch counters; bathrooms; and recreation facilities such as the YMCA. Blacks were also denied equal employment (generally other than ser vice or labor jobs), hotel accommodations, fair trials, open housing, and adequate health care facilities, while being constantly humiliated and denied social forms of respect.

When whites could not gain African American obedience and submission to these laws and social codes of white supremacy, they sometimes resorted to lynching, mob violence, and other forms of racial terrorism. While the Ku Klux Klan did not become a strong force within Northern Kentucky, Klan groups were present, especially in rural areas, and used “white-sheet” tactics and cross-burnings to intimidate blacks. African Americans throughout Northern Kentucky during the years of segregation (1865–1964) continually resisted, individually and collectively, the various forms of disenfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence.

Some African Americans resisted by escaping across the Ohio River into Cincinnati; others joined the Exodusters, who moved west into Kansas, Oklahoma, and Montana in 1879–1881; still others went farther north with the Great Migration (1890–1940) to such cities as Chicago, Ill.; Detroit, Mich.; and New York City, hoping to find a better life. This constant migration out of North-

SEIGEL, GREG AND REBEKKA

ern Kentucky depleted the number of talented and ambitious individuals in the community.

Those who remained to struggle against segregation and racial oppression organized and participated in such diverse groups as the Anti–Separate Coach Movement, the Council on Interracial Cooperation, the Kentucky Negro Education Association, the Kentucky Association of Women for the Prevention of Lynching, the NAACP (National Association of Colored People), the National Association of Colored Women, the National Negro Business League, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Kentucky State Colored Chautauqua, the Kentucky Commission to Study Negro Affairs, and many other groups.

Education was very important to blacks recently freed from slavery. After the Civil War, one of the fi rst schools for African Americans, a Freedman School (see Freedmen’s Bureau Schools), was orga nized in 1866 in Covington under the direction of Jacob Price. Even before the Kentucky legislature passed the 1904 Day Law, legally requiring the segregation of public and private schools, the vast majority of schools, other than Berea College in Berea, were already segregated. In 1874 the Kentucky legislature passed laws creating a comprehensive public school system that included segregated schools for African Americans. The revenue for the maintenance of these schools was derived from the taxes on property. For African American schools, this means of support automatically reduced the school term to 2 or 3 months a year, while the term for white schools was 5 to 10 months a year.

The African American schools in Northern Kentucky, which according to state law had to be located at least one mile from a white school, were separate and unequal. The William Grant School and the Our Savior School in Covington, the Southgate St. School in Newport, the Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Wilkens schools in Elsmere, and the John G. Fee Industrial High School in Maysville were schools for blacks built in Northern Kentucky. Although far inferior to white schools in physical, material, and fi nancial aspects, these schools provided their students with an outstanding education that rivaled the one offered in white schools, thanks to dedicated teachers and principals. African American schools were closed during the era of desegregation following the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. in 1954.

In 1892 the Kentucky legislature passed a law requiring separate railway cars for African American and white passengers on interstate railroads.

Minnie Myers, while traveling from Cincinnati to Lexington, Ky., in 1895, arrived in Covington and was required to move out of her first-class railway car seat in an integrated car into a segregated car designated “for colored only.” As part of the Anti– Separate Coach movement, she protested her physical removal and later sued the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Such courageous and defiant acts of resistance were commonplace during the “Jim Crow” era.

Segregation was the norm in Kentucky, just as it was in most other states, but there were areas in Northern Kentucky where segregation did not take root. When the Covington Public Library (see Kenton Co. Public Library) opened in 1900, its open-door policy, allowing blacks full access to its books and ser vices, made it the first desegregated main library in the South and one of the few in the United States. Since there were no state laws requiring segregated facilities at public libraries, the Covington public library was never legally confronted about this policy, thanks to cooperative community leaders and forward thinking library staff who avoided public scrutiny.

Since 1893 the Green Line carried streetcar passengers with integrated seating between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. In 1916 the company was indicted by a Kenton Co. grand jury and found guilty of not providing separate facilities as required by Kentucky’s separate coach bill. Appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, this conviction was upheld in 1920, but the Green Line Streetcar Company found ways to evade the state laws by amending its charter and never instituted segregated streetcars.

Many Christians fought against the evils of segregation. For example, when the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) built Camp Marydale in Boone Co. during the 1940s, Rev. Anthony Deye, a teacher and coach at the allblack Catholic Our Savior School, made certain that the camp was open to all children, regardless of race.

Despite some advances, however, racism reigned supreme. “Legal lynching” was condoned under the public hanging law in effect at the time.

African Americans accused of crimes, especially if the alleged crime was raping a white woman, were tried under hostile circumstances, with no real opportunity to prove their guilt or innocence, and customarily given a death sentence. In other cases, the victims of lynching were not even accused of a specific crime, except, perhaps, violating some unwritten social convention. During the 30-year period 1899–1930, Northern Kentucky residents were partners in and witnesses to three rape trials that gained national attention. In 1899, 18-year-old Richard Coleman was charged with the rape and murder of a white woman in Maysville. To avoid a possible lynching, the local sheriff transported Coleman to Covington for safekeeping. After being ordered by a grand jury to return him to Mason Co., the sheriff turned Coleman over to a mob of hundreds of white men, women, and children who proceeded after a quick “trial” to burn Coleman alive and cut off his body parts as souvenirs.

No persons were ever charged in this sensational act of mob frenzy and extreme brutality. In March 1930, a white woman from Crescent Springs in Kenton Co. charged an African American youth, Anderson McPerkins, with rape. After a quick trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. He was saved from being lynched by a white mob through the combined efforts of the Cincinnati branches of the International Labor Defense and the NAACP, the Kentucky Commis-

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sion on Interracial Cooperation, the Cincinnati chapter of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and the Ninth St. Methodist Episcopal Church of Covington. In 1932 his verdict was overturned, and he was released from prison. In 1935 John Pete Montjoy was accused of robbing and raping a white woman and given a quick trial.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Again, individuals and groups from Covington and Cincinnati joined together in an attempt to have Montjoy’s verdict overturned. This time they were not successful. On December 17, 1937, Montjoy was hanged in front of the Covington city-county building.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., after 80 years of ruling in favor of segregation, finally declared state-sponsored segregation unconstitutional. But it took 10 more years and a growing civil rights movement, which made use of boycotts, sit-ins, and marches, together with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to bring the era of “Jim Crow” to a close.

Kentucky Commission of Human Rights. Kentucky’s Black Heritage. Frankfort, Ky.: Kentucky Commission of Human Rights, 1971.

Wright, George C. A History of Blacks in Kentucky.

Vol. 2, In Pursuit of Equality, 1890–1980. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992.

Jim Embry

SEIGEL, GREG AND REBEKKA (Greg: b.

1947, Cincinnati, Ohio; Rebekka: b. 1948, Columbus, Ohio). Greg Seigel, a traditional potter, and Rebekka Seigel, a contemporary quilt-maker, both inherited from their grandparents a passion for hand-making items. Greg Seigel was always interested in art, but it was not until he moved into a house that was set up for pottery-making that he got his hands into working with clay. Largely selftaught and strongly influenced by the inventiveness of his machine-making grandfather, Greg began creating functional pieces with touches of whimsy. Moving to rural Owen Co., Ky., allowed him to incorporate local materials into his clays and glazes and to build his own brick kilns, where he creates stoneware art and utility pieces using traditional hand-firing techniques. Greg’s legacy is embedded in the hallways of the Owen Co. Elementary School, where he has worked beside students in grades 4–12 to design, create, and glaze tiles and then install them into murals on the school’s walls.

Rebekka Beer Seigel grew up in Cincinnati, where she met and married Greg Seigel in July 1973. While expecting the birth of the first of the couple’s two children, she learned basic quilting skills from her grandmother; but she found traditional patterns uninspiring. She preferred to tell stories in quilts and sought to express herself in fabric. The subjects of her intricate hand-sewn, pictorial appliqué quilts frequently honor female pioneers in all fields. Some of her quilts are in the permanent collections of the Kentucky History Museum in Frankfort and the Evansville (Ind.)

818 SELDEN, DIXIE Art and Science Museum. Others are in private collections. Her most acclaimed quilt was chosen to represent Kentucky in the 1986 Statue of Liberty contest at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. In 2004 Rebekka was awarded the Al Smith Fellowship of the Kentucky Arts Council for excellence in visual arts.

George, Phyllis. Kentucky Crafts: Handmade and Heartfelt. New York: Crown, 1989.

Hicks, Jack. “Couple Crafts Works of Art in Their Home,” KP, January 20, 1993, 1K.

Rebecca Mitchell Turney

SELDEN, DIXIE (b. February 28, 1868, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. November 14, 1935, Cincinnati, Ohio). Renowned local artist Dixie Selden was the first and only surviving child of John Roger and Martha McMillen Peyton Selden. In 1870 when Dixie was two years old, the family moved to 101 W. Fourth St., Covington, the first of several residences in Covington. Even though John Selden served in the Union Army during the Civil War, both he and his wife later developed unequivocal sympathies with the South. They named their first child Dixie, so that there would never be any doubt concerning their pro-Southern feelings.

Dixie and her parents were proud of their ancestry, which extended back to New England and the American Revolution, and accordingly they joined the recently founded Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution (SAR and DAR). In 1894 Dixie commemorated her acceptance into the DAR by painting her own portrait, Daughter of the Revolution, which was exhibited at the Woman’s Art Club that fall. For unspecified reasons, the Seldens dropped out of the SAR and the DAR in 1899.

Dixie Selden’s interest in the arts was cultivated by her parents through travels abroad. Their travels were undertaken for other reasons, but the Seldens later said the trips served as crucial groundwork for Dixie’s artistic career. Newspaper accounts described Martha Selden as a prominent member of the Culture Club, a local literary society, and an associate member of the Covington Art Club.

Dixie’s parents also participated in the Shakespeare Society. While most of the family’s activities centered on Covington, the family moved freely in elite social circles on both sides of the Ohio River.

Later, when Dixie became a working artist, her parents’ social connections provided easy access to a society that required a steady flow of portraits and paintings. After Dixie’s mother and father died in 1907 and 1908, respectively, Dixie continued to live in her parents’ home in Covington on W. Fourth St.; she later moved to two other residences in Covington. In about 1910, she moved to 1106 Cross Ln. in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati.

Selden was educated at Miss Virginia Simpson Private School in Covington, Miss Clara E. Nourse Select Girls School in Cincinnati, and Miss Bartholomew’s English and Classical School for Girls in Cincinnati. She was determined early in life to be a painter, initially concentrating on portrait

painting. Selden’s parents set up an art studio for her in their home while she was attending these schools. In 1884 her love of art led her to enroll in the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati (later the Cincinnati Art Academy, CAM). Six years later, on November 1, 1890, the internationally famous Covington artist Frank Duveneck taught his first class at this school, and Selden was enrolled in the class. She responded well to Duveneck’s teaching and continued her education at the academy off and on until 1912. She was one of Duveneck’s favorite students, and she made excellent progress under his teaching. He called her “the little one” because of her short stature. After six years of drawing and watercolor classes and nearly two years of painting with Duveneck, Selden began publicly exhibiting her work. Her first art exhibition was at the Covington Art Club in 1890.

She received prizes for best portrait and painting in oil.

In 1891 Selden entered her second art exhibition, with four paintings at the more prestigious Cincinnati Art Club. In June 1892 she received the distinction of being invited to show three of her paintings with Frank Duveneck, Henry Farny, Frank H. Lungren, Edward Potthast, and Charles Henry Sharp at Barton’s Gallery. This was the moment when she shed her amateur status. In the same year, she became a founding member and twice served as president of the Cincinnati Woman’s Art Club. She gained further experience and recognition through her exhibitions with the Woman’s Art Club. The 1893 spring exhibit was held at Closson’s Art Gallery, where she received further praise. Additional semiannual exhibitions with the Woman’s Art Club provided venues for the quick sale of her works.

Selden was best known for fine portraits and lively landscapes. Many of her later works were displayed in the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Chicago Art Museum, the New York Art Academy, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and other places. Some of her more celebrated portraits are those titled Mary M. Emery, Frederick Hicks, The Dana Boys, Spanish Gypsy, Eleanor Simpson Orr, Frank Duveneck, Little Parker Girl, Arab Bride, Aunt Patsy, Fishermen’s Wives, and Wife of Martinez. Selden received many awards throughout her life.

In the 1890s Selden completed approximately 10 major works per year. In addition to portraits of family, her subjects initially were pets, domestic life, and flowers. By 1894 she was advertising her career as a portrait painter in Covington, and her portraits soon gained more fame. One of her most notable portraits, from 1896, was Soudanese Woman. Some of her portraits were similar to those called Etudes, small exercises of partially unfi nished works of society’s disadvantaged. As Selden perfected her painting skills, her artistic talents and horizons broadened. By 1909 she had become a painter in the impressionistic style of portraits, genre, and landscapes as well as an illustrator. She is still considered to be one of the premier impressionists from the Greater Cincinnati area.

Further distinction came to Selden when Frank Duveneck received the honorary Doctor of Laws in 1917 from the University of Cincinnati. She painted his portrait from brief sittings owing to his poor health. The portrait was exhibited both at the New York National Academy of Design and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1918.

Duveneck’s portrait brought her considerable recognition when it was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy. This was one of the few times Selden exhibited in the eastern United States. In May of the same year, Duveneck’s portrait was exhibited at the 25th Annual Exhibition of American Art at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Duveneck died on January 30, 1919.

After World War I, Selden’s living quarters were damaged by a fire, and she visited friends in Lexington while repairs were being made. One of her best portraits, Madeline McDowell Breckenridge, was painted while she was in Lexington. She also participated in the Southern States Artists Association, the McDowell Society, the National Association of Women Artists and Sculptors, the National Art Club (New York City), and the Louisville Art Association.

Selden’s portrait of Henry Feltman, the founder of the Citizens National Bank of Covington, was touted as a fine example of her power and fine imagination. In the last 25 years of her life, she traveled the world, recording scenes of streets and markets and producing portraits of newfound friends in Belgium, Brittany, China, Cuba, Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Normandy, Spain, Switzerland, the Middle East, and Yugoslavia. Her traveling companions at various times were a Miss Coit, Mary Ives Duhme, Jeanie D. McKee, and Emma Mendenhall, a watercolorist.

Selden died of a heart attack at age 65 in her apartment on Cross Ln. in Cincinnati. Funeral ser vices were conducted in her home by Rector Frank Nelson of Christ Cathedral, and she was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, near her parents. She never married or even had a beau of enough importance to be mentioned in accounts of her life. From March 4 to April 8, 1936, the Cincinnati Art Museum held a memorial exhibit of 60 of her works, which dated from 1903 to 1935. Most came from private collections.

Alexander, Mary L. “Cincinnati Artist Completes Portrait of Covington Banker,” KTS, March 5, 1923, 16.

———. “Is True Art: Cincinnati Artist Depicts Charm of Venice Atmosphere,” KTS, October 15, 1923, 12.

Bauer, Marilyn. “Strong Impressionist: Cincinnati Art Galleries Celebrates Dixie Selden Biography with Exhibit of Native Daughter’s Paintings,” CE, July 25, 2002, 3E. “Cincinnati’s Most Collectible Artists,” CE, April 19, 1998, 6H. “Gallery Will Show State Art,” KP, April 20, 1983, 10K. “Honor Carlisle,” KP, June 11, 1925, 2.

McLean, Genetta. Dixie Selden: An American Impressionist from Cincinnati, 1868–1935. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Galleries, 2001.

SE NIOR SERVICES OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY Reis, Jim. “Dixie Selden, Artist,” KP, October 31, 2005, 4K. ———. “Dixie Selden Studied with Duveneck and Farny, Later Earned National Recognition for Landscapes,” KP, September 6, 1993, 4K. Williams, Hal. “Kenton, Campbell Exhibits Displayed in Kentucky’s Historical Museum,” KTS, March 12, 1958, 2A.

Richard M. Sacksteder

SEMINARY OF ST. PIUS X. Bishop William T. Mulloy decided in the early 1950s to build a diocesan seminary to educate priests for the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). The Marydale property in Erlanger provided a convenient location. The seminary program was initiated in the fall of 1955 in the old horse barn at Marydale, which also served as a retreat house. The high-school- and college-level seminarians lived in the barn and received their spiritual formation there. They were bused to Covington Latin School for their general education; on weekends they were allowed to go home. Msgr. Elmer Grosser was the first rector of the seminary, which was named St. Pius X in honor of the early-20th-century pope of that name.

By 1958 the architectural firm Betz and Bankemper (see Carl A. Bankemper) had been hired to design a permanent seminary building. It was constructed across the small lake from the recently built Marydale retreat house, which had been designed by the same architects. Students took up residence in the new building in January 1960. The new bishop of Covington, Richard H. Ackerman, dedicated the residence on September 4, 1960. A separate gymnasium, with racquetball courts and a bowling alley, was constructed in 1963 and dedicated to the memory of Mulloy, who died in 1959. The seminary discontinued its high school program in 1965. The Southern Association of Colleges accredited the college liberal arts academic program, centered on philosophy, in 1968.

In the period following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), several changes were introduced into seminary programs around the country. Many Catholic priests and educators questioned the wisdom of continuing the rigidly structured model of seminary formation, which mandated a self-contained environment in which seminarians had little contact with others outside of the seminary. A more open program was being promoted, one that allowed students more individual freedom in assuming responsibility for their education and formation. But there were other Catholics, including Ackerman, who disagreed with the new approach. Ackerman was very concerned about the growing number of priests and sisters nationwide who were leaving their ministries in the late 1960s and early 1970s and about the concomitant drop in seminary enrollments.

He believed that part of the problem was that the new seminary model did not offer the proper formation for seminary students. He intended to keep the Seminary of St. Pius X in line with the more traditional model. To boost enrollment, he made the Seminary of St. Pius X accessible to students from other dioceses. Some like-minded bishops

from around the country were glad to have the seminary in the Diocese of Covington available as an alternative to what they considered the overly liberal seminaries that seemed to dominate the field. Throughout the 1970s, under the rectorship of Rev. William G. Brown, Ackerman retained the traditional model of formation at the Seminary of St. Pius X. Ackerman’s successor, however, did not support that model. Soon after his arrival as bishop of Covington in 1979, William A. Hughes initiated a study of the seminary by a committee appointed by the National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB).

The study was conducted in the spring of 1981 and headed by Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Va. The committee used the criteria established in the NCCB’s “Program of Priestly Formation” as the basis for its evaluation of the program at St. Pius X. Following the committee’s recommendations, Hughes announced in 1982 that the Seminary of St. Pius X would introduce major changes. The seminarians would no longer attend classes at the seminary but would now travel to Thomas More College in nearby Crestview Hills for their education.

Nor would their lives be as regimented by routine.

In addition they would discard the traditional garb worn by students at St. Pius. He appointed Rev. Raymond Holtz as the new rector.

These changes meant the loss of many students from other dioceses whose bishops had favored the previous program. The resulting smaller enrollment (it still included students from other dioceses in Kentucky and Tennessee) made it difficult to sustain the seminary. After closing the seminary building and sending seminarians to live in a separate dorm facility on the Thomas More Campus for the 1986–1987 academic year, Hughes and the Seminary Board determined that it was no longer economical ly feasible to continue the seminary program, so the Seminary of St. Pius X’s program ended in 1987. The following year, the diocesan offices were moved from downtown Covington into the old seminary building, which was renamed the Catholic Center. The Diocese of Covington then began sending its seminarians to seminaries in other parts of the country.

“Bishop Announces Sept. Opening for Jr. Seminary,” Messenger, February 6, 1955, 1A. “Bishop Hughes Announces Decision: St. Pius X Seminary Program to Be Phased Out,” Messenger, November 15, 1987, 1.

“Bishop to Dedicate St. Pius X Seminary,” Messenger, September 4, 1960, 1A. “Building Set for New Seminary: Construction Features Classical-Colonial Design,” Messenger, March 30, 1958, 1A. “Cardinal Ritter Dedicates Memorial Gymnasium,” Messenger, May 19, 1963, 1A. Fagan, Sean. “The New Approach to Seminary Training,” Furrow 16, no. 5 (May 1965): 269–70.

“New Look Seminary Opens Doors, Collars,” Messenger, August 29, 1982, 2.

O’Donoghue, Joseph. “Reforming the Seminaries,” Commonweal 81, November 6, 1964, 195.

Seminary of St. Pius X Student Cata logues, 1962– 1963, 1963–1964, 1969–1970, Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Erlanger, Ky.

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“St. Pius X Board Decides: Seminarians to Go to Thomas More,” Messenger, 18 April 18, 1982, 1–2.

“St. Pius X Seminary Trains First Priest-Aspirants,” Messenger, October 23, 1955, 16A–17A.

Thomas S. Ward

SEMINARY SQUARE. See Western Baptist Theological Institute.

SENIOR SERVICES OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY. Senior Ser vices of Northern Kentucky (SSNK), under various names, has been serving the region since 1962. In December of that year, a group of concerned citizens and community leaders from Trinity Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics), and Mother of God Catholic Church established the fi rst senior center in the state in the American Legion Hall at 115 E. Fourth St. in Covington. The center soon moved to the community rooms at Trinity Episcopal Church. The orga ni zation, which began under the name of Senior Center Inc. as a recreational center funded by the Community Chest, later expanded as a Title III project of the Older Americans Act, while adding more centers and conducting limited outreach. In 1971 ser vice and senior centers were established throughout the eight-county Northern Kentucky Area Development District with an array of offerings: congregate meals/senior centers, home-delivered meals, transportation, outreach, protective ser vices, a nursing home ombudsman, information and referral, lifeline, homemaker ser vices, the retired senior volunteer program, the Northern Kentucky senior games, the Sentinel Newspaper, and one church–one elder. In 1974, free hot meals were made available at the senior centers.

In 1989 the Covington senior center and the regional administration moved into the former Elks Hall at 34 W. Fifth St.; in April 1993, the organization moved into the former Knights of Columbus building at 1032 Madison Ave. in Covington, consolidating its offices and its commissary.

In January 1994, its name became Senior Ser vices of Northern Kentucky Inc. Today, SSNK is the only agency in the eight counties responsible for mealson-wheels. For many elderly people, the delivery of these daily meals is the only contact they have with the outside world. Today, after 40 years, SSNK continues to support the independence and dignity of persons over age 60 in the following eight Northern Kentucky counties: Boone, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton, Owen, and Pendleton.

SSNK and some 300 volunteers are prepared to meet the needs of the aging baby boomer population of Northern Kentucky.

Senior Ser vices Northern Kentucky. www.seniorser vicesnky.org (accessed October 30, 2006).

Senior Ser vices of Northern Kentucky. Older Adults: The Resource Guide. Covington: Senior Ser vices of Northern Kentucky, 2005.

“Start New Agency: Senior Citizens Not Just Rockin’,” KP, January 24, 1969, 1K.

Donna Oehler

820 SETTLE, EVAN E. SETTLE, EVAN E. (b. December 1, 1848, Frankfort, Ky.; d. November 16, 1899, Owenton, Ky.) Evan Evans Settle, an Owen Co. lawyer and politician, was the son of William H. and Harriet Evans Settle. Evan’s early education was at the prestigious B. B. Sayre Academy in Frankfort. The family moved to Louisville, where Settle attended Louisville Male High School, graduating in 1864.

He worked for a year in Louisville in the U.S. Provost Marshall’s office during the Civil War and then moved to Frankfort and worked for the state auditor. Settle studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1870. He set up his first legal practice at Owenton. He married Lizzie Herndon on October 20, 1875, and they had six children. Settle served as Owen Co. attorney from 1878 until 1887 and was then elected to the Kentucky legislature. In 1897 he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until his death at age 50. Settle was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery at Owenton.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

“Settle, Evan Evans.” http://bioguide.congress.gov (accessed November 22, 2005).

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

SHALER, NATHANIEL BURGER (b. July 21, 1805, Massachusetts; d. January 17, 1882, Newport, Ky.). Dr. Nathaniel Burger Shaler, a physician, attended schools in the city of Lancaster, Mass., before graduating from medical school at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. He had a somewhat combative personality, which occasionally got him into trouble. Shaler went to Havana, Cuba, to practice medicine because he had a connection with the U.S. consul there. After that did not work out, he moved to the frontier town of Newport, Ky., in 1832, at the height of the worst cholera epidemic the state of Kentucky had ever experienced. As Shaler cared for those victims, he quickly gained the respect of the community. He was one of the first physicians to abandon the medical practice of bloodletting. In October 1835 Shaler married Ann Southgate, the daughter of Richard Southgate and Nancy Hinde Southgate. The newlyweds built a home in what is now Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate. Shaler was known for treating difficult cases with some degree of success. In 1847 he became the surgeon at the local Newport Barracks and later served as a Union Army medical officer during the Civil War. His hospital at the barracks had a higher rate of success in achieving cures than other military hospitals. Shaler was a member of the Covington and Newport Medical and Surgical Society and the Newport city school board. Often his name would appear in the newspapers of the day in the lists of individuals owing back taxes. He was the father of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, a noted geologist, teacher, and historian who went on to become one of the great teachers of the 19th century at Harvard University. Late in life, Dr. Nathaniel B. Shaler moved into a mansion on Taylor St. in Newport (E. Third St. today), where he died in 1882. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, near his former home.

Poweleit, Alvin C., and James A. Schroer, eds. A Medical History of Campbell and Kenton Counties.

Cincinnati: Campbell-Kenton Medical Society, 1970.

SHALER, NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE (b.

February 20, 1841, Newport, Ky.; d. April 10, 1906, Cambridge, Mass.). Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was an educator, a geologist, and one of Northern Kentucky’s most prolific authors. He was the eldest surviving son of Nathaniel Burger Shaler, an eminent physician and surgeon, and Ann Hinde Southgate, the daughter of a prosperous attorney and landowner, Richard Southgate. Because he was born soon after his parents had lost their firstborn son in an accident, and because of his own frail health, his early boyhood was exceedingly sheltered. His lifelong love of nature, domestic and wild animals, and earth sciences was no doubt fostered during these early years, when he often accompanied his father on horseback rides down to the Ohio River and throughout the rustic Northern Kentucky countryside. As a youngster, Nathaniel also spent a great deal of time with his maternal grandfather, Richard Southgate, at his grandfather’s residence in Newport.

During the first decade of Nathaniel’s life, the significant early influences of his father and his maternal grandfather, open access to their wellstocked home libraries, and free rein to explore the natural world around him supplied ample fodder for his insatiable curiosity and precocious mind.

Between the ages of 11 and 12, Nathaniel attended the school at the nearby Newport Barracks.

There he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics, although ill health (in the form of “sick headaches,” which continued to plague him throughout his life), as well as his dislike of the school, often interfered with his attendance. When he reached age 15, his father hired a private tutor to supplement Nathaniel’s somewhat unorthodox education. Johannes Escher, a clergyman of Swiss and German heritage, not only furthered Nathaniel’s education but also provided him with a sterling example of scholarly discipline. Under Escher’s expert tutelage, Nathaniel built a sound, classically based foundation that included German, Greek, and Latin literature, as well as the philosophy of Hegel, Kant, and Schelling.

When Nathaniel reached age 17, his parents determined that their eldest son should enroll in an institution of higher learning. Dr. Shaler, a Harvard graduate from the class of 1827, deemed his son to be a fitting candidate for his prestigious alma mater. Despite Nathaniel’s somewhat jumbled early education, he was enrolled as a sophomore at Harvard in 1859. While there, he studied earth sciences under the noted naturalist Louis Agassiz.

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler’s years of undergraduate study were also spent preparing for whatever role he might be called upon to play for his native Kentucky in the escalating conflict between the Northern and Southern states. The militaristic influence of his boyhood experiences at the Newport Barracks, where his father served as army sur-

geon, along with his father’s resolve that Nathaniel, from a very early age, should become proficient in the use of the rifle and the sword, certainly prepared him for soldierly duty, but they did little to blunt his sensibilities to the harsh realities of war.

As the specter of war loomed, Shaler supplemented his Harvard curriculum with martial activities: he participated in a drill club, studied various works on military tactics, and performed soldierly duties and clerked at the nearby military base Fort Independence in Boston Harbor.

The outbreak of the Civil War occurred during Shaler’s last year as a student at Harvard. Wrestling with his conflicting desires—to take his final examinations or to delay his degree conferment to enlist in the army—Shaler returned to Kentucky and sought the counsel of trusted friends and family members. Following the advice of his grandfather, Richard Southgate, placed him on the Union side. But family and friends urged him to postpone his enlistment in the Union Army until after he had obtained his degree, so Shaler went back to Cambridge and prepared for his final examinations. On July 8, 1862, he graduated summa cum laude with a BS in geology from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School.

Almost immediately, he traveled to Frankfort, Ky., where he received a commission as captain of the Union Army’s 5th Kentucky Battery. He and his unit fortified one of the hillside battlements that had been hastily constructed earlier in 1862 when Confederate troops threatened Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Because his father owned the land upon which the structure was built and graciously opened his vineyards to allow for the battlement’s construction, it was later named Shaler Battery in his honor. (Now a part of the Evergreen Cemetery grounds, Shaler Battery’s earthen ramparts remain visible atop the highest hill of the cemetery’s rolling acreage.) Although severe bronchitis forced Captain Shaler to resign his post, he was deeply affected by his wartime experiences and later wrote of his poignant military reminiscences in a posthumously published book, From Old Fields: Poems of the Civil War. In that same year, 1862, he married Sophia Penn Page. The couple had two daughters, Gabriella and Ann Penn.

In 1864, prompted by pressing reasons of health and employment, he returned to the cooler climate of Cambridge and the welcoming environs of Harvard Yard. His beloved teacher and mentor, Agassiz, appointed him assistant lecturer in paleontology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. One year later, Agassiz’s declining health prompted increased teaching responsibilities for Shaler, as he took over instruction in both zoology and geology.

From 1866 to 1868, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, collecting fossils and other specimens for the museum and conducting fieldwork in the Alps, France, and Italy. His travels also included a trip to Kentucky in 1868, when he participated in a paleontological dig at Big Bone Lick in Boone Co. Upon his return to Harvard in 1869, the 28-yearold Shaler was granted a full professorship in paleontology (his title was changed to professor of geology in 1888).

SHANTYBOATS

Shaler’s ties to his native state were reaffirmed in 1873, when Kentucky governor Preston H. Leslie (1871–1875) appointed him director of the newly revived Kentucky Geological Survey. Shaler served the Commonwealth of Kentucky in this capacity until 1880, and during those years he undertook the first comprehensive survey of the state’s natural resources, publishing the findings in an 1876 monograph entitled A General Account of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. His work led to the state’s later emergence as a leader in the coal industry. In addition to revitalizing the Kentucky Geological Survey, in 1875 he initiated Harvard’s first summer school for geology and conducted its opening installment at Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. Shaler was also instrumental in revitalizing Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1886 and was appointed dean in 1891, a position he retained for the rest of his life.

Shaler vibrant classroom lectures, delivered extemporaneously, conveyed his passion for earth sciences to a nearly 40-year procession of Harvard students. He instructed every undergraduate who entered the university between 1884 and 1891, largely because of the popularity of Geology 4, his introductory geology class. His reputation was mythical among Harvard’s student body, not only because of his teaching abilities but also because of his caring and compassionate demeanor toward his students, especially those who were challenged financially, intellectually, or physically. His students called him “Uncle Nat.” Shaler published a large number of scholarly writings over the course of his long academic career. Yet he wrote on many nonacademic subjects as well. The bibliography of his published works, which lists 29 books and 234 articles, includes an acclaimed introductory textbook, The First Book of Geology (1884); a history of his native state, Kentucky: A Pioneer Commonwealth (1884); and a late-life social trilogy, The Individual (1900), The Citizen (1904), and The Neighbor (1904). His hundreds of articles and essays covered highly diverse topics: a few titles are “On the Formation of Mountain Chains” (1866, natural science), “Race Prejudices” (1886, social philosophy), “The Summer Schools” (1893, education), and “The Dog” (1894, domestic animals).

Throughout his life, Shaler’s substantial mental energy was equaled by his physical vigor. Despite his boyhood frailty and lifelong battles with chronic headaches and vertigo, he maintained an ambitious exercise regimen. He often walked up to six miles a day, heedless of adverse weather, and regularly visited the campus gymnasium. In early spring 1906, Shaler set out on foot to visit an ill friend; the ground was still covered with hardpacked snow, which made the return trek very strenuous. Shaler fell ill soon afterward and underwent surgery for appendicitis. He then contracted pneumonia and died April 10, 1906, at his home in Cambridge. He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

So highly had the Kentucky-born Harvard professor and dean been regarded by the people of Cambridge, his Harvard colleagues, and the stu-

dent body that on the afternoon of his funeral, all flags in the city and on campus hung at half-mast, shops were closed, classes were suspended, and the entire undergraduate student population of both the college and the Scientific School lined both sides of the street from Shaler’s home on Quincy St. to Appleton Chapel on the campus.

“Dean Shaler Died Yesterday,” Harvard Crimson, April 11, 1906.

Livingstone, David N. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1987.

Purvis, Thomas L., ed. Newport, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. Newport, Ky.: Otto Zimmerman, 1996.

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate, and Sophia Penn Page Shaler. The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler with a Supplementary Memoir by His Wife. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1909.

Shaler, N. S. Papers, Harvard Univ. Archives, Pusey Library, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass.

Janice Mueller

SHANTYBOATS. The shantyboats and shantyboat communities that used to be scattered along the Ohio, Licking, and Kentucky rivers within the Northern Kentucky region are perhaps best known from literature and film. Ideally, shantyboats were tucked away in protected inlets and backwaters.

Families resided within these makeshift floating houses (shanties) on the fringes of the larger river towns, from Maysville to Carrollton and up the Kentucky River to Frankfort. The boats were of all types: oil-drum pontoons, houseboats, and log rafts, tied to the shore wherever they were allowed. They were built of whatever scrap materials could be scavenged. One-story shacks, seldom longer than 30 feet and not much wider than Conestoga wagons, they were mainly homes of low-income persons. Many believe that the shantyboat design was a direct descendant of early Ohio River flatboats. Some shantyboats evolved into somewhat comfortable living quarters, but most did not. Shantyboaters anchored to the shore, paying no property taxes, and sent their children to local schools. They bartered whatever they could collect, often fish, for what they needed from shore. Smoked river-bottom carp was one of their dietary delicacies and trade commodities. The fathers of shantyboat families often were temporary day laborers, but unlike Gypsies, shantyboaters were not transient.

Some shantyboat colonies numbered as many as 8 or 10 boats, roped to each other and to the bank. They were visited by floating grocery stores (hucksters) that docked next to them and supplied their needs. These communities once existed at Brent in Campbell Co., at Dayton, at Sandy Hook, on the Newport waterfront between the bridges, in West Covington, and in other more remote spots. Perhaps the most famous Kentucky shantytown was in front of downtown Frankfort along the Kentucky River, where the families of prisoners in the old state penitentiary tied up and remained, an easy walk from the jail for visits. Shantyboaters cooked with grills on the boats, raised chickens, and had small gardens on board. For lo-

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cal officials, they were legal nightmares: jurisdiction over them, ser vices, and so forth were constantly at issue. The shantyboat population seems to have peaked with the Great Depression, when they represented a rent-free housing option. The farther south one traveled, the more shantyboats one saw, since the climate more easily allowed the lifestyle; in contrast, locally, the December 1917 Ohio River ice gorge destroyed much of the local fleet of shantyboats.

Beginning with the flood of 1937, which caused unbelievable damage, the shantyboats gradually have almost disappeared. The raising of the Ohio River pool stage in the early 1960s also contributed to their demise, because the higher water level made anchorage more difficult to find.

One Brent shantyboat family, on encountering this dilemma, simply moved up the bank and into the attic of the Brent train station of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O); they managed and cared for the station until the depot closed. Later, housing codes further prompted the wane of shantyboats.

As late as the 1970s, Boone Co. area resident Robert Cannon lived on the Ohio River near Rabbit Hash. Cannon, 75 years old in 1976, was a former steamboat captain who once tried living in a city apartment but, unable to sleep, gave it up. He spent his retirement combing the Ohio River from his cypress skiff, seeking aluminum he could sell as junk and other salable flotsam. Cannon was also a hunter and trapper; possum skins brought him $3 each.

In the 1980s, Walter Harding, in his sixties, and his live-in friend, 30-something Helen Beck, lived in a shantyboat along the Newport bank of the Licking River, just south of the C&O Bridge.

The D. Krischner and Sons scrap yard nearby allowed them to remain there. Harding’s dogs were tied up outside on the bank, to warn of visitors and to ward off the rats coming out of the junkyard’s scrap piles. Harding paid the government $10 annually for the license on his boat.

In literature, the shantyboater population appears often in the works of Covington’s Ben Lucien Burman. His many books about river life are peppered with savory and unsavory characters from the shantyboat era. Other local literary figures who popu larized the shantyboat were the independent-minded Harlan and Anna Hubbard and Gallatin Co.’s Dr. Carl Bogardus. The motion picture Tammy and the Bachelor, which was the 1957 movie of the year, and its theme song etched the shantyboat lifestyle into the minds of viewers. The heroine, Tammy, played by Debbie Reynolds, was the beautiful poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the local shantyboat community, who fell for a young man from another social class. “Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love,” goes the song. Dickey Lee referred to the social stigma that came with a shanty address in his 1962 popu lar hit song “Patches”: “Down by the river . . . there lives a girl everybody calls Patches, Patches my darling of old shanty town.” Much like Tammy, she fell in love with a boy from the other end of town, but the relationship ended tragically.

822 SHARON, MARY BRUCE Today few shantyboats remain, and most are recreational fishing or hunting shacks. Changing times, regulations, and riverside development have flooded out this part of Northern Kentucky history.

Bogardus, Carl R. Shantyboat. Indianapolis, Ind.: Jobber, 1959.

Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Hubbard, Harlan. Shantyboat: A River Way of Life.

Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1977.

“A Life on the River,” KP, June 14, 1976, 1.

Wecker, David. “Shanty Boat Floats Away Their Worldly Cares,” KP, March 15, 1982, 2K.

Michael R. Sweeney

SHARON, MARY BRUCE (b. September 6, 1878, Kansas City, Mo.; d. October 1, 1961, New York City). As a young child, Mary Bruce Green, who became a noted painter, moved to Covington with her mother, Henrietta Bruce Green, after the death of her father, Richard, in 1880. Mary lived a privileged childhood with her wealthy grandfather, Col. Henry Bruce Jr., a Confederate sympathizer and businessman who helped hire John Roebling to design and build the John A. Roebling Bridge in Covington. Mary’s playroom in the Bruce home on Sanford St. in Covington was equipped with working appliances. She met famous people, including Sitting Bull, Tom Thumb, and Buffalo Bill, and for part of each year, she traveled with her family to New York City, where she first visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art at age seven. Both her mother and her grandfather were interested in art and collected artwork.

As a young adult, Mary continued traveling with her mother. They lived in Boston, where for a time Mary took singing lessons for an opera career.

She stopped when her mother told her that “nice girls didn’t go on the stage.” They eventually returned to Kansas City, Mo., and Mary wed Fredrick Christy Sharon, who was in the real estate business and active in the community. They lived there until 1939, when they moved east and lived in New York City and Connecticut. After her husband died in 1944, Mary went to live with her only daughter, Henrietta Bruce Sharon Aument.

When her son-in-law, abstract painter Carroll Aument, saw the illustrations that accompanied the stories she had written as a child, he encouraged her to paint. So at age 71 Mary Bruce Sharon, known as Mouse to her friends, began painting.

She continued until her death in 1961, completing 150 paintings in 13 years.

Mary’s childhood in Kentucky influenced her artwork. The clothing, architecture, furnishings, and family traditions depicted in her paintings offer a glimpse into the world of a wealthy child in the 1880s. She portrayed barbecues and dinners, in works such as Christmas Dinner in Covington, painted in 1886. Pony rides, torchlight political parades, fishing with Grandpa Bruce, and horse racing are seen in other paintings, for example My First Visit to the Kentucky Derby. She often included herself in the paintings as a small, happy,

blond-haired girl. Mary remembered her mother’s story of asking Grandpa Bruce to build a bridge.

“Pa, won’t you please build us a bridge over the Ohio River? We’ve got to cross on the ferryboat every day to go to school in Cincinnati, and a bridge would be so much better.” The Suspension Bridge is shown in Mary’s painting Over the Rhine on Grandpa’s Bridge, now housed in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Roebling stayed with the family for six months as he designed the John Roebling Bridge connecting Covington to Cincinnati.

As the works of a primitive artist, her paintings are full of detail, especially in the clothing and furniture patterns and the use of an array of bright colors. The flat, two-dimensional quilt-pattern look is representative of the primitive style. Mary worked mostly with a dense watercolor pigment known as gouache. Her works were acclaimed almost immediately in the New York City art world.

Life magazine gave her a three-page spread, and art magazines and critics were enthusiastic. When she exhibited in France, she was labeled “the American Matisse.” ARTS Magazine wrote after her death, “Though Mrs. Sharon was born in 1878, there is a scented but fading antebellum flavor to her nostalgic primitive painting. . . . unlike Grandma Moses, her style is not only primitive, but Early American primitive, as if Mrs. Sharon painted during the period she so charmingly documented. Her work rightly belongs in that category known as Americana.”

Mary Bruce Sharon’s first public showings were in her hometowns: Cincinnati (the Taft Museum), Kansas City, and New York City (the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Her works have been included in a Smithsonian traveling exhibit and are published in her book Scenes from Childhood. They are represented in the collections of the Dwight D. Eisenhower family, the Hubert H. Humphrey family, the national board of the YMCA, and many family members and friends. The Behringer- Crawford Museum in Devou Park, Covington, holds 12 Mary Bruce Sharon paintings in its permanent collection, owing to the generous donation of Covington residents Eva G. and Oakley Farris in 2004.

In 1961, at age 83, Mary died at her home on W. 22nd St. in New York City.

“Cincinnati’s ‘Grandma Moses’—The Late . . . ,” CE, April 5, 1964, Pictorial Sec., 46–47.

Findsen, Owen. “Covington’s Native Daughter,” CE, November 1, 1981, H7.

Foreman, B. J. “Painting Show Comes Home to Covington,” CP, October 21, 1981, 10B. “Mary Bruce Sharon,” CP, October 3, 1961, 4.

“Mrs. Mary Bruce Sharon Dies; Gained Attention as Artist at 70,” NYT, October 3, 1961, 39.

Reis, Jim. “Art Career Blossomed Late in Life,” KP, December 22, 1986, 4K. Sharon, Mary Bruce. Scenes from Childhood. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978.

Laurie Risch

SHARON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. In 1803 Rev. Robert Wilson organized the first Presbyterian Church in Bracken Co. at Sharon, near Germantown. However, by 1812 the meeting place

had been moved to Augusta, where the church met in the courthouse in the city park. The first permanent meetinghouse of the Sharon Presbyterian Church was built in 1818, on the northeast side of Main and Third Sts. in Sharon. Arthur Thome, father of James Thome and a leading local citizen, built the brick church, which lasted into the 20th century. In 1836 a second church was built near the original Sharon Presbyterian Church’s location, and in 1893 the current church building was constructed. The Best, Fee, Taliaferro, and Taylor families were among the members attending ser vices at the church after 1836.

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

Caroline R. Miller

SHARP, PHILLIP ALLEN (b. June 6, 1944, Cynthiana, Ky.). Biochemical research scientist and Nobel Prize–winner Phillip Sharp, the son of Joseph and Katherine Colvin Sharp, was raised along a Licking River bend near McKinneysburg in Pendleton Co. He attended McKinneysburg Elementary School and Butler Elementary and Butler High School and graduated from Pendleton Co. Memorial High School (1962). Sharp earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematics from Union College in Barbourville (1966) and his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Illinois (1969). He was a staff member at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York from 1971 to 1974, the year he assumed a faculty position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Center for Cancer Research.

In 1977, while working at MIT, Sharp discovered that genes could be discontinuous, that is, a gene could be present in several well-separated DNA segments. This fundamental discovery changed the way scientists looked at how higher organisms develop during evolution. The implications as they relate to cancer research are highly significant. For this work, Sharp and another scientist, Richard Roberts, shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Roberts, while working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, had independently made a discovery similar to Sharp’s. Later in 1993, Sharp was honored by Kentucky governor Brereton Jones (1991–1995) and by both bodies of the state legislature. In 1985 he became director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, in 1991 head of the MIT Department of Biology, and in 2000 founder of MIT’s McGovern Institute. He currently holds MIT’s highest academic rank, institute professor. He cofounded Biogen Inc. (now Biogen Idec), one of the first biotech companies, in 1978 and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in 2002, both of Cambridge, Mass., and he currently serves on the boards of both companies. Sharp has been a member of the editorial board of the journal Cell.

He once turned down the MIT presidency. When it was announced that Sharp had won his Nobel Prize, he said that he “had done pretty good for a Kentucky farm boy.” Sharp is the paramount scientist of the Northern Kentucky region. Today, he

SHEPHERD, JEAN

lives in Newton, Mass., with his wife, Ann Holcomb Sharp. They have three daughters.

Nobelprize.org. “Phillip A. Sharp.” www.Nobelprize. org (accessed May 31, 2005).

“Scientist’s Work Helped Map New Frontier in Gene Research,” KP, October 16, 1993, 1–3.

“Two from Mass. Win Nobel for Medicine,” Boston Globe, October 12, 1993, 1.

Michael R. Sweeney

SHAW, THOMAS, 1ST SERGEANT (b. August 23, 1846, Covington, Ky.; d. June 23, 1895, Rosslyn, Va.). Thomas Shaw was born into slavery to an African American mother and a white father.

Thomas spent his youth in the Mississippi River town of Louisiana, Mo. In January 1864, after gaining his freedom at age 18, he joined the Union Army and served with the 67th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops. Despite the hardship of being garrisoned and bivouacked in the swamps of Port Hudson, La., Shaw remained with the regiment until the newly formed 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment was organized in Louisiana in 1866. His 28year army career stretched over both the Civil War and the Indian Wars. Shaw saw firsthand the expansion and settlement of the West, where he served as a guardian of settlers and travelers at some very remote outposts. His regiment moved to Texas, and within 10 years Shaw rose to the rank of 1st sergeant. There he trained a fellow Kentuckian, African American trooper and future Medal of Honor winner Brent Woods. While in the New Mexico Territory, Shaw participated in the pursuit of renegade warriors from the Southern Ute and Apache tribes. He helped to enforce the law and patrol the area during the Colfax and Lincoln Co. wars. As a result of his troop’s pursuit of the Apache subchief Nana in 1881, following the death of Chief Victorio, Shaw earned a Medal of Honor. However, he did not receive his medal until December 7, 1890, while he was serving with K Troop, 9th Cavalry, at Fort Robinson, Neb. While serving in Nebraska, Shaw fought in the last major Indian war against the Sioux Indians of South Dakota. Shaw and the K Troop were then reassigned in April 1892 to Fort Myer, Va., where they performed ceremonial garrison duty. Shaw retired from the Army in January 1895. Later that year, he died at his home in Rosslyn, Va., and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va. “Battle of Carrigo Canyon.” In The Black Military Experience in the American West, ed. John M. Carroll. Fort Collins, Colo.: Old Army Press, 1970.

“Monument to Honor War Heroes,” KP, August 10, 2001, 16A. Register of Enlistments, United States Army, 26 September 1871. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Record Ser vice (NARS), Government Printing Office, 1871.

Reis, Jim. “Acts of Heroism Won Local Men Nation’s Highest Military Award,” KP, November 29, 1982, 4K. ———. “A Slave Who Earned Honors as a War Hero.”

In Pieces of the Past, by Jim Reis, vol. 2. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991.

Theodore H. H. Harris

SHEEHAN, AUGUST F., JR., “GUS” (b. April 30, 1917, Covington, Ky.; d. October 30, 2000, Fort Thomas, Ky.). Kentucky legislator and journalist Gus F. Sheehan was the son of August F. and Louise Barkau Sheehan. At age 18, he started a weekly newspaper, the Ludlow News Enterprise. He wrote most of the articles for the paper and also acted as sales and circulation manager. During World War II, Sheehan served in the South Pacific combat zone but continued to write his newspaper articles. He sent them back to his father, who handled their publication in Gus’s absence. Sheehan was educated in Ohio at the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, and later the Chase College of Law. He entered politics in 1950, serving two terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives. After passing the bar examination, he practiced law in Covington. Sheehan ran for the Kentucky Senate and won a seat that he held for the next 16 years. During his long tenure in the state Senate, he backed legislation that created the Northern Kentucky Transit Authority (see Northern Kentucky Transit Inc.) and was also a proponent of the Kentucky State Lottery. In local politics he was known as Mr. Democrat. Gus Sheehan had a lifelong compassion for the less fortunate and was always eager to help.

Sheehan and his wife, the former Mary Catherine Welp, had four children, Martin, Joyce, Janet, and Patricia. Their son, Martin, became a lawyer, served in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and is now a Kenton Co. Circuit Court judge. Gus Sheehan owned the News Enterprise for 52 years and then sold it in 1988 to Gene Clabes, who merged it into the Kenton County Recorder (see Recorder Newspapers). Sheehan’s wife, Mary Catherine, died in 1985. After a long illness, Gus Sheehan died at age 83 at the Highlands Nursing Home in Fort Thomas. Funeral ser vices were held at St. Ann Church in Covington and burial was at St. Mary Cemetery, Fort Mitchell.

“Legend Gus Sheehan Dies,” KE, October 31, 2000, B1B. Kenton Co. Library. “Sheehan, August ‘Gus.’ ” www .kentonlibrary.org/genealogy/bios/.

“Suburban Recorders Bought by Gene Clabes,” KP, January 9, 1991, 8K.

SHELLY ARMS HOTEL. The Shelly Arms Hotel, in the area of Bivouac Pl. (now Crown Ave.) in Fort Thomas, was built in 1907 by Samuel Bigstaff to provide a less expensive hotel than the nearby Altamont Springs Hotel. The Shelly Arms was smaller and more affordable for families taking vacations and did not have the prominent location and the wide verandas found at the Altamont. The Shelly Arms was a short distance away from the electric streetcar line connecting Fort Thomas to Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport.

The hotel was well patronized in the summer by visitors coming either for a few days or for a prolonged vacation.

During World War I, when the hospital at the Fort Thomas Military Reservation became full, the Army Medical Corps established convalescent wards in the entire Shelly Arms Hotel and in a sec-

823

tion of the Altamont Springs Hotel. Nurses attending the patients were housed in the Avenel Hotel, only a few blocks away. Just as some soldiers who had been stationed at the Fort Thomas military post came back to live in Fort Thomas after discharge from military ser vice, so did some of these convalescents. A number of these men met and married local women after the war ended in 1918.

The success of the Shelly Arms Hotel was tied to the fortunes of the Altamont Springs Hotel and Mineral Baths, which featured health treatments whose popularity had begun to wane by 1920. The resort atmosphere and vacation spots in Fort Thomas were ruined further as growing numbers of privately owned automobiles transported potential customers to new vacation spots farther away from the city. By July 1928 the hotel had been unoccupied for a year and a half following closure of the federal government’s hospital for disabled veterans there. Adam Haas, a Newport-based real estate developer, purchased the property, and the building was razed; the area was developed into Crown Ave., Altamont Ct., and the development known as Crown Point.

“Hotels Bought: Altamont and Shelly Arms Sold to Haas for $101,000,” KP, June 29, 1928, 1.

Stegeman, A. Vinton. “The Legend of the Highlands’ Mineral Springs,” Fort Thomas Living, February 1987, 21.

Betty Maddox Daniels

SHEPHERD, JEAN (b. July 21, 1921, Hammond, Ind.; d. October 16, 1999, Sanibel Island, Fla.).

Movie script writer and radio and television personality Jean Shepherd grew up in Hammond, Ind. After a stint in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, he arrived in the Cincinnati area, doing late-night talk shows on radio stations WCKY, WKRC, WSAI, and WLW from 1948 until the mid-1950s. He was fired from many of these jobs for not playing enough songs each given hour.

He ad-libbed and became a favorite of truck drivers traveling on the roadways east of the Mississippi River.

Shepherd lived in an apartment along Madison Ave. in Covington and frequently talked about walking across the John A. Roebling Bridge on his way to work. He broke into television on WLWT with a comedy show called Rear Bumper.

In 1955 he moved to Philadelphia and soon to New York City, where on WOR radio he gained a large following of late-night listeners along the East Coast. Jack Paar later recommended that Shepherd should be the one to replace him on The Tonight Show. In 1983 Shepherd wrote the screen play A Christmas Story, the story of nine-year-old Ralphie Parker’s attempt to persuade his parents to buy him a Red Ryder BB gun. Although this semiautobiographical movie did not win an Academy Award, it has become a seasonal television classic and the inspiration for the television show The Wonder Years. Shepherd died of natural causes in southwest Florida in 1999 at age 78.

Miller, Mark K. “Humorist Jean Shepherd Dies at 78,” NYT, October 27, 1999, 9.

824 SHERMAN “Radio Wit Jean Shepherd Dies,” CE, October 17, 1999, A4.

Wallace, Charlton. “ ‘Old Shep’ Bounced from Job to Job,” CTS, August 31, 1956, 18.

SHERMAN. The town of Sherman in northern Grant Co., along U.S. 25 and four miles north of Dry Ridge, developed around a tavern built in 1812 by Louis Myers, who held a large land grant from Virginia. The tavern property was sold in 1832 to Louis Cason, whose descendants owned the property until 1975. The origin of the community’s name, Sherman, is unknown, although there is a local story that Union general George Sherman rode through the community during the Civil War. As population in the area increased, the Sherman School District No. 6 was opened in 1858. A post office was established in 1865, discontinued in 1869, reestablished in 1870, discontinued again in 1871, and reestablished in 1873. It operated continuously until 1969, when postal ser vice was again discontinued. George Robert Atkins, the last Sherman postmaster, also operated a general store. Ed Singleton had a general store and a bus depot; Robert Snow ran an automobile and a farm machinery garage.

Today, Sherman consists of a residential area and farmland. The school was consolidated years ago with the Dry Ridge School. The businesses closed as owners retired or died during the 1980s.

Four churches continue to be active and well supported by their members.

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

“Your Town,” KTS, March 5, 1957, 15.

John B. Conrad

SHERMAN, SIDNEY, MAJOR GENERAL (b. July 23, 1804, Marlborough, Mass.; d. August 1, 1873, Galveston, Tex.). Sidney Sherman was the son of Micha and Suzanna Dennison Sherman. At age 16, Sherman worked for a merchant in Massachusetts. He moved to New York City, aspiring to become a store owner, then in 1826 began to move westward. Eventually he arrived in Cincinnati, where he settled in 1831. Shortly afterward, he moved to Newport, where he became involved in establishing factories in the area. He operated a sheet lead plant in Covington and was the first person to manufacture sheet lead in the region. He also operated a successful cotton bagging plant in Newport. In April 1835, Sherman married Isabella Catherine Cox at Frankfort, and they resided in a house adjacent to their factory at Third and Monmouth Sts. in Newport. Kentucky governor James T. Morehead (1834–1836) commissioned Sherman to command a volunteer militia company. It was at this time that Texas had begun its effort to achieve independence from Mexico. Sympathizing with the Texans in their struggles, Sherman organized a company of 50 men from Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport. The group, billeted at the Newport Barracks, became known as the Newport Rifles.

On December 18, 1835, Sherman’s company offi-

cially became enlisted in the Army of Texas. The women of Newport, led by Sherman’s wife, made and presented a flag to this company of volunteers.

On December 31, 1835, Sherman and his men boarded a steamboat, the Augusta, at Newport and departed to aid Texas in its fight. On March 12, 1836, Sherman was elected lieutenant colonel of the 1st Regiment of Texas Volunteers. After a second regiment was organized, Sherman was made a colonel. Following the defeat of the Texans stationed at the Alamo, Sherman was in command of a small cavalry unit on April 20, 1836, at the battle of San Jacinto, the decisive victory for the Texas Volunteers in their war for independence. He gallantly led a squadron of 68 soldiers in a skirmish that day, attacking a detachment of the enemy. The next day, the full-scale battle of San Jacinto began.

Sherman led the left wing and initiated one of the major onslaughts of the battle. He was the first to sound that now famous battle cry “Remember the Alamo!” The flag made by the women of Newport was the only flag carried that day by the Texas troops.

After the victory, Texas was declared a free and independent republic. Sherman tendered his resignation as a colonel of the Texas Volunteers. However, David G. Burnet, president of the newly founded Republic of Texas, and the son of Cincinnati’s Jacob Burnet, would not accept it and instead gave him a commission as a colonel in the new Army of Texas. Burnet ordered Sherman to return to Newport and raise more troops for the army.

Sherman came home and afterward took his family to Texas. In 1839 he was made a major general of the Republic of Texas. In 1842 he was elected a representative in that republic’s Congress and appointed chairman of the Military Committee. In 1845 the Lone Star Republic, as Texas was affectionately known at that time, entered the Union, adding one more star to the nation’s flag. In 1850 Sherman acquired a charter and built the first railroad in Texas; its first locomotive was named the General Sherman in his honor. From 1852 to 1853 he served in the Texas legislature. Sherman died in 1873 and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Galveston, Tex. Reis, Jim. “Newport Unit Battled Santa Anna,” KP, July 25, 1998, 4K. ———. “Proud Soldiers in the Battle for Texas,” KP, March 9, 1992, 4K. Truesdell, Charles B. “Newport’s Great Hero—General Sidney Sherman,” Papers of the Christopher Gist Historical Society, March 25, 1952, 47–76.

Robin Caraway

SHERMAN BROTHERS (Chester Sherman: b.

August 10, 1895, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. November 4, 1976, Fort Thomas, Ky.; Joseph Vani: b. June 12, 1913, Chicago, Ill.; d. March 21, 2008, Montgomery, Ohio). The Sherman Brothers were a two-man clown act that appeared in hundreds of circus performances around the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The members of the team were Chester Sherman, who grew up in Bellevue, and his “brother,” Joseph Vani, who was from Illinois. Sherman was

the creative artist and designer of roles, skits, and costumes; Vani played the straight man. As a team they performed for more than 43 years (1932– 1975), until Chester’s death. When they were not on the road, they called 418 Van Voast Ave. in Bellevue their home. In 1995 the team was voted into the International Clown Hall of Fame at Delevan, Wis. Chester Sherman was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. Joe Vani was buried at St. Alphonsus Church Cemetery in New Munster, Wis. “Clown Gets Extra Bow—in the Hall of Fame,” CP, September 6, 1995, 1A. Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Michael R. Sweeney

SHIELDS, KEN (b. December 23, 1941, Covington, Ky.). Basketball coach Robert Kenneth Shields is the son of Jack and Blanche Kenney Shields. In 1960 he was named most outstanding athlete as a senior at Covington Catholic High School, where he played four years of basketball and baseball. He graduated from the University of Dayton in 1964 with an education degree. He also earned an MA in 1970 in educational administration and a Rank I degree in 1972, both from Xavier University in Cincinnati. Shields’s first coaching position was at Covington Catholic High School. He began there in 1964–1965 as an assistant coach in men’s basketball. He became men’s head basketball coach at the now-defunct St. Thomas High School the following season, winning 199 games in 10 years there; he coached men’s basketball for the next 13 years at Highlands High School, winning 261 games. In 1979 the Highland High School Bluebirds claimed their first Ninth Region title in 45 years. Shields won a total of five regional championships while coaching basketball at Highlands High School. His cumulative 460-257 record at St. Thomas and Highlands high schools still ranks him as the winningest Northern Kentucky men’s high school basketball coach ever.

In August 1988, Shields was hired as men’s head basketball coach at Northern Kentucky University (NKU). He made that school’s program into one of the finest in NCAA Division II. Shields achieved a record of 306-170 in 16 seasons at NKU, becoming the school’s winningest men’s basketball coach, and guided the NKU Norse to national championship game appearances in 1996 and 1997. The school had not won the Great Lakes Valley Conference championship or made the NCAA Tournament since 1978, when Shields’s team did both in the 1994–1995 season. As a result, Shields was named national coach of the year by the Division II Bulletin. The Norse qualified for the NCAA Tournament in seven of Shields’s final 10 seasons.

Shields retired from coaching after the 2003– 2004 season yet remains at NKU as a part-time teacher. He was inducted into the Covington Catholic Hall of Fame in 1994, the Greater Cincinnati Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2005.

SHINE, MICHAEL T.

church clerk and financial secretary for most of that time. Shimfessel received a plaque from the local chapter of the NAACP for outstanding community ser vice and also was named an outstanding senior citizen by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. She was a charter member of the Charles Henderson American Legion Post Ladies Auxiliary. Shimfessel died in 1983 at age 82 and was buried at Mary E. Smith Cemetery in Elsmere.

Ernst, Ryan. “Shields’ Pupils Await His Next Move,” CE, October 12, 2003, 15C. ———. “Shields Will Retire after This Season,” CE, October 8, 2003, 2B. Schmidt, Neil. “Shields Says Retirement Seems Likely,” CE, May 15, 2003, 1B.

Neil Schmidt

SHILOH. The history of Shiloh, a community located in Grant Co., began long before it was named.

Most of the area in present-day Grant Co. south of Williamstown was originally covered with dense forests and sparsely populated. Absentee owners with large land grants held title to much of the area.

One of these owners was the Frenchman Francis Simon (1806–1892), who settled between modern Corinth and Keefer and built a road known as Simon’s Passway, the currently usable part of which is now known as Ragtown Rd. Here Simon and his wife, Eliza Musselman Simon, built a “manor house.” The house is long gone, but a family cemetery and a slave cemetery remain nearby.

The first semipublic building constructed in the community of Shiloh was the Shiloh Baptist Church, erected in 1875. It was a log building with two stories, and the second floor was used for community recreation. When the building became unsafe, it was replaced by the church’s present onestory frame structure.

The second public building, a one-room school called Oakland, was built on donated land in 1881.

Officially known as Grant Co. School District 8, the Oakland School was closed in 1903. The pupils then walked to Keefer to attend school. The section of Simon’s Passway from the foot of Ragtown Hill to the Shiloh Rd., once traveled by buggies, carriages, horses, and wagons, is impassable now and is so marked on county road maps. In 1998 there was a suspicious fire at the Shiloh Community Baptist Church, after which the church was rebuilt.

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

“Motives for Fires Sought,” KP, November 9, 1998, 2K.

John B. Conrad

SHIMFESSEL, ALICE THORNTON (b. June 27, 1901, Xenia, Ohio; d. December 5, 1983, Cincinnati, Ohio). Alice Thornton was the daughter of Rev. Isaac and Laura Thornton. Alice married Elmer T. Shimfessel. In 1941 she became the first secretary of the newly opened Jacob Price Homes housing project in Covington. During the early 1950s, she was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and accepted a challenge from the city of Covington and neighborhood residents to find a place for African American youth to play. She stated in a local newspaper: Now that the sun is about to shine on both sides of the street the kids in this end of town are looking for a place to go. They do not have a YMCA, Boys’ Club, canteen, Community Center, picture show or any place where they might find recreation. Not even a ball field where they can play a game of ball.

Friends, this is really serious to me. We talk about

825

“Alice T. Shimfessel: A Clear Voice Who Espoused Concern, Involvement,” CP, December 6, 1983, 10A. “A Check for $525,” KTS, April 22, 1952, 5.

“Early Start Planned for Negro Center,” KTS, February 9, 1955, 2A. Fisher, John C. K., “Blacks Join Together on a Positive Note; Program Teaches Children about Heritage,” KP, February 29, 1988, 1K–2K. “Fouse League Is Getting Results,” KP, August 1, 1957, 1.

“Negro Building in Dispute,” KTS, September 21, 1956, 1A. “White Only Sign in Store Is Hit,” KP, July 19, 1960, 1K.

Theodore H. H. Harris Alice Shimfessel, 1970.

SHINE, MICHAEL T. (b. June 15, 1850, Ireland; juvenile delinquency but are we doing anything about it? I still say any old building or even a prefab building would solve the problem. I am anxious to get started on a drive for just such a place. I wonder if anyone is willing to help?

She appeared before the Covington Board of City Commissioners to request aid. Shimfessel also encouraged the African American community to support the Covington–Kenton Co. Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

Several attempts were made to establish a YMCA in Peaselburg (central Covington), on a site owned by the L. B. Fouse Civil League. This civic activity evolved into the effort to start the community center on E. Bush St. that became the L. B. Fouse Civic League building. Shimfessel served as its president for many years. Many civil rights activities, including Congress of Racial Equality freedom riders protest demonstrations, NAACP meetings, and teen dances, were launched out of the L. B. Fouse Civic League.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shimfessel was involved in protest activities against segregated restaurants, movie theaters, and department stores in Covington. She led the protestors who were carry ing signs in front of the Madison and Liberty movie theaters. In 1958 she found herself in federal district court supporting the enrollment of an African American student, Jesse Moore, at Holmes High School. Shimfessel’s efforts were successful; Jesse Moore was permitted to enter the high school, thereby breaking the color barrier that had existed there. In later years, Shimfessel was instrumental in getting the Civic League to participate in serving senior citizens locally through the Meals on Wheels program. She also taught preschool at the Civic League.

Shimfessel was a member of First Baptist Church for more than 50 years and served as

d. June 20, 1930, Covington, Ky.). Michael Thomas Shine, a lawyer, judge, and politician, was born in Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when Michael was a young boy and settled in Northern Kentucky, where Michael was educated in local schools. His first job was working at the Covington railroad terminal. He apprenticed law under Judge Walter W. Cleary and, after passing the bar exam, set up his legal practice in Covington’s Boone Block, at Fourth and Scott Sts. His office adjoined those of John G. Carlisle, William Goebel, and Judge James P. Tarvin. Shine’s legal practice grew quickly, and he became one of Northern Kentucky’s most successful attorneys. He

Michael Shine.

826 SHINKLE, AMOS married Rose Jennings in 1881; the couple had three daughters and two sons.

In 1884 Shine entered Democratic politics and was elected a judge of Kenton Co. He held that position for the next 16 years. In 1900, when he ran for reelection, he was defeated by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats aligned with William Goebel.

Shine served as president of numerous fraternal organizations, including the Cathedral Holy Name Society, the Catholic Knights of America, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He was also a member of the Knights of Columbus and the Knights of St. John and an exalted ruler of the Covington Elks Club (see Civic Associations). In 1923 Shine’s former residence at 12th St. and Madison Ave. became the first home of the Covington Latin School. For many years, he lived at 804 Scott St. in Covington. Shine underwent an operation in early 1930 and developed complications from it. After a long and successful career, he died later that year at age 80 in Covington’s St. Elizabeth Hospital (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center). Funeral ser vices were held at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption and burial was in St. Mary Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. Michael Shine was part of a group of successful Irish immigrants (others were Peter O’Shaughnessy and James Walsh [see Walsh Distillery]) who were members of the Covington Cathedral parish and who became both religious and social leaders of the community.

“Body of Jurist Will Lie in State,” KP, June 21, 1930, 1.

“Former Judge Is Taken in Death,” KTS, June 21, 1930, 1.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 4668, for the year 1930.

“Michael Thomas Shine,” KP, June 22, 1930, 2.

“School Begun in Former Home of Judge,” KP, September 21, 1998, 4K.

SHINKLE, AMOS (b. August 11, 1818, Brown Co., Ohio; d. November 13, 1892, Covington, Ky.). Amos Shinkle, the son of Peter and Sarah Day Shinkle, was Northern Kentucky’s foremost philanthropist and business leader for most of the second half of the 19th century. At age 18 he began working as a cook on a flatboat. In 1846 or 1847 he arrived in Covington, where he established a coal business that supplied fuel to steamboats on the Ohio River. Then starting in the 1850s, he built and sold steamboats. During the Civil War, he held the rank of colonel of the Kentucky Home Guards during the 1862 siege of Cincinnati. He also helped to orga nize the “Shotgun Company,” which later became the Union’s 41st Kentucky Volunteer Infantry. The United States purchased at least two of his steamboats for conversion into ironclads during the war. Shinkle was involved in numerous businesses, including the Champion Coal and Tow-boat Company (founded in Covington 1865) and the First National Bank of Covington (see First National Bank and Trust Company of Covington). In 1856 he became the major stockholder in the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company and was the major force behind the construction of the John A. Roebling Bridge. It was due in part to the efforts of Shinkle that engineer John Roe-

bling came to Northern Kentucky to build the fi rst bridge to span the Ohio River in this area.

For that reason many people have lobbied to have Shinkle’s name added along with Roebling’s to the name of the bridge. Shinkle was also president of the Covington Gaslight Company in 1863 (see Gas Lighting and Gasworks).

Shinkle founded an orphanage, which was located first on Madison Ave. in Covington. It later relocated to Devou Park and today operates as the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky.

As a civic leader, Shinkle served on the Covington City Council from 1853 to 1866. He also was a member of the Covington Board of Education and served on the board of trustees of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, which aided freed slaves in the area. In Ohio, he was on the board of Cincinnati’s Wesleyan Female College, whose most famous graduate became first lady Lucy Hayes, the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes (1887–1891).

A prominent Methodist, Shinkle was a member of Covington’s Union Methodist Episcopal Church at Fifth and Greenup Sts., which became First Methodist Church and later, in 2005, a downtown campus of Immanuel United Methodist Church.

Shinkle served as superintendent of his church’s Sunday School from 1867 until his death in 1892.

His financial support assisted Epworth Methodist Church (West Covington), Main St. Methodist Church (Covington), and the Shinkle Methodist Church (Covington), the latter named in his honor in 1892. The Shinkle Methodist Church has since moved to Independence.

Shinkle married Sarah Jane Hughes on November 10, 1842, and they had one son, Bradford.

The family owned several residences in Covington and a summer home in what is now Crestview Hills, a property known locally for many years as the Lookout Stud Farm. Amos Shinkle died on November 13, 1892, just after he and his wife had celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. During his time, Amos Shinkle was thought to have been one of the richest persons in Covington. At his death, he left an estate valued at more than $2.5 million, even after making significant contributions to his church and his community. Shinkle was buried in Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

“Amos Shinkle—The Philanthropist and Financier,” KP, November 14, 1892, 1.

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

Covington City Death Certificate No. 708, for the year 1892.

Highland Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell, Ky. Johnson, E. Polk. History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. Chicago: Lewis, 1912.

Kenton Co. Public Library. “Amos Shinkle.” www .kenton.lib.ky.us (accessed February 15, 2006).

Reis, Jim. “Amos Shinkle: Rags to Riches Story,” KP, March 4, 2002, 4K.

Paul L. Whalen

Covington businessman Amos Shinkle and his wife, Sarah Hughes Shinkle. The family moved to Covington when Bradford was one year old. He was educated in Covington public schools and then attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

During the Civil War, Bradford left college to serve with the Union Home Guard, in which his father held the rank of colonel. Bradford later returned to Miami University and graduated in 1864. Amos Shinkle gave Bradford his first job, serving as a clerk on a steamboat the elder Shinkle owned, the Magnolia. On March 21, 1868, while headed to Cincinnati from Maysville, the boat’s boilers exploded, killing about 50 persons. Bradford was blown into the river but managed to swim to safety. Although one of his eyes was injured and he suffered some burns, he recovered fully. In October 1868, Bradford married Ann Hemingray, daughter of Robert Hemingray and Mary Carroll Hemingray, owners of the Hemingray Glass Company in Covington. Bradford and his wife lived in the Hemingray family mansion at 165 E. Second St.; they also had a summer home in Rhode Island. Bradford and Anna Shinkle had two children, Camilla and Amos Clifford. Ann Shinkle died on October 1, 1884, and Bradford married her sister, Mary Ann Hemingray, on January 6, 1887.

He and his second wife had one child, Bradford Shinkle Jr. Amos Shinkle was president of the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company and was the driving force behind the building of the John A. Roebling Bridge. At his father’s death in 1892, Bradford succeeded him as president of the bridge company. Bradford also served as president of the Champion Ice Company and was the largest shareholder in the Fift h-Th ird Bank of Cincinnati and the First National Bank of Covington (see First National Bank and Trust Company of Covington). He served on the boards of directors of many local organizations. However, much of his time was spent with the Shinkle, Wilson & Kreis Wholesale Grocery Company, in which he was a partner. Bradford Shinkle prided himself on living a very normal life, preferring to spend his leisure time at home rather than at parties and other social functions. He neither smoked nor drank alcohol and attempted to keep himself physically fit. He was a founding member of the Fort Mitchell Country Club in Fort Mitchell.

He developed heart problems, which brought about his death at age 63. Because Shinkle had a morbid fear of being buried alive, he left specific instructions that his body should be observed for a reasonable time after death before being buried.

For 11 days, guards opened his casket every hour, to make sure that he was not alive. He was buried in the Highland Cemetery, Fort Mitchell, which he had helped establish. In 1914 the Gothic threestory, 33-room Shinkle mansion was given to the Salvation Army, which operated the Booth Memorial Hospital in Shinkle’s opulent former home.

SHINKLE, BRADFORD (b. September 29, 1845, Higginsport, Ohio; d. May 7, 1909, Covington, Ky.). Bradford Shinkle was the son of wealthy

“Bradford Shinkle Claimed by Death,” KP, May 8, 1909, 1.

SHORTWAY BRIDGE “Feared Burial Alive: Casket Is Guarded,” KP, June 10, 1909, 2.

“Funeral Rites over Remains of Capitalist,” KP, May 10, 1909, 2.

Johnson, E. Polk. History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. Vol. 2. Chicago: Lewis, 1912.

Reis, Jim. “Bradford Shinkle Made Own Name in Business,” KP, March 4, 2002, 4.

SHONERT, WARREN J., JR. (b. September 26, 1922, Falmouth, Ky.; d. April 29, 2002, Falmouth, Ky.). Newspaper publisher Warren Jeff rey Shonert Jr. was the son of Warren J. and Grace Ridgway Shonert. He was also a grandson of a Union Army veteran, a nephew of a Confederate Army officer, and a great-grandnephew of Capt. John Waller, an early Pendleton Co. pioneer. Shonert Jr. loved history and spent most of his adult life chronicling historical events. From 1941 to 1985, he served as the owner, publisher, and editor of the Falmouth Outlook, carry ing on the tradition of journalism begun by his father, W. J. Shonert Sr., who founded the newspaper in 1907. Shonert Jr. sold the newspaper in 1985 to Delphos Herald Inc., which continues publishing it.

Warren Shonert Jr. also was a director and an employee of the former First National Bank of Falmouth and Butler and an active community leader in Pendleton Co. He was a president of the Falmouth Rotary Club. He and his wife, Genevieve Hancock Shonert, traveled across the state of Kentucky while Warren was district Rotary governor.

Shonert was a Republican Party leader, and his wife was a leader within the Democratic Party. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Pendleton Co. Industrial group, and the Riverside Cemetery board. He was vice chairman of the Pendleton Bicentennial Commission and a regent of Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and held membership in a number of Masonic lodges and orders, as well as the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Confederate Veterans Camp No. 1342. He was a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and a Kentucky Colonel. As a member of the NKU board, Shonert was deeply involved in the turbulence that beset the college in the mid to late 1970s.

In 1985 he and his wife donated a valuable book collection of more than 1,500 titles to the NKU archives. The collection deals with the Civil War, Kentucky history, the life of Abraham Lincoln, and other topics and includes more than eight years of Falmouth Outlook issues. In the early 1990s, Shonert was a contributor to The Kentucky Encyclopedia, published by the University Press of Kentucky. Survivors include a daughter and a son. Shonert was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Falmouth.

“Falmouth Outlook Sold after 78 Years,” KP, December 30, 1985, 1K. “NKU Gets Valuable Collection,” KP, January 18, 1985, 1K. “Warren Shonert, 79, Falmouth Outlook Owner and Publisher Dies,” Falmouth Outlook, May 7, 2002, 1.

“Warren Shonert, 79, Falmouth Outlook Owner and Publisher Dies,” KP, May 2, 2002, 17A.

Mildred Belew

SHORT CREEK/GOFORTH. Located in westcentral Pendleton Co., along Ky. Rt. 467, Short Creek was a thriving community during the mid-1800s.

The town had a blacksmith shop; a general store; a tobacco warehouse; an ice storage house, where in the winter ice was cut from ponds and stored in sawdust for use in the coming summer; a school; and a thriving Baptist church, which was the center of social as well as religious life. There were two practicing physicians, Dr. Bethel and Dr. N. B. Chipman. Chipman, who moved to Falmouth in 1890, also dealt extensively in tobacco and operated the Old Tub Fowler Distillery at Falmouth.

After Chipman left Short Creek, Dr. George W. McMillian and Dr. N. H. Ellis practiced medicine there. McMillian later moved to Covington, and Ellis relocated to Williamstown.

In 1880 a post office was established at Short Creek. Until about 1920, it was common for couriers on horseback to carry the mail between community post offices. The post offices were usually located in a general store, since rural free delivery was not established until the turn of the 20th century. The Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., discovered there was another Short Creek, Ky., so, at the suggestion of Chipman, the name of the town’s post office was changed to Goforth; thus the community had two names. Early settlers had initially referred to it by a third name, Cold Springs, which described the cold spring water they found in the area.

One of the outstanding houses at Short Creek was a huge log house that was built before 1859, when some of the area around Short Creek was almost a wilderness. It was the home of John R. Wadsworth. James Mitchell Ballinger owned this home in 1924, when the logs were sold and moved to Kenton Co. The log home Wadsworth had built was reconstructed and is still standing near Pleasure Isle on Ky. Rt. 17, south of Covington; it now houses the Log Cabin Restaurant.

The Baptist Church of Christ at Short Creek was constituted in 1833, with six members. Rev. Christian Tomlin was the first pastor and served in that capacity until 1837. The church met to worship in a log schoolhouse near the waters of Short Creek until 1840, when a house of hewed logs was built for worship. This church building, which had a large stone fireplace at one end, was near a spring on one of the tributaries of Short Creek, on the land of Amos Eggleston. The cost of building the church was about $15, aside from material and labor furnished by the church people. In 1852 the congregation completed a new house of worship, a hewed-log house about 50 by 60 feet in size, costing about $75. On the morning of May 5, 1908, that church building was struck by lightning and burned; it was a total loss, and there was no insurance carried on the building. The congregation quickly rebuilt their church building and dedicated it on May 23, 1909. Ser vices are still being held in it.

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

1994].

827

Monroe, John. “Historical Sketch,” Falmouth Outlook, April 28, 1916, 3.

Mildred Belew

SHORTWAY BRIDGE. The former Shortway Bridge, which linked E. 12th St. in Covington to W. 11th St. in Newport, was marked by tragedy even before it was completed. On June 15, 1892, while still under construction, it collapsed into the Licking River, killing at least 22 workers and injuring others, several of whom died later. This was not the first Licking River bridge to fail. On January 16, 1854, the Newport and Covington Suspension Bridge (at the location of the current Fourth St. Bridge) dropped into the water below. Work on the 1892 bridge resumed right away, and it opened in December of that same year with a single lane running in each direction. The Bridge Company of Cleveland completed the structure at a cost of roughly $200,000. The span was closed on May 10, 1914, because of structural safety issues. A new, sturdier bridge was erected, capable of carry ing the heavy electric streetcars of the Green Line company; the bridge, opened on April 7, 1915, was known by various names: the Green Line Bridge, the 11th St. Bridge, and the 12th St. Bridge. It had a 358-foot main truss and approaches at each end totaling another 1,200 feet. For years it was owned by a sister corporation of the region’s bus company but operated by the Green Line. The bridge provided quick access to Covington for Green Line streetcars and buses from the company’s bus barn located in Newport. In 1970 some 10,620 vehicles crossed the bridge daily. In 1978 the toll for passenger cars was raised to 10 cents, the first increase since 1932. In 1983 about 5,800 cars were crossing daily, and in March of that year the toll went to 20 cents for passenger cars.

In later years, the bridge became known as the Shortway Bridge. It generated roughly $250,000 in annual revenue during the early 1970s. On July 26, 1976, a fire caused by children playing with fire under the Newport approach stopped bridge traffic until August 10 of that year. Until February 1977, when the I-275 Poweleit Bridge at Wilder opened, Kenton and Boone Co. Northern Kentucky University students crossed the Licking River on the Shortway Bridge, winding their way to the school’s Highland Heights campus.

Tolls on the bridge stopped being charged on September 9, 1986, the day the Commonwealth of Kentucky purchased the bridge for $1.25 million. It was the last privately owned toll bridge in the state. The bridge closed forever on April 2, 2001. An adjacent downstream state-funded replacement bridge across the Licking River opened in September 2001, which since has been named the Licking River Girl Scout Bridge. The Girl Scout Bridge is a welcome roadway with two lanes in each direction. It greatly improves traffic flow between the two cities of Covington and Newport and across Northern Kentucky as part of Ky. Rt. 1020. Kentucky tried to give away the old Shortway Bridge but could not find a taker.

On August 25, 2003, it was imploded and cut up for scrap.

828 SHOWBOATS “Fire Closes Short-Way Bridge,” KP, July 26, 1976, 1K. Lehmann, Terry W., and Earl W. Clark. The Green Line. Chicago: Central Electric Railfan’s Association, 2000.

Reis, Jim. “A Link with Death: Collapse of Shortway Bridge’s Predecessor Claimed 31 Lives,” KP, May 2, 1983, 4K. Reiter, John. “Tolls Will Rise on Short Way,” CP, July 11, 1978, 11.

Remlinger, Connie. “One Last Toll,” KP, September 10, 1986, 1K. “Shortway Bridge Toll Removed,” KP, September 10, 1986, 1.

SHOWBOATS. In early August 1945, the Menke brothers’ showboat Hollywood (formerly the Columbia) tied up at the foot of Greenup St. in Covington for 10 nights of Clouds and Sunshine, with the curtain rising at 8:30 p.m. It was one of the last times for such a stop at Covington. Beginning in the 1830s, similar boats had plied the navigable rivers of the region—the Ohio and the Kentucky—bringing smiles and fun. The previous showboat to dock in Covington had been the behemoth 1,400-seat Golden Rod, in 1939. River records suggest that at least 100 showboats were built for the inland waterways. Big and small, these migratory vaudev illian emporiums, gingerbread constructions set atop mostly unpropelled barges, were towed to venues at Maysville, Augusta, Dayton, Bellevue, Newport, Covington, Ludlow, Warsaw, and Carrollton on the Ohio, at Gratz and Monterey on the Kentucky, and sometimes all the way to Frankfort and beyond. Calliopes would announce their arrival; then the evening bill was typically a melodrama full of villains and tear-jerking plots, with multiple roles performed by members of the boat’s crew. Popcorn and penny candy were available for purchase.

These annual summer visits were greatly anticipated by people of all ages. The larger cities, being the fi rst to open movie theaters, were the fi rst to lose their showboats; but gradually, throughout the region, the floating palaces of a bygone era ceased coming round the bend.

Many rivermen and showboaters retired to Newport and Covington. In 1931 Captain Edwin A. Price died at his home at 324 Park Ave. in Newport. He and his son, Steven E. Price, had operated several showboats (the Grand Floating Palace, the Water Queen, and the New Era) on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from Pittsburgh and St. Paul to New Orleans. They did so until 1928, when Steven Price died. The Prices’ large floating theaters were welcome sights for the people of the region for many years. The popu lar Bryant’s Show Boat was retired in 1942, after 24 seasons on the water. The few boats that survive are novelties. The Showboat Majestic, for example, is permanently moored at the public landing at Cincinnati; it does not leave its berth.

The lore of showboating has captured the literature and arts of America. Based upon an Edna Ferber novel of the same name, the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein epic musical Show Boat opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York

City in December 1927. It had a run of one and a half years and has been redone many times, professionally on Broadway (and even recently in London’s West End) and nonprofessionally by schools and local groups. Some critics have called it perhaps the greatest American musical. The production’s continued success demonstrates the degree of nostalgia for this now-missing part of the American landscape, which the Northern Kentucky region once so thoroughly enjoyed firsthand.

Bryant, Betty. Here Comes the Showboat. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1994.

“Here Comes the Showboat,” KP, August 6, 1945, 2.

Reis, Jim. “We Build on Their Efforts: Unsung Stalwarts Created Community,” KP, June 19, 2000, 4K. “Ser vices for Proprietor of Show Boats,” KTS, March 15, 1928, 3.

Way, Frederick, Jr. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848– 1994. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1994.

Michael R. Sweeney

SHUTT, JACOB D. (b. 1830, Warren Co., Pa.; d.

February 24, 1895, Covington, Ky.). Jacob D. Shutt became a very wealthy banker in Northern Kentucky after the Civil War. Although his background is somewhat obscure, Shutt moved from Pennsylvania to Covington around 1850. He started working in the lumber business, married an employer’s daughter (Sarah A. “Nannie” Richardson), and found political success. In 1863 he won a seat on the Covington city council and later was chosen council president. In 1864, as a Republican, Shutt won election to the Kentucky legislature and served from 1865 to 1867. In 1881 he lost a bid to become a state senator. In 1868 he purchased four city lots in Covington. At 26 W. Fift h St. in Covington still stands the elegant Shutt mansion, now housing professional offices. After the Civil War, Shutt’s career paralleled that of many Republican businessmen and bankers. Following passage of the national banking act of 1864, Shutt built his career in the new banking system as one of local businessman Amos Shinkle’s associates. In 1877 Shutt was elected a director of Shinkle’s First National Bank in Covington.

In 1880 Shutt was one of the bank’s seven directors, along with Vincent and Amos Shinkle. In 1885 Shutt was president of the City National Bank of Covington. At the time of his death, he was vice president of the First National Bank.

Shutt joined the Washington Lodge and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, served on the board of the Covington Protestant Children’s Home (see Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky), gave time and money to the new Union Methodist Episcopal Church (see First United Methodist Church), and was a director of Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell (1879–1895). A Highland Cemetery brochure lists Shutt with 25 other men and 1 woman (Una Merkel) as distinguished persons interred there. Shutt was entombed alone in 1895 in a $40,000 mausoleum, with his own life-size statue on top.

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

Covington Death Record No. 119, for the year 1895.

Kenton Co. Deed Book 17, May 29, 1868, 610–11.

“Mr. Shutt’s Death—Positions Held in County,” KP, February 25, 1895, 1.

John Boh

SIEWERS, SARAH M. (b. March 1, 1855, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. April 22, 1926, Massillon, Ohio).

Medical doctor and suff ragist Sarah M. Siewers was the daughter of Charles G. and Rebecca Carpenter Siewers. The family moved to Newport when Sarah was a young child. She attended public school in Newport and graduated from Newport High School. Shortly thereafter, she became a grade school teacher and later taught at Newport High School. Siewers attended a series of lectures on chemistry and physiology during the time she was teaching high school, and she decided to pursue a medical career. She left teaching and enrolled in the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati in Ohio, the only area medical school that would accept female students. Another well-known doctor who attended that school was Louise Southgate, who set up her medical practice in Covington. Siewers graduated with a medical degree in 1891. She did postgraduate work at the Cincinnati City Hospital and at the Ohio Hospital for Women and Children. After her postgraduate work was completed, she opened her medical practice at 209 E. Sixth St. in Newport. She also became involved in social issues and joined the women’s suff rage movement, eventually serving as president of the Susan B. Anthony Club of Cincinnati. Siewers also worked tirelessly for educational reform and became the first woman elected to the Cincinnati Board of Education. She was an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, which promoted abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. She continued her medical practice in Newport until 1916, when she moved to Massillon, Ohio. She died there of Bright’s Disease (a kidney disorder), at age 71. After she was cremated, her ashes were buried in a family plot at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Goss, Charles Frederick, ed. Cincinnati: The Queen City, 1788–1912. 4 vols. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912.

Reis, Jim. “Doctor Didn’t Limit Crusades to Women,” KP, June 11, 1984, 8K. Rootsweb. “Sarah M. Siewers.” www.rootsweb.com (accessed April 25, 2006).

SILVER GROVE. Silver Grove in eastern Campbell Co. lies along the Ohio River where Ky. Rt. 8 (Mary Ingles Highway) and Ky. Rt. 547 (Four Mile Pk.) intersect. Melbourne is to the east along the river, and Alexandria is located seven miles to the south. Silver Grove, incorporated as a sixthclass city in 1948, was an active community early in the 20th century. The Four Mile Creek, a major watershed of central Campbell Co., lies to the

SILVER GROVE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

west of Silver Grove and empties into the Ohio River.

The first owner of the land that comprises the city was Hugh Mercer, who was born in 1720 in Aberdeen, Scotland. For his ser vice as an officer in the French and Indian War, he was granted 5,000 acres along the Ohio River; he later served also in the Revolutionary War. Mercer died in New Jersey in 1776, and no one from his family is known to have set foot in the Silver Grove area. In 1817 the Mercer heirs sold the land in Silver Grove to Gen. James Taylor Jr. On the 1883 Lake County Atlas for Campbell Co., the area is shown as being in the Hayfield Precinct, with 35 structures stretching from Four Mile Creek to Ten Mile Creek.

Silver Grove takes its name from the second of two parks in the area. The fi rst, Phoenix Grove Resort, was developed during the late 19th century to provide a destination for train and steamboat day excursions from Cincinnati and Newport. The location was along the Ohio River across from today’s intersection of Ky. Rts. 1998 and 8. Popu lar for only a few years, the park was closed and became the site of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Dam No. 36 in 1920. Silver Grove Park opened in June 1890, on a site that is now a baseball field (bounded by Ash, Second, and Oak Sts. and the backs of houses facing Ky. Rt. 8). The silver maple trees there gave rise to its name. More than just a public picnic ground, the park included beer stands, a lunch house, a clubhouse, a dance hall, an electric light plant, a boiler, and a engine house, surrounded by a fence. The Silver Grove Park existed for only one year before the county sheriff closed it for a debt of $12,000 that was owed.

In the 1880s, the C&O Railroad purchased land in Silver Grove; it was along the Ohio River, 13 miles upstream from Cincinnati. Tracks were laid in the late 1880s, and by 1912 the railroad had built a new million-dollar facility on the site. The rail yard was named for George W. Stevens, president of the C&O Railroad from 1899 to 1920. The yard expedited freight (fruits, vegetables, and phosphates), eastbound passenger ser vices, and coal cars returning to the coalfields. During Stevens’s tenure as president of the railroad, a rail hump was built to sort cars for eastbound trains onto the proper tracks. An arc-shaped row of thirteen repair and maintenance shops was arranged around an electrically driven turntable 85 feet in diameter.

A 100-room hotel operated by the YMCA served trainmen and other employees. Taylor Park, named for a C&O railroad superintendent, was completed in 1912; across from the fire station that had been built was another park that remained open until 1940.

After its rail yard was established in 1912, the company established the Silver Grove Land and Building Company. Because there were only a few houses in the area, the C&O Railroad Company purchased land along Ky. Rt. 8 to provide 400 lots for the building of employee housing. Employees purchased their land and either built homes or

bought them from local builders. This was the first town in Kentucky in which every home had running water, electricity, and a furnace. Water and electricity were subsidized by the C&O Railroad Company and cost only one dollar a month. Fireplugs were installed and a volunteer fire company was established. Although heavily influenced by the railroad, Silver Grove became an independent entity in 1951. The railroad, however, was instrumental in the formation of the Silver Grove Public Schools, and the high school maintains its nickname of “the big trains.”

Semipro baseball was a popu lar Sunday afternoon activity in many localities after World War I, and Silver Grove had a fine field for playing it.

With grandstands under a roof and surrounded by an eight-foot-high wooden fence faced with large advertising signs, this was considered one of the best fields in the region. All of the semipro baseball facility was lost in the 1937 flood. Thereafter, the field was converted into a baseball field for the high school. Horse and mule races were once held at the Newport Fairgrounds and Driving Association Racetrack along Ky. Rt. 8. Later these grounds were used as an airfield for flying lessons. After the grounds were donated to the Campbell Co. Fiscal Court by Ed Morscher in 1974 and designated for recreational use, this site became Morscher Field, a well-used public playground.

Over the years, there have been several churches in Silver Grove; like almost everything in town, they have suffered devastation from occasional floods. Not one structure in Silver Grove was spared when floodwaters of the Ohio River rose and spilled over into the town in January 1937. Reaching a crest of 80 feet, well above flood stage, the murky, swift-flowing water fi lled basements and first floors, turning some of the homes over on their sides. A few houses on higher foundations could accommodate the people who escaped in rowboats. It was necessary to boil all the water; and the Red Cross immunized everyone in town with typhoid shots. Most residents joined in the cleanup and only a few families left or sold their houses. The foul-smelling ruins were cleaned up and, by Easter, things had basically returned to normal. Another serious flood in town occurred in March 1997, when heavy rains raised the level of nearby Four Mile Creek. The city was cut off on all sides and its 700 residents had to seek refuge elsewhere while National Guardsmen protected the area.

The town firehouse on Four Mile Pk. was erected in 1964 and has two fire engines, an EMS crew, an ambulance, and a fire-and-rescue boat for use on the Ohio River. The city also has a full-time police chief. The city building is located at W. Third and Oak Sts. Mail deliveries were first made by boat from Newport to the Hayfield District (Silver Grove area) in 1845. The present-day ser vice is by truck to the post office building (built in 1969) on Four Mile Pk., where residents go to pick up their mail.

After the C&O Railroad left the Stevens yard in 1981, the city annexed 504 unincorporated acres

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along three miles of the riverfront to the east. The greatest change came to this small city in 1999 when the French-owned Lafarge Gypsum Company began to construct its $90 million plant on the site of the former Stevens Rail Yard. The halfmile-long green-and-white building uses calcium sulfate from the nearby Cinergy Zimmer electric plant in Moscow, Ohio, to make drywall materials.

It is the largest single-assembly-line facility in the United States. The plant produces 900 million square feet of drywall annually. In 2000, the U.S. Census reported the population of Silver Grove as 1,215.

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

Betty Maddox Daniels

SILVER GROVE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The Silver Grove school system began in about 1911, when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad founded the city of Silver Grove and built the Stevens Rail Yard along its tracks there, adjacent to the Ohio River in southeastern Campbell Co. At first, classes were held in a house donated by the railroad, since this fi ft h-class city began as a company-owned town. Later, classes were moved into a two-and-a-half-story brick building near the intersection of River Rd. (Ky. Rt. 8) and Four Mile Rd. Some 125 students attended that original school. On January 24, 1924, the school building was damaged by fire on the same day a schoolhouse in nearby Dayton also burned. In 1927 plans were drawn for a new 10-room school building, costing $65,000, that could house both high school and elementary students. The new school was dedicated on September 21, 1929. Just as the town of Silver Grove has been inconvenienced by Ohio River floods, so has the school district. In the flood of 1937, the records of the school system were lost. In 1959 an elementary school addition was completed; a middle school addition was fi nished in 1969, and a high school addition in 1979. The 1929 building was torn down in 1986.

Today the school district has preschool through grade 12 in the same building, which is located along Four Mile Rd. For many years the railroad contributed extensively toward the expenses of the school, but the railroad has been gone now for more than 20 years. Silver Grove currently has a population of 1,000; in 2003 the school district, the second-smallest independent school system in Campbell Co. and one of the smallest in the state, had 262 students. The system has changed to an all-year schedule, with three school breaks during the academic year. It has started an innovative recreation program and an on-site student health clinic. It competes on the ju nior high school and high school levels in men’s and women’s basketball; men’s baseball, golf, and cross country; and women’s softball, volleyball, and cross country.

There have never been enough students to field a football team. The school’s teams are called the Big Trains, reflecting the era when the town was

830 SIMMONS, ROBERT C. “BERT” owned and run by the railroad. The Silver Grove school system struggles for funding, as most of the public school districts in the state do, but the diseconomies of scale inherent in Sliver Grove’s small numbers make its future survival questionable.

The town has a major employer, Lafarge North America, whose dry-wall-production facility in Silver Grove is the world’s largest, but the Frenchowned firm, unlike the C&O Railroad, has never been involved in the operation of the town’s public school system.

Reis, Jim, “Two Cities, Two Fires on the Same Frozen Day in 1924,” KP, November 6, 2000, 4K.

SIMMONS, ROBERT C. “BERT” (b. August 7, 1867, Covington, Ky.; d. June 4, 1953, Park Hills, Ky.). Lawyer and politician Robert C. Simmons was the son of Robert and Delia Schofield Simmons. He grew up in Covington and became a lawyer, with offices in the First National Bank building in Covington at Sixth St. and Madison Ave. (see First National Bank and Trust Company of Covington). He served as a president of both the Kentucky and the Kenton Co. bar associations. He also held the office of Kenton Co. attorney from 1894 to 1902. He then served in the Kentucky legislature, four years in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. Simmons played a prominent role in the development of Park Hills, where he lived for many years. He married Alma Lawton in December 1926; there were no children from the marriage. Simmons was a charter member of the Covington Elks Club (see Civic Associations) and the University Club in Cincinnati. He was also board chairman of the BakerHunt Foundation in Covington for the first 16 years of its existence. Simmons was a lifelong member of Covington’s Trinity Episcopal Church, where he sang in the choir for 30 years.

After a long illness, he died of anemia at age 85, in his home at 1300 Amsterdam Rd., Park Hills. Memorial ser vices were held at the Trinity Episcopal Church, and burial was in Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 12823, for the year 1953.

“Robert C. Simmons Dies at Age of 85,” KP, June 5, 1953, 1.

“Robert C. Simmons Dies; Dean of Kenton Lawyers,” KTS, June 5, 1953, 1.

SIMON KENTON HIGH SCHOOL. The fall 1937 opening of Simon Kenton High School, located at 11132 Madison Pike (Ky. Rt. 17) in Independence, represented progress in the development of public secondary education in Kenton Co. Before the establishment of Simon Kenton High School and Dixie Heights High School, in Edgewood (also in 1937), the high schools of Kenton Co. had drawn unfavorable comparisons with more modern high school facilities in Covington and with the independent-district Beechwood High School in S. Fort Mitchell (Fort Mitchell). Indeed, in those years dissatisfied Kenton Co. residents often sent their children out-of-district

to attend high school. A 1935 state review of Kenton Co. schools produced a plan to replace the county system’s inadequate Independence High School, Piner High School, and Crescent Springs High School buildings with two new high schools, one for each of the northern and southern portions of Kenton Co. Partial funding for the schools came from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal federal agency. For the proposed southern high school, the Kenton Co. School Board acquired 28.5 acres along the west side of Madison Pike about one mile south of Independence. The name for the new school came from frontiersman Simon Kenton. Architect Howard McClorey’s design for Simon Kenton High School, constructed at a cost of about $176,000, included 18 classrooms, a cafeteria, a gymnasium, and an Art Deco facade. Reuben C. Hinsdale served as the school’s first principal, continuing until he was appointed Kenton Co. schools superintendent in 1960. Students chose Pioneers for the name of their athletic teams. The opening of Simon Kenton and Dixie Heights High Schools contributed to a nearly 50 percent increase in secondary enrollment within the Kenton Co. school system.

Simon Kenton High School’s campus has undergone many changes over the years. Additional classrooms, a new library, and a new cafeteria were constructed during the 1950s and 1960s. A 1980 renovation resulted in expanded classroom, gymnasium, music, and industrial arts facilities. A four-phase $21 million renovation and expansion that began in 2001 produced a substantially new, state-of-the-art building but preserved the facade of the original 1937 structure. The first three phases of the renovation, , which were completed by 2005, gave Simon Kenton High School a new media center, expanded science and computer labs, an auditorium with stadium seating, an expansive library, a modern climate-control system, and expanded athletic and dining facilities. Phase four construction, including a new softball field, began in 2007.

The 1980–1981 academic year may be Simon Kenton High School’s most memorable. On October 9, 1980, an explosion (see Simon Kenton High School Explosion) caused by a boiler-room gas leak ripped through the high school’s newly constructed north wing, claiming the life of junior Robert Williams II and injuring several other students. The blast resulted in damages totaling $1.5 million and closed the school for a year, forcing Simon Kenton students to attend classes in the evening at Scott High School in Taylor Mill. Nevertheless, the men’s basketball team won the state championship in 1981; it was the 9th Region’s only state tournament title up to that date.

The current principal at Simon Kenton High School is Rick Culross. Enrollment is approximately 1,430.

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. “Simon Kenton’s Sweet Memory,” KP, November 29, 2005, 7K.

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

Greg Perkins

SIMON KENTON HIGH SCHOOL EXPLOSION. On October 9, 1980, two explosions ripped apart the Simon Kenton High School in Independence, Ky. Aside from the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977, no event drew greater emergency response in Northern Kentucky’s history.

Every Kenton Co. fire and police department, and nearly all the Boone Co. fire and police departments, hurried to the scene of the disaster. The first explosion, in the boiler room adjacent to an art room, blew out a concrete wall and fatally injured a talented 16-year-old art student, Robert Williams.

Because personnel were unable to locate the valve to turn off the natural gas, a spark ignited the builtup gas in the school, resulting in a more extensive and violent second blast that ruined more than half of the school building and injured 36 others, mostly firemen. While repairs were being made, the Kenton Co. School Board sent the entire student body of Simon Kenton High School to night school at the nearby Scott High School. After three months, the students returned to their repaired building. In a remarkable irony, the Simon Kenton Pioneer varsity boys’ basketball team, despite not having a home gym for three months, later that season won the 1981 state championship. Led by head coach Larry Miller and assistant coaches Dave Schadler and Bill Pelfrey Jr., players Dave Dixon, Sean Dougherty, Troy McKinley, Dave Medley, Billy Meier, Alan Mullins, and Greg Ponzer accomplished what no Northern Kentucky team in 93 years of the state tournament had achieved. In 2006 Eric Deters, married to Mary Zimmerer, a cheerleader from the team, published a book called Pioneer Spirit about the explosion and the championship team.

Deters, Eric. Pioneer Sprit: One High School’s Rise from Tragedy to Glory. Morley, Mo.: Acclaim Press, 2006.

“Simon Kenton Closed,” KE, October 11, 1980, A2.

“Student Killed, 33 Injured in Blast—Explosions Rock Simon Kenton,” KE, October 10, 1980, A1.

Eric Deters

SIMON KENTON MEMORIAL BRIDGE. For 138 years, ferries plied the waters of the Ohio River between Maysville, Ky., and Aberdeen, Ohio.

Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, November 25, 1931, the two cities were linked by the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge, commonly called the Maysville-Aberdeen Bridge. On that cold day, local school classes were dismissed for the event, and the bands of four high schools and the University of Kentucky gathered at the newly completed silverpainted suspension bridge. The ceremony attracted a crowd of more than 15,000. Maysville had competed with Augusta as the site for the bridge. Even though the new span was a toll bridge, no tolls were collected for the fi rst three days after opening. The new bridge was reported to be a proto-

SIMRALL, CHARLES B.

type of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The Dravo Company of Pittsburgh poured the bridge’s substructure, and the J. A. Roebling Bridge Company completed the superstructure (see John A. Roebling; John A. Roebling Bridge). The world-renowned bridge-building company of Modjeski & Masters of Harrisburg, Pa., was retained as the design-engineering firm and construction supervisor for the project. The Modjeski firm later built another bridge in Northern Kentucky, the I-75 Brent Spence Bridge at Covington, completed in the early 1960s. Including its approaches, the bridge between Maysville and Aberdeen spans 3,163 feet, and its deck is about 100 feet above the river at pool stage. The total cost for the bridge was $1.6 million, which included a onetime $50,000 buy-out of the former Maysville Ferry. The new bridge connected the Mary Ingles Highway with the old Atlantic and Pacific Highway, U.S. 52, in Ohio.

The economic environment in Maysville changed for the better after the opening of the bridge. The much easier access to Maysville’s downtown district brought more shoppers from Brown and Adams counties in Ohio. The Hayswood Hospital gained patients from those same areas, and Ohio tobacco farmers, hauling truckloads of their crops, used Maysville markets more often.

Travelers en route from Lexington, Ky., to Columbus, Ohio, had a new route, no longer needing to divert west to Newport or east to Portsmouth, Ohio, for a quick crossing of the Ohio. Often those people stopped, shopped, dined, and sometimes stayed in Maysville. The Simon Kenton Bridge, named for Simon Kenton, the pioneer frontiersman so instrumental in the settlement of the Maysville area, was an overnight shot in the arm for Maysville’s economy.

Although the bridge began as a toll bridge, no tolls were charged after October 1, 1945. The original tolls were $0.05–$0.60 for cars, $0.85–$1.50 for buses, $0.55–$2.00 for trucks, $0.50–$0.80 for animal-drawn vehicles, and $0.05 for pedestrians.

As traffic increased over the years, the relatively narrow lanes became dangerous at times.

During the cold war, the bridge was painted green to blend in with the vegetation and water below, making it less visible to a possible bombing attack. During the early 1990s, the bridge structure was lighted with four 1,000-watt floodlights and 140 other strategically placed hanging lights, presenting a dramatic scene at night along Maysville’s riverfront. In January 2001 the Simon Kenton Bridge was bypassed somewhat with the opening of the William H. Harsha Bridge a few miles downstream. That allowed for the Simon Kenton Bridge to close for a few months twice, once in 2002 and once in 2003, for much-needed repairs; the reduced traffic into Maysville and the resulting decline in business during those closings demonstrated how important the bridge remains in the economic life of the city’s downtown. The Harsha Bridge, in the meantime, has taken much of the heavy truck traffic out of downtown. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the bridge is open again, having been in place for more

than 75 years. It is one of only about 10 Roeblingtype suspension bridges remaining in the United States.

Comer, Martha. “Bridge’s Birthday Is Nov. 25,” Maysville Ledger Independent, October 30, 1991, n.p.

Dunbar, Lisa. “Repair Time for Bridge Shortened,” Maysville Ledger Independent, October 9, 2002, A1–A2.

“Maysville Schools Closed,” Maysville Daily Independent, November 25, 1931, 1.

Pheifer, Julie. “Bridge Opened 60 Years Ago,” Maysville Ledger Independent, November 25, 1991, n.p.

Reis, Jim. “Maysville’s Bridge to Ohio Twice Cause for Celebration,” KP, July 28, 1997, 4K. Simon Kenton Bridge Vertical File, Mason Co. Museum, Maysville, Ky.

SIMPSON, ARNOLD R. (b. April 26, 1952, Somerset, Ky.). Arnold Ray Simpson is the first African American to serve as Covington’s city manager and the first of his race to be elected a state representative in Kentucky’s 65th district. The son of funeral directors James and Zona Pennington Simpson, he was educated in the public schools of Covington and attended Kentucky State University in Frankfort and the University of Kentucky College of Law in Lexington. On October 10, 1981, he married Jo Ann Hill of Cincinnati.

In October 1986, Simpson was appointed city manager of Covington, after serving as the assistant city manager since 1980. He was picked for the top job following city manager Donald Eppley’s resignation. In November 1989 Simpson resigned from the city manager position. In November 1993 Marty Sheehan, having been elected a Kenton Co. district court judge, resigned as the Kentucky 65th District state representative, and the Kenton Co. Democratic Party selected Simpson as its candidate to compete in a special election. Simpson defeated Republican Jerry Hatfield in that January 1994 election. The following May, Simpson ran in the Democratic primary against James Redwine and won both the May primary and the November election, in which his opponent was Republican Eileen Wendt; he continues to serve in the Kentucky legislature. Simpson lives in Covington with his family.

Collins, Michael. “City Manager Leaving,” KP, October 30, 1989, 1K–2K. ———. “Covington Picks Simpson to Be Manager,” KP, October 15, 1986, 1K–2K. Fischer, John C. K. “Simpson Victory Decisive,” KP, November 9, 1994, 7K. Hicks, Jack. “Simpson Elected in 65th,” KP, January 12, 1994, 1K–2K. ———.”Simpson Likely Candidate to Fill Vacated Seat in General Assembly,” KP, November 25, 1993, 1K. ———. “Simpson to Run for State House,” KP, December 13, 1993, 1K–2K. ———. “Simpson Wins Right to Try and Keep Seat,” KP, May 25, 1994, 5K. “Redwine Challenges Simpson Again for Party’s Nod,” KP, May 20, 1994, 5K. “Stage Set for Fall,” KP, May 25, 1994, 1K.

Theodore H. H. Harris

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SIMPSON, JAMES, JR., “JIM” (b. July 24, 1928, Somerset, Ky.; d. February 18, 1999, Covington, Ky.). Jim Simpson, the first African American to be elected and serve on the Covington city commission, was the son of James and Zetta West Simpson. He was educated in public schools in Covington and then joined the U.S. Army in 1947.

Following his tour of duty in the army, he entered the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, graduating in 1951. In 1952 Simpson began working for Anna Jones, the owner of the C. E. Jones Funeral Home in Covington (see Funeral Homes).

In 1961, following the retirement of Jones, Simpson took over the operation of the funeral home and became part owner of the business; the firm’s name changed to Jones & Simpson Funeral Home.

In 1972 the City of Covington acquired the funeral home’s property at 633– 635 Scott St., and the business moved to its current location at 1129 Garrard St. In 1971 Simpson ran successfully for the Covington city commission. He served the full twoyear term and later completed an unexpired term of Nyoka Johnston on the commission in 1991.

Simpson served on the Kenton Co. Airport Board for eight years and in 1978 was elected its chairman; he also served on the boards of the People’s Liberty Bank; the Booth Memorial Hospital, Covington; the St. Elizabeth Hospital, Covington (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center); and the Kenton Co. Tuberculosis Sanatorium. Simpson was the father of Arnold R. Simpson, a Covington city manager and a Kentucky state representative. James Simpson Jr. died February 18, 1999, and was buried in Highland Cemetery, Fort Mitchell.

In June 2001 Simpson was nominated for the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

Fisher, John C. K. “Dignified Leader Laid to Rest; James Simpson, Jr. Called a ‘True Friend,’ ” KP, February 23, 1999, 2K. ———. “Simpson Is Nominated for Rights Hall of Fame,” KP, June 28, 2001, 3K. “Kentucky Deaths,” KP, February 20, 1999, 13A. Reis, Jim. “Funeral Directors Assumed Civic Roles,” KP, February 2, 1987, 4K. “Simpson Wins at Wire; Covington Vote Close,” KE, November 3, 1971, 1A.

Theodore H. H. Harris

SIMRALL, CHARLES B. (b. 1843, Madison, Ind.; d. September 22, 1901, Crittenden, Ky.). Attorney Charles Barrington Simrall was the son of John W. G. Simrall and the former Mary Bartow.

Charles’s early education was in the public schools of Covington, and later he studied in Württemberg, Germany, and at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He studied law under Covington attorney William Pryor and earned his law degree in 1865 from the Cincinnati Law School. He married Belle Pierce, and the couple had six daughters.

Charles Simrall and his family lived on Wallace Ave. in Covington, but Simrall kept his law office in Cincinnati. He served for 15 years as the general counsel for the Cincinnati Southern Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. He also served as counsel for the local Green Line

832 SISTERS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE (Transit) Company. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Covington (see Community of Faith Presbyterian Church). After a lengthy bout with cancer, Simrall died of pneumonia at age 58 at his summer home in Crittenden and was buried in the Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

“C. B. Simrall Laid to Rest,” KP, September 25, 1901, 8.

“C. B. Simrall Passes Away,” KP, September 23, 1901, 1.

“Funeral of Charles B. Simrall,” KP, September 24, 1901, 3.

SISTERS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. The Sisters of Divine Providence in Covington have their origin in 16th-century France. In 1792 Jean Martin Moye founded the Roman Catholic order (sisters) of the Congregation of Divine Providence (CDP) in France. The sisters under his direction had a special concern for teaching poor children in the Alsace-Lorraine region, where their order began. When this area came under the control of Germany in 1871, following the Franco-Prussian War, the Sisters of Divine Providence of St. Jeande-Bassel found it difficult to carry on their teaching ministry. In 1889 the Superior General of the congregation, Mother Anna, contacted Covington bishop Camillus P. Maes, himself a native of Belgium, about the possibility of establishing a branch of the Sisters of Divine Providence in the United States. Bishop Maes was happy to invite the sisters to come to the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics).

A small number of sisters came to Northern Kentucky in August 1889 and stayed briefly with the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center). In October Bishop Maes offered them the Jones mansion (see Thomas Laurens Jones), located on a hill in Newport. That house, which they called Mount St. Martin, was the motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Providence for many years. The sisters opened their first school, Mount St. Martin Academy, in the same building. This location became the center of the first American province of the congregation, who were incorporated in the state of Kentucky as the Sisters of Divine Providence of Kentucky. The sisters also served as teachers in many parish schools in the diocese as well as in other states that were included in their province.

By 1900 Mount St. Martin Academy was too small for its enrollment, so in 1903 the congregation built a new school on Sixth St. in the east end of Newport. The Academy Notre Dame of Providence, which later became Our Lady of Providence Academy, opened in 1908 as a secondary school for girls. The sisters also opened St. Camillus Academy in Corbin, Ky., in 1915. A Catholic institution in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky was unusual, since the area was largely Protestant. But by their manner and success as teachers, the sisters overcame the prejudice many of the local population felt toward Catholics. The sisters went on to open more schools and hospitals in the mountains.

In 1909 Peter O’Shaughnessy, a wealthy resident of Newport, assisted the sisters in the acquisition of a large piece of property near Melbourne, in Campbell Co. On this site the sisters built their current motherhouse, St. Anne Convent, which they occupied in 1919. It also became the headquarters of the American province of the CDP. The picturesque setting at St. Anne Convent was depicted in some of the scenes in the 1988 movie Rainman. Sr. Celeste Marie O’Shaughnessy, daughter of Peter, was elected provincial superior in 1937. On the same property in 1957 the sisters built the Holy Family Home for use as a residential care facility for their elderly sisters and opened the Moye Spiritual Life Center (a retreat house) in 1980. In December 2004 Thomas More College named as its 13th president a member of the Sisters of Divine Providence, Sr. Margaret Stallmeyer.

After the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, the sisters underwent a process of change, which they called “Corporate Renewal,” that allowed them to maintain their traditional identity while meeting the new exigencies of the times.

They continued their focus of education, though with an added emphasis on serving the poor. Some sisters entered forms of ministry in which the congregation had not been engaged in the past. Today the Sisters of Divine Providence face the same difficulties that many religious orders do: a shortage of professed novices to carry out all the obligations the sisters once had, and an aging congregation.

But the sisters remain active in many ministries in their American province and even participate in ministry in other countries that are missions of their international congregation based in France, known as the Sisters of Divine Providence of St. Jean-de-Bassel.

Congregation of Divine Providence. 1889–1989: One Hundred Years. Melbourne, Ky.: Congregation of Divine Providence, 1989.

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

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

Thomas S. Ward

SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME. The Sisters of Notre Dame serve the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Covington, primarily in teaching and medical roles. The order was founded in Namur, Belgium, by St. Julie Billiart during the early 19th century. Sisters M. Aloysia Wolbring and Ignatia Kuhling joined the community of sisters in Amersfoort, Holland, in 1850, though they actually took up the religious habit in Coesfeld, Germany, a city in which they had been teaching poor children. In 1855 they started at Coesfeld an offshoot of the congregation as they separated from their motherhouse in Amersfoort. While the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf was raging in Germany, Sr. Aloysia joined a group of seven sisters who immigrated to

the United States in 1874. At the request of Richard Gilmour, the bishop of Cleveland, Ohio, the sisters established in that city the motherhouse of what became the first American province of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Bishop Augustus Maria Toebbe of Covington had a sister in that congregation. Although he did not know whether his sister was among them, Toebbe invited some of the sisters in Cleveland to come to Covington in 1874. The bishop’s sister, Mary Modesta, did not arrive in Covington until a year later.

The Sisters of Notre Dame constructed the first wing of their academy and convent on Fift h St. in Covington in 1876. They also took charge of the Mother of God School in Covington. Over the next several years, the sisters expanded their teaching ministry to parochial schools in Alexandria, Augusta, Bellevue, Carrollton, and Newport. They took over operation of St. Joseph Orphans Asylum in Cold Spring from the Franciscan Brothers of Cincinnati in 1877. The congregation in the Covington Diocese continued to grow into the 20th century until it had 17 houses and about 700 sisters.

The Sisters of Notre Dame in Covington achieved a milestone in 1924 when Covington became the seat of a separate province of the congregation. It was established as the Immaculate Heart of Mary Province, with Mother Mary Angela Meiners as its first provincial superior. In 1926 the sisters began work on a new provincial motherhouse and convent, on property they had acquired earlier, located on Dixie Highway in Park Hills.

Bishop Francis W. Howard dedicated the order’s new property, known as St. Joseph Heights, on November 13, 1927. In 1963 the sisters built the new Notre Dame Academy for girls on the same property behind St. Joseph Heights. In 1961 the sisters took charge of the new Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home, created from the merger of the St. Joseph and St. John orphanages. The Sisters of Notre Dame engaged in health care as well as teaching. They opened St. Charles Care Center in 1960, as well as two hospital facilities in the mountains of Kentucky (Notre Dame Hospital in Lynch and St. Claire Medical Center in Morehead).

In 1986 the Covington province was given a singular honor when its provincial superior, Sr. Mary Joell Overman, was elected superior general of the congregation worldwide, a position she held until 1998.

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

Sisters of Notre Dame. “Legacy: Mission for Life and Love: 75th Anniversary of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Province,” Messenger, March 24, 2000, supplement.

———. The Sisters of Notre Dame: A Celebration of Life. Strasbourg, France: Éditions du Signe, n.d.

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

Thomas S. Ward

SKATING RINKS

SISTERS OF ST. BENEDICT. On June 3, 1859, three sisters at the Benedictine convent in Erie, Pa., answered the call of the fi rst American Benedictine abbot, Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., to staff the St. Joseph Girls’ School in Covington. On August 2, 1859, Mother Alexia Lechner, O.S.B., founding prioress, arrived in Covington to establish St. Walburg Monastery. For monastic women, prayer is primary; ministry follows. Nevertheless, the community of sisters taught, built the fourstory St. Walburg Monastery and a boarding school (St. Walburg Academy, 1863–1931), and carried out the work of a small farm. Over time, as they gained in numbers, the bishop asked them to assume care of the St. John Orphanage in present-day Fort Mitchell (see Diocesan Catholic Children’s Home) and other schools in addition. From the Covington monastery, which was on 12th St. in Covington, three other monasteries were established, in Ferdinand, Ind. (1867), Covington, La. (1873–1987), and Cullman, Ala. (1902).

Mother Walburga Saelinger was the second prioress (1889–1928) in Covington. She purchased the Villa Madonna Academy (VMA) site in 1903 from the DeWitt Collin estate and established a boarding school for girls in Villa Hills. An adjacent 32 acres, purchased from E. S. Lee in 1932, became home to the Benedictine novitiate in 1916 and to Villa Madonna College (1921–1929). The college became diocesan, moved to Covington, and in 1968 occupied a new campus in Crestview Hills, becoming Thomas More College. Villa Madonna remained a boarding academy through 1979. Coeducation followed.

The convent’s third prioress, artist Mother Margaret Hugenberg (1928–1931), beautified the site of the Villa Madonna Academy and laid out a sisters’ cemetery. Before that, sisters had been buried at Mother of God Cemetery, Covington.

German-born Mother Lioba Holz, the fourth prioress (1931–1943), erected a monastery on the site, reintroduced the Divine Office, and answered the plea of Covington’s bishop to begin hospital work in Appalachia. The fift h prioress, Mother Domitilla Thuener (1943–1955), insisted that every teaching sister have a degree and that the community join the Federation of St. Scholastica. The convent’s sixth prioress, Mother Hilda Obermeier (1955–1961), recognized the need for a new Villa Madonna High School building (1958) and published a centennial pictorial, The Challenge. The community was at its highest membership, 266 sisters, at that time. The seventh prioress, Mother Benedict Bunning (1961–1970), began the local Madonna Manor Nursing Home and Senior Citizen Village, razed the original convent on 12th St. in Covington, and conducted a renewal program in 1969 to follow the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

Sisters Ruth Yost (1971–1978), Justina Franxman (1978–1986), Mary Catherine Wenstrup (1986–1998), and Rita Brink (1998–present) have served as prioresses since Sister Benedict. These four prioresses implemented several changes:

they opened a Montessori school; withdrew the order from its hospital work; established a Benedictine associate program; helped VMA become coeducational; added lay persons to the boards of VMA and Madonna Manor; renovated the monastery building, including the chapel and the infirmary; and established the Social Needs Fund to help organizations serving in the areas of health, hunger, housing, and education. The community of sisters has supported the VMA Capital Campaign to renovate the school and to build a new sports complex. A new ministry called the Center of Spirituality offers programs for those who seek to strengthen their relationship with God. Today, St. Walburg has 77 finally professed members, one member in first vows, and 51 covenanted associate members. Monastery sisters serve in four dioceses: the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the dioceses of Covington and Lexington, Ky., and Pueblo, Colo.

“New Convent for Benedictines at Villa Madonna Being Built,” KP, November 13, 1936, 6.

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

Schwartz, Joann R. “St. Walburg Monastery, Covington, Kentucky, 1859–1899,” master’s thesis, Xavier Univ., 2005.

Wolking, Teresa, O.S.B., and Joann Schwartz. “The Story of Villa Madonna Academy and the Benedictines,” NKH 11, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 2003): 2–16.

Teresa Wolking

SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH THE WORKER. The Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker were founded in the Diocese of Covington. The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, held at the Vatican in four autumn sessions, 1962–1965, brought many dramatic changes to the practices and traditions of Catholicism. Although the most noticeable ones were changes to the liturgy, most aspects of Catholic life were affected, including the vowed religious life of nuns and sisters. Religious orders of women went through a process of renewal called for by the Second Vatican Council and accordingly altered their traditions in numerous ways. Interior renewal and a return to the spirit of the founders of their orders were the main emphases. Yet, most other Catholics were more aware of external changes, such as modifying or discontinuing the special clothing that distinguished them as sisters and pursuing ministries other than teaching and nursing. But the communities of women religious who went through this process were far from unanimous in their opinions about the changes that were adopted.

The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth were a community founded in Kentucky in 1812 with a special emphasis on teaching in Catholic schools.

They staffed many parish schools in the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). When their process of renewal was completed in the late 1960s and new rules for the community were

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composed (which had to be approved later by Rome), some sisters, including Sister Ellen Curran, were concerned that too many of the traditions of the past had been abandoned, things that were essential to the nature of religious life. She fi rst petitioned the leadership of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth to allow her and a group of like-minded sisters to continue the traditional practices in a separate house, though they would still belong to the community. When no mutually satisfactory arrangement could be found, Bishop Richard H. Ackerman of Covington, who agreed with Sr. Ellen’s assessment of the changes to religious life, offered to assist her in founding a new community of sisters that would no longer be part of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. With Ackerman’s assistance, permission was fi nally obtained from the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes at the Vatican in 1974 to establish a new order of sisters that would be a diocesan congregation under the direction of the bishop of Covington.

At the suggestion of Ackerman, the group of sisters took the name Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker and elected Sr. Ellen as their first superior in 1974. They adopted a more traditional way of life, including religious garb. After living in temporary quarters, the sisters found a permanent home in Walton, where they built St. William Convent. In 1976 the sisters took over the closed school of All Saints Catholic Church in Walton and reopened it as St. Joseph Academy. They also took control of Taylor Manor in Versailles, a nursing home that the sisters now operate. The Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker remain a relatively small congregation today.

Curran, Mother Ellen, S.J.W. History of the Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker, 1997. Available at the Archives of the Diocese of Covington, Erlanger, Ky. Tenkotte, Paul A., David E. Schroeder, and Thomas S. Ward. To Be Catholic and American in Northern, Central, and Appalachian Kentucky: The Diocese of Covington, 1853–2003. Forthcoming.

Thomas S. Ward

SKATING RINKS. Northern Kentuckians iceskated indoors from the mid-20th century on; they had a roller-skating rink at least as early as 1886.

Ice-skating can be traced back to the Stone Age, when early humans tied animal bones to their feet and skated across frozen lakes and rivers.

Scandinavian tales from about a.d. 1200 tell of the skating ability of their national heroes and their gods. Many early Dutch people became expert skaters and were even known to engage in military battles on ice skates. During the Middle Ages, residents in London, England, attached bones to their feet and propelled themselves across the ice with pointed sticks. The people of the Netherlands later found that they could use iron blades as runners and thereby greatly improve their skating ability.

During the late 1800s, ice-skating became quite popu lar in both Europe and North America. When the first indoor ice rink was built in 1912, it led to

834 SLAVERY the growth of figure skating, ice hockey, and speed skating. Northern Kentucky’s first indoor ice rink was the Dixie Gardens Ice Bowl in Fort Wright, which opened in the early 1960s and closed in the late 1980s and was located next to the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater (see Drive-Ins). The Northern Kentucky Ice Center opened in 1990 at the former home of the Northern Kentucky Racket Club, in Crescent Springs. However, much of the ice-skating in the region continues to be done on lakes and ponds and on parking lots that have been flooded for the purpose. In Fort Thomas, before the recent renovation of the mess hall at the old fort, the tile floor was flooded during the winter, the windows opened, and the heat turned off, allowing indoor ice-skating.

Ice hockey was added to the Summer Olympic Games at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920, and figure skating was moved to the winter games in 1924.

During the 20th century, choreographed iceskating shows became a popu lar form of entertainment throughout the world.

The fi rst recorded use of roller skates was in a play on the London Stage in 1743. John Joseph Merlin invented a three-wheel in-line roller skate in 1760, primarily to allow ice-skaters to skate during warm weather. The fi rst patent for roller skates was issued to a Frenchman, Monsieur Petitbled, in 1819. However, those early roller skates proved to be difficult to control. To correct the problem, in 1863 James L. Plimpton invented a four-wheel roller skate, which he called the quad.

His skates had rubber cushions between the plate and the front wheels, which permitted skaters to maneuver easily, by shift ing their weight from side to side. His innovation made it possible for roller skaters to perform moves previously made only by ice-skaters. In 1866 the fi rst public rollerskating rink opened in the United States, in the ballroom of the Atlantic House Resort Hotel in Newport, N.J. Within a short time, improvised roller-skating rinks began appearing in ballrooms, town halls, and similar buildings across the country. In later years, many portable skating floors were also set up at events like carnivals and county fairs.

One of the fi rst Northern Kentucky roller skating rinks was opened in 1886, at the old Masonic Hall (see Masons) on York St., in Newport.

Shortly thereafter, another opened in the ballroom of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall, at Fift h St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. In the late 1800s, there was also a combination skating rink and dance hall operated at Berlin Beach in Dayton, Ky. That building was later sold and moved to Tacoma Park, where it continued to operate into the 1950s. A large combination roller-skating rink and bowling alley, called the Roll and Bowl, opened in Florence, Ky., during the early 1970s but closed about two years later, when the entire building was made into a bowling alley, the Super Bowl. Currently the largest roller rink in Northern Kentucky is the Fundome, located off I-75 (see Expressways) and Ky. Rt. 18 in Florence. Jimmie’s Rollerdome has been operating in Elsmere since 1948, and

Reca Roller Rink in Alexandria has been serving Campbell Co. skaters since 1960.

In Maysville, the Princess Skatorium on E. Second St. opened to much fanfare in 1907; later the Americana Rink operated for many years in the mid-1900s. In Maysville today is the Maysville Roller Rink, at the corner of Lexington St. and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad; it is open on weekends. South of town, Rudy’s Roller Rink has operated since 2001 near Lewisburg along Ky. Rt. 3071. In 1959 the Coasters skating club was formed in Maysville at the Maysville Roller Rink; several of its Maysville members participated that same year in the less-than-12-hour skate run from nearby Aberdeen to Portsmouth, Ohio, eastward along U.S. 52.

Over the years, family-run roller-skating rinks have appeared in most Northern Kentucky cities; however, few survive today. Roller Derby in the 1950s and 1960s, skateboarding in the 1980s, and the in-line skating craze of the 1990s have hurt attendance at most indoor rinks. Large nationally or regionally owned conglomerates have taken over much of the industry. Those corporations often operate huge, glitzy rinks that offer restaurants, game and party rooms, exercise classes, and child care; and small family-owned rinks cannot compete. Also, high admission prices, caused partly by soaring liability insurance costs and other operating expenses, have contributed to the demise of many rinks.

The first U.S. Speed Roller Skating Championships were held in 1937, at the Arena Gardens in Detroit, Mich. Dance and figure skating championships were added in 1939. Roller-skating competition was included in the Pan American Games in 1979 and in the Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain, in 1992. Speed Roller Skating is scheduled to appear for the first time in the Summer Olympic Games in 2012.

The Diagram Group. Enjoy Skating. Edinburg, Scotland: Morrison and Gibb, 1978.

“Healy Building in Newport Has New Owner Now,” KTS, August 11, 1921, 25.

“Kids on Wheels,” KP, March 20, 2001, 8K. National Museum of Roller Skating. “John Joseph Merlin-Monsieur Petitbled.” www.rollerskating museum.com (accessed July 2, 2006).

“Skating,” local history fi les, Kentucky Gateway Museum, Maysville, Ky.

Jack Wessling

SLAVERY. The American form of slavery had already been codified by constitutional provisions, legislative acts, and municipal ordinances in Virginia and other English colonies when Dr. Thomas Walker in 1750, Christopher Gist in 1751, and James McBride in 1751 began to map the eastern and northern regions of Kentucky. As prescribed by these laws in the colonies, slaves were, for the first time in history, defined as chattel, as property; slavery was perpetual, that is, slave status was inherited; and legal racism was embedded in slavery, because slaves were defined as being black and of African descent. The economic benefits to white slave owners in the United States through chattel

slavery developed over the next 100 years through the transatlantic slave market and the domestic buying and selling of slaves. As the Civil War neared, in 1860 nearly 4.5 million people of African descent were working for white landowners for free or for a pittance and millions more had died in servitude.

There were counterforces. By the time Kentucky became a state in 1792, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts had already abolished slavery in various forms. The Northwest Territories had also been declared free of institutional slavery, making Ohio and Indiana free states as they entered the Union in 1803 and 1816, respectively. And earlier, in 1795, France had declared all slaves free both on its native soil and throughout its colonies.

At the Kentucky Constitutional Convention at Danville in 1792, Rev. David Rice and other ministers fought against Article 9, which would legalize slavery. Their efforts met with defeat, however, and slavery was permitted within the new commonwealth of Kentucky’s boundaries.

Sixteen men voted against Article 9, including Northern Kentuckians Miles Withers Conway and George Lewis of Mason Co. and John Wilson of Woodford Co. (which then covered all of Boone, Campbell, Grant, Kenton, and Owen counties). Later, by virtue of a provision in the 1799 Kentucky Constitution, slaves became perpetual chattel, and the importation of slaves subsequently began in earnest; 165,213 slaves had entered the commonwealth of Kentucky or had been born into slavery in the state by 1830. By 1860 there were 225,483 slaves, 11,483 of them living in Northern Kentucky.

Put into perspective, Northern Kentucky had 0.2 percent of the nation’s slaves and the state of Kentucky about 5 percent. The human misery of those enslaved is recorded in hundreds of slave interviews, now accessible in collections and books.

Historians, sociologists, novelists, and poets have published the stories of individual slaves and slave families, creating fully dimensional people from the myths, stereotypes, and cartoon figures of recent memory. And several of Northern Kentucky’s slaves have been immortalized in books, music, poems, and even, in the case of Margaret Garner of Boone Co., recently in an opera.

Active slave trading occurred in Northern Kentucky at slave markets in Maysville and Washington. Slaves in the region built houses and fences, cleared fields, planted, harvested, took produce to market, and worked the steamboats and river craft, all through forced slave labor. Even though the counties of Northern Kentucky had just 6 percent of the state’s slaves, institutional slavery played its part in this region’s history.

In 1833 the Kentucky General Assembly banned importation of slaves into Kentucky except by emigration, inheritance, or marriage. This new law was generally ignored. In 1849 the advocates of slavery in Kentucky, flush with their victory at that year’s State Constitutional Convention, gained yet another victory when the Kentucky legislature re-

SLAVERY

pealed the Non-Importation Act of 1833 and passed the third-strictest set of restrictions on free people of color and slaves in the nation, rivaling the codes of the Deep South. Furthermore, in 1865, 1868, and 1870, Kentucky failed to ratify the three U.S. constitutional amendments that made former slaves citizens of the nation. Dismayed, Union general Clinton B. Fisk characterized members of the Kentucky legislature as “the meanest, unsubjugated, and unreconstructed rascally rebellious revolutionists” he had ever had the displeasure of encountering.

Local municipal ordinances, particularly in the northern counties of Kentucky bordering the Ohio River, frequently prohibited a slave owner from hiring out his or her slaves, yet that became a common practice during the 1830s and 1840s.

Grand juries in Gallatin and Carroll counties indicted several slaveholders for violating this law; however, hiring out slaves for a season or for the year was lucrative, and the fines were too modest to prevent this practice.

Slave trading in Northern Kentucky was basically unregulated and, except for the regular slave market held in Mason Co., small in scale. Buying and selling of human chattel took place in the large slave markets at Lexington and Louisville on a regular schedule. By comparison, the slave market conducted at Washington in Mason Co. was not large. Often it involved small numbers of slaves in coffles brought by traders passing through the area or sales conducted by local slave owners themselves.

In Northern Kentucky the density of the slave population was highly dependent on the type of underlying farmland. The planter culture, mimicking Virginia’s patricians, took root immediately in the rich river bottoms and upland grasslands of Mason, Boone, and northern Owen counties. Mason and Boone counties, with more than 6,400 slaves in 1840, accounted for 55 percent of all slaves held in Northern Kentucky. In 1840 Campbell and Grant counties had only 289 and 348 slaves, respectively.

Rural areas within Boone and Mason counties rivaled the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, with more than 40 percent slave populations. Mason Co., in par ticu lar, jumped from 1,747 slaves in 1800 to 4,309 by 1840. Boone Co., in the same period, climbed from 325 slaves in 1800 to 2,183 in 1840.

Numbers in Gallatin Co., part of which went to form Carroll Co. in 1838, rose from 329 slaves in 1800 to 604 slaves in Gallatin Co. plus 731 slaves in Carroll Co. in 1840. Among Northern Kentucky counties, Owen Co. had the third-largest slave population in 1840, 1,281; that number increased in 1860 to a peak of 1,660 slaves, almost all of whom resided in the upland pastureland between Owenton and New Liberty. The urban areas that developed along the Ohio River, Maysville, Augusta, Newport, Covington, Fredericksburg (Warsaw), and Port William (Carrollton), had less than 20 percent slave populations before the Civil War. There were many slave owners in Boone Co., about 36 percent of all families, but the number of slaves per plantation was generally fewer than 10

per household. In the villages, only 1 or 2 slaves were owned by about 20 percent of the families.

The total number of slaves in Boone Co. grew rapidly from 629 in 1810 to 2,183 in 1840 and then declined as the impact of the Underground Railroad and the selling of excess slaves to the Deep South began to reduce slave numbers in this county. By 1860 there were 1,745 slaves and 11,118 whites in Boone Co. However, the value of these slaves as property had increased substantially.

Slaves were only 15 percent of the tax base in 1850 but had climbed to 24 percent by 1860.

Boone Co. never had many free people of color; there were only 27 free blacks in 1840, 37 in 1850, and 48 in 1860. After the Civil War, the black population of Boone Co. declined severely. In 1840 blacks made up 21.8 percent of the population; in 1870 they were only 9.5 percent, representing a loss of more than 1,170 black citizens from the county.

By 1840 the slaves in Mason, Boone, and Owen counties accounted for 28 percent, 22 percent, and 16 percent, respectively, of the total population, compared to 50 percent in Fayette Co., in the heart of the Bluegrass region. Counties in the northern portions of Kentucky such as Lewis, Grant, and later Robertson, where the more rugged hill country dominated, counties that were settled chiefly by yeomen with small landholdings, had slave populations of less than 10 percent. The urbanized counties Campbell and Kenton had few slaves. In Bracken Co. slave density approximated 30 percent in certain upland districts, while in other areas the population was less than 10 percent slaves.

Kentucky remained a part of the international slave trade until 1808, when federal law banned the importation of slaves. However, by 1833, when the Kentucky legislature forbade any further importation of slaves, more than 150,000 slaves had entered Kentucky with landowners or through inheritance. After the 1808 federal ban on the importation of slaves into the United States, a domestic slave trade sprang up and thrived in Kentucky. Mason Co., with its tobacco-based economy, established the earliest recorded domestic slave-trading market in Kentucky at Washington, which is located on a hill above Maysville. In about 1826, Capt. John W. Anderson, who lived near Washington in Mason Co., took over the northern region’s major slavetrading operations from Edward Stone of adjoining Harrison Co. Stone had been killed in a slave revolt. The domestic slave market at Washington later became famous as the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She had observed the selling of human beings in the center of Washington during her visit to the Marshall Key house in Mason Co. The height of Anderson’s domestic slave sales operation was reached about 1830; slaves from Mason Co. were shipped through the Dover landing in Kentucky to Natchez, Miss. Anderson was taking in $50,000 in revenues each year, nearly $1 million in terms of today’s monetary values. When he died, legend has it that he was chasing a runaway slave. James

835

McMillen then took over Anderson’s domestic slave trade business and also served as an agent for Bolton, Dickson & Co., large-scale slave traders at Lexington; Memphis; Charleston, S.C.; Natchez, Miss.; St. Louis; and New Orleans.

From 1830 to 1863, slave trading in Kentucky constituted a major component of the U.S. domestic slave trade; thousands of Kentucky-born slaves were sold south through Vicksburg and Natchez, Miss., and New Orleans markets. It was common for local slavers to go to Washington or to Lexington and pick up a small coffle of slaves to sell in the rural areas. By the 1840s, slavers were taking excess slaves from these same rural areas to sell into the Southern markets at prices reaching $800 to $1,000 per male slave. By the mid-1840s, selling slaves south became one of the largest sources of cash in Northern Kentucky.

Locally, slave owners did their own trading quietly among themselves and frequently hired slaves out for cash to support increasingly expensive private schools, household furnishings, and especially horse racing. The Kentucky Gazette, the Maysville Eagle, the Licking Valley Register, and the Bracken Sentinel all carried numerous advertisements to buy or sell individual slaves, announcements of estate sales of slaves, and notices of rewards for runaway slaves.

Slaves designated as prime field hands brought $300 to $400 in 1820, but with the opening of the Vicksburg and New Orleans slave markets, prices rose substantially. It was not uncommon by 1860 for a male slave to fetch $800 to $1,000 or sometimes even more in the Lexington market. And Northern Kentucky’s slave owners tended to pay the highest prices for mulatto, or mixed-race, slaves, a preference established originally by landed Virginia owners. Obviously, these mulatto men, women, and children sold at auction were sons and daughters of white slave owners, a fact the Northern abolitionists found abhorrent, immoral, and unacceptable.

The patrollers searching for runaway slaves were known to the slaves as paddywhackers, or padrolers. The patroller system was instituted in the Ohio River counties of Kentucky quite early in the history of these counties’ administrative courts as a form of control to keep slaves from running away. In the June 1799 Gallatin Co. Court Order Book 1, it was ordered that Benjamin Craig, Simeon Crosby, and Martin Hawkins be appointed patrollers for three months from that date, along with George Burton and Nicholas Lindsay. Among the earliest court orders in Boone Co. was the 1808 authorization for slave patrollers to receive one dollar per 10 hours worked. The court collected a special poll tax on slave owners to pay for these patrols. Patrollers were generally slave owners, and working as patrollers often served as a rite of passage for older sons; the patrollers were assigned 10to 12-mile circuits along the Ohio River that they were to guard at night. Because of the distances involved, most patrollers along the Ohio River used horses. Patrollers were also authorized to whip any slave caught, with the prescribed numbers of lashes codified in Kentucky law.

836 SLAVERY By the early 1840s, as the numbers of runaway slaves became politically sensitive, legislators in Kentucky acted to expand patroller controls; counties farther removed from the Ohio River created patroller systems aligned with constable jurisdictions. Thus, in practice, the controlling of runaway slaves became a matter supported by all taxpayers, not just owners.

Many of the Underground Railroad’s stories from Indiana about small Kentucky posses trying to recapture runaway slaves actually described patrollers on duty at night who had access to a skiff or a ferry. As the slave losses mounted in Boone Co. and the surrounding region, patrollers used scent dogs to aid them in their attempts to recapture runaway slaves. A brutal bloodhound named Nero figured in the following runaway-slave story that took place in Boone Co. at Cooper’s Bottom. Lindsay Cooper of Cooper’s Bottom owned between 8 and 10 slaves before 1850. Ike, one of Cooper’s slaves, purchased his freedom and that of his wife and settled just across the river in Indiana. When they tried to purchase their four children, Cooper refused. He bought or borrowed John G. Moore’s savage dog Nero to prevent runaways, but the four children of Ike poisoned the dog and escaped across the Ohio River. By 1860 Cooper owned only one slave; the rest had gone.

Slave codes and local municipal ordinances established a vehicle for violence against slaves. Because of the economic value of slaves, punishment of slaves was most often provided by whipping, rather than penal offenses. For example, for a particu lar crime, whites would be incarcerated in the penitentiary, but slaves would be punished at the whipping post or killed. White offenders during slavery times were executed only for murder and certain kinds of rape. Slaves were put to death for murder; manslaughter; rape of a white woman; attempting to commit crimes of robbery, arson, or burglary; conspiring to rebel; administering poison with intent to cause death; shooting and wounding a white person; and shooting without wounding. Although slave patrollers were limited in the number of whiplashes they could administer if a runaway slave was caught, slave owners and slave traders had no such restrictions.

Long before the Ku Klux Klan marauded through Central Kentucky, a long, sordid history of violence, lynchings, false accusations, rape of slave women, and brutal whippings of slaves and freedmen had become part of Kentucky’s history. The various historical collections of slave eyewitness reports refer to the occurrence of such outrages before 1865, while George C. Wright’s Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940 catalogs the hundreds of lynchings and brutal violence against slaves and free people of color occurring after the Civil War. Slaves’ quest for escape from bondage was continuous. Slaves escaped from and through Northern Kentucky before 1787, when the Kentucky Gazette fi rst began posting runaway want ads. Only a strong motivation to achieve freedom or to fi nd their separated family members would cause a slave on the frontier to run into forests controlled by Indian tribes. Slaves in Northern

Kentucky counties along the Ohio River had the most opportunity to flee, but as the slave density in the Bluegrass region approached 40 percent, slave escapes increased in spite of patrollers and the increasing use of slave-catchers, detectives, and other forms of control. For the fi rst 30 years of the 19th century, runaway slaves made it to the Ohio River on their own, found some kind of raft or conveyance, and trekked through the Northwest Territories, sometimes fi nding a friendly person, sometimes melting into the populations of free black agricultural communities or into friendly Indian tribes. Once the antislavery societies were orga nized in Ohio and Indiana during the late 1830s, aid to runaway slaves improved from the haphazard fits and starts of earlier times.

In Northern Kentucky, Patrick Doyle’s abortive attempt to bring a group (somewhere between 40 and 75) of slaves from Lexington through Bracken Co. occurred in 1848. Rev. Calvin Fairbank and Delia Webster helped Lewis, Harriet, and Jo Hayden successfully escape through Maysville in 1844, but both Fairbank and Webster were imprisoned upon their return to Kentucky. John Fairfield successfully led 15 slaves in crossing from Boone Co. into Indiana during the early 1850s. Robert and Margaret Garner’s tragic attempt to escape from Boone Co. in 1856 has been immortalized in books and an opera.

When Elijah Anderson moved his base of operations from Madison to Lawrenceburg, Ind., in 1846, Boone Co. slave owners began to experience the loss of slaves almost immediately. By 1853 Boone Co. was losing 50 slaves a month. Anderson himself claimed to have helped 1,000 slaves escape Kentucky between 1850 and 1856; in 1856 he was arrested and sent to prison at Frankfort, Ky. Some of the most famous stories in Northern Kentucky of slaves reaching freedom involve these individuals: —Eliza Harris, Mason Co., whose escape across the icy Ohio River was codified for all time in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

—Henry Bibb, who escaped from Bedford, Trimble Co., Ky., was jailed at Covington in Kenton Co., and became the first black editor of a newspaper in Windsor, Canada. He and his wife Mary were designated persons of distinction by the Canadian legislature.

—Andrew Gagnon of Bracken Co., who, trying to impress a young woman, learned how to conduct runaway slaves to Ripley, Ohio, and maintained a regular passage to freedom during the 1850s.

—John White, who escaped from Rabbit Hash, Boone Co., and with the aid of Michigan abolitionist Laura Haviland, returned to Kentucky in an abortive attempt to rescue his wife. He eventually made it back to Michigan.

—Richard Daly of Hunter’s Bottom, Carroll Co., who aided 30 runaway slaves in their escapes before taking his own family of five in 1856 to freedom in Canada.

—Adam Crosswhite, who took his family of five to Marshall, Mich., with the aid of the Madison, Ind., Underground Railroad. When pursued by a Kentucky posse, the Crosswhites were helped by local black and white citizens of Marshall and taken to Windsor, Canada. After the Civil War, the Crosswhite family returned to Marshall, and a bronze tablet was later placed at the site of their cabin by the Michigan Historical Society.

—Wheeling Gaunt, a Carroll Co. slave, who purchased his own and his family’s freedom, moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, after the Civil War, amassed a fortune of more than $30,000, and became a leading Ohio philanthropist, aiding Wilberforce College.

—Rev. Elisha W. Green, a Baptist preacher at Maysville and Paris and founder of the Consolidated Baptist movement after the Civil War. —Jacob Price, a businessman and community leader in Covington, who organized the William Grant School.

—James Bradley, born in Africa and enslaved in South Carolina, who purchased his freedom, gained an education, and participated in the Lane Seminary debates with Theodore Weld in 1833; his statue is in Covington today.

—John P. Parker, enslaved in Virginia and Alabama, a trained foundry worker, who gained his freedom in 1845 and migrated to Jeffersonville, Ind., to New Albany, Ind., to Cincinnati, and eventually to Ripley, Ohio. He was chiefly responsible for transporting hundreds of runaway slaves across the Ohio River from Mason Co. to the Ohio Underground Railroad activists.

Blassingame, John W. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ.

Press, 1977.

Coleman, J. Winston. Slavery Times in Kentucky.

Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1940.

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

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

Fisk, Gen. Clinton B., to Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, House Executive Document No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 1865–1866, p. 230.

Hudson, J. Blaine. Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006.

———. Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002.

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

Lucas, Marion B. A History of Blacks in Kentucky.

Vol. 1, From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891.

Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992.

Miller, Carolyn R., comp. African-American Records: Bracken County, Kentucky, 1997–1999.

Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Historical Society, 1999.

Works Projects Administration. Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Vol. 7, Kentucky Narratives. Washington, D.C.: Federal Writer’s Project of the WPA, 1941.

Wright, George C. Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ.

Press, 1996.

Diane Perrine Coon

SLAVERYTHE KENTUCKY RAID

SLAVES IN NORTHERN KENTUCKY, 1840 TO 1860, AND FREEDMEN IN NORTHERN KENTUCKY, 1870

County Boone

1840

1850

1860

1870

2,183

2,104

1,745

1,012

Bracken

819

840

750

636

Campbell

289

177

116

282

Carroll

731

949

1,045

540

Gallatin

604

704

708

690

Grant

348

532

696

509

Kenton

751

830

567

1,656

Mason

4,309

4,284

3,772

3,582

Owen

1,281

1,514

1,660

1,176

437

509

424

641

Pendleton Robertson*

257 11,752

12,443

11,483

10,981

*Robertson Co. was not established until 1867.

SLAVERY IN BOONE CO. Most Boone Co. farms in the 19th century had a handful of enslaved persons, who worked the fields in good weather and performed household tasks or honed their skills as coopers, wheel-makers, and blacksmiths after the growing season.

“Slavery,” according to Jane Smiley, a presentday commentator on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “was an economic system dependent upon bankers” as well as on farmers and plantation owners. The rationale for enslavement ranged from biblical quotes to claims of white intellectual superiority to “simple economic interest and convenience.” In Boone Co., the demand for slaves was sufficiently low that at times slaves were sold out of the county, often to markets that supplied the Deep South. But the economic system of slavery was a lively enterprise for many Boone Countians from the time of the county’s formation in 1799 until the end of the Civil War. The assessed value of most adult slaves was between 10 and 20 times the value of an acre of land. Surnames of Boone Co. slaveholders include Brashear, Coleman, Dinsmore, Gaines, Johnson, Parker, and Riddell. Enslaved blacks comprised one-fifth to one-quarter of the county’s population from 1799 to 1860. Free blacks represented a tiny minority. After the end of the Civil War, African Americans exited Boone Co. en masse.

Remote areas of Boone Co. such as Rabbit Hash and the North Bend Bottoms were prime areas for escape from bondage. Active Underground Railroad connections in Indiana and Ohio beckoned enslaved persons in Boone Co. The best-known fugitive slave story in Boone Co. is that of Margaret Garner, who was enslaved by Archibald Gaines of the Maplewood Farm, Richwood. She was the central character in the 20th-century novel and movie Beloved, and the Margaret Garner Opera played at Music Hall in Cincinnati during summer 2005.

All three art forms have drawn attention to the tragic story of this pregnant enslaved mother of four who fled with her family on a frigid January

night in 1856. The Garners tasted a few sweet hours of freedom in Cincinnati before the family was captured. Margaret slit the throat of her young daughter Mary and attempted to kill her other three children, declaring that she would rather see them dead than enslaved. Margaret did not hang for the murder of her child. Instead, she was remanded to the custody of Gaines, who sent Margaret and her husband to a plantation in the Deep South. Margaret died there in 1858.

On March 21, 2005, students from St. Joseph Academy in Walton dedicated a memorial to the Underground Railroad in Boone Co. The inscription remembers and honors “all the slaves in Boone Co., those who helped them, and the slaves’ descendants.” The memorial is the first of its kind in the county.

Boone Co. Heritage Education Curriculum. River Born, Kentucky Bred. Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Historic Preservation Review Board, 2001.

McNutt, Randy. “Boone Grows Big, Stays Small,” CE, April 29, 2003, 2E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Jane Smiley. New York: Random House, 2001.

Tanner, Paul. Slavery in Boone County (And Its Aftermath). Frankfort, Ky.: P. Tanner, 1986.

Yanuck, Julius. “The Garner Fugitive Slave Case,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 15, no. 1 (June 1953): 47– 66.

Jannes W. Garbett

SLAVERY—THE KENTUCKY RAID (also known as the Cassopolis Outrage). Two large groups of enslaved people, altogether numbering at least 35, escaped from Kenton and Boone counties during spring 1847. The first party of 22 departed Saturday night, April 24; the second group followed a couple of weeks later. Aided by “conductors” of the Underground Railroad, both groups traveled north through Ohio and Indiana and on into Michigan. There, in the southwestern part of the state, they found refuge in rural Cass Co.

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The fugitives from slavery spent the summer in Cass Co., living and working on farms owned by Quakers. They joined a growing black pioneer population that included free African Americans who had migrated to this Northern refuge site. Cass Co.’s abolitionist reputation also caught the attention of white Kentuckians, including several aggrieved slave owners in Boone and Kenton counties.

The slaveholders hired a spy to pursue their missing human “property.” Around June 1847, the spy arrived in Michigan, posing as an abolitionist from Massachusetts seeking subscribers for antislavery periodicals. Using this guise, he traveled from farm to farm, talking with the locals and secretly creating a map detailing the fugitives’ whereabouts. He then returned to Kentucky and issued his report. A posse was gathered, comprised of 22 slave owners and their agents. Fully armed, and with wagons equipped to transport captives back to Kentucky, the slave-catchers arrived in Cass Co. on August 20, 1847. In the early hours of that Friday morning, the posse split into smaller raiding parties and set out to capture fugitives simultaneously at four different farms. As dawn broke, the slave-catchers pounded on cabin doors and began their roundup. At some farms they captured entire families; at others, either a wife or a daughter escaped and sounded the alarm. As the alarm spread, the raiding parties attempted to rendezvous at the local mill with their 10 captives. The Kentuckians soon found themselves surrounded by a growing number of locals, both black and white, who were armed with guns, axes, hoes, straw-cutters, and even fence posts that they had hastily pulled out of the ground. The Kentuckians, in turn, brandished their guns and bowie knives. Violence was averted when the Kentuckians agreed to take their captives to the county courthouse and submit proof of their ownership claims to a judge.

The entourage of slave-hunters, captured fugitives, and determined locals marched off together to the courthouse in Cassopolis, the county seat.

Word of the raid continued to spread over the course of their five-mile trek, and the number of Michiganders in the crowd swelled to 200 or 300.

When they all arrived in town, 14 of the Kentuckians were arrested for attempted kidnapping, trespassing, and assault and battery. They also were served with a writ of habeas corpus, requiring that they produce the people they had abducted before the court. The Kentuckians posted bail and awaited trial.

The county’s judge was unavailable, so the neighboring Berry Co. commissioner presided over the habeas corpus trial. Unbeknownst to the white Southerners, the commissioner was an abolitionist and a covert member of the Underground Railroad. When the Kentuckians appeared before him to prove their ownership claims, the commissioner refused each type of evidence they presented, such as bills of sale and power-of-attorney documents. Instead, he insisted that they produce Kentucky’s statutes proving that slavery was legal in the state. Although the statutes clearly existed, the Kentuckians did not have them in their possession and the commissioner denied them time to

838 SLIP UP obtain them. Consequently, he ruled that the captives should go free.

As soon as the captives and their families had left the county, all charges against the Kentuckians were dropped, in what Michiganders called “the Kentucky Raid.” The Kentuckians, however, returned home, infuriated. They described their experience in the local newspapers as the “Cassopolis Outrage”—in which Northern abolitionists defied the nation’s laws to help slaves escape.

The slave owners and their allies pressured the U.S. Congress to pass a new fugitive slave law that would increase the penalties for helping slaves attain freedom. They also fi led six lawsuits against the white abolitionists in Michigan, charging them with violating the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. One lawsuit eventually went to trial in Detroit, in December 1850. Although the case ended with a hung jury, the defendants settled rather than face a second trial subjecting them to the new 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that had just been passed by Congress.

“The Cassopolis Outrage—the Rights of Slavery, Parts I–IV,” LVR, October 15, 1847, 3; November 5, 1847, 1.

“Kidnapping by the Wholesale,” National Antislavery Standard, November 4, 1847.

Rogers, Howard S. History of Cass County, from 1825 to 1875. Cassopolis, Mich.: Vigilant Book and Job Print, 1875.

Sanford, Joseph, and John Hatfield. Interviews in The Refugee; or, The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, by Benjamin Drew. Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1856; reprint, Toronto: Prospero, 2000.

Sanford, Perry. “Out of Bondage: How Perry Sanford Escaped from Slavery: Thrilling Experience on His Way to Michigan,” Heritage Creek: A Journal of Local History 9 (Winter 1999): 78–81.

Debian Marty

SLIP UP. This crossroads community is located along U.S. 62 in southwestern Mason Co., near Shannon and not far from the Robertson Co. boundary. It is within the Murphysville Precinct.

At one time, Slip Up had a school, but it was consolidated into the Sardis School. The community also was once home to a mill. During the 1960s and 1970s, a popu lar news feature in the Maysville newspaper was entitled the Slip Up News. Only a store remains at the once busy crossroads. Local people used to say that they were going to “slip up” to the store, and thus the name Slip Up became attached to the community.

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

SMITH, ALBERT CLARENCE, LIEUTENANT COLONEL (b. January 7, 1904, Monterey, Ky.; d. March 9, 1973, Fort Knox, Ky.). Albert C. Smith, a Kentucky representative and a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, was the only child of Evan Forest and Maude Karsner Smith. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1924 and served three years in Panama. He married Mary Etta Power on

October 3, 1929, and they became the parents of one child, Etta Maud. Smith was employed by the Kentucky Highway Patrol. In 1935 he joined the Kentucky Army National Guard and served on active duty during the flood of 1937 and during the Harlan coal strikes in 1939. On February 29, 1941, Smith’s unit was federalized and designated Battery A, 103rd Separate Battalion Coast Artillery (anti-aircraft).

He served in the continental United States until June 1945, when he was ordered to the Far East, entering Japan with the Occupation Army as an assistant provost marshal in Tokyo. In 1948 he was reassigned as provost marshal to Fort Gordon, Ga. In November 1951, he was sent to Korea. From April 1953 to April 1954, Smith served as the provost marshal in Sasebo, Japan. When he retired in 1957 as a lieutenant colonel, he was serving as senior adviser to the Lexington, Ky., area U.S. Army Reserve. His decorations included the Bronze Star with Valor and the Army Commendation Medal.

Upon retirement, he moved back to his family home on Cedar Creek in Owen Co., Ky., where he lived the rest of his life.

Smith served one term as a representative to the Kentucky legislature for Owen and Grant counties in 1960. He spearheaded the Korean Bonus Bill passed that year by the legislature. He was a ser vice officer and commander at VFW Post 3119 in Owenton and also served as chairman of the Owen Co. American Red Cross Chapter. Smith died in 1973 and was buried in the Monterey Cemetery with full military honors.

Murphy, Margaret A. “Looking Back”: Our Smith Family History. Frankfort, Ky.: Lynn, 1998.

Margaret A. Murphy

SMITH, GREEN CLAY, GENERAL (b. July 4, 1826, Richmond, Ky.; d. June 29, 1895, Washington, D.C.). A general, congressman, governor, and preacher, Green Clay Smith was a son of John Speed and Elizabeth Louis Clay Smith. At age 15 he enlisted in the army, where he served for a year as a 2nd lieutenant in the 1st Kentucky Cavalry during the Mexican War. On his return, he attended a preparatory school in Danville, Ky.; Transylvania University in Lexington, where he graduated in 1849; and the Lexington Law School in Lexington. He gained admittance to the bar in 1852.

In 1858 Smith moved to Covington, where he practiced law until the political unrest of 1860 occurred. At that time he ran for a seat in the Kentucky legislature and won election to the House of Representatives. After the Civil War broke out, Smith enlisted as a private in the Union Army, but once his previous ser vice record was discovered, he was promoted to the rank of major. The following year he was promoted to colonel and sent into the field with the 4th Kentucky Cavalry. He pursued Confederate raider and fellow Kentuckian Gen. John Hunt Morgan through Kentucky and into Tennessee, where he helped to defeat Morgan at the Battle of Lebanon (Tenn.) on May 5, 1862. This action

contributed to Smith’s promotion to brigadier general the following month. He resigned his seat in the Kentucky legislature that August and ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress. A strict Unionist, he was elected by a small margin in a district sharply divided by Civil War politics. He won reelection in 1864.

After being soundly defeated when he next met Morgan in battle in 1863, Smith resigned his commission and focused on his work as a congressman.

The army refused his resignation, instead promoting him to the rank of major general. In the U.S. Congress, Smith united with the other two strict Unionist congressmen from Kentucky, refusing to entertain a compromise with the South. This position eventually brought about a split in the Kentucky Democratic Party; it broke into factions based on loyalties to the North or the South. While in office, Smith also voted for controversial bills including the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

In 1865 Smith resigned from his congressional seat in order to accept an appointment as territorial governor of Montana. He found the territory hopelessly in debt and harassed by the local American Indian tribes, but he went to work lobbying his former colleagues in the U.S. Congress for soldiers, weapons, and most importantly, money.

During his short time as governor, he led the militia on the battlefield, put the territory firmly on the road to financial recovery, and introduced the first signs of eastern “civilization” in a rough-andtumble western land.

On Smith’s return to Kentucky, his life took an entirely different turn when he was ordained a Baptist minister. Smith pastored churches throughout Kentucky and is credited with starting many more. He was a popu lar preacher at revivals, where the oratorical skills he had sharpened in the U.S. Congress helped to enlist innumerable founding church members.

Smith made one more try at politics in 1876: he ran for president on the National Prohibition Party ticket. Receiving fewer than 10,000 votes, Smith gave up politics and returned to the quieter ministerial life. In 1890 he accepted a position at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where he remained until his death on June 29, 1895. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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

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

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

Hood, James Larry. “For the Union: Kentucky’s Unconditionalist Unionist Congressmen and the Development of the Republican Party in Kentucky, 1863–1865,” RKHS 76 (July 1978): 197–215.

Hubbell, John T., and James W. Geary, ed. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1995.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Reis, Jim. “Green Smith: A Man of Many Talents,” KP, April 13, 1987, 4K.

Jennifer Gregory

SOCIALIST PARTY

SMITH, HERBERT LEE “HUB” (b. June 18, 1912, Claxon Ridge, Owen Co., Ky.; d. May 26, 1986, Owenton, Ky.). Herbert Lee Smith, a county sheriff and a hospital administrator, was the son of Elza and Susan Ora Smith. He married J. Ward Marston on June 4, 1932, and they had one child, Johnny Marston Smith. Hub Smith was a farmer in Owen Co. In 1942 he began his political career as deputy sheriff of Owen Co. and in 1948 became the high sheriff. He was appointed county Democratic chairman and accepted the position of administrative assistant to the Kentucky commissioner of finance in 1954. In February 1955, Smith was appointed state director of personnel. He was named the administrator of the Owen Co. Memorial Hospital (see New Horizons Medical Center) in 1956 and continued in that position for 15 years.

Smith was also a director of the Peoples Bank and Trust Company in Owenton for 30 years and, for four years, director of the Burley Tobacco Association. When his health failed, he retired on December 30, 1971, and lived in Owen Co. until his death at age 74. He was buried at the Monterey Cemetery in Monterey.

“Herbert ‘Hub’ Smith Remembered,” Owenton (Ky.) News-Herald, June 5, 1986, 1.

Murphy, Margaret Alice, and Lela Maude Hawkins.

The History of Historic Old Cedar Baptist Church and Community, 1816–2004. Frankfort, Ky.: Lynn, 2004.

Margaret A. Murphy

SMITH, MORGAN LEWIS, BRIGADIER GENERAL (b. 1822, New York; d. December 28, 1874, Jersey City, N.J.). Civil War veteran Morgan Smith left home at age 21 and taught school in Indiana. He then joined the U.S. Army and from 1845 through 1850 served as a sergeant and drill instructor at the Newport Barracks in Newport, Ky., using the alias of Mortimer L. Sanford. From 1850 until after the Civil War began, he lived on Saratoga St. in Newport while working as an Ohio River steamboat agent. During the war Smith led the 8th Missouri Volunteers in combat at Shiloh, at Vicksburg, and in several other engagements and was severely wounded. Gen. William T. Sherman said of him: “He was one of the bravest men in action I ever knew.” In 1866 U.S. President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) appointed Smith U.S. consul in Honolulu, Hawaii. Returning in 1868, Smith was employed in Washington, D.C., dealing with claims against the government and contracting for mail routes. He also worked for a building association. Smith died while visiting in Jersey City, N.J., in 1874 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. He was the older brother of U.S. General Giles A. Smith. Morgan Smith was one of the many nationally famous people who passed through Newport Barracks and resided in Northern Kentucky.

Donnelly, Joseph L. Newport Barracks: Kentucky’s Forgotten Military Installation. Covington, Ky.: Kenton Co. Historical Society, 1999.

Virtualology.com. “Morgan Smith.” www.famous americans.net (accessed June 25, 2007).

SMITH, SAWYER A. (b. April 9, 1883, Barbourville, Ky.; d. November 3, 1969, Park Hills, Ky.).

Lawyer and politician Sawyer A. Smith was the son of George W. and Sarah McKinney Smith. Sawyer’s early education was at the Barbourville Baptist Institute in Barbourville. He earned his BA from Cumberland College at Williamsburg. On December 29, 1913, he married a classmate, Effie Barton. Smith taught in the Knox Co. schools for five years, then left teaching, returned to school, and earned a law degree from Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Ind. He began his legal career by forming a partnership with attorney Flem D. Sampson, who later became governor of Kentucky (1927–1931).

Smith moved to Northern Kentucky, where he soon earned a reputation as one of the region’s best defense attorneys. He entered politics in 1908 and was elected as a Republican to the Kentucky legislature, where he served for two years. President Warren G. Harding (1921–1923) appointed Smith Assistant U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Kentucky, a continuing under the administrations of presidents Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929–1933). On August 31, 1933, Smith resigned and returned to his law practice.

His most publicized case was his defense of 16-year-old Joan Kiger, who had been charged with the murders of her father, Carl Kiger (Covington’s vice mayor), and her six-year-old brother, Jerry. Smith won an acquittal by arguing that Joan was having a nightmare at the time of the killings and therefore could not be held responsible for the deaths. Smith died in 1969 at age 86 in the St. Charles Care Center, Fort Wright, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Erlanger.

“Honored,” KP, April 5, 1930, 4.

“Post Editorial Read,” KP, February 10, 1930, 4.

Reis, Jim. “A Distinguished Legal Career,” KP, October 3, 1994, 4K. “Schoolday Romance Ends in Marriage,” KP, December 30, 1913, 10.

Tapp, Hamilton. Kentucky Lives. Hopkinsville, Ky.: Historical Record Association, 1966.

SNOW’S POND. During the September 1862 invasion of Northern Kentucky by the Confederate Army, one of the two Civil War skirmishes to take place in Boone Co. occurred at Snow’s Pond.

The site is located roughly along the Old Lexington Pk. (see Covington and Lexington Turnpike) between Richwood and Walton, seven miles south of Florence, Ky. The pike is parallel to modern U.S. 25 (see Dixie Highway). There, on September 17, 1862, about 100 Confederate troops under the command of Col. Basil Duke of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry were encamped at Snow’s Pond and were attacked by a Union cavalry force. One Union and five Confederate soldiers were killed, and one Union and seven Confederate soldiers were wounded. Civilian Larkin Vaughn, a local farmer, was killed by a stray bullet. Duke’s men captured 49 Union soldiers, who were marched off to Falmouth and later were exchanged.

The Union Army camped at Snow’s Pond for three weeks afterward. The Confederates had left

839

the carcasses of 13 dead mules in the water. The Union Army eventually discovered these remains, which explained why some of the federals camped at the pond had become sick. In recent years the Snow’s Pond site has been a hub of metal-detecting and artifact-hunting. Several items have been found, mainly lead bullets. On May 14, 1999, a Kentucky Historical Marker was placed at the site of Snow’s Pond, on land held by the Dixon family since the 1870s.

Dixon, Daniel F. Snow’s Pond: The Forgotten Civil War Skirmish in Boone County, Kentucky’s Past. Mount Vernon, Ind.: Windmill, 1999.

Goetz, Kristina. “Civil War Field Marked,” KE, August 9, 1999, C1.

Rouse, Jack. The Civil War in Boone County. Mount Vernon, Ind.: Windmill, 1996.

SNYDER, MARION GENE (b. January 26, 1928, Louisville, Ky.; d. February 16, 2007, Naples, Fla.). Marion Gene Snyder was a real estate broker, a homebuilder, and, for many years, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. His parents were Marion Gustavus and Lois E. Snyder.

Gene attended Louisville public schools and graduated from Louisville’s duPont Manual High. He earned both his LLB and JD degrees from the Jefferson School of Law (now part of the University of Louisville) in 1950 and set up his law practice in Louisville. In 1961 Snyder married Mary Louise Hodges, and they had one son, Mark. The couple divorced in 1973.

Snyder entered politics in 1954 and served as Jeffersontown city attorney for four years and as Jefferson Co. magistrate for the next four. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1963 to 1965 (January–January) but was defeated when he ran for reelection in 1964. In 1966 he won the seat back and held it from January 1967 until January 1987. During his tenure in the U.S. Congress, he was instrumental in gaining approval for many projects in his home state, including the construction of Northern Kentucky University in Campbell Co. and the Snyder Freeway in Louisville. He worked tirelessly for a Licking River dam at Falmouth but was unsuccessful in obtaining funds for it. He retired from politics in 1986 and returned to his Oldham Co. farm.

He married his second wife, Patricia Creighton Robertson, on April 10, 1973, and they became the parents of two children, Chris and Ginger. Snyder died in Naples, Fla., at age 79 and was buried in the Floydsburg Cemetery in Oldham Co., Ky. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

“Snyder, Marion Gene.” http://bioguide.congress .gov (accessed February 24, 2007).

“Former Congressman Gene Snyder Dies,” CJ, February 17, 2007, 1.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

SOCIALIST PARTY. The Socialist Party was fairly strong in Northern Kentucky in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Branches existed in Covington, Latonia, Ludlow, Newport, and other urban areas; the party drew its largest support

840 SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL from such places. Immigrants working in factories in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky tended to accept Socialist views, and many of them joined the party.

The Socialist Party made inroads in politics, although in Northern Kentucky, unlike other regions of the country, no party member was elected to any major political office. The socially progressive views of the party struck a chord with many Northern Kentuckians, and as a result many political races were affected by these views. In the 1904 elections in Kenton Co., the Socialist Party received a significant portion of votes for a minority party. Although it never came close to defeating candidates from the two major parties, it received more votes than any of the other small parties, such as the People’s Party or the Prohibition Party.

In 1904–1905, Eugene Victor Debs, the perennial Socialist presidential candidate, spoke to a following at the Ludlow Lagoon (see Lagoon Amusement Park), to a gathering at Clark’s Grove in Dayton, Ky., and before a crowd of 500 in Covington’s Congress Hall Auditorium. The Socialist Party in Northern Kentucky had many leaders of its own. Rev. Thomas McGrady (1863–1907) was a Roman Catholic priest serving for years at St. Anthony Church in Bellevue, Ky. A nationally known Socialist author and speaker, he was in conflict with the political views of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1902 he resigned from the priesthood, refusing to comply with an ultimatum issued by Bishop Camillus Paul Maes (1846–1915) ordering him to retract his views and statements. It was reported that many of his parishioners wept at his departure.

He remained in Bellevue for a short while before moving to San Francisco, where he practiced law.

Because of his speaking abilities, McGrady was a conspicuous figure at Socialist conventions. Despite his disagreement with the church, he received the last rites and died as a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

Another local Socialist figure was Walter Lanfersiek (1873–1962), a Newport attorney who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Kentucky in 1911. Lanfersiek was active in the Socialist Party and in 1913 was elected executive secretary of the national party. Lanfersiek’s wife, Pearl A. Blanchard Lanfersiek, was also active in the party; in 1912 she was one of three Socialist candidates for seats on the Newport school commission.

Pearl Lanfersiek and fellow Socialists Gussie Balser and Jacob Raphaelson pledged themselves to accomplish progressive mea sures, some of them unheard of at the time, such as these: free textbooks, playgrounds and physical education instructors, night schools for working children and adults, a “penny lunch,” better pay for teachers, equal pay for equal work regardless of gender, the right to present grievances, and free kindergartens.

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the resulting “Red Scare” in the United States did a great deal of damage to the Socialist Party in Northern Kentucky and throughout the nation. Although the party continued to put forth candidates for many elections, the candidates often fell victim to

mob violence and assault. One Socialist Party member who suffered in the backlash against socialism was Northern Kentuckian John Thobe.

Thobe was a candidate for Kentucky lieutenant governor when antisocialist groups began to intimidate him. At a Socialist meeting in Covington in November 1919, a group of soldiers, reportedly just returned from World War I, forced Thobe to stop speaking by threats of violence. Later another group of soldiers made a bonfire of Socialist literature and also burned the box upon which Thobe was speaking. In addition, Socialist documents belonging to Thobe were stolen, possibly by the same group that had forced him to stop speaking. In September 1924, after making a political speech, Thobe was ambushed and beaten while walking along 16th St. in Covington. He was struck three times on the head with an iron pipe. His assailant, according to witnesses, leaped into a waiting automobile and fled. By then the Socialist Party was in decline and never again rose to the level of influence it had held during the first two decades of the 20th century.

“Father M’Grady Dies in Frisco,” KP, November 27, 1907, 2.

“Lanfersiek Lands Socialist Office,” KP, May 16, 1913, 5.

“Newport Socialists Have Progressive School Ticket,” KP, August 14, 1912, 3.

“Socialist Was Compelled to Stop Speaking,” KTS, November 14, 1919, 30.

“They Got a Big Vote,” KP, November 10, 1904, 1.

“Thobe Is Beaten,” KP, September 15, 1924, 1.

“Two Packages of Socialist Papers Gone,” KTS, November 19, 1919, 27.

Rob Farrell

SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul operates thrift stores

and a free pharmacy, as well as other ser vices, for the poor of Northern Kentucky. The society is named for a 17th-century French saint of the Roman Catholic Church. As a priest, Vincent de Paul devoted himself to helping the poor and founded the Confraternity of Charity for women. He founded several Vincentian organizations, but the one he founded for men did not last. A young college student in Paris, France, Frederick Ozanam, started the current Society of St. Vincent de Paul for men in 1833, to assist the poor in Christian charity and for the spiritual good of its members. This new Catholic lay society was approved by the Vatican and soon spread throughout Europe. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was first accepted in St. Louis, Mo., in 1845 and, with the blessing of America’s Catholic bishops, rapidly spread across the nation. George A. Carrell, the first bishop of the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics), welcomed it to his diocese in the 1860s.

In the structure of the society, local parish conferences are the primary division. Over these is the Diocese of Covington Council, which in turn is part of the Mideast regional conference. All of the regional councils are part of the National Council of the United States, Society of St. Vincent de Paul Inc. All of the conferences worldwide are united under the Council-General. Many parishes within the Diocese of Covington formed their own conferences. The various Northern Kentucky Society of St. Vincent de Paul conferences were linked together under the Par ticu lar Council of Covington, which was established on October 29, 1923. Part of the mission of the society is to serve anyone in need without regard to color, race, creed, or origin. Parish conferences work on the local level, accepting monetary donations placed in offering boxes at church doors and donations of food and clothing.

Members of the society then allocate items to those

St. Vincent de Paul store, Greenup St., Covington, in 1946. Front row: Margaret Grumbie and Alma Schwede; back row: Paul Ison, Andy Lonneman, Charlie Burman, and Ed Miller.

SOUTHBANK PARTNERS

who call for assistance after members make a home visit to assess needs. Members also visit the sick and elderly in nursing homes and hospitals.

One popu lar feature of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s charitable outreach is its stores, or salvage bureaus as they were designated originally, which accept donations from anyone and sell salvageable items at low prices. At the instigation of William T. Mulloy, bishop of the Diocese of Covington, the first two St. Vincent de Paul stores in Northern Kentucky were opened in Covington and in Newport in 1946. Both stores were under the direction of Andrew Lonneman. Stores were opened later in Dayton and Crescent Springs. The Crescent Springs location houses the warehouse that serves Northern Kentucky. The society’s trucks travel to homes locally to pick up donations of larger items, such as furniture and appliances.

The society even sponsors a used-car program for donated automobiles still in working condition.

The society also conducts a coat giveaway for students and others in need of a warm coat. In 2002 the diocesan council began a pharmacy program.

The pharmacy, located at the Crescent Springs office, dispenses donated sample medicines from doctors or pharmacies to fi ll prescriptions for persons in need. In 2008 the charitable pharmacy operation was officially renamed Faith Community Pharmacy.

“Free Pharmacy Plan: Grow,” KP, September 17, 2002, 1K. Laukonis, Kathryn. “St. Vincent De Paul Society: Followers of Charity-Saint Active for Diocesan Needy,” Messenger, July 17, 1955, 1A. Rules of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Indulgences Granted by the Sovereign Pontiffs.

New York: Superior Council, 1909.

Stapleton, Joe. “St. Vincent de Paul Expands Activity,” Messenger, December 1946, 2.

“Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Covington.” www .svdpcovington.org (accessed June 24, 2008).

“St. Vincent de Paul Society Celebrates 160 Years,” Messenger, April 30, 1993, 8.

Thomas S. Ward

SOMERSET HALL. William Butler Kenner, the builder of Somerset Hall, and his brother George Kenner were two of the four sons of Louisiana plantation owners William and Mary Minor Kenner (see Kenner Family). The family lived in luxury, as did most other families of the southern antebellum elite. Their 2,200-acre Louisiana plantation, called Ashland, was often the scene of private balls, dinner parties, and horse races for their aristocratic friends. This Ashland was named after Henry Clay’s estate in Lexington, Ky. Much of the Kenner land in Louisiana later became part of the city of Kenner, La., where the New Orleans International Airport is now located. William Butler and George Kenner were privately tutored, receiving the typical southern classical education. Afterward they traveled extensively. While visiting Cincinnati, they met many members of the city’s social elite, including two sisters, Ruhamah and Charlotte Riske, who were half sisters of Israel Ludlow Jr. George married Charlotte and William Butler

married Rumalah. In 1840 George and Charlotte Kenner bought Elmwood Hall and some surrounding acreage from Israel Ludlow Jr. The family lived most of the year in Louisiana but used the Ludlow home as a summer retreat from the oppressive heat and diseases of the Deep South.

William Butler Kenner purchased nine acres of land near Elmwood Hall from his brother George in 1845, and he and his wife built Somerset Hall there, shortly after the purchase. Their home was constructed as an elaborate lodge, with the best materials and architectural designing available at the time. Somerset Hall has a 120-foot-long porch, which is said to have been the longest in Kentucky.

Despite the cost and elaborate planning for his home, William Kenner did not retain ownership long. He became discouraged after many of his slaves escaped to freedom across the Ohio River.

Some have said that Somerset Hall later served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad. William Butler Kenner died of yellow fever in 1853, in New Orleans. In 1852 Somerset Hall was sold to Thomas Keevan, who sold it in 1854 to Cincinnati balloonist Richard Clayton. Henry Jenkins, a wealthy Cincinnati jeweler, purchased the house in in 1862. In 1875 A. B. Closson Jr., a partner in Closson’s Art and Home Furnishings Store in Cincinnati, purchased Somerset Hall for his residence. Several generations of the Closson family lived in the house until 1925, when it was sold for use as a Masonic Lodge (see Masons).

In December 1996, Stephen and Paula Chapman purchased Somerset Hall from the Masons.

They have completely remodeled the house, attempting to return it to its original splendor. However, in order to make the home a comfortable dwelling, the Chapmans have installed two furnaces, added air conditioning, installed modern wiring, and added modern kitchens and bathrooms. The Chapmans have indicated that they may eventually use the house as it was originally intended, by spending their winters in the South (Florida) and their summers at Somerset Hall.

“How the City of Ludlow Just Missed,” KP, September 6, 1925, 8.

“Ludlow,” KP, February 22, 1995, 1KK–2KK. Marsh, Betsa. “A Legend in Ludlow,” Cincinnati Magazine, January 2003, 93–96.

“Summer Home, Closson House, now Masonic Lodge,” Ludlow News Enterprise, January 25, 1973, 1.

SOUTHBANK PARTNERS. Founded as a Kentucky nonprofit organization in 1997, Southbank Partners serves as a coordinating body for the redevelopment of the core areas of Campbell and Kenton counties. The desire for a convention center in Covington was the original impetus for this organization. The Covington Business Council, along with Jim Huff, Chris Mehling, and Wally Pagan, promoted the idea. It was a contentious issue because the Drawbridge Inn supported an alternate plan for a convention center in the Fort Mitchell area. During a 1995 special session of the Kentucky legislature, the State of Kentucky awarded $40 million for the construction of a con-

841

vention center in Covington. It was funded in 1996 and opened in November 1998.

The question arose, What would the conventioneers do after they arrived? While the existing RiverCenter and the restaurants were nice, there were not enough area attractions to support the convention industry. Consequently, Southbank organizers felt a need to expand their vision.

The original Southbank founders were Ray Beil, president of EGC Construction; Paul Knue, editor of the Kentucky Post; Roger Peterman from the law firm of Peck, Shaffer & Williams L.L.P.; and Stephen C. Schatteman, president of PNC Bank of Northern Kentucky. Ray Beil, who had just returned from Paris with its famous Left Bank, suggested the name Southbank. About a year later, Wally Pagan became president of the organization.

The cities of Newport and Covington were attracted to the idea and joined, and then the City of Bellevue petitioned to become a member of Southbank Partners. A great deal of time was spent preparing development strategies such as the renovation of the L&N Bridge as a pedestrian link named Riverwalk, between Newport and Cincinnati, and the revitalization of historic Main Street areas. Many of the ideas were the consequences of the vision of Forward Quest/Vision 2015.

The Southbank goal of developing partnerships within Northern Kentucky began to be reached when the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) helped create the Southbank Shuttle in 1999. The Southbank Shuttle, subsidized by TANK, is the first real inner-city connector between Cincinnati, Covington, Newport, and Bellevue. Although there was initial resistance from Cincinnati, eventually it became apparent that the traffic went both ways and benefited all.

Southbank Partners was also involved in the creation of the Millennium Monument World Peace Bell, the world’s largest swinging bell. It was cast in Nantes, France, in 1998, installed in Newport, and rung in 2000. This was part of the Millennium Monument project, which was to include the Millennium Tower and a park between Newport-on-the-Levee and the bell. Neither of those projects was completed, although two-thirds of the $120 million needed was obtained.

The next project was modeled after a project in Chattanooga, Tenn., that was centered on an aquarium and the 107-year-old Walnut St. Bridge over the Tennessee River. There the orga ni zation known as RiverValley Partners worked to convert the bridge into a pedestrian bridge linking sections of Chattanooga. About that time the L&N Bridge in Newport was scheduled for demolition and the Kentucky Department of Transportation was ready to let demolition bids. In 2000, Representative Jim Callahan led the effort to save the bridge on the House side of the Kentucky legislature. As majority caucus leader, he was close to the governor; with the support of the Northern Kentucky delegation, he was able to obtain $4 million to rejuvenate the bridge. The money budgeted for demolition was used instead to save it.

842 SOUTHERN RAILWAY A significant portion of the funds was used for a structural study, because a pedestrian bridge actually has a larger load factor than a vehicular bridge. There is more weight per square foot with people. Planning, including a paint analysis, took more than two years. Lead paint was removed by pressure washing, and a coat of purple epoxy paint was applied. At fi rst, it was thought the bridge might be called the Barney Bridge because of its color, but after Wally Pagan developed the alliterative name Purple People Bridge, that became the preferred name. The operation of the bridge was formalized in 2003 in the incorporation of the Newport Southbank Bridge Company, a partnership between the City of Newport and Southbank Partners. The bridge has now become a pedestrian link used by thousands of people.

During Tall Stacks 2006, more than 150,000 people crossed the bridge.

In 2004 a creative use for the bridge was proposed. Dennis Spiegel developed a feasibility study for Thom Jackson that was presented to the Newport Southbank Bridge Company: the idea was to build a bridge climb. The company leased the climbing rights to help cover the constant bridge operating expenses, and eventually Dennis Spiegel bought the rights to the project. When the Purple People Bridge Climb was opened in 2006, it was first climbing bridge in the Northern Hemisphere; at that time Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney and Brisbane in Australia were the only other places in the world that had climbing bridges; however, the Purple People Bridge Climb closed in 2007 due to lack of patronage.

Southbank Partners has had a role in the creation of Newport-on-the-Levee, assisting with the tax credit for Hofbrauhaus Newport and with condo developments in both Bellevue and Newport. It obtains its own funding from city and county funds and through a contract with Northern Kentucky Tri-ED, whereby it promotes development in the inner-city areas.

Cities do not always have the development staff they need, and the continuity, expertise, and collaborative spirit that Southbank Partners provides enables projects to move forward. Southbank Partners is concerned with economic development in Covington, Newport, and Bellevue and assists with matters of public policy in Ludlow, Dayton, and Fort Thomas. Since there are many areas of common ground among those cities, the city managers of Newport and Covington regularly meet with the city administrators of Bellevue, Dayton, Fort Thomas, and Ludlow under the aegis of Southbank Partners to discuss new projects, such as a river walk along Bellevue, Newport, and Covington and the $800 million Ovation development in Newport. Bill Scheyer succeeded Wally Pagan as president in 2008.

McNair, James. “Bridge-Climb Sale Lawsuit Tossed Out,” KE, February 27, 2007, 10A. Pagan, Wally. Interview by Bob Stevie, November 26, 2006, Newport, Ky.

Robert W. Stevie

SOUTHERN RAILWAY. The Southern Railway (SR) is a predecessor of the Norfolk Southern Railway, one of the two major railroad systems operating in the Northern Kentucky region today.

In 1894 the SR was founded by combining the assets of the bankrupt Richmond and Danville Railroad and the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G) to form a new viable railroad.

The SR ran its locomotives over the Cincinnati Southern rail lines through its control of the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railroad.

The SR, in acquiring the ETV&G, came into possession of the successor of the Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad. Thus, with the formation of the SR, the connecting railroad between Cincinnati and Charleston, S.C., finally became a reality. The SR was merged with Norfolk and Western (N&W) in 1982 to form the Norfolk Southern Railroad.

Davis, Burke. The Southern Railway. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Drury, George H. The Train Watcher’s Guide to North American Railroads. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Books, 1992.

The Historical Guide to North American Railroads. 2nd ed. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Books, 2000.

Charles H. Bogart

SOUTHGATE. Southgate, named for the prominent Southgate family who owned much of the town’s land, is a city of nearly 3,500 residents. Located in the northeastern section of Campbell Co., it is one mile south of Newport. Richard Southgate settled in the Southgate area in 1795. The town was laid out in 1896 and incorporated in 1907. The police department was started in 1907, and the fire department followed in 1909.

The 1883 Lake atlas shows slaughterhouses, green houses, a saloon, and the Kentucky House as businesses in operation in Southgate at that time. The city is home to Evergreen Cemetery.

Begun in 1847, this is the largest cemetery in Campbell Co. Most of an early Newport “burying ground” was transferred to the cemetery, because Newport needed more land for businesses and housing during the 1840s. The Civil War came to Southgate in the form of earthwork fortifications, and a fortification known Battery Shaler was built in Evergreen Cemetery (see Civil War Fortifications).

The Southgate School system, which began in 1901, is one of the smallest in Kentucky (see Southgate Independent Schools). The city once was home to the famous Two-Mile House and the Heidelberg Inn. Where the latter once stood is now the site of the St. Therese Catholic Church and school. Moock Rd., which borders the south side of the cemetery running west to Wilder, is named for George Moock, a longtime local dairy operator who resided and operated his business on properties adjoining the road.

By far the most famous place in Southgate was the Beverly Hills Supper Club. Opened in 1936, it was billed as the “showplace of the nation.” Mem-

bers of an organized crime family reportedly took the club over during the 1940s, and the nation’s most famous performers and performance acts of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s came there to entertain. Things changed on the night of May 28, 1977.

A fire broke out, and before it ended 165 people had died.

Southgate today boasts new homes, apartments, and condominiums. A new city building and community center opened in 1994. I-275 and I-471 (see Expressways) are located nearby. In 2000 the city had a population of 3,472.

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.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

U.S. Census Bureau. www.census.gov/ (accessed April 28, 2007).

Kenneth A. Reis

SOUTHGATE, LOUISE (b. February 20, 1857, Walton; Ky.; d. August 15, 1941, Bracht Station, Ky.). Louise Southgate, a physician, was born to parents from prominent families of Campbell and Kenton counties. Her great-grandfather, Thomas Kennedy, owned much of the land in early Covington, and her grandfather was George Maris Southgate. Louise was the daughter of Dr. Bernard H. and Eleanor Fleming Southgate. In 1871 both of her parents died in a cholera epidemic, and Louise and her siblings moved to their Aunt Nancy Kennedy’s home at 124 Garrard St., Covington.

Southgate attended the Western Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio, and the Women’s Medical College of Cincinnati, where she graduated in 1893. She continued her education by attending lectures in Vienna, Austria, and at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. There she became a firm believer in the germ theory of disease. Returning to Covington, she opened a medical practice and became known to family, friends, and patients as Dr. Louise; in 1902 her office was located at 107 W. Fourth St. Southgate traveled to the Hindman Settlement School in rural Knott Co., Ky., in summer 1905, to volunteer her ser vices there. Back in Covington, she and the Women’s Emergency Club of Covington assisted the school in its fundraising efforts.

Southgate purchased, in 1909, the old stone home of Thomas Kennedy on Riverside Dr. in Covington, as well as her deceased Aunt Nancy’s house on Garrard St. She lived in the latter stately Greek Revival home with her sister Virginia, a teacher in the Cincinnati Public Schools. She also moved her medical practice to the Garrard St. house. She offered the old stone Kennedy home to the City of Covington; when the city declined, she had the house demolished. The George Rogers Clark Park on Riverside Dr. now occupies the site of the former Kennedy homestead.

Southgate was actively involved with the Cincinnati Women’s Club, the Equal Suff rage Club

SOUTHGATE HOUSE

(see Women’s Suff rage), and the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs. She was also cofounder of the Central Suff rage Committee of Hamilton Co., Ohio, and president of the Pioneer Woman’s Suff rage Association. In 1910 she spoke at the Kentucky Equal Rights Association state convention in Covington on the topic “The Sisterhood of Women.” She helped rid the city of its unsavory and notorious poolrooms and also initiated the practice of conducting physical examinations for schoolchildren in Covington. Southgate was an active member of the former Booth Memorial Hospital and its auxiliary and a member of the American Medical Association.

In 1930, a year after the death of her sister Virginia, Southgate retired from medical practice.

Following a long illness, she died in 1941 at age 84 at the home of her sister Eleanor Green. Ser vices were held at the Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church, and her cremated remains were buried in Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington. In recognition of Southgate’s medical ser vices to Northern Kentucky, the St. Luke Hospitals named one of their ser vice facilities the Louise Southgate Women’s Center in 1990.

“The Club a School for Suff rage,” KP, August 16, 1941.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 20333, for the year 1941.

Mueller, Jan. “Dr. Louise Southgate,” JKS 21 (September 2004): 144–54.

Russell, Steven. “Area’s First Woman Doctor Believed in Women’s Rights,” Dixie News, January 28, 1993, 8.

Betty Maddox Daniels

SOUTHGATE, RICHARD (b. January 23, 1774, New York City; d. July 24, 1857, Newport, Ky.).

Richard Southgate was the son of Capt. Wright and Mary Lush Southgate. He received his bachelor’s degree from William and Mary College in Virginia and his law degree in Albany, N.Y. He arrived in Newport about 1795 and soon became a distinguished attorney. On July 10, 1799, he married Ann Winston Hinde (known as Nancy), daughter of Dr. Thomas Hinde, the renowned physician.

Richard and Ann Southgate had eight children. He was a very generous father and gave a house to each of his children when they married.

His daughter Ann married Dr. Nathaniel Burger Shaler, and they had a famous son named Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, who was said to be the favorite grandson of Richard Southgate. Richard wanted his grandson to have a superior education, so he hired a private tutor for the boy’s early training and then sent him to study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. After graduating, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler became a professor of geology and paleontology at Harvard University, a position he held for life, and also the author of many books. One of them, his autobiography, is a source of much information about the Southgate family.

In 1814 Richard Southgate used labor provided

by British War of 1812 prisoners from the New-

port Barracks to build his magnificent home, which still stands at 24 E. Third St. in Newport (the Southgate House). Many of the socially elite of that era, including Henry Clay, James Polk, and Zachary Taylor, were known to have visited the home. In 1803 Richard Southgate was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1817 he was elected a state senator, an office he held until 1833. In addition to being a very successful lawyer and politician, Richard Southgate also owned vast amounts of real estate and was one of the wealthiest men in the state. For many years his family operated a well-known health resort called Southgate’s Mineral Wells, which historians believe was located between Evergreen Ave. and the Alexandria Pk. in Southgate. Richard Southgate died in 1857 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in the city of Southgate. The name Southgate was given to the family in earlier generations because they were the keepers of the south gate into London, England, when it was a walled city.

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

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

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate. Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. Boston: Houghlin Mifflin, 1908.

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

Jack Wessling

SOUTHGATE, WILLIAM WRIGHT (b. November 22, 1800, Newport, Ky.; d. December 26, 1844, Covington, Ky.). William Wright Southgate, a distinguished lawyer and politician, was the son of lawyer and businessman Richard Southgate and Ann Winston Hinde Southgate. William’s early education was by tutors and in private schools. He received his degree from Transylvania College in Lexington and then moved to Covington, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1821.

Southgate set up his first law practice in Lexington.

He married Adliza Keene in 1823, and they had thirteen children. William Southgate purchased the Gano-Southgate House in Covington in 1825, adding a Greek Revival wing in 1835. He served as a prosecuting attorney from 1825 to 1827 and as a state representative from 1828 to 1840. After leaving politics, he returned to Covington and resumed the practice of law. In 1844 he served as a presidential elector for the Whig candidate Henry Clay. He died a young man and was buried in the Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington.

Johnson, E. Polk. History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. Vol. 2. Chicago: Lewis, 1912.

Langsam, Walter E. Great Houses of the Queen City.

Cincinnati: Cincinnati Historical Society, 1997.

Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County.

Alexandria, Ky.: Self-published, 1997.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE. Located at 24 E. Third St., Newport, the Southgate House (also known as the Southgate-Parker-Maddux House and the

843

William Wright Southgate.

Knights of Columbus Hall) is one of the city’s oldest and most historically significant antebellum structures. Sometime between 1814 and 1821, the two-story house was erected for Richard Southgate. According to local tradition, the mansion was at least partially constructed by British prisoners from the War of 1812 who were being held at the nearby Newport Barracks.

For Southgate, who was wealthy, influential, and socially prominent, both locally and nationally, the Newport mansion provided an elegant backdrop for lavish entertaining and also served as an island of civility that drew affluent visitors from all parts of the state and the nation. Tradition has placed many distinguished persons within its walls, including Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, James K. Polk, and Gen. Zachary Taylor.

Not all of these visits, however, have been officially substantiated.

An 1840 visit by the soon-to-be married Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd to attend a gala ball, though unconfirmed, is plausible based on the friendship between Southgate and Mary Todd’s father, Col. Robert Smith Todd; the two men had similar social and political beliefs and were related by marriage through the Parker family. A second visit by Lincoln, in 1856, was noted by Southgate’s grandson Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, the eminent Harvard professor, dean, and renowned geologist, in his autobiography. This visit has also been disputed, though not completely discounted; recent scholarship fails to confirm an 1856 visit to the state but instead places Lincoln in the area during an 1855 trip to Cincinnati, at which time he may have visited the Southgate House. Tradition and fact again mingle in regard to the Southgate House’s association with the Texas Revolution.

Legend has it that the house was the site of an extravagant send-off party on December 30, 1835, for 50 men under the leadership of Newport resident Sidney Sherman. The Kentucky unit later fought for Gen. Sam Houston, assisting the Texans in their defeat of Santa Anna at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto.

844 SOUTHGATE IN DE PEN DENT SCHOOLS Richard Southgate’s long life came to an end at age 83 at his Newport mansion in 1857, and he was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate. He had generously provided for each of his living children within his will. His vast estate, then valued at $1.5 million, included extensive landholdings in Ohio and Kentucky, securities, real estate, and the family’s Newport homestead, the Southgate House, which he left to his eldest daughter, Frances Mary Taliaferro Parker.

Frances owned the house from 1857 to 1869 and then deeded it to her daughter, Julia Maria Taliaferro Thompson, who was married to James Thompson, a lieutenant colonel in the army, a West Point graduate, and a military science professor at Indiana University at Bloomington, Ind. Frances continued to reside at the mansion until she died there in 1883; her funeral was held at the house as well.

Julia’s son John Taliaferro Thompson, born at the Southgate House in 1860, had a long and distinguished military career, but he is perhaps best remembered for the invention he and his son Marcellus engineered in 1919: the Thompson machine gun, or “Tommy Gun.” This groundbreaking automatic weapon soon became standard issue for the military and was utilized by law-enforcement organizations, owing to its exceptional design. To Thompson’s dismay, the weapon also gained extreme popularity among the ranks of organized crime syndicates.

For nearly the entire first century of its existence, the Southgate House was owned by a member of the Southgate family. Julia Thompson’s sale of the house on March 31, 1888, to its fourth owner, Fannie F. Maddux, the wife of Louis Oliver Maddux, passed it to a new family. The structure continued to serve a long-established purpose, though; according to newspaper accounts of the time, the Maddux family entertained frequently in their Newport mansion, just as the Southgate family had done. L. O. Maddux died there on October 22, 1909.

Given the Southgate family’s prominent position as one of Northern Kentucky’s founding pioneer families, the Southgate House was an appropriate setting for another event that occurred there during Fannie Maddux’s ownership. On May 18, 1894, the Keturah Moss Taylor Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was founded at the house. According to several sources, this new organization had the distinction of being the first chapter in Kentucky.

Sometime during the Maddux family’s ownership, or perhaps while Frances Mary Taliaferro Parker or her daughter, Julia Thompson, owned the home, extensive renovations and additions were undertaken, significantly altering the structure. It is believed that only the walls of the twostory main block and the basement remain from the original antebellum structure. Yet, the grand old residence’s intact Georgian-style features include the front facade’s symmetrical composition, five bays, and Flemish-bond brickwork. At the end of the 19th century, Second Empire–style features were added, including a concave man-

sard roof, punctuated by altered dormers replete with decorative fanlights; cast-iron hoodmolds over the front windows; and a four-story entrance tower with a mosaic-floored vestibule on the fi rst floor. Other 19th-century renovations included the addition of a third-story ballroom and a late Victorian porch; its delicately rendered posts, spandrels, and openwork railing complemented the newly added tower and decorative slate-tiled roof.

Fannie Maddux continued to reside at the house until May 9, 1914, when she sold it to attorney John William Heuver. Before the year was up, on November 13, 1914, the house again changed hands when Heuver sold it to the Newport Knights of Columbus for $10,000. For more than six decades, this organization made good use of its mansion meeting place, which became known as the Knights of Columbus Hall. The Knights of Columbus held bimonthly meetings there and hosted bingo games, dances, wedding receptions, and fundraisers. During this period, ceiling beams and wainscoting were added in several interior rooms. Exterior alterations included the replacement of the delicate wooden porch with the current square-tiered brick porch, the addition of a corbelled brick balustrade on the front and the east side (which has since been enclosed), and the addition of a large auditorium wing at the rear of the structure.

Twice during the Knights of Columbus’s ownership, the Southgate House was damaged by fire.

In July 1925, flames from a fire at the Abe Colker Chewing Gum Factory, located at the intersection of Southgate and York Sts., just behind the mansion, spread to the house. The structure sustained more than $6,000 in damage. In 1948 the auditorium addition was destroyed by fire on Thanksgiving Day. Damage from the blaze was estimated at $50,000. The resilient fraternal organization repaired the structure and rebuilt the auditorium not long after the end of World War II. On September 15, 1976, The Knights of Columbus sold the aging mansion to Morrell Ross and Bess Raleigh for $65,000. Raleigh, a lifelong resident of Newport and an inspector for the Campbell Co. Health Department, had heard rumors that the stately old mansion would be slated for demolition once the Knights of Columbus had moved. So he bought the historic house to save it from the wrecking ball. A year later, the Southgate House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. From 1978 to 1980, the mansion stood vacant as Raleigh scrambled to make costly, desperately needed repairs while devising a plan that would keep his historic-preservation venture financially solvent.

In 1981 Raleigh opened the Southgate House as a short-lived country music and entertainment venue called Mom’s Opry. By 1982 the house again was vacant, though Raleigh was far from giving up on his plans for the historic old homestead. In 1983 he reopened it as an entertainment venue with its original name, the Southgate House. Raleigh, his daughter Morella, and her longtime friend Chris

Schadler have successfully positioned one of Newport’s most important antebellum structures as a revitalized center for arts and music. Now, more than a century and a half after its construction, the elegant and expansive ancestral home of the Southgate family continues to be the site of social gatherings, vibrant entertaining, and cultural events. Included are local, regional, and national musical performances, art exhibits, poetry readings, and other attractions.

“K.C. Fire Loss $50,000; 10 Overcome,” KP, November 26, 1948, 1.

“Newport K. of C. Buy Building,” KP, March, 12, 1914, 12.

Purvis, Thomas L., ed. Newport, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. Newport, Ky.: Otto Zimmerman, 1996.

Ramos, Steve. “Owners of Newport’s Historic Southgate House Have High Hopes for a Rich Future, but Local Development Plans Might Stop Them in Their Tracks,” City Beat, April 2–8, 1998, 12–15.

Reis, Jim. “Newport’s Southgate House Dates Back to the Early 1800s,” KP, May 16, 1994, 4k.

———. “Soldiers and Gangsters Used the ‘Tommy’ Gun.” In Pieces of the Past, by Jim Reis, vol. 2.

Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991.

Richard Southgate Will, Campbell Co. Will Book C, 200.

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate. The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler: With a Supplementary Memoir by His Wife. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1909.

Southgate Family fi le. Local History fi les, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Southgate House fi le. Local History fi les, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “Still Blamed in $250,000 Fire—Newport Chewing Gum Factory Destroyed by Flames; Owner Cited on Liquor Charge, Which He Denies; Garages and Autos Burned,” KP, July 18, 1925, 1.

Janice Mueller

SOUTHGATE INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS. Southgate Independent Schools refers to a single school, the Southgate School, located at the northwest corner of William Blatt and Evergreen Aves. in Southgate, Campbell Co. Before the city of Southgate was incorporated in 1907, a Campbell Co. school was in operation at the site of the current school. It opened in October 1901 as a oneroom frame structure on land donated by the Shaler estate. A brick building was erected to replace the frame schoolhouse in 1903, and additions were made to the school in 1930 and in 1995. The school has operated only as a grade school through the eighth grade; for Southgate high school students, the City of Southgate makes tuition payments to various nearby high schools, including Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Newport High School, Bellevue High School (see Bellevue Public Schools), Dayton High School (see Dayton Public Schools), and Campbell Co. High School.

One of the graduates of the Southgate School is Harold H. Smith, the 16th president of Pikeville College in Pikeville, Ky. The Southgate School has

SOUTHGATE ST. SCHOOL

always been noted for the individualized attention it provides students and for the school’s low student-teacher ratio. Southgate is the smallest independent school district in Kentucky, and over the years there have been discussions of merging the city with adjacent cities and school districts or closing the school for reasons of diseconomies of scale. Today, the Southgate School has approximately 200 students in nine classrooms. With recent plans made for new construction in Southgate, the school is anticipating increases in its student population in the near future.

Harden, Crystal. “Southgate Ends Tuition Subsidy,” KP, March 10, 2003, 2K. Schafer, Ray. “Always Small, Always Beloved,” KE, May 15, 2001, B1.

SOUTHGATE ST. SCHOOL. Newport’s Southgate St. School, organized in 1873 for the African American citizens of Campbell Co., was located on the north side of Southgate St. between Saratoga and Washington Sts. The school would not have been finished without the help of Dennis Lightfoot, Robert Littleton, and Washington Rippleton, who were involved from the very beginning, along with educators such as Dennis Anderson, Lavina Ellis, Charles D. Horner, and Elizabeth Hudson. But the commitment of two important local governmental bodies, the Newport City Council and the city board of education, was also essential. Each of these bodies used state legislation and the Freedmen’s Bureau to establish the school.

Early teachers at the Southgate St. School were Elizabeth Hudson, who taught from 1873 to 1878; Mr. F. Mackoy, 1878–1879; and Dennis R. Anderson, 1879–1890. The 1880s witnessed an increase of more than 50 percent in the African American population in both Newport and Campbell Co. The Southgate St. School served the entire county, and even some children from nearby Bracken Co. On June 26, 1893, the school held its fi rst graduation exercise at the Park Avenue School hall; the fi rst two graduates were Louisa Smith and Lavina Ellis. In attendance were the president of the board of education, E. G. Lohmeyer, and a representative from the school, C. W. H. Johnson.

Johnson was one of the committee members who had originally petitioned the Newport City Council for free public education for African American children in the city. Lohmeyer addressed the audience, urging parents to persevere in keeping their children in school; he said education, and not legislation, would prove the best solution to the race question. The second graduating class consisted of only one person, Beatrice Genevieve Johnson. The commencement exercise took place on June 19, 1896, again at the Park Avenue School hall.

In 1901 the city school board determined the curriculum for the high school, based on a threeyear school program. The Southgate school’s principal, Charles D. Horner, asked to have the course requirements extended to cover four years, so that

the students would have the same educational advantages as students at the white Newport High School; however, a four-year program was never implemented. With the addition of a second floor, two more classrooms were added to the building and another teacher was hired. Each teacher had to teach three grades, and the principal taught the three high school grades. On June 5, 1921, Superintendent E. F. Sporing recommended to the Newport educational board that the Southgate high school be discontinued for the coming school year, because of unsatisfactory conditions, and that the high school students be sent to William Grant High School in Covington. He believed that there they would receive an “all grade high school education, and upon graduation, the students would be eligible for admission to the leading Universities and Colleges which are open to African-American students.” Given the small number of graduates from the Southgate high school, and the cost of only $50 in tuition per student to send them to the Covington high school, it was an easy decision for Newport’s educational board to send students to Covington. African American students did not again attend high school in Newport until fall 1955.

From 1916 through 1940, the Southgate St. School principals were chosen from within the school. In August 1921 W. S. Blanton, who had been principal at the Southgate St. School since 1909, resigned and was replaced by Nora H. Ward, who had been a teacher of domestic science in the sixth and seventh grades at the school.

The teachers’ dedication to the school and the community was a source of pride for all African Americans in Newport. Lavina Ellis, who was in the first graduating class of 1893, returned to teach at the school about 1900 and stayed until she retired in 1936. She saw a need and opened a day nursery for African American children nearby. Ellis lived on Covert Run Pk. in Bellevue.

She had the longest tenure of any teacher, serving under three principals: Charles D. Horner, W. S. Blanton, and Nora H. Ward. Elise Gooch, who began teaching at the school in 1910, was the sister of Elizabeth Gooch, a teacher at Covington’s Lincoln- Grant School from 1912 until 1953. Elise had direct contact with all the new students from Newport. Most faculty members at the Southgate St. School were lifelong residents of Covington with connections throughout Northern Kentucky. Ruth Bond taught at Southgate from 1936 to 1957. She was from Louisville, where her family had strong educational ties. When the Southgate St. School was closed because of integration, she was transferred to another Newport school and retired in 1957.

In 1926 Anderson D. Owens was appointed superintendent of the Newport schools. Under his direction, the Southgate St. School received considerable attention. For example, Owens wanted to replace the old Southgate St. School building with a larger, modern school. In 1938 he proposed to the city’s school board that a new school for African Americans be built. The board proposed building the new school under the federal Public Works

845

Administration (PWA). The application to the PWA for funding was supplemented with a local bond issue and sent to the Newport City Council, which approved both applications and placed the issue on the ballot for voters. The law required that all bond issues be approved by voters with a twothirds majority. Owens, the board, and the council had done their part. But in the general election on November 8, 1938, the voters defeated the new school bond issue; a majority, but not the required two-thirds majority, voted in favor of the bond issue.

In 1940 Charles Harris replaced Nora Ward as principal at the Southgate St. School. Harris had been a teacher there since November 1932. Harris’s staff of teachers included Ruth Bond, Melissia Bruce, and Leila Patton. This staff remained at the school until after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision mandating school desegregation.

On June 27, 1955, Superintendent Owens submitted to the city board of education a program for the desegregation of Newport Public Schools. He asked the board to adopt a policy requiring that all African American children through the 11th grade attend Newport schools during the 1955–1956 school year, thereby closing the segregated Southgate St. School. All African American students in the 12th grade who were attending William Grant High School in Covington were given the choice of either finishing their senior year there or attending Newport High School. The superintendent also placed African American teachers in desegregated schools. Thereby, the Newport school system became the first public school system in Northern Kentucky to integrate. The closing of the Southgate St. School was much like its beginning, accomplished without the hostility, lawsuits, and study groups that many communities experienced during the period of school desegregation. But Superintendent Owens’s concern for the equitable placement of the now-defunct school’s former teachers was equally important. Charles Harris retired in 1956; Ruth Bond, Melissa Bruce, and Leila Patton continued teaching at their new schools, and all three of them retired after the 1957–1958 school year.

The old Southgate St. School building has remained very much a part of Newport’s African American heritage. In 1959 the Newport Masonic Lodge No. 120 purchased the building. The Southgate St. School Alumni Association is leading the restoration project for the school building as part of the neighborhood’s historic district. A Kentucky State Historical Society Highway Marker was dedicated in front of the former Southgate St. School on October 6, 2001.

Annual Report of the Board of Education, Newport, Kentucky. Newport, Ky.: Newport Printing, 1873.

City Council Records, 1874, Newport, Ky. “Colored School Graduation Exercises,” KSJ, June 6, 1893, 4.

“First Day School Figures Go Up,” KP, September 7, 1955, 1.

Harris, Theodore H. H. “Southgate School Newport, Kentucky (1866–1955),” NKH 4, no. 2 (Spring– Summer 1997): 34–42.

846 SOUTHGATE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH “Integration Delay May Bring Suit,” KP, September 1, 1955, 1.

“Integration Will Begin in Newport,” KP, August 15, 1955, 1.

“Local Schools Openings to See Changes,” KP, September 5, 1955, 1.

“Negro Educational Convention,” CC, February 19, 1873, 3.

“Newport,” CDG, August 28, 1873, 2; August 30, 1873, 3; September 8, 1873, 3.

“Newport School Appointments,” Newport Local, June 11, 1878, 3.

“Newport School Committee on Salaries,” Newport Local, June 3, 1879, 1.

“Newport Voters Defeat Bond Issues,” KP, November 9, 1938, 1.

Reis, Jim. “Superintendents Notable for Longevity, Leadership,” KP, March 6, 1995, 7.

Theodore H. H. Harris

SOUTHGATE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. The Southgate Methodist Church was founded 1906 as an outreach in the village of Southgate by the Grace United Methodist Church of Newport. Starting a Sunday school in Southgate was the vision of Louis Wilson of the Grace Church. Between 1900 and 1906, the Grace Church held Sunday school on Sunday afternoons in the old two-room school that was located on Elm St. in Southgate. Later, church ser vices were held at the same location two Sundays each month.

Eventually, a Ladies Aide Society was organized and money was raised to build a church in Southgate. Shaler Berry donated a lot across from the Southgate School, and Catherine Wright and her husband donated another lot for a church building. The building itself was financed by picnics, lawn fetes, bazaars, and other fundraising activities. The 36-by-40-foot church, designed by architect L. H. Wilson of Newport and costing $8,000, was dedicated in 1908. The original building had a sanctuary and two small rooms in the back. Rev. George Bunton was the first pastor, and William Theis was the first Sunday school superintendent.

Between 1908 and 1939, three additions to the church were built. By 1939 church membership was about 300 and Sunday school membership was 189.

A parsonage was built and dedicated on May 14, 1950, nearby in town at 226 Evergreen Ave. Rev. T. O. Harrison was the first pastor who occupied it. In May 1952, “the Little Church by the Side of the Road,” as the church was known, was torn down in order to build a new structure on the property. The church furnishings were taken across the street to the Southgate School, where the congregation met during the construction of its new building. The first ser vice in the new sanctuary was held April 19, 1953, with Pastor H. K. Carl presiding. Orie S. Ware, a Masonic Past Grand Master (see Masons), presided at the cornerstone-laying ceremony, which was conducted by the Newport Masonic Lodge No. 358 on May 17, 1953. When the fi nal payment on the $120,000 mortgage had been made, in January 1966, the building was formally dedicated as part of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the

Southgate United Methodist Church in 1906. During the 1970s and 1980s, the church was known for its promotion of scouting in the Southgate community.

By the 1990s, the Southgate United Methodist Church had become an urban church, and it began to experience a decline in attendance and membership. As a result, it was reorganized as the New Hope Church. Finally in 2004 it became the New Hope Campus of the Immanuel United Methodist Church in Lakeside Park, in order to continue to serve the communities of Southgate and south Newport.

“Corner-Stone of Edifice Laid,” KP, September 9, 1907, 5.

Dedication Program, 1966. Southgate, Ky.: Southgate Methodist Church, 1966.

“Site Is Deeded for M.E. Church,” KP, March 28, 1907, 5.

“Southgate Methodists to Dedicate,” KP, June 20, 1908, 5.

“Throngs of People Attend Dedication,” KP, June 22, 1908, 5.

Paul L. Whalen

SOUTH HILLS. Perched on a hill above the southwestern border of Covington, the area now known as South Hills was once home to Battery Hooper, one of the Civil War fortifications built to defend Cincinnati. South Hills began in the late 1920s as a 121-acre subdivision of more than 400 lots, its name derived from the company that developed the first streets. Fred W. Staengle, a Covington realtor, led much of the original housing development.

South Hills was widely known in its early years as one of the largest and most attractive developments in Northern Kentucky; it touted amenities such as electricity and gas, as well as the “Heart’s Desire” model home on Crittenden Ave., which was visited by thousands of people in the late 1920s, according to newspaper reports. In 1927, lot prices in the subdivision ranged from $25 to $50, and a nice house could be had for $5,000. In addition to Crittenden Ave., original streets included St. Anthony, Cumberland, and Henry Clay, which was the only road open from Covington to the south during the Ohio River flood of 1937.

In 1949 the South Hills subdivision incorporated as a sixth-class city to block potential annexation by Covington and to create the taxing authority to provide basic government ser vices such as infrastructure maintenance and police.

Council meetings were held in the basements of various residences until the South Hills Civic Club was built in 1957. The Civic Club also served as the city building. South Hills mayors included A. J. Jung, Royal Clark, George Schulte, and M. A. Groening.

Nearly all residential, South Hills was a closeknit community that had a community club as early as 1941 and for many years sponsored an annual festival and other events at the Civic Club.

Rumors of annexation and consolidation with neighboring cities swirled many times between the early 1940s and the late 1950s, and finally in 1960

South Hills was annexed by neighboring Fort Wright. South Hills continues, however, to maintain a typical neighborhood atmosphere.

City of Fort Wright. City of Fort Wright 50th Anniversary Booklet. Fort Wright, Ky.: City of Fort Wright, 1991.

“Henry Clay Avenue Maintenance Asked,” KP, May 8, 1941, 1.

“Historic Spot Converted into Subdivision,” KP, March 27, 1927, 6.

“Park Hills, Ft. Wright, Lookout Heights Talk More on Merger,” KE, March 21, 1967, 19.

Reis, Jim. “The City They All Seem to Want,” KP, November 11, 1985, 4K. “South Hills One of Northern Kentucky’s Largest Developments,” KP, December 30, 1928, 7.

Dave Hatter

SPARKS, HENRY, CORPORAL (b. June 16, 1753, Culpeper Co., Va.; d. August 14, 1836, Owen Co., Ky.). Henry Sparks was one of the family members of Capt. James Clark’s sons and daughters, who arrived in Owen Co. as early pioneers: the Clarks, the Marstons, the Smoots, the Sparkses, the Towles, and the Hancocks. Each of these families had received large land grants, and Henry Sparks owned 1,000 acres along the Kentucky River north of Monterey. He had earned his land by serving in the Revolutionary War as a bodyguard of Gen. George Washington, whose military unit was said to be the “flower and pick of the American army.” Sparks fought at the battles of Brandywine Creek (September 11, 1777) and Germantown (October 3–4, 1777) in Pennsylvania and was discharged from military ser vice on February 2, 1778, at Valley Forge, Pa. In 1795 he came to Kentucky and settled in what is today Owen Co. He died there in 1836. Sparks was buried at Sparks Bottom Cemetery near Monterey, his grave site marked with a military stone. He is one of several Revolutionary War soldiers who chose to settle in Owen Co., which was at the time part of the new American West.

Owen Co., Kentucky. “Henry Sparks.” www.rootsweb .com/~kyowen (accessed June 25, 2007).

SPARTA. The town of Sparta straddles Owen and Gallatin counties, where Ky. Rts. 467 and 35 intersect. In 1779 Jacob and John Carlock migrated to Kentucky from the Holsten Valley of Virginia and arrived in the valley on the north side of Eagle Creek in early summer. They set up camp at the mouth of the Two-Mile branch of the creek and began to establish the town that later became known as Sparta. Accompanying the Carlock brothers were Dave and John Alcor, William Swango, and Jacob Walters. Soon there were families of settlers living on both sides of the creek. By 1804 a gristmill, a tanning business, a distillery, a mechanic’s shop, and shoemakers were operating in town. By 1806 Enoch Winkfield had opened a storehouse there as well. Those who chose to be farmers grew cotton and hemp as cash crops.

When Owen Co. was established in 1819, Eagle Creek was the dividing line between Gallatin and

SPEERS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

Owen counties. The Sparta homes and businesses established earliest were in Owen Co., in what was later referred to as Old Sparta. These original settlers were dismayed to learn that they had no legal claim to their land. Several large syndicates (May, Bannister & Company, the Crosley Company, and J. Fellows & Company) had purchased the land in 25,000-acre plots and sold sections to other farmers, thus preempting the founding settlers’ land claims. Some of the displaced original settlers moved to Missouri or the Northwest, but others stayed and bought property from the land syndicates.

The first bridge, built across Eagle Creek in 1851, soon fell because it could not withstand the amount of traffic that crossed it, and in 1873 George Wagel constructed a second bridge there.

The first church and school at Sparta was that of Little Hope on Two-Mile Branch. During the early 1870s, a school district was formed in town to serve students of the area from both Owen and Gallatin counties. A. D. Mason donated a large lot for the school building, which came to be called “The Old Red Schoolhouse.” The building also served as a community center. The Samuel brothers planted trees, making a portion of the school grounds into a playground area. In 1875 John T. Hawkins, pastor of the Christian Church at New Liberty, led in the formation of a church at Sparta, in Gallatin Co. In 1881 the Sparta Baptist Church was built on property within Owen Co. The exciting news of a railroad coming through Sparta meant that the residents could have a connection to larger cities. Since the old part of town was surrounded by hills and most of the valley had been used for businesses and homes, the intended railroad could not come through Owen Co.; its path was moved across Eagle Creek into Gallatin Co. After surveys had been taken and legalities cleared by the Kentucky legislature, the construction of the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington Railroad began in spring 1867. African American, German, Irish, and Swedish workers built the twisting, rollercoaster-like rail pathway through the valleys and hills adjacent to Sparta.

Florian and Atilla Cox had charge of the railroad depot, which also housed the post office, a store, the freight department, a waiting room, and offices for the railway agent and the telegraph operator.

With the building of the depot and its associated businesses came the expansion on the other side of Eagle Creek in Gallatin Co. that became known as New Sparta. The Sparta Deposit Bank opened its doors at New Sparta in 1900, the Sparta Lumber and manufacturing Company in 1908, the Standard Oil Company in 1921, and the Stock Yards in 1928.

The Sparta Transfer Company, begun in 1800, took horses and mules on treks to Owenton and Warsaw. Its owners, Cox & Company, referred to their enterprise as the Stage Coach. It was later run

by June Gayle, P. O. Minor, John Thomas, and F. P. Jacobs. The first silent movies, which were free and were shown outdoors, began in 1918. Other businesses opened later in Sparta were the hotel, a used-car dealership, ser vice stations, taverns, gen-

eral merchandise stores, groceries, a fertilizer and coal company, and a restaurant.

Like many other small communities, both parts of Sparta have declined. Today, in Old Sparta there are only homes. The fi rst church building stands abandoned, but the community uses the church’s outside wall to mark water levels of floods. It is believed that the decline of the pioneer side of Sparta (Old Sparta) was due mostly to the lack of space to build and to the devastating Eagle Creek floods. With no dam for flood control, this area remains at the mercy of the weather.

The Gallatin Co. section of Sparta now consists of a ser vice station, a tavern, a general store (known for its old country hams), and the families who still call it home. The completion of I-71, just to the north, during the 1960s, diverted much automobile traffic away from Sparta. Not far away in Gallatin Co. is the new Kentucky Speedway, which has a Sparta address. Sparta is one of four cities in Northern Kentucky that overlap two counties; the others are Jonesville (Owen and Grant), Germantown (Mason and Bracken), and Walton (Boone and Kenton).

Historical Society Files, Owen Co. Public Library, Owenton, Ky. Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976.

Doris Riley

SPEERS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL. When a wealthy Dayton, Ky., resident, Elizabeth L. Speers, died in August 1894, she bequeathed $100,000 to construct a hospital in her hometown of Dayton to be named in memory of her deceased husband.

Charles Speers had made his fortune selling cotton during the Civil War. Elizabeth Speer’s will directed the Campbell Co. Circuit Court judge to appoint three trustees, who would be authorized to build the hospital and hire the required personnel. In accordance with those instructions, Judge

Speers Memorial Hospital, Dayton, Ky., ca. 1923.

847

Charles Helm appointed as trustees John Trapp, Charles Nagel, and Dr. C. B. Schoolfield. The trustees first met on July 6, 1895, and John Trapp was chosen president, Dr. Schoolfield vice president, and Charles Nagel secretary-treasurer. The hospital was built on the block bounded by Main and Boone Sts. and Fourth and Fift h Aves., at a cost of $75,000. Anna Sutton was hired as hospital superintendent to oversee the operation of the facility. The trust fund provided money for construction of the building and purchase of equipment but no operating capital. Construction took two years, and the facility opened for business on October 10, 1897, with the admission of its first patient, Carolyn Meyer. The building contained four hospital wards and 15 private rooms and was designed by the architectural firm of Crapsey and Brown (see Charles Crapsey). The hospital staff was made up of 31 prominent doctors; among them were J. L. Pythian, C. B. Schoolfield, Frank H. Southgate, R. W. Thornton, William M. Truesdell, and Lee C. Wadsworth from Northern Kentucky and S. G. Ayres, C. H. Good, Charles M. Paul, Ed Walker, and W. S. Weaver from Cincinnati. In 1901 the hospital started a nurses’ training program, one of the first in Kentucky. Three years later, the first class of seven young ladies received their nursing diplomas, in ceremonies held at the Dayton High School auditorium (see Dayton Public Schools).

In 1911 an east wing was added to the hospital, which provided a children’s ward and seven private rooms. In 1912 the hospital arranged with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to care for its workers, making it a so-called railroad hospital. In 1924 a residence for student nurses was constructed at the east end of the property. By 1937 several other additions had been made, which brought the hospital’s capacity to 100 beds, in five wards and 38 patient rooms. Disaster struck Speers Memorial Hospital that year, when floodwaters of the flood of 1937 entered the basement and the

848 SPENCE, BRENT first floor. All patients had to be moved to other sites, including Dayton High School, the Poplar Street School in Bellevue, and the Cote Brilliante School in Newport. The flood ruined some of the hospital’s equipment and caused considerable damage to the building, forcing a complete renovation. Funds for the work came from a campaign launched by the Campbell Co. Chamber of Commerce (see Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce). In 1938 a number of prominent physicians lectured at the hospital. The speakers included the world-renowned brain surgeon Dr. Frank Mayfield and the developer of the first live polio vaccine, Dr. Albert Sabin.

As the Speers Memorial Hospital and its equipment aged, the finances were not available to upgrade properly and maintain the facility. A number of fundraisers were held in an attempt to save the hospital, but to no avail. In the late 1940s, seven area doctors sought voter approval of a $1 million bond issue to build a new, larger, more modern hospital in Campbell Co. Voters approved the request, and in 1954 St. Luke Hospital was built in Fort Thomas. The new hospital facility was out of the flood district, was more centrally located, and had room for expansion. Speers Memorial Hospital ceased operations in 1973, when St. Elizabeth Hospital of Covington acquired it. The Speers hospital building remained vacant until 1979, when the King Wrecking Company tore the structure down. A senior citizens’ housing development was built on the site in 1983. The Speers Memorial Hospital was the second hospital in Campbell Co. (the medical facility at the Newport Barracks was the first) and the third in Northern Kentucky. Some instruments and items of equipment from Speers were saved and placed on display in a medical museum at St. Luke Hospital in Fort Thomas. In 2006 the museum was moved to the Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society’s office in Alexandria.

“Demolition Begins at Speers,” KP, October 18, 1978, 7K. “Like an Old Friend, Speers Hospital Is Dying,” KP, July 26, 1973, 8K. Poweleit, Alvin C. A Medical History of Campbell and Kenton Counties. Cincinnati: Campbell– Kenton Co. Medical Society, 1970.

Reis, Jim. “Wealthy Widow’s Gift Led to Campbell’s First Hospital,” KP, December 21, 1998, 4K.

SPENCE, BRENT (b. December 24, 1874, Newport, Ky.; d. September 18, 1967, Fort Thomas, Ky.).

Brent Spence, a lawyer and a long-term legislator, was the son of Col. Philip Brent Spence, a Confederate cavalry officer, and Virginia Berry Spence.

He was also a nephew of Albert Seaton Berry, founder of Bellevue, Ky.; a grandson of James Berry, founder of Jamestown, Ky.; and a greatgrandson of Washington Berry and Alice Thornton Taylor, sister of James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. Spence’s education was in local public schools and at the University of Cincinnati Law School, where he graduated in 1895. He was admitted to the bar that same year and joined

Hedlund, Richard. “Brent Spence and the Bretton Woods Legislation,” RKHS 79 (Winter 1981): 40–56.

The Honorable Brent Spence. Newport, Ky.: Otto Printing, 1996.

Purvis, Thomas, L., ed. Newport, Kentucky, a Bicentennial History. Newport, Ky.: Otto Zimmerman, 1996.

Reis, Jim. “Brent Spence, the Man,” KP, August 5, 2005, 4K.

Jack Wessling

Brent Spence, ca. 1940.

the law firm of his uncle Albert S. Berry. Spence was a Kentucky state senator from 1904 until 1908 and city solicitor of Newport from 1916 until 1924.

In 1920 he married Ida Billerman, and the couple had no children. Spence, a Democrat, ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Sixth District in 1928 but lost. In 1930 he was elected to the first of 16 consecutive terms in the U.S. House, serving from March 4, 1931, until January 3, 1963.

In Congress he earned a reputation as a strong, liberal leader. He became a staunch supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) and his policies during the Great Depression. As a longtime chairman of the powerful Committee on Banking and Currency of the U.S House, Spence was a delegate to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. He guided the House passage of the Bretton Woods Agreement, which allowed U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank. Spence also used his influence to get the federal government to finance construction of the Greater Cincinnati Airport (now the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport) in Boone Co., which contributed greatly to the economic growth of the Northern Kentucky region. Other projects he championed were bonuses for World War I veterans, public housing for low-income families, the Internal Revenue Ser vice Center in Covington, and the construction of floodwalls in Covington, Newport, and Maysville. Spence retired from the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, at age 88. When the new I-75 bridge between Covington and Cincinnati was opened in 1963, it was named in his honor (see Brent Spence Bridge). He died at age 92 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

“Spence, Brent.” http://bioguide.congress.gov (accessed November 22, 2005).

SPERTI, GEORGE SPERI (b. January 17, 1900, Covington, Ky.; d. April 29, 1991, Covington, Ky.).

Inventor and scientist George Speri Sperti was the son of George A. and Caroline Speri Sperti, Italian immigrants. He was educated in the Covington public schools, including the old Covington High School, and he graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering in 1923. While still a college student, Sperti invented a utility meter for which General Electric paid him $30,000, making the young inventor a celebrity in the field of invention. Sperti held the fi rst patent for fluorescent lights and developed the Sperti Sunlamp. In 1925 he became the director of the University of Cincinnati’s Basic Science Research Laboratory.

During the Great Depression, Sperti left the University of Cincinnati, and in 1935 he cofounded the Institutum Divi Thomae (the St. Thomas Institute) in Cincinnati with Archbishop John T. McNicolas. The St. Thomas Institute, a small doctorate-granting research institute, was organized as an old-fashioned institute of higher learning, with students and teachers living and working on campus. However, Sperti himself never lived on campus, preferring to remain on his farm near Burlington, Ky. In 1936 Pope Paul XI appointed Sperti to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Sperti’s research at the St. Thomas Institute helped develop such world-famous products as Sperti Ointment burn salve and Preparation H hemorrhoid cream. As a researcher and inventor, he developed products and processes used in the food and drug industry, in electronic and radiation devices, and in cosmetics. He searched for a cure for cancer much of his life and pioneered cancer research at the St. Thomas Institute. For financial reasons, the institute stopped granting degrees in 1987, but research there continued.

Sperti died in 1991 and was buried in St. Mary Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. He had never married. Following his death, the St. Thomas Institute campus was sold and the proceeds designated for scholarships at Thomas More College and the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati. Sperti’s farm in Boone Co. became a nature preserve.

DeVroomen, Sasha. “Thomas More Gets Gift from Sperti,” KP, May 31, 1991, 2K. Harden, Crystal. “George Sperti, Scientist and Inventor, Dead at 91,” KP, April 30, 1991, 1K. Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

William S. Bryant

STAFFORDSBURG

SPHAR BRICK COMPANY. The Sphar Brick Company, located about two miles from Maysville, near the Ohio River in Mason Co., was established

by A. C. Sphar, who also started the Maysville Brick Company. The Maysville Daily Independent reported in 1935 that the company was organized in 1904. However, according to other sources, it may have begun as early as 1878. At least during 1906–1908, the Sphar Brick Company and the Maysville Brick Company were operating at the same time.

The Sphar Brick Company was incorporated in July 1912 by A. S. Clark, H. T. Miles, E. A. Robinson, A. C. Sphar, E. S. Sphar, and W. N. Stockton. Sphar and his wife, who together owned 387 of the 500 shares, controlled the company. The capital stock of the corporation was $50,000, divided into shares valued at $100 each. A. C. Sphar was president and H. T. Miles was secretary and trea surer. After Sphar died in 1920, A. S. Clark and H. T. Miles assumed ownership of the company.

In 1908 the company had five rectangular brick kilns, a drying shed, two sorting sheds, a structure for storing bricks and hay, a corn crib, an oil house, a polishing house, an office, a brick machine with an 85-horsepower engine, and a water tank. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad provided transportation for the brickyard. By 1914, additions to the property included two large brick kilns and a second drying shed, and by 1926 a small hotair drying shed and a new brick machine had been added.

By 1922 the Sphar Brick Company had a large and well-equipped modern brickyard. Heinrich Ries described Sphar’s operation as follows: “Clay was excavated with a steam shovel, loaded into dump cars, and hauled to sheds. A brick machine was used to produce 30,000 to 45,000 pressed bricks per day. Tunnel dryers were employed to dry the bricks prior to firing. Seven rectangular kilns, including five downdraft and two up-draft kilns, were used to fire the bricks.” The company later produced a wire-cut “Face Building Brick” in smooth and rough textures. Ries noted that the bricks were a good red color, usually a deep or dark red; textured bricks were fired to different shades of red. Sphar bricks were sold in Kentucky and other states, almost exclusively through dealers.

The company used the Sphar brand name on its bricks.

The Sphar Brick Company’s corporate status expired on July 15, 1937. In December 1955, a new corporation with the same name was incorporated

by F. H. Peters and Mrs. M. R. Peters of Dayton, Ohio, with 15,000 shares of stock without par value. F. H. Peters was president; the company employed 35 men in 1955–1956, had 40 employees in 1957–1958, and had 35 employees in 1959–1960.

The company closed sometime between 1959 and 1961.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 23181, for the year 1920.

Ries, Heinrich. The Clay Deposits of Kentucky: An Economic Consideration of the Pottery, Brick,

and Tile Clays, Fire Clays, and Shales of Kentucky, with Notes on their Industrial Development. Series 6, vol. 2. Frankfort: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1922.

The Spirit of Greater Maysville & Mason County.

Maysville, Ky.: Daily Independent, 1935.

Charles D. Hockensmith

SPILMAN, FRANCIS “FRANK” (b. 1756, King George Co., Va.; d. September 22, 1828, Alexandria, Ky.). Frank Spilman, a Revolutionary War veteran, a civic leader, a humanitarian, and the founder of the city of Alexandria, Ky., came to the highlands of central Campbell Co. in 1796. He named the town he founded after the one he had left in Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, Spilman served as a sergeant in the Virginia Cavalry and later served with Gen. George Rogers Clark. According to Spilman family tradition, Spilman met his wife Rebecca by honoring the request of a dying soldier. While he was serving in the army, a buddy named Mumford, when near death from a battle wound, asked Spilman to take care of his wife Rebecca. Spilman married her in 1786, and the couple had eight children. Spilman was a shoe and boot maker by trade; but in his new town of Alexandria, he became a civic leader, serving as justice of the peace, county commissioner, and road surveyor. In 1819 he donated 12 acres of land on which to construct public buildings and had the town lots platted. After his close friends Benjamin and Jeannette Beall died, Spilman raised their two infant sons. He was a strong advocate of education and each day took children to the Walnut Hills Academy in Cold Spring, which was the finest school in the area. The original Spilman log cabin was located just north of where the First Baptist Church now sits. Spilman died in 1803 and was buried in the Spilman Family Cemetery, next to the church.

Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County.

Alexandria, Ky.: Self-published, 1997.

Jack Wessling

SPLIT ROCK CONSERVATION PARK. Split Rock Conservation Park at Petersburg in Boone Co., more commonly known as Split Rock, is a unique outdoor conservation education facility. It was opened to the public, on a limited basis, in spring 2002 by Wildlife Conservation Kentucky Inc., whose mission is to address the conservation issues in the Northern Kentucky area. Split Rock is a 165-acre park located at the confluence of the Ohio River and Woolper Creek. The highlight of the park is the geologically significant formation known as Split Rock, a conglomerate formed by an Illinoian glacier some 132,000 to 300,000 years ago. The park offers educational programs on the archaeology, the ecology, the geology, and the history of the area, including evidence of early human habitation at Split Rock. All education programs stress the need for visitors to conserve these valuable local resources for the community while exploring the park’s two miles of trails. Included in

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the park are scenic overlooks, ponds, 40 acres of native grasses, more than 10 different species of native trees, a four-acre wetland, and wildlife watering holes. By 2005 more than 4,500 visitors had experienced this unique outdoor center for educational and scientific research. Split Rock works with local cultural, historical, and scientific organizations to enhance and expand its conservation mission.

“Conservation Field Day,” KP, September 7, 2005, 2K. Jacobs, Mark. Interview by Gabrielle Summe, March 26, 2006, Petersburg, Ky. Jacobs is executive director of Split Rock Conservation Park.

Uhde, Andrea. “Rock Solid Treasure,” KP, May 24, 2002, 1K. Wildlife Conservation Kentucky. “Split Rock.” www .splitrockpark.org (accessed April 1, 2006).

Gabrielle Summe

SQUIRESVILLE. Squiresville in Owen Co. is five and a half miles west of Owenton along Ky. Rt. 1982. The village of Squiresville reportedly derived its name from the number of squires and magistrates who once lived there. Within the commonwealth of Kentucky, anyone who becomes a squire or a magistrate can use the title for life. Local surnames such as Montgomery, Nuttall, Burke, Long, and Bibb were common in the village. A post office existed there from 1871 to 1903. For many years, there was a school at Squiresville. The town was the boyhood home of Gen. Gerald “Jerry” Walter Johnson, an ace fighter pi lot of World War II who rose in his military ser vice career to become the U.S. Air Force inspector general. It was also the home of Richard C. Arnold, MD. Arnold, a career U.S. Public Health Ser vice employee, revolutionized the treatment of syphilis by demonstrating the effectiveness of penicillin as a therapeutic agent. At the Squiresville Cemetery are the graves of Rena Lusby Yancey, an Owen Co. poet and historian, and members of her family. Rena Yancey was the author of Kentucky Trails (1957), a book of poems.

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

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

STAFFORDSBURG. Staffordsburg is a small Kenton Co. community located southeast of Independence. It is flanked by White’s Tower to the west and Visalia to the east. Like many communities with their roots in the early 1800s, this small town developed around the need for a place for local residents to worship. In 1877 Rev. J. W. Hughes, later instrumental in the forming of Asbury College at Wilmore, held ser vices at Staffordsburg in a small school building. A year later, a one-fourthacre piece of land owned by W. W. Coleman was conveyed to be the building site for the new Ebenezer Methodist Church. Although two general stores, a school, and a blacksmith’s shop were already present, it was only after the church’s arrival

850 STAINED GLASS THEATRE that a true sense of community was formed. The church has been renovated many times over the years, most extensively in 1959. At that time a full basement was added, as well as brick veneer on the exterior, a choir loft, a new organ, and new pews from the dismantled Holy Guardian Angels Catholic Church located at the bottom of the Dudley Turnpike in Sanfordtown. Today, the general stores and the blacksmith’s shop are long gone, but the church thrives as the center of the small rural community.

“Kenton County—Staffordsburg,” DC, August 17, 1983, 2.

“Staffordsburg Church Celebrates Centennial,” Advertiser, August 17, 1983, 4.

Staffordsburg United Methodist Church. Centennial Directory, 1878–1978. Staffordsburg, Ky.: Staffordsburg United Methodist Church, 1978.

Robert D. Webster

STAINED GLASS THEATRE. The Stained Glass Theatre began in 1987, when a community theater group moved into the building at 802 York St. in Newport that for more than a century had been home to the Salem United Methodist Church. The 19th-century church was designed

by Samuel Hannaford and Sons. The Salem United Methodist Church was dedicated in 1883, when the congregation was made up of German Methodists. After a 1986 tornado left major steeple and roof damage, repair of the badly damaged building was fi nancially unrealistic for the church’s active membership of fewer than 50.

Therefore, the Salem United Methodist Church merged with Grace United Methodist Church in Newport and put the grand building up for sale.

Footlighters Inc., a nonprofit community theater orga ni zation established in 1963, purchased the building for $65,000. The group had previously performed at local high school auditoriums and at Westwood Town Hall in Cincinnati. After purchasing the marred yet extraordinary building, Footlighters proceeded to convert the historic structure from a church into a theater. The fi rst floor was made into a 75-seat theater, and a second-floor theater with 162 seats opened in 1991. The continuing renovation efforts at the Stained Glass Theatre have been supported by other community organizations: the Edgecliff College Theatre in Ohio donated lighting and seating, and Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV donated additional lighting equipment in 2004. Opening season for the Stained Glass Theatre in 1988 featured a per for mance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Per for mances since then have included The Secret Garden, South Pacific, Gypsy, and West Side Story. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Franzen, Gene. “Tornado Ended Church Function,” CE, November 5, 2000, B1.

Reis, Jim. “Historic Salem Church Now Used as Theater,” KP, August 13, 2001, 4K.

Stein, Jerry, and T. C. Brown, “Church to Become ‘Stained-Glassed Theatre,’ ” KP, June 2, 1987, 1B.

Judy L. Neff

STALLMEYER, SISTER MARGARET (b. August 18, 1946, Dayton, Ky.). Sister Margaret Stallmeyer, C.D.P., became the 13th president of Thomas More College on December 15, 2004.

She came to Thomas More from the convent of the Sisters of Divine Providence in Melbourne, Ky. Sister Margaret was born in Dayton, Ky., to Robert T. and Ruth Newman Stallmeyer. She joined the Congregation of Divine Providence in 1962 and took her vows in 1970. She received a BA in mathematics and secondary education from Thomas More College in 1968, an MEd from Xavier University in Cincinnati in 1972, and a degree in canon law from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., in 1987. Sister Margaret worked as an educator and administrator in two high schools in the Diocese of Covington for two decades. She served from 1988 to 1994 as tribunal director and judge for the Diocese of Lexington.

From 2001 through 2003 she was a member of the Board of Governors of the Canon Law Society of America. Sister Margaret also has considerable financial knowledge. She served as treasurer for the Sisters of Divine Providence for 10 years, from 1994 to 2004, and was on the Thomas More College Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2004 and on the St. Elizabeth Medical Center board from 1996 to 2005, the last four as chairperson.

She is an active member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Council of Independent Colleges, the Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges and Universities, the Greater Cincinnati Consortium of Colleges and Universities, and the Canon Law Society of America. Her involvement in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area includes board membership on the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and membership on the leadership team for Vision 2015, a contemporary planning effort for Northern Kentucky.

“Thomas More Adds Five Trustees,” KE, October 4, 1998, C1D. “Thomas More Announces 13th President,” SC, December 19, 2004, 2A. “Stallmeyer Inaugurated—’68 Graduate Is 2nd Woman President,” KE, April 30, 2005, 1A.

Kelly Marsh

STANBERY, HENRY (b. February 20, 1803, New York City; d. June 26, 1881, New York City). U.S. attorney general Henry Stanbery, the son of physician Dr. Jonas Stanbery, moved with his family to Zanesville, Ohio, at age 11. He entered Washington College (later named Washington and Jefferson College) in Washington, Pa., at age 12 and graduated four years later. He began the study of law in Zanesville and was admitted to the bar in 1821. At that time he attempted to open his own office but soon learned that Ohio law did not per-

mit persons under age 21 to practice law. So he worked under another attorney until 1824, before establishing his own law practice. About 1825 he married Frances Beecher, and they had three children. His wife died when the children were quite young, and he married his second wife, Cecelia Bond. Stanbery soon distinguished himself as an attorney; in 1846 he was appointed Ohio’s first attorney general. He spent the next five years in Columbus, where in 1850 he helped draft Ohio’s constitution. When his term in office ended, he returned to Zanesville. In 1856 he arrived in Cincinnati and the next year moved across the Ohio River to the District of the Highlands (now Fort Thomas) in Campbell Co. In 1866 he drafted the paperwork to incorporate that town, which was approved by the state in 1867. President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) appointed Stanbery as the U.S. attorney general in 1866. When the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson on February 24, 1868, Stanbery resigned as attorney general to serve as the lead attorney for the president’s defense. The trial caused him so much anguish that he soon became ill and had to relinquish his duties. When the impeachment vote failed, President Johnson attempted to return Stanbery to his former position as attorney general; however, the U.S. Senate would not approve his reappointment. Stanbery returned to his home in Kentucky and invested in local real estate. His eyesight slowly began to fail, and in 1880 he went to New York City for an operation, in an attempt to regain his sight. He died there in 1881. His body was returned to Cincinnati for burial at that city’s Spring Grove Cemetery. Today’s Stanbery Ridge Rd. in Fort Thomas is on the site of Stanbery’s farm.

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

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

Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1904.

Rim, Jim. Pieces of the Past. Vol. 2. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991.

STANLEY, BEUFORD E. (b. February 13, 1914, near Williamstown, Ky.; d. March 21, 1995, Cincinnati, Ohio). Funeral director Beuford Elwood Stanley was the youngest of three children born to William Saul and Elizabeth Ellen Lawrence Stanley. His father, a farmer and a building contractor, moved his family to Independence, Ky., and later to Covington, where Beuford graduated from Holmes High School in 1932. He chose his lifelong profession of funeral directing and embalming with the encouragement of his sister. After graduating from the Melton School of Embalming in Louisville and passing his examinations, he became a state-licensed embalmer and funeral director at the youngest eligible age of 21.

Stanley’s 60-year career as a funeral director and embalmer began when he was employed by O. P. Elliston in Williamstown; he purchased the funeral business from Elliston at the age of 23, in 1937. In 1939 Stanley married Frances Rae Clink-

STEAMBOAT DISASTERS

scales, and together they served Northern Kentucky as owners of the Elliston-Stanley Funeral Home.

Stanley’s life was characterized as one of compassionate ser vice to others, not only in his chosen profession, but also as a charter member and president of the Williamstown Rotary Club and the Williamstown Kiwanis and as a 16-year member of the Williamstown Board of Education, which he chaired from 1970 to 1972. He was a longtime member of the Williamstown Baptist Church, where he served on the church’s building committee. He was a member of the first board of directors of Parkview Manor Apartments, a public housing project for senior citizens sponsored by his church, a 50-year member of the Masonic Lodge (see Masons) and Order of the Eastern Star, and a longtime member of the Shrine and Scottish Rite.

Stanley’s legacy of ser vice remains as his wife and two sons, Michael and Dennis Stanley, along with grandsons Patrick and Douglas Stanley, continue to operate Stanley Funeral Homes in Williamstown, Crittenden, and Verona, Ky. In 2006 they observed the 125th anniversary of the founding of the business.

Baker-Nantz, Jamie. “Friends Recall Stanley’s Life,” Grant County News, March 30, 1995, 1.

“Beuford E. Stanley,” CP, March 22, 1995, 9A. Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

Stanley, Frances Clinkscales. Interview by William Michael Stanley, March 18, 2006, Williamstown, Ky.

William Michael Stanley

STANTON, HENRY T. (b. June 30, 1834, Alexandria, Va.; d. May 9, 1898, Frankfort, Ky.). Poet Henry T. Stanton, the son of Richard Henry Stanton, a U.S. congressman from Kentucky, and Asenath Th roop, moved to Maysville, Ky., with his family at age two. As a young person he developed an interest in poetry. He attended the Maysville Seminary (Maysville Academy) and later was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., but did not graduate. He married Martha R. Lindsey on June 4, 1856. Shortly after the Civil War began, Stanton enlisted in the 5th Kentucky Confederate Regiment and served as captain in Company B. During the war he held the position of assistant adjutant-general on the staffs of three different commanders: Gen. John S. Williams, Col. Henry L. Giltner, and Gen. John Echols, under whom he was promoted to major. He also served under fellow Kentuckians Gen. John C. Breckinridge and Gen. John Hunt Morgan. At the war’s conclusion, Stanton returned to Maysville and became editor of the Maysville Bulletin, continuing until 1870. He moved to Frankfort in that year to become chief assistant in the office of the state commissioner of insurance. He continued to write poetry, and some of his poems appeared in newspapers and periodicals. Several volumes of his poetry were published, two of them posthumously: Poems of the Confederacy and The Poetical Works of

851

Henry T. Stanton. His most famous poem was “The Moneyless Man.” He had one novel to his credit, the 1889 work A Graduate of Paris. Stanton died in Frankfort in 1898 and was buried at the Frankfort Cemetery.

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

Browning, M. Carmel. Kentucky Authors: A History of Kentucky Literature. Evansville, Ind.: KellerCrescent, 1968.

Thomas S. Ward

STANTON, RICHARD (b. September 9, 1812, Alexandria, Va.; d. March 20, 1891, Maysville, Ky.).

Richard H. Stanton, a lawyer, a judge, a newspaperman, and a U.S. congressman, was the son of Richard and Harriet Perry Stanton. He arrived in Maysville, Ky., in 1835 and served as the editor of the Maysville Monitor until 1841. In 1839 he was admitted to the Kentucky bar, in 1845 he became the postmaster of Maysville, and in 1849 he was elected to the U.S. Congress, serving three terms.

During the Civil War, he was arrested by Gen. William “Bull” Nelson for his pro-Southern stance, reportedly for his advocacy of Kentucky’s secession from the Union. This action encouraged many of his Maysville friends to join the Confederate side. Stanton signed an oath of allegiance to the Union cause and was released.

In Maysville, Stanton resided at the northwest corner of Walnut and Front Sts., in a home that burned down in 1897. He retired from the practice of law in 1885 after serving as a district judge in Mason Co. He married a Miss Throop in Alexandria, Va., in 1833 and was the father of Henry T. Stanton, the poet laureate of Kentucky. He died in 1891 in Maysville and was buried at the Maysville Cemetery.

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

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

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

Michael R. Sweeney

STAVERMAN, LARRY (b. October 11, 1936, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. July 12, 2007, Edgewood, Ky.). Larry Joseph Staverman was the fi rst basketball player to come out of Newport Catholic High School (see Newport Central Catholic High School) and play in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was the son of Matthew and Loretta Siemer Staverman. He grew up in Covington but attended high school in Newport. Although best known as a basketball player, he was also an accomplished baseball pitcher, playing both sports for legendary coach Jim Connor at Newport Catholic High School. Staverman was a member of the class of 1954. He went on to graduate from Villa Madonna College (see Thomas More College) in 1958 and was drafted in the NBA’s ninth round that year by the Cincinnati

Larry Staverman.

Royals. He was a six-foot-seven forward who played professionally for five years with the Royals, the Chicago Zephyrs/Baltimore Bullets, and the Detroit Pistons.

While an assistant at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., Staverman was selected as the first coach of the American Basketball Association’s Indiana Pacers in 1967 and served in the same capacity with the NBA’s Kansas City Kings in 1978. For 15 years he was the superintendent of the old Cleveland Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio, and later helped to build the new multipurpose stadium downtown in Nashville, Tenn. He died in 2007 and is buried in Mother of God Cemetery in Covington.

“Larry Staverman.” www.wikipedia.org (accessed January 5, 2007).

“Our Larry Leader of Kings,” KP, January 10, 1978, 9K. Staverman, Larry. Telephone interview by Michael R. Sweeney, January 9, 2007.

“Staverman New King’s Assistant,” KP, December 15, 1977, 27K.

Michael R. Sweeney

STEAMBOAT DISASTERS. The first steamboat appeared on the Ohio River in 1811, when the New Orleans came through on its way to New Orleans. Although the new invention represented a huge advance in transportation, it carried serious risks. The elements were unpredictable; the equipment used, such as the boilers and the gauges, was relatively primitive; and the operators of early steam vessels often lacked necessary knowledge or caution. The average life of a steamboat in the 19th century was approximately four years. While nature provided hazards in the form of snags, ice, fog, and high and low river levels, manmade disasters such as explosions, collisions, and fire (which often occurred during racing) were among the reasons vessels—and many lives—were lost.

Steam packets carry ing cargo and passengers grew in popularity. As business developed, pressures such as cargo and passenger deadlines grew as well and could encourage risk-taking. Voyages

852 STEINFELDT, HARRY A. were undertaken even when the water level was low, exposing the packet and its contents to special hazards. During the late 1840s, bulk cargo carriers in the form of steam towboats made their appearance, and after the Civil War they began to supplant the packet trade. Far fewer towboats were lost, for many reasons. Business was much less pressing for bulk cargo than for passenger and miscellaneous cargo transport. Steam towboats, like their modern propeller-driven diesel descendants, were generally under contractual obligation to one or more parties simply to deliver their cargoes intact, and thus did not fall victim to accidents caused by speed or racing. The towboats’ heavier machinery called for stronger hulls and adequate bracing, which in turn required a greater depth of hold. Before channel improvements were made in the early 20th century (See Ohio River Navigation), the river was shallower, and towboats frequently were laid up during low-water season. As a result the life of their hulls and machinery was prolonged.

The Northern Kentucky shore between Maysville and Carrollton was the scene of many disasters. In the lists below, the boats are packets unless identified otherwise, and all the vessels were lost except the few noted otherwise.

Boiler Explosions Union, below Big Bone Island, December 2, 1826 Tally-ho, Dover Landing above Augusta, May 1, 1830 Redstone, Carrollton wharf while racing with Wild Wagoner, April 2, 1852 Raven (towboat), Covington, April 5, 1870, raised and returned to ser vice Phantom, Brooks Bar above Maysville, while racing with Handy, June 28, 1881 Collisions Polander and Hornet, opposite Cincinnati, Ohio, April 19, 1832 Brooklyn and Confidence, Big Bone Island, November 6, 1849 Brooklyn (towboat) and Scioto, Augusta, 1853 John C. Fremont and Switzerland, near Ghent, January 1855, both returned to ser vice Kentucky Home and Telegraph No. 3, Sugar Creek Bend, July 30, 1855, returned to ser vice Lady Walton and Norman, one mile above Warsaw, August 2, 1864 Highland Chief rammed by Major Anderson, two miles above Ghent, August 18, 1864 C.T. Dumont and Tom Rees (towboat), Big Bone Island, December 14, 1865, both returned to service America and United States, Rayls Landing near Warsaw, December 4, 1868 Henry M. Stanley and Joseph Walton (towboat), Rabbit Hash, sinking the latter, April 4, 1900 Cincinnati and Belfont (diesel sternwheeler towboat), below Carrollton, May 24, 1928

Weather-Related Incidents Helen Mar, ice, Maysville, February 24, 1855, raised and returned to ser vice Albertine, Flag, Madonna, and Salem, ice, Covington, February 24, 1856 Washington, ice, Covington, February 1867 C.T. Dumont, tornado, Warsaw (Ky.) wharf boat, August 19, 1867 Champion No. 6 (towboat), below Cincinnati, December 12, 1869; later returned to ser vice Swallow, snowstorm, two miles below Covington, December 1869 Etna, ice, opposite Ripley, Ohio, January 12, 1879, raised and returned to ser vice Al Martin (towboat), ice, Carrollton, December 1903 Big Kanawha, ice, Maysville, 1906 Hattie Brown, windstorm, Carrollton, March 1915 Princess, ice, mouth of Kentucky River, Carrollton, January 1918 Fire Circassian and Trenton, Maysville, February 27, 1848 Belle Quigley and Vermont, Carrollton, February 5, 1856 Henry A. Jones, one mile below Augusta, February 27, 1858 Andy Fulton, Carrollton, July 29, 1861 Bostona No. 3, Maysville (Ky.) wharf boat, October 8, 1866 D.M. Sechler, Carrollton, December 4, 1868 Uncle Sam (towboat), Carrollton, October 17, 1914 Laurance, Maysville, 1930, rebuilt and returned to ser vice Ohio (ferryboat), Carrollton, May 15, 1936, rebuilt and returned to ser vice A.C. Ingersoll Jr. (towboat), one mile above the Tietzville Light, August 23, 1940 John J. Kelly (towboat), near Rabbit Hash, August 29, 1958 Captain Hook’s (floating restaurant, originally the towboat Destrehan), Covington, October 14, 1971 Miscellaneous Disasters Metropolis, sank at Sugar Creek near Warsaw, December 26, 1858 Tiger (towboat), struck Kirby’s Rock on Kentucky shore at Mile 500, June 7, 1864, raised and returned to ser vice Arrow (towboat), capsized opposite Aurora, Ind., December 14, 1865, raised and returned to service National, retired and wrecked by high water at Covington wharf, October 1873 Wildwood, sank at Augusta, ca. 1880 Bengal Tiger (towboat), wrecked against bridges near Covington, April 1883, returned to ser vice

Minnie Bay, sank on Kentucky shore opposite Moscow, Ohio, October 15, 1889 W.F. Nisbet, sank at Wellsburg, in Bracken Co., January 1, 1900 Fulton (towboat), capsized beneath Central Bridge, Newport, July 7, 1915 Jim Wood No. 2 (towboat), sank after striking pier at Lock and Dam No. 33 above Maysville, November 9, 1917 Margaret (towboat), capsized near Maysville, December 18, 1920, raised and rebuilt Helper (towboat), capsized in Cincinnati harbor, March 16, 1922, raised and returned to ser vice W.H. Warwick (towboat), sank above Dam 36, November 1923, and burned while sunk, November 27, 1923 Sallie Marmet (towboat), sank above Lock No. 36, August 1925, raised and returned to ser vice Calvin B. Beach (towboat), sank on bar opposite Higginsport, Ohio, January 8, 1938, raised and returned to ser vice G.W. McBride (towboat), struck the L&N Bridge at Newport and capsized, February 22, 1942 Omar (towboat), sank at mouth of Licking River, May 22, 1948, raised and returned to ser vice Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, comp. The Ohio River, 1934. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1935.

Lloyd, James T. Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters. Cincinnati: James T. Lloyd, 1856. Lithographed (Cincinnati: Young and Klein, 1979).

Lytle, William M., and Forrest R. Holdcamper, comp.

Merchant Steam Vessels of the United States, 1790–1868, Supplement No. 1. Ed. C. Bradford Mitchell. Staten Island, N.Y.: Steamship Historical Society of America, 1978.

Way, Frederick, Jr., comp. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1994.

Way, Frederick, Jr., and Joseph W. Rutter, comps.

Way’s Steam Towboat Directory. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1990.

Barbara Huff man

STEINFELDT, HARRY A. (b. September 29, 1877, St. Louis, Mo.; d. August 17, 1914, Bellevue, Ky.). Major league baseball player Harry Albert Steinfeldt was the son of Henry and Charlottte Todde Steinfeldt. The family moved to Bellevue, Ky., when Harry was a young boy. There, he met and married a local girl, Myrtle Lockwood, and they took up residence at 220 Ward Ave. in Bellevue. The couple had one child, a daughter. Steinfeldt began his big league career as a right-handed batting and throwing infielder/outfielder with the 1898 Cincinnati Reds. His best season with Cincinnati was in 1903, when he batted .312 and batted in 83 runs. He played with the Reds for seven seasons before being traded to the National League’s Chicago Cubs in 1906. Steinfeldt played third base for the Cubs, on the team that had the famous double-play combination of Tinkers, Evers, and Chance. That Chicago team played in the World Series in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1910 and won the World Championship in 1907 and 1908.

STEPHENS, ROBERT F.

They were considered one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. In 1909, when the Cubs failed to win the National League pennant, it was primarily due to the brilliant pitching of Covington, Ky., native Howie Camnitz, who led his Pittsburgh Pirates to the league championship.

When Frank Chance, first baseman for the Cubs, retired as a player in 1908 to become manager of the team, he moved Steinfeldt from third base to first. The move was not popu lar with Cubs fans, who later blamed Steinfeldt for the team’s not being World Champions in 1909 and 1910. Steinfeldt was traded to the National League’s Boston Braves in 1911 and retired from baseball at the end of that season. During his 14-year major league career, Steinfeldt appeared in 1,646 games, batted .267, hit 27 home runs, and batted in 762 runs.

After retiring he remained popu lar in his hometown, where he was expected to become the next mayor of Bellevue; however, he decided not to run. He was just 36 years old when he died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in his Bellevue home. He was a member of the Christian Science faith, and his pastor, Rev. Otterman of Cincinnati, conducted the funeral ser vices. Floral tributes and letters of condolence were received from all major league teams and nearly every prominent baseball player in the United States. Steinfeldt’s body was placed in a vault at Evergreen Cemetery, Southgate, but in 1921 it was moved to the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

The Baseball Page. “Harry Steinfeldt.” www.thebase ballpage.com (accessed January 7, 2007).

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 20419, for the year 1914.

Reference.com. “Harry Steinfeldt.” www.reference .com (accessed January 7, 2007).

Reis, Jim. “Famous Infield Also Included Bellevue’s Steinfeldt,” KP, March 30, 1998, 4K. ———. “The Wonder of Wonderville,” KP, March 8, 2004, 4K. Spring Grove Cemetery Records, Cincinnati.

“Steinfeldt Funeral Set for Thursday,” KP, August 19, 1914, 1.

STEINFORD, GEORGE AND ROSE (George Steinford, b. February 22, 1900, Covington, Ky.; d.

July 9, 1980, Covington, Ky.; Rosalyn Barnett Steinford, b. February 8, 1899, Paris, Ky.; d. December 22, 1973, Covington, Ky.). George Steinford was the son of stonecutter Charles G. and Anna Casselman Steinford; his wife, Rosalyn Steinford, was the daughter of James and Mary A. Salmons Barnett. George and Rosalyn married in May 1923. During the Great Depression, the couple recognized that poor children in their neighborhood in Covington were not happy at Christmastime. The Steinfords, who had no children of their own, began to purchase and repair used toys for the neighborhood’s needy children.

Thus began a lifelong project for Rose and George, who was a Kenton Co. commissioner and a Kentucky state representative.

During the next 50 years, the Steinfords quietly developed a network to secure the names of needy children and anonymously delivered the

toys to the children’s families during the Christmas season. What started as a neighborhood project soon expanded to include children in Kenton, Boone, and Campbell counties. The Steinfords’ home, at 513 W. Sixth St. in Covington, grew to resemble Santa’s workshop. Throughout the year, as toys were repaired and refurbished, the Steinfords developed their list of needy families and packed the gifts for those families. Friends of the Steinfords pitched in to handle the distribution of the toys.

When Rose Steinford died in 1973, it appeared that a tradition and much-needed ser vice had ceased. George Steinford’s health was failing, but several Covington–Kenton Co. Jaycees who had been involved in the project persuaded Steinford to continue to organize the Christmas project at least one more year. He did, and with the success of the project that year and the growing support of his friends, in 1974 he formed the Rose and George Steinford Toy Foundation Inc. to perpetuate the ser vice and continue to fulfi ll the couple’s stated wish, “that the Christmas spirit will fi ll a child’s heart in time of need.”

George died in 1980, but the Rose and George Steinford Toy Foundation continues the tradition of generosity that the Steinfords established. George Steinford was buried next to his wife of 50 years at the Mother of God Cemetery in Latonia. Since the formation of the foundation, volunteers have provided Christmas presents for nearly 2,000 children in Northern Kentucky each year.

“Ex-Kenton Commissioner George Steinford Dies,” KP, July 10, 1980, 8K. Kreimer, Peggy. “Mrs. Santa Claus Won’t Deliver Toys This Year,” KP, December 24, 1973, 3K. Reis, Jim. “Single Vote Launched Career, Ended Another,” KP, January 22, 2001, 4K. The Steinford Toy Foundation. “History of the Foundation.” www.steinford.org (accessed August 30, 2006).

Donna M. Bloemer

STEPHENS, LEONARD, GENERAL (b.

March 10, 1791, Orange Co., Va.; d. March 8, 1873, Florence, Ky.). Legislator and sheriff Leonard Stephens was one of 11 children born to Benjamin and Dorothy Waller Stephens. The family left Orange Co., Va., in 1806 and came, by way of Bryants Station, to their new home along the Banklick Creek in Kenton Co. Stephens served as a brigadier general in the War of 1812, where he fought in campaigns against the Indians. He married Catherine Sanford on August 14, 1813. Stephens was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1824 and served until 1828. In 1828 Stephens was elected to the state Senate, where he served until 1832. When Kenton Co. was split off from Campbell Co. in 1840, he was appointed the first sheriff of Kenton Co. and held that office for two years. Stephens continued to work his large farm until he was 75 years old. He distributed most of the land to his children while he was still living.

The 1,500-acre Stephens farm, known as Locust Grove, originally extended from today’s Stevenson Rd. to Richardson Rd. In 1855 Stephens helped to

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organize in Florence, Ky., the Florence Baptist Church, where he remained a member for the rest of his life. He moved to Florence shortly before his death. He died on March 8, 1873, at age 81 and was buried in the family graveyard, near Richardson Rd. in Independence.

Ellison, Carol. “A Dusty Reminder of Past,” KP, September 2, 1975, 5.

“Obituary of General Leonard Stephens,” CJ, March 15, 1873, 2.

STEPHENS, ROBERT F. (b. August 16, 1927, Covington, Ky.; d. April 13, 2002, Lexington, Ky.).

Robert Francis Stephens, a lawyer and a Kentucky Supreme Court justice, attended Beechwood High School in Fort Mitchell (see Beechwood Public Schools), where he was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1945. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1946. He enrolled in a prelaw program at Indiana University at Bloomington, Ind., in 1948 and graduated from the University of Kentucky Law School at Lexington in 1951. Stephens served as a law clerk for the Kentucky Court of Appeals through 1952. He worked for a year as an attorney for the Kentucky Department of Insurance.

From 1953 through 1958 he served as legal counsel and executive officer for the Salvage Lumber and Manufacturing Company. He was assistant county attorney for Fayette Co. during 1964–1969. He was elected Fayette Co. judge (the position now known as judge executive) and held that office from 1970 to 1975. In this position, he was instrumental in implementing the historic merger of the governments of the City of Lexington and Fayette Co. into the state’s first urban-county government.

Stephens served as attorney general of Kentucky from 1975 to 1979 and was then appointed a Kentucky Supreme Court justice by Governor Julian Carroll (1974–1979). In 1980 Stephens was elected to fi ll an unexpired term on this court and was subsequently reelected for eight-year terms in 1984 and 1992. During his tenure, he was part of a progressive court, which handed down a number of opinions that had a dramatic effect on all citizens of Kentucky. Their highest-profi le decision was in the 1989 case Rose vs. Council for Better Education, Inc., in which the court declared the funding of the state’s public school system to be unconstitutional. That ruling resulted in the 1990 enactment of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), which balanced the funding of schools across the state. Explaining the importance of the educational reform, Stephens said, “the children who live in poor districts and those who live in rich districts, must be given the same opportunity and access to an adequate education.” The court also mandated continuing education for judges and other court employees. Justice Stephens lobbied the General Assembly to have video cameras installed in courtrooms, making it possible to review tapes of trials, rather than sort through stacks of paperwork. Stephens resigned as chief justice in 1998 but continued to serve as a justice. The following year he resigned completely from the court to accept an appointment as secretary of the Justice Cabinet. He had served on the court for almost 20

854 STEVENSON, JOHN WHITE years, 16 of them as chief justice. Stephens died of lung cancer at age 74 at his Lexington home and was buried in the Lexington Cemetery.

Houck, Jeanne. “Robert F. Stephens: 1927–2002,” KP, April 15, 2002, 1K.

STEVENSON, JOHN WHITE (b. May 4, 1812, Richmond, Va.; d. August 10, 1886, Covington, Ky.). Prominent attorney and Democratic politician John White Stevenson was the son of Andrew and Mary White Stevenson. His early education was by private tutor, and he earned BA and JD degrees at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Afterward, he lived for a short time at Vicksburg, Miss., before coming to Covington in 1841.

He married Sibella Winston in 1843, and they had five children. Stevenson was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1845, where he served for four years. He next served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 to 1861. In 1867 Stevenson was elected Kentucky lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket to serve with Governor John L. Helm (1867). When Governor Helm died after five days in office, Stevenson became governor. During his term in office, Stevenson had to call out the state militia several times, to quell violence against African Americans who were attempting to assert their right to vote. He resigned as governor in 1871 upon being appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he served for six years. Stevenson died at age 73 and was first buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, then reinterred at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. www.senate.gov (accessed May 20, 2008).

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

STEWART IRON WORKS. The Stewart family, who came from the Glens of Scotland, arrived in Louisville during the early 1800s. Thomas Stewart was a contractor in Louisville who died young; two of his sons became steamboat captains. A third son, Richard C. Stewart (1829–1906), learned the blacksmith trade. By 1850 R. C., as he was known, was managing his own blacksmith business in Louisville. He resided for a time in Cleveland, Ohio, where his sons Richard C. and Wallace A. Stewart were born, and in Newport, but by 1862 R. C. Stewart Sr. had set up a business in Covington. Under the company name Architectural Iron Works, R. C. Stewart manufactured verandas, balconies, stairways, doors, shutters, cellar gratings, awnings, stirrups, anchors, hog chains, bolts, hinges, railings, bridge iron, and sheet iron at 813– 815 Madison Ave. Richard C. Jr. (1857–1937) and Wallace A. (1858–1910) followed their father into the iron industry, working from several locations within Covington. In 1886 the brothers ventured west to Wichita, Kans., where for a few years they successfully engaged in the iron business. For unknown reasons, they had moved back east to Cincinnati

Stewart Iron Works, Covington.

by 1895 and eventually became involved in enterprises such as jail-cell construction and decorative iron work. In 1903 their Stewart Iron Works (SIW) moved to a new modern plant at 17th St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. The facility was located at what was known as the KC Junction, the intersection of the Louisville and Nashville and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroads, a major railhead connection that facilitated making shipments nationwide. Ultimately, the local ironworking firm used four buildings at the Madison Ave. site for a wrought iron furniture and fence division, a truck division, the jail cell division, and, much later, a chain-link fence division. The company supplied iron fencing to the Sears and Roebuck Company of Chicago, under a 23-year contract.

Stewart Iron Works built railroad entrance gates for the Panama Canal and an iron fence around the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Recently the company as it is now configured restored the entrance gates to the White House that were in place during the term of President Rutherford B. Hayes, for the President Hayes Memorial Museum in Fremont, Ohio. During the Victorian era, Stewart Iron Works products were shipped internationally and graced the fronts of French châteaus, of London town houses, of houses on San Francisco’s Nob Hill, of brownstones in New York City, of homes in New Orleans, and of countless cemeteries. At the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis, the SIW was awarded the Grand Prize and the gold medal of merit in construction for its numerous designs of iron fencing and lawn furniture.

During World War I, Stewart Iron Works manufactured one-, two-, and three-ton trucks, under the name of the United States Motor Truck Company (incorporated 1914). Some of the trucks made by the firm were sold to local individuals; the first one off the assembly line went to John Craig, a contractor and former mayor of Covington. Some were delivered as far away as Australia. Over the

years, customers for SIW’s motor truck division included Dow Drug Stores, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cincinnati Post, Firestone Tire & Rubber, and Cincinnati’s Hoff mann Meats and French Bauer Dairy. The motor truck division’s high point was reached in 1918, when it delivered 100 trucks to the U.S. Army. The company also made heli exhaust manifolds for use in the diesel engines of submarines. The SIW truck division ceased in 1928.

The jail cell division delivered products to prisons such as the federal penitentiaries at Atlanta, Ga.; Alcatraz; and Marion, Ill., and to state penitentiary facilities at Sing Sing and Attica, N.Y., and New York City’s Rikers Island. According to a story told in the history of the Stewart Iron Works Company, during the early 1930s, a load of jail cells en route from the dock at San Francisco to Alcatraz Island slipped off the barge and rests still today at the bottom of the bay. The last jail cells were produced in 1985, when prisons began using electronic locking mechanisms. An extant example of a local Stewart jail product is the no-longer-used lockup at Brooksville, in Bracken Co. The old jail at Latonia (before Latonia became part of Covington) was Stewart-made. All told, the company built cells for at least 92 prisons and 85 smaller city station houses and lockups nationwide. The SIW also produced bank vaults.

During World War II, the SIW fashioned portable Bailey bridges for the U.S. Army. By folding and extending, these quickly laid iron bridges allowed military troop movements to cross waterways. The company also made folding landingstrip mats, tank parts, and machine gun mountings. The SIW and its employees held at least 27 U.S. patents, covering such products as racehorse track starting gates; jail-cell locking systems, including remote-control mechanisms; joist hangers; wedge-shaped hoof pads for horseshoes; selfclosing gates; radiator protectors; dumping devices for trucks; and fence rail connectors. The company has retained many of the century-old

STOBER, HENRY BERNARD

drawings, patterns, and molds of its products from its heyday, and some of them are still used today.

An outstanding employee of the SIW—one among many—was Robert C. “Cap” Bunge, a prison expert. In the early 1930s, the Federal Bureau of Prisons consulted with him in the planning stage before constructing Alcatraz, the strongest prison in the world, which was to be escape-proof and to house the nation’s most hardened criminals. He also served on a U.S. commission to develop the federal prison system. In 1949 Bunge retired from the firm’s prison division after 19 years as its chief engineer. His nickname Cap was from his rank of captain in the U.S. Army during World War I. Over the years, the Stewart family was heavily involved in the Northern Kentucky community.

R. C. Stewart Jr. was one of the founders of the Covington Industrial Club, the predecessor of the modern Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. He was also a baseball team owner and was instrumental in bringing to Covington its 1914 Federal League baseball franchise, the short-lived Covington Blue Sox. The family converted the old Star baseball park in Covington at 17th St. and Madison Ave., across from the firm’s factories, into Stewart Park, beautiful grounds available to both company employees and the public; it also served as a showroom for the SIW’s outdoor products. The Stewarts were benefactors of the Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington, lending time, workers, and funds toward its upkeep. They were members of Covington’s First Christian Church.

R. C. Stewart Sr. died in 1906, and Wallace A. Stewart died in 1910. The last Stewart family member to lead the company was Stanley M. Stewart, R. C. Stewart Jr.’s grandson, who headed the firm from 1944 until 1955. In 1966 the company was taken over by Pott Industries of St. Louis, which merged the SIW with Decatur Iron and Steel. In 1974 Pott Industries ordered Stewart-Decatur to sell off all its divisions except the jail works. One former division of Stewart Iron Works went to Erlanger, where it continued to make chain-link fence and ornamental iron gates, railings, and fences. In 1987 the Erlanger division of the new Stewart Iron Works returned to Covington to Building 3 at its former Madison Ave. site.

The company has since changed ownership several times but continues in a reduced state, specializing in ornamental gates, fencing, and furniture. Much of today’s production is for historic restoration and architectural accents. Privately held, the firm is a mere shadow of itself in its heyday, the early 20th century, when there were at least 300 employees and Stewart Iron Works was Covington’s largest employer. Today’s book of business has included projects such as at the Flagler Mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., two miles of fencing for a cemetery in Toledo, Ohio, and a city fountain (an elaborate dog, horse, and human drinking fountain) in Ligionier, Pa. During the early 1900s, the SIW was the world’s largest man-

ufacturer of iron fencing and lawn furniture and is still remembered for once having been Covington’s industrial giant.

“Covington Is to Secure Big Motor Plant,” KP, June 6, 1914, 1.

“Famed Prison Expert Retiring to Have Fun,” KP, March 26, 1949, 1.

Franzen, Gene. “Ironworks Spans 3 Centuries,” KE, December 30, 2001, B1.

Guido, Anna. “Iron Works Profits in Past,” CE, May 25, 2006, A10.

Hunnicutt, John M. “Profi le of the Stewart Iron Works Company, Inc., Covington, Kentucky,” paper delivered to the Christopher Gist Historical Society, May 28, 1963, Northern Kentucky Univ.

Archives, Highland Heights, Ky. Kreimer, Peggy. “Artisans Ply Ancient Trade,” KP, May 27, 2000, 1K. Lietzenmayer, Karl J. “Stewart Iron Works, a Kentucky Centenary Company,” NKH 5, no.1 (Autumn–Winter 1997): 1–14.

“Motor Truck Company Has Its Election,” KP, July 17, 1914, 1.

“Stewart Iron Works.” www.stewartironworks.com (accessed June 10, 2006).

“The Stewart Iron Works: A Credit to Covington and to the State,” KP, April 8, 1905, 8.

Stewart Iron Works Archives, Covington, Ky.

Sharon Jobert

STEWARTSVILLE. Stewartsville is located on Ky. Rt. 36, eight miles west of Williamstown, in Grant Co. During the 19th century, Stewartsville was a vital town: on Saturdays, its general stores were busy with grocery shopping, political rallies, and socializing. There also was plenty of work for the town’s blacksmith. The area’s rural economy was based on corn, tobacco, cattle, sheep, poultry, and horses. Transportation was improved when in 1891 the Stewartsville and Owen Co. Turnpike was incorporated locally, with Robert Clay Blain as president. By 1900 the use of tollgates on this turnpike was terminated because its users revolted.

Three churches anchored the community, the Stewartsville Baptist Church (still active), the Hopewell Methodist Church, and the Old Salem Methodist Church.

The schools of Hopewell/Sheriff, Smoky Row, as well as the Stewartsville School (still standing) were social centers, where pie suppers were held or pupils from the school gave recitations. Stables were provided at school for students arriving on horseback or in buggies. The yearly school census named each child between the ages of 6 and 20 as well as the head of each child’s household. Eight grades could be completed at the school under the instruction of qualified teachers who were supervised by the trustees. The Gaugh, Salem, Mitts Rd., and Sheriff cemetaries are nearby. A post office operated at Stewartsville from 1868 until the arrival of rural free delivery in 1906.

Chapman, Virgil, Sr., comp. Grant County Cemeteries. Vol. 1. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1988.

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

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Pease, Janet, comp. Abstracted County Court Records. Vol. 9. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.

Mary Louis Evans

STOBER, HENRY BERNARD (b. August 25, 1901, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. early January 1945, aboard the Japanese prisoner-of-war ship Enoura Maru, Takao Harbor, Formosa). Rev. Henry Stober, a Catholic priest and a World War II chaplain and hero, was the son of Martin and Philomena Luhn Stober. Raised in Cincinnati, he attended minor seminary (studying philosophy) at St. John’s Seminary in Little Rock, Ark., and major seminary (studying theology) at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati. After his ordination in 1931, Stober served at St. John Catholic Church, Covington; St. Elizabeth Hospital, Covington (later St. Elizabeth Medical Center); Mount St. Martin, Newport; St. Agnes Catholic Church, Fort Wright, the Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Joseph Heights, Park Hills; and the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington. In 1932–1933, he served as secretary to Bishop Francis W. Howard. Suffering from chronic sinusitis, for which he underwent surgeries, Stober followed the advice of his surgeon and spent time during the mid-1930s in the drier climates of Arizona and California, where he served as a priest. His health restored, he returned to Covington and in 1939 was appointed pastor of St. William Catholic Church, Williamstown. In 1940 he volunteered for ser vice as a chaplain in the U.S. Army, spending some time at Kelly Field and Brook Field, both in Texas. His rank was 1st lieutenant. The following year, he was deployed to the Philippine Islands as chaplain of the 14th Engineer and the 57th Infantry regiments and promoted to the rank of captain. On April 9, 1942, after U.S. forces on the mainland of the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese, Stober became a prisoner of war (POW) and was subjected to the horrible inhumanities of the Bataan Death March. On April 17, 1942, he arrived at the Japanese-controlled Camp O’Donnell in the Philippines. There Dr. Alvin C. Poweleit of Newport recognized Stober, who was emaciated and suffering from dysentery, malaria, and beriberi. Poweleit nursed Stober back to health, and in September 1942 Stober was sent for work detail on the island of Mindanao, at the Davao Penal Colony, where he ministered to Christians and Jews alike. In June 1944 he was sent aboard a prison ship to Manila and then to a POW camp at Cabanatuan. In December 1944 he and 1,600 other POWs boarded the Oryoku Maru, a “hell ship” bound for slave labor in Japan. Bombed by American airplanes, the ship sank, but Stober and others avoided drowning and were transferred to the Japanese ship Enoura Maru, where Stober died while the ship was anchored in the harbor of Takao, Formosa (Taiwan). Varying accounts place his death as sometime between January 1 and January 9, although the most plausible is the latter, when the Enoura Maru was bombed by U.S. planes. Deceased POWs were either buried or cremated at

856 STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER, SLAVERY TO FREEDOM MUSEUM Takao. Stober was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star (for valor), the Purple Heart, the Prisoners of War Medal, and the Asiatic and Pacific Campaign Medal. His name was included on the Chaplains’ Hill Monument in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Mahoney, A. Joseph. The Chaplain: Henry Bernard Stober Story, Captain United States Army, 1901– 1945. Lake San Marcos, Calif.: Privately published, ca. 2001.

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

Paul A. Tenkotte

STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER, SLAVERY TO FREEDOM MUSEUM. See Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum.

STREETCARS. Originally horse-drawn and later electrified, streetcars were the first major form of public transportation in American cities. The Covington Street Railway began operating the first horsecars in Covington along its Madison Ave. route in August 1867. In the same month it inaugurated ser vice across the John A. Roebling Bridge to Cincinnati; by July 1868 the Covington streetcars were carry ing 2,600 passengers per day across the bridge. In 1867 the Newport Street Railway Company established horsecar ser vice in Newport, extending it across the Newport and Covington Bridge at Fourth St. A third franchise, the Newport and Dayton Street Railway, completed construction of a line to Dayton, Ky., in 1870. A fourth corporation, the Covington and Cincinnati Street Railway Company, built north-south horsecar lines along Main and Scott Sts. in Covington in 1875, connecting them in a continuous loop along east-west streets Fourth and Pike. The following year, the Newport Street Railway Company completed tracks across the Newport and Cincinnati Bridge (the L&N Bridge). Expansion of the horsecar lines continued, and in the 1880s the four main streetcar companies of Covington and Newport were consolidated into one, which became known as the Green Line. The Green Line began conversion of its horsecars to electric streetcars in 1890 in Covington and in 1892 in Newport.

The Maysville Street Railroad and Transfer Company began the operation of horsecars in Maysville in August 1883 and gained permission to convert to electricity in 1890.

The electric streetcar was the dominant form of urban passenger transportation in Northern Kentucky between 1890 and 1930. Running on two steel rails and propelled by electricity accessed from an overhead wire by means of a trolley wheel or shoe, the streetcar represented a quantum leap in speed and comfort compared to the horse and buggy or even the early automobiles when they had to traverse largely unpaved, and sometimes almost impassable, streets and roads.

A streetcar right-of-way in urban areas was usually shared with horse-drawn (and later auto-

mobile) traffic. When a street railway built extensions to newly developing suburbs where a private right-of-way was the norm, the streetcars could double their average urban speed from 7 to 15 miles per hour. As a consequence, the streetcar was a primary factor in the development of business districts and residential subdivisions at everincreasing distances from traditional inner-city areas. The streetcar enabled individuals to reside outside the inner city, with its congestion and its often foul air, yet be within easy commuting distance of their downtown job site.

Although streetcar motors were typically powered by 550- to 600-volt direct current (DC), cheaper alternating current (AC) was either produced or purchased by transit companies for conversion to DC. By means of substations located at various points on a street railway, the AC current was fed through rotary converters that transformed it to safer DC for use by streetcars.

Direct current of 550 volts was supplied to the Northern Kentucky streetcars of the Green Line; it flowed from the trolley wire down the trolley pole to the motorman’s controller box on the front platform. The controller was a device for regulating the amount of current to be sent to the car’s motors. A slight turn or “notch” of the controller completed an electric circuit between the trolley wire, the motors, and the rail, allowing current to flow to the motors through a labyrinth of thin, cast-iron “grids” that offered considerable resistance and thereby limited the current to the right amount to produce a smooth start. As the motorman pulled the controller handle farther around, a drum switch inside the controller box gradually reduced the resistant grids until full line voltage was sent to the motors, causing the streetcar to run at top speed.

Each streetcar motor was contained in a watertight housing. The car axle passed through bearings at one end of the housing, and the other end rested on springs attached to the truck frame. A large gear on the axle meshed with a pinion on the armature shaft, and the motor revolved around the axle at about four times the speed of the car wheels.

To retard the speed of a streetcar, a motorman “notched down” his controller.

A streetcar built around 1900 was a marvel of the woodworker’s art. The car bodies were made almost completely of wood; the car floors under the seats were made of standard yellow pine, but the more durable maple was used for aisle floors.

Interior trim, sashes, and doors were made from cherry and mahogany. Side and end panels were constructed of five-eighths-inch yellow pine covered with a heavy-gauge steel.

The Green Line in Northern Kentucky employed two primary types of streetcars. Some 200 single-trucked streetcars (two-axle cars) made up the bulk of the Green Line fleet as late as 1929.

These 30-foot-long cars, seating about 35 passengers, had a crew of two: a motorman (the “driver”) and a conductor who stood by the backdoor entrance and collected fares, called out designated stops, and looked after the general well-being of the passengers. In 1917 the Green Line purchased

25 double-trucked (four-axle) cars measuring more than 45 feet long and capable of seating more than 50 passengers. These new cars were fitted with four 25-hp motors as compared to the two 35-hp motors in the single-truck cars. As an economy measure, the large cars were rebuilt in 1937 with larger front doors for passenger entry and with a fare box installed near the motorman’s seat, eliminating the need for a conductor.

The double-trucked cars were equipped with air brakes. Air pressure was supplied by an air pump driven by a small electric motor. As the pressure dropped, the motor driving a compressor would start up, to manufacture compressed air that was stored in a reservoir tank suspended from the car body. A small valve allowed the motorman to admit air under pressure from the reservoir to the brake cylinder and stop the car in a smooth and safe manner. The same compressed air was also used to apply sand to the car rails for an emergency stop or when the rails were slippery. A downward pressure on the brake valve actuated the rail sanders.

In addition to carry ing passengers (some 14 million in 1900 and more than 25 million by 1929), Green Line streetcars also hauled the U.S. Mail. Early cars were proudly lettered “U.S. Mail.”

In 1894 the Green Line started a closed-pouch mail ser vice to and from the General Post Office (GPO) at Fift h and Walnut Sts. in Cincinnati, connecting to Northern Kentucky points. The mail was generally loaded among the passengers, but where the conductor could keep an eye on it. By 1900 there were mail routes from Cincinnati to Milldale (Latonia), to Dayton, Ky., and to Fort Thomas. In addition, the Green Line carried the mail from the Covington Post Office to Ludlow.

Mail ser vice to Dayton, Fort Thomas, and Ludlow was discontinued in 1901, but the Green Line continued closed-pouch mail ser vice from Cincinnati to Newport (six trips per day), to Covington (nine trips), and to Latonia (two trips) for almost two more decades. The Green Line’s involvement with the U.S. Mail ended in 1919. With the everincreasing automobile traffic in downtown Cincinnati, the use of Green Line streetcars for onstreet loading and unloading of mail in front of the GPO caused delays to both Green Line passengers and vehicular traffic. By then the motor truck was coming into its own, and the Post Office found that off-street dock loading onto the more flexible trucks afforded better protection of the mail from both the weather and potential thieves.

The last Green Line car to carry mail left for Covington on July 26, 1919.

The Green Line also possessed two parlor cars, so named because they were equipped with curtains, carpeting, wicker tables and chairs, cut-glass dome lights, and even an ice-cooled refrigerator.

Although the parlor cars were designed primarily for the use of company officials during inspection trips and for entertaining important business clients, the public could also rent these cars. The two cars, the Bluegrass and the Kentucky, could be chartered for local excursions to the Lagoon Amusement Park, the Latonia Racecourse,

STRUBEL, EDWARD

Tacoma Park, or just a summer night out with a group of friends. Birthday parties in the parlor cars were especially popu lar, and until the 1930s, the Bluegrass and the Kentucky carried the welldressed partygoers to the new suburbs while they sipped pink lemonade, enjoyed cake and ice cream kept cool by the newfangled “dry ice,” and sang along with an accordionist or a violinist. The Kentucky remained available for use until 1950, when it was donated to the Behringer- Crawford Museum, where it survives today as one of the museum’s centerpieces. Built in 1892 and converted to its parlor-car configuration in 1912, it is one of the two oldest extant streetcars in the United States.

The car was restored by the volunteer efforts of Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky employees in the late 1990s.

In spite of their quiet operation and nonpolluting nature, streetcars fell out of favor with transit operators in the 1930s. Since roads were being paved at an ever-increasing rate by municipalities and other governmental authorities, motor buses were soon substituted whenever possible.

With their use, the expense of maintaining streetcar tracks was avoided. Motor buses, not confined to a narrowly fi xed rail path, could also more easily detour around traffic wrecks and flooded areas, and they could easily reach new subdivisions and industrial parks not accessible via the existing streetcar trackage.

Streetcars suspended operation in Maysville on December 31, 1936, being replaced by buses.

The last streetcar line in Campbell Co., No. 11–Fort Thomas, was discontinued on August 23, 1947. All streetcar ser vice in Northern Kentucky ended on July 2, 1950, when the No. 1–Fort Mitchell line was converted to motor buses.

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

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

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

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

Terry W. Lehman

STRINGTOWN (BOONE CO.). The name Stringtown is not unique to Boone Co. As a matter of fact, throughout this country’s history there have been hundreds of Stringtowns. It was a very common name given to the lineal towns and villages that sprang up along major roads, rivers, and ridges. A debate among locals concerns which geographical and topographical identifiers describe the “real” Stringtown in Boone Co. When John Uri Lloyd wrote his first novel, Stringtown on the Pike, set in his boyhood neighborhood of Florence, Ky., during the immediate post–Civil War era of the 1860s, he chose the name Stringtown instead of Florence, just as he chose the name Judge Elford in his text instead of Judge Herman Ashley, or Professor Drake instead of his father’s real name. Lloyd

readily admitted that all his characters were based on real people he knew who lived in the town. The people of Florence knew that Stringtown was really their town. Some even went so far as to lobby for the name to be officially changed to Stringtown.

That did not occur, but Stringtown remained Florence’s affectionate nickname over the years. The Stringtown that achieved official recognition was a little community also in Boone Co., just downriver from Anderson Ferry and Constance, on Ky. Rt. 8 along the Ohio River.

Reis, Jim. “Tiny Unincorporated Towns Abound in Boone,” KP, December 9, 1985, 4K. “Stringtown Goes a Bit Uptown,” CE, December 31, 2004, Weekend section, 14.

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

Don Clare

STRINGTOWN (GRANT CO.). Stringtown in southeastern Grant Co. is strung out along three roads: Ky. Rt. 36, the Williamstown-Cynthiana Rd.; the Corinth-Stringtown Rd.; and the StringtownWebber Rd. It may be said that the center of Stringtown is the junction of Ky. Rt. 36 and the CorinthStringtown Rd. This is not the Stringtown made famous by Northern Kentucky author John Uri Lloyd.

The first settlers at Stringtown, arriving in 1818, were Francis and Mary Terrell Robinson, their 14 children, some of whom were married with children, and their 25 slaves. Francis Robinson built a large log cabin for his family and other cabins for his slaves. As each of his children married, the couple was given a tract of land and had a cabin built for them. Thomas T. Thompson, who married Frances Robinson, appears to have assisted in providing for the housing needs of each of the children as they married.

The first school was a log structure, replaced by a white frame building in 1910. This school was consolidated in 1926 with the school at Corinth.

The Stringtown Christian Church was established in 1848 and rebuilt in 1877 on land donated by Benjamin Robinson, who specified that the church was to be named the Elizabeth Christian Church in honor of his daughter. This church is the only vestige remaining of the original town.

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

John B. Conrad

STRINGTOWN ON THE PIKE. In 1900 a novel by an obscure and unknown avocational author (but a famous and well-respected chemist and eclectic pharmacology genius) from Cincinnati named John Uri Lloyd (1849–1936) was serialized on the pages of the Bookman magazine.

Stringtown on the Pike was presented in the magazine’s serial sections over 10 issues. Later that same year, Dodd, Mead, and Company acquired the rights to publish the book by offering Lloyd more money than had ever been offered to any author, including Mark Twain. The book’s

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fi rst run of 50,000 copies sold within three months. The setting for the novel was Florence, Ky., where Lloyd grew up after coming to Northern Kentucky from New York with his family. His father was a civil engineer who relocated to help design and lay out a new railroad that never materialized. Instead of moving back, the Lloyds remained in Florence.

The characters and events of the book were all based on real people and true occurrences in Lloyd’s boyhood, as he often confirmed to the media. He portrayed himself as Sammy Drew; Judge Elford was actually Judge Herman Ashley, a man of the highest principles and morals, who presided for many years over Boone Co. courts; Professor Drake, a very learned and analytical man who instructed the youth of the county, was Lloyd’s own father. All the other characters were equally identified, recognized, and verified by the real residents of Florence, even 40 years later.

Featuring the mixed sentiments and emotions of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, coupled with an unprecedented treatment and presentation of local dialect and folklore, beliefs, and superstitions, Stringtown on the Pike quickly became an American favorite and classic, establishing Lloyd as one of America’s new and aspiring young authors and initiating a series of Stringtown novels.

Grayson, Frank X. “Historic Spots in Greater Cincinnati,” KTS, August 23, 1933, 7.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Lloyd, John Uri. Stringtown on the Pike: A Tale of Northernmost Kentucky. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1900.

Ward, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky.

Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1988.

Don Clare

STRUBEL, EDWARD (b. April 4, 1875, Bavaria, Germany; d. January 10, 1964, Covington, Ky.).

Edward Strubel, who became a church organist, attended a teachers’ seminary in Arnstein and a music conservatory in Speyer, both in Germany.

Trained as an organist, he left Germany at age 19 for the United States, arriving at Ellis Island on June 19, 1894. He had an aunt, Gertrude Strubel, in New Albany, Ind., where he found a home and was able to set up a studio to teach music.

During a visit to Cincinnati in August 1895, Strubel learned of an opening for an organist at Mother of God Catholic Church, Covington.

He went to see musician-priest Henry Tappert (see William and Henry Tappert), then assistant pastor, and applied for the position. Tappert gave Strubel one of his compositions, and Strubel promptly played several variations on the organ.

The young virtuoso was hired on the spot. His training had been as a church musician in the Catholic Caecilian tradition, which was popu lar at that time. Strubel’s subsequent 55 years of ser vice at Mother of God Church was interrupted only once when he left in 1905 for a position at St. Anthony Church in Brooklyn, N.Y. Tappert coaxed

858 SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT him back to Mother of God after only four months.

Strubel had a measure of regret when he later discovered that the Brooklyn position was more lucrative as well as more prestigious.

Perhaps the main reason for Strubel’s return to Covington was Rose Schmeing, a member of the St. Gregorius Society, for which he was organist.

Tappert was the director of this 50–70-voice mixed adult choir. Rose and Strubel met during choir practices and fell in love. They married in 1906, both at age 31, and rented an apartment at 501 Russell St. in Covington. Edward could conduct private music lessons there as well as walk to work. By 1908 the family purchased a small house at 1040 Scott St., where they raised a son and a daughter.

In 1909 Professor Strubel (as he and other organists were known by students) and several prominent Northern Kentucky musicians, including Professor Sylvester Eifert (organist at St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Covington) formed the Mendelssohn Singing Society. After only three years of guiding the Mendelssohn group, Strubel had also become director of at least four male singing societies in Cincinnati and one as far away as Hamilton, Ohio. Most of them rehearsed with him at Grammer’s Café on Liberty and Walnut Sts., in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati.

Strubel directed the regional Bayerisch Männerchor (Bavarian Men’s Choir) through its 50th anniversary in 1937.

The highlight of Strubel’s career, as it concerned directing German singing societies, occurred in 1924. To celebrate a diamond jubilee, the Nordamerikanischen Sängerbundes (North American Singing Society) conducted a national contest for new compositions of American folk songs. Both music and lyrics had to have been composed by Americans. After much searching, Strubel came upon James Whitcomb Riley’s poem “When Evening Shadows Fall.” He set the poem to music and arranged the work for a four-voice male chorus; the piece won first prize. Strubel later attended the national festival of 1924 and directed his prizewinning song with 152 societies in attendance and almost 4,000 singers.

By 1938 the Strubels had moved into their final home at 2014 Greenup St. In 1946 Strubel received the papal medal Pro Pontifice et Ecclesia in recognition of 50 years of ser vice at the parish. Strubel had many compositions for church use published

by McLaughlin & Reilly, J. Fischer & Brothers, and the Theodore Presser Company. In 1958 he collaborated with local poet-columnist Alice Kennelly Roberts on a song dedicated to Covington’s Garden of Hope. He died in 1964, as did his wife Rose, and both were buried at Mother of God Cemetery, Covington.

Litzenmayer, Karl J. “Professor Edward Strubel, Composer, Church Musician, Teacher (1875–1964),” NKH 1, no. 1 (Autumn–Winter 1993): 27–37.

Karl Lietzenmayer

SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT. In Northern Kentucky, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), at least two hospitals, and other organizations, of-

fer assistance to substance abusers. AA, which began in 1935, came to Northern Kentucky about 1945, when a man remembered as Mr. Meyerson held one of the first group Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the region, according to Tony D., an AA historian. (Because of AA’s principle of anonymity, full names of individuals involved are rarely available.) An AA group is a gathering of two or more people who share their stories, their pains, and their hope for a better life.

A booklet titled The History of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in Cincinnati: 1941 through 1964 describes the establishment of a large home at 405 Oak St., in Cincinnati’s Mount Auburn neighborhood, as the central location for anyone sharing the desire to stop drinking. A prominent Cincinnati lawyer, whose son suffered from alcohol abuse, knew the homeowner, whose father and brother were active alcoholics. Through those chance acquaintances, 405 Oak St. developed into what it is today, the most well-known alcohol recovery center in Greater Cincinnati. Today, 405 Oak St. remains AA’s unofficial headquarters in Greater Cincinnati, offering meetings, information, and fellowship every day of the week, 365 days per year.

Northern Kentucky’s first official AA group was formed and chartered in New York City on July 11, 1947; founding members were Vertna C., Lawrence D., Farrell H., Hetty H., Albert K., Jack McG., and John T. That group met at St. Mary’s School on Madison Ave. (see Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) in Covington, between 11th and 12th Sts. By 1964 there were six groups in Northern Kentucky. Meetings were held several times each week in Newport, Covington, and Erlanger. One of them, called the Covington Group, met in Covington at the Madison Ave. Christian Church, 1530 Madison Ave., at 8:30 p.m. on the third Sunday of the month. As of summer 2006, that group, now named the Madison Group, was meeting every Sunday night.

During the late 1960s, an AA group met in a restaurant at 237 Court St., Covington, a facility now buried under the southbound ramp of the John A. Roebling Bridge. By July 1980 that group had outgrown the Court St. space. A brief history, with no author listed, says, “A committee consisting of Fred Read, Cy Dilhunt, Larry Droege and Ted ‘Jelly Roll’ Vale searched for [a] new building for drunks to call home.” Rev. William Mertes, of Mother of God Catholic Church, guided the group to a rundown building in Covington at 531 Russell St. A lifeboat for those in need of help, Father Mertes, now deceased, was an unwavering supporter of anyone down on his luck or trying to improve his life. The first official meeting of a group at 531 Russell was on February 14, 1981, and the last was on November 27, 1999. Roughly 2,000 people per month had been attending meetings there. A shotgun-style building at 722 Washington St., once used for food storage, became the new Covington AA clubhouse in late 1999. A coffee shop and meeting area comprising a front room and a large back room, about the size of a small gym, remained in operation there as of summer 2006.

According to a March 2006 AA listing, approximately 25 meetings were being held in Northern Kentucky; there were one or more meetings every day of the week, each day of the year, and special meetings were scheduled on major holidays such as Christmas. AA’s central Northern Kentucky office, located in Covington at 1729 Madison Ave., offers staffed ser vices Monday through Saturday, and an emergency phone operates around the clock. Clubhouses include one at 722 Washington St., Covington; the Promises Club (formerly the Ninth St. United Methodist Church) at Ninth and Anne, Newport; and the Alano Club, 249 Main, Florence.

The St. Elizabeth Medical Center and the St. Luke Hospitals offer a variety of inpatient, outpatient, and residential treatment plans. At the end of treatment, or as part of treatment, each medical facility sends patients to AA. Transitions Inc., formerly known as the Comprehensive Care Center (see NorthKey Community Care), an offshoot of the Northern Kentucky Regional Mental Health–Mental Retardation Board, offered substance abuse treatment and education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In spring 2006 Transitions gained approval to build a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Erlanger, in the Plea sure Isle Swim Club area off Madison Pk. in Kenton Co., using approximately $3.5 million in federal and state funds. The new facility will be modeled after The Healing Place in Louisville, which carries out cutting-edge substance abuse treatment. Homeless alcoholics are taken by the police to The Healing Place’s detox center as an alternative to drying out in a drunk tank. After a week, individuals are offered a choice to enter The Healing Place’s program or return to their former way of life. About 50 percent choose the program. Another source of assistance is Droege House, named for longtime substance treatment advocates Larry Droege and his sisters, Virginia and Margaret, which is currently located in the former Speers Hospital nurse quarters, 925 Fifth Ave., Dayton, Ky. (see Speers Memorial Hospital).

Even though help is available from various organizations, the region’s substance abuse rate continues to grow. More and more, mental health associations, hospitals, insurance companies, and treatment centers see alcohol and drug abuse as a national health crisis. Costs of substance abuse show up, for example, in spouse or child abuse, burglaries, job loss, divorces, homelessness, medical malpractice, and negligent homicide while driving under the influence. The road to recovery recommended by AA is to follow a 12-step program on a daily basis. Key ingredients in the program are helping others, spirituality, and removing harmful thinking from one’s mind. All detox programs are temporary solutions; individuals are generally referred to AA for long-term or permanent recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction.

“Combating Drugs, Alcoholism,” KP, April 7, 2000, 3K. Eigelbach, Kevin. “Rehab Center OK’d: Erlanger Board Approves Project,” KP, April 25, 2006, 1A.

SUMME, GREGORY LOUIS “Help for the Most Helpless,” KP, October 21, 1908, 4.

“Transitions Offers Addicts a Way Out,” KP, November 11, 1989, 8K.

Roger Auge II

SUDDUTH, HORACE (b. August 8, 1888, Covington, Ky.; d. March 19, 1957, Washington, D.C.).

Businessman Horace Sudduth was the son of Charles Sudduth and Mattie Lee Howard Sudduth.

In 1906 Horace graduated from Covington’s African American high school, William Grant High School, while also working as a messenger for the U.S. Post Office. One of Sudduth’s teachers stated, “Horace was a dedicated pupil and his high school education was all the formal training he received.

But he obtained the skill and confidence needed to pursue a career in business.” It was during his high school graduation commencement that Sudduth first acknowledged in public his personal admiration for business. His oration was “The Growth of Industrial Pursuits.”

By marrying Melvina Jones, the sister of Charles E. Jones, a funeral director in Covington, Sudduth established the family bonds necessary to proceed with the new business development he had planned for Covington. But it was across the Ohio River in Cincinnati where Sudduth became a business and civic leader. He soon proved to be astute both in developing modern business practices and in establishing organizations to promote such endeavors. He founded the Horace Sudduth and Associates Real Estate Agency and was owner of the Manse Hotel, the place where influential African American visitors such as Sammy Davis Jr. stayed while in the area.

Sudduth served as president of two national organizations, the National Negro Business League, whose sole purpose was to promote black-owned businesses, and the Industrial Federal Savings & Loan Association. He was also president of the Crawford Old Men’s Home and the New Orphan Asylum for Colored Children of Cincinnati. Sudduth’s greatest impact, however, was in helping to promote progressive business thinking among fellow African Americans both in Cincinnati and in his hometown, Covington. Along with Charles Jones, his father-inlaw, Sudduth helped establish and lead Covington’s African-American Businessmen’s Association.

For many years he and his wife were members of the Ninth St. Methodist Episcopal Church. Sudduth died at age 68 in 1957 in Washington, D.C., where he had traveled on business. He was buried in the United American Cemetery in the Madisonville, Ohio, suburb of Cincinnati.

Garretson, Joseph. “A Tribute to a Negro Hotel Operator,” CE, April 16, 1950, sec. 2, p. 3.

“Long Illness Fatal to Horace Sudduth,” CP, March 20, 1957, 6.

Middleton, Stephen. “We Must Not Fail!!! Horace Sudduth: Queen City Entrepreneur,” QCH 49, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 3–20.

“Open House at New Manse Hotel,” CE, April 1, 1950, 12.

“Wm. Grant High School Commencement,” KTS, June 8, 1908, 1.

Theodore H. H. Harris

SUGAR GROVE PLANTATION. Reportedly named for the sugar maple trees on the property, the Sugar Grove Plantation was located at river light number 247 along the Ohio River, in North Bend in Boone Co. The original 650-acre plantation was included in land granted to Christopher Clark and surveyed in his name. Over the years, Sugar Grove has been touched by fame and the roots of American history. John Brown (1752– 1824), a New Jersey native and a Revolutionary War veteran, settled the land he later named Sugar Grove Plantation sometime in the 1790s. Brown, along with neighbors Cave Johnson and Jacob Piatt, was prominently involved in the establishment of Boone Co. in 1799 (see Cave Johnson House). Brown was known for his close association with John Cleves Symmes, a fellow veteran and a neighbor across the Ohio River. Brown lived on the Sugar Grove Plantation with his only surviving child, Clara Harlow Brown (1783–1847).

Clara Brown married her young first cousin Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1779–1813) on March 4, 1801. She resided at Sugar Grove while her husband, the famed explorer and general for whom Pike’s Peak was named, was engaged in adventures for the military. In April 1813, Pike died from wounds received in the Battle of York. Clara and their surviving daughter Clarissa remained at Sugar Grove. Clarissa Pike (1803–1837) eventually married John Cleves Symmes Harrison (1798–1830), the eldest son of President William Henry Harrison; John and Clarissa Harrison had six children.

When John Brown died in the fall of 1824, his will stated that the Sugar Grove Plantation (642 acres at the time), including all its contents, was to go to his infant son John Brown, born on August 11, 1824. Clara Pike was to be given other properties, but she would receive Sugar Grove only if her half brother did not reach maturity.

Clara assumed responsibility for the property taxes in 1825. After Clara’s death, an 1847 amendment to John Brown’s will stated that John Brown’s “infant son and devisee John Brown departed this life in his tender infancy and without issue.” In June 1847 the then 667.5-acre estate was divided among Clara Pike’s six grandchildren, who had been raised by her after being orphaned 10 years earlier.

According to Marjorie Byrnside Burress, in the mid-1840s the original Sugar Grove mansion burned, taking most of the Brown-Pike history with it. Oral tradition holds that a new residence was built farther away from the river, using the bricks from the original house. The property passed into the hands of the Southgate family after 1915. The Southgates did not reside on the property, and the second residence fell into disrepair and eventually burned in the late 1980s. The Brown-Pike-Harrison Family Cemetery remains on the property.

Bond, Beverly W. The Intimate letters of John Cleves Symmes and His Family. Cincinnati: Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 1956.

Boone Co. Tax List, 1799, Boone Co. Court house, Burlington, Ky.

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Boone Co. Tax List, 1825, Boone Co. Court house, Burlington, Ky. Boone Co. Will Book B, pp. 156– 61, Boone Co. Court house, Burlington, Ky. Boone Co. Will Book E, pp. 58–59, 79–84, Boone Co. Court house, Burlington, Ky. Cist, L. J. Cincinnati Gazette, April 5, 1881.

Worrel, Stephen, and Anne W. Fitzgerald. Boone Co., Kentucky, Marriages, 1798–1850. Falls Church, Va.: S. Worrel, 1991.

Bridget B. Striker

SUMME, GREGORY LOUIS (b. November 25, 1956, Covington, Ky.). Gregory L. Summe, a business executive, is the 5th of 12 children of James and Mary McQueen Summe. He graduated from Covington Catholic High School and entered Thomas More College, then transferred to the University of Kentucky, where he received a BS in electrical engineering. His postgraduate degrees include an MS from the University of Cincinnati in electrical engineering and a MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1983 Summe joined the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company Inc. and became a partner in 1990. From his home in Atlanta and later, for a time, Hong Kong, he traveled the globe in ser vice of his clients. In 1992 he became the general manager of Commercial Motors for General Electric. From 1993 to 1998, he was president, successively, of the General Aviation Avionics, Aerospace Engines, and Automotive Products Group divisions of AlliedSignal, now Honeywell Corporation.

Summe became the president and operating officer of EG&G (originally Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier Inc.) in 1998. In 1999 he became the chief executive officer and also the chairman of the board. He directed the transformation of a company that was primarily a diversified government contractor into to a focused high-tech corporation. In October 1999 the corporate name was changed to PerkinElmer Inc. He streamlined the company’s focus from a broad base of defense and industrial markets to two emphases—life and analytical sciences and photonics. PerkinElmer is a leader in the field of neonatal genetic testing and scientific instruments for discovering new drugs.

PerkinElmer Inc. has 8,000 employees serving customers in more than 125 countries and is a component of the S&P Index.

Summe is a director of the State Street Corporation. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for Boston College and on the University of Kentucky Electrical Engineering Advisory Board. He is a former director of the TRW Corporation and a former member of the Singapore-U.S. Business Council. He has been active in many civic endeavors, including the United Way, Boy Scouts, and the March of Dimes. In 2004 he was the Massachusetts recipient of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Humanitarian Award. He is married to Susan Louise Stevie and has three children. They reside in Weston, Mass.

Heimbouch, Hollis. “Racing for Growth: An Interview with PerkinElmer’s Greg Summe,” Harvard Business Review, November–December 2000.

860 SUMME, PATRICIA M. PerkinElmer. “Summe Biography,” in e-mail to author, October 2, 2006.

Univ. of Kentucky College of Engineering Hall of Distinction. “Gregory L. Summe.” www.engr.uky.edu/ alumni/hod/summe (accessed September 25, 2006).

Robert W. Stevie

SUMME, PATRICIA M. (b. May 20, 1953, Covington, Ky.). Patricia Mary Summe, the fi rst woman Kenton Co. Circuit Court judge, is the daughter of prominent attorney Joseph L. Summe and Kathleen “Kit” Maguire Summe. The third of six children, Patricia lived in Covington until 1957, when the family moved to Fort Wright. She attended St. Agnes Catholic Church grade school and graduated from Notre Dame Academy, in Park Hills, in 1971 and Xavier University, in Cincinnati, in 1975. She received a JD degree from Chase College of Law, in Highland Heights, in 1979. Following the death of her father in 1980, she became a partner in Summe & Summe attorneys at law. Summe served as city attorney of Fort Wright from 1982 to 1994 and as city attorney of Ludlow from 1990 to 1994. After practicing in the areas of family law, municipal law, personal injury, and real estate, Summe successfully ran for the Kenton Co. Circuit Court in 1994. She serves on the Kentucky Bar Association’s committee for judicial concerns. She was board president of the Chase College of Law Alumni Association from 1983 to 1985, was president of the Redwood School (see Redwood Rehabilitation Center) from 1988 to 1995, and served on the board for the First Bank of Northern Kentucky. Summe’s commitment to the community earned her the Kentucky Post’s “Outstanding Woman of the Year” award in 1998, and in 2003 she received the Martin Luther King award from the local chapter of the NAACP. She is active in her parish and in various charities and nonprofit organizations.

“Notre Dame Recognizing 3 Alumnae,” KP, February 25, 2004, 3K. Summe, Patricia. Interview by Gabrielle Summe, January 1, 2006, Fort Wright, Ky. “Woman Breaches Male Bastion,” KE, November 15, 1994, B3.

Gabrielle Summe

SUMMERS, HOLLIS S. (b. June 21, 1916, Eminence, Ky.; d. November 14, 1987, Athens, Ohio).

Novelist and poet Hollis Spurgeon Summers Jr. was the son of a Baptist minister, Rev. Hollis Spurgeon Summers Sr., and Hazel Holmes Summers. During his youth, Hollis Jr. and his family lived in parsonages at Campbellsville (Taylor Co.), Louisville, and Madisonville, Ky. He earned his BA from Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky., in 1937, his MA from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt., in 1943, and his PhD from the University of Iowa at Iowa City in 1949. His fi rst employment was as an English teacher at Holmes High School in Covington. His next teaching position was at his alma mater, Georgetown College. In

1949 he was appointed chair of the English department at the University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington, where he taught for the next 10 years. While at UK, he and his colleague Robert Hazel played major roles in the nurturing and development of five “world-class” writers: Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, James Baker Hall, Gurney Norman, and Bobbie Ann Mason. After leaving UK, Summers taught at Ohio University in Athens from 1959 to 1986. He married Laura Vimont Clarke on June 13, 1981, and they had two sons, David Clarke Summers and Hollis S. Summers III. Colleagues of Hollis Summers described him as a cultivated, sophisticated individual, “punctilious” and a good, sharp critic, who expected his students to dot every i and cross every t. Between 1948 and 1984, five novels, seven books of poetry, and numerous short stories written by Summers were published. He used his home state of Kentucky as the setting for many of his writings, and the underlying theme often dealt with the lifelong confl ict between religious teachings and human love affairs. His brother Joseph H. Summers Sr. was also a writer and an English professor, at the University of Rochester in New York. Hollis Summers Jr. died at his home in Athens, Ohio, at age 71 and was buried at the Millersburg Cemetery in Millersburg, Ky. After his death, Ohio University began awarding, in his honor, the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize for the best unpublished poem submitted each year, a practice that continues today.

Department of English & Theatre. “Hollis Summers.” www.english.eku.edu (accessed May 8, 2006).

Kentucky Educational Television. “The U.K. connection.” www.ket.org (accessed May 8, 2006).

Summers, Hollis Spurgeon. Brighten the Corner.

New York: Doubleday, 1952.

Ward, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky.

Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1988.

SUMMERS, JANE ROBERTA WHATLEY (b.

May 5, 1895, Selma, Ala.; d. June 29, 1992, Covington, Ky.). Community activist Jane Roberta Whatley Summers was the daughter of Calvin and Minerva Kendall Whatley. In 1934, at age 16, Jane Summers moved with her family to Covington.

She soon developed a community-service mindset. She joined the St. James A.M.E. Church and became one of the denomination’s most active members, both locally and nationally. As both a wife and a mother, it seemed that daily Summers was helping someone in need. For example, if she encountered a person who required medical attention, she would contact a local physician and stay at the person’s side until medical help arrived.

Throughout the years, because of such generosity, most local African American Kentuckians described Summers as an angel of mercy.

At age 50 Summers became the first African American manager of Covington’s Jacob Price Homes housing community, which was built in 1939. As manager, she helped numerous residents by conducting yearly fundraising events, by offering individual counseling sessions on health-care topics, and by sponsoring workshops on how to

gain access to local governmental agencies. During these years, many local residents referred to Summers as “Mama Janie.”

Even after leaving her Jacob Price Homes position at age 75, Summers continued to serve her community. She was a member of the Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission, the Northern Kentucky Interfaith Commission, the local Meals on Wheels program, and the Kentucky Human Rights Commission. She also was active in the local NAACP chapter and helped to organize a regional Poor People’s Campaign.

In 1992, as a testament to her various humanitarian activities and extraordinary community ser vice, Summers was inducted into to the Northern Kentucky Leadership Hall of Fame. After her death that year, Summers continued to receive posthumously notable awards, celebrity plaques, and recognition decrees, such as a key to the City of Covington, a proclamation from the Kenton Co. Fiscal Court, an honorary and recognition letter from U.S. senator and former Kentucky governor Wendell Ford (1971–1974), a Community Ser vice Award from the Covington–Kenton Co. Jaycees, and election into the Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Throughout her 97 years, Summers was an essential and preeminent community activist, who waged a lifetime battle against racism, homelessness, illiteracy, and hunger.

African American National Biography, s.v. “Jane Roberta Summers,” by Lois Schultz. Oxford Univ.

Press, forthcoming.

Fisher, John C. K. “African American History Has a Devoted Caretaker,” KP, October 18, 1997, 1K. “Happy Birthday—Our Role Model—Th is Is Your Life—Jane Summers: 96 Years Young—May 5, 1991,” Northern Kentucky African American Heritage Task Force Collection, W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Kentucky Univ.

“Jane Summers,” KP, July 2, 1992, 10A. “Jane Summers, 97, Mentor to Many in Covington,” KP, July 1, 1992, 10A. “Local Activist Added to Gallery,” KP, November 14, 2001, 21A. Northington, Mary. Interview by Eric R. Jackson, September 2004, Covington, Ky.

Eric R. Jackson

SUMMERS, SCOTT (b. March 25, 1967, Warren Co., Ky.). Scott Patrick Summers, a champion cross-country motorcycle racer, is the son of Wade and Fran P. Garrison Summers. He grew up in Petersburg in Boone Co. Scott began riding motorcycles at age five and began racing them at age seven. He attended Ockerman Junior High School and graduated from Conner High School. By age 21, Summers had become a competitor within the American Motorcyclist Association race circuit. He won at least 10 national motorcycling titles. On the circuit, he traveled upwards of 60,000 miles annually. He has three practice tracks on his farm off Synder Ln. in Boone Co., where he spends several hours riding motorcycles each day.

Success in motorcycling competitions brought Summers more than 18 corporate sponsors, in-

SURTEES, ROBERT L.

cluding makers such as the American Honda Manufacturing Company. He has written columns for Dirt Bike magazine and has hosted a television show called OHV [off-highway vehicle] Video Magazine. Summers retired from competitive racing in 1991 but continues to develop racingrelated equipment for various companies at his Boone Co. farm.

Boehmker, Terry. “Motorcycle Racer Going for 10th National Title,” KP, July 14, 1998, 5K. Fields, Jerry. “Summers Rides to Top of His Profession: Connor Grad Tops in Off-Road Cycling,” KP, August 5, 1991, 6K. Warner, Jennifer S. Boone County: From Mastodons to the Millennium. Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Bicentennial Book Committee, 1998.

SUMMIT HILLS GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB. A young Covington businessman and an avid golfer, Joseph Macke, leased the Summit Dairy Farm in Kenton Co., at the corner of Turkeyfoot Rd. and Dudley Pk. in Crestview Hills, from his father-in-law and during the late 1920s began what came to be known as Summit Hills Golf and Country Club. Today, the Summit Hills Golf and Country Club boasts a rolling and challenging 18-hole par 70 course.

The original course was designed by Bill Jackson, the golf professional at Camargo Country Club in Cincinnati, and featured a popu lar design considered a classic in the United States. Jackson used a topographical map, and all the work was done by hand, with the exception of the leveling and other ground preparation, which were accomplished by several horse-drawn scrapers. Although this was Jackson’s only course design, he laid out a course recognized for its premium on shot-making skills and tactics, strength, and accuracy.

The new country club opened in 1930 with 150 members and a clubhouse converted from a large cattle barn; it featured a mansard shake roof and two silos. The club suffered through a fire in late November 1931, which caused $20,000 worth of damage. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Macke was forced to sell his interest to a group headed by the original landowner, Harry Hartke.

In the 1940s the membership initiation fee was $5.00 and full family membership dues were $75.00. For members with transportation problems, the club provided a shuttle ser vice from a Dixie Highway bus stop. In 1944 the membership purchased the club from Hartke for $150,000 and gave it its present name of Summit Hills Golf and Country Club.

The first clubhouse was struck by lightning on Labor Day 1952 and burned to the ground. One of the original farm silos survived, and a new clubhouse, built around it, opened in May 1953. Summit Hills Golf and Country Club has several old photos of the club, and an aerial photo of the original golf course and clubhouse is displayed on the old surviving silo in the club’s entrance foyer.

Golf course remodeling projects in 1980 and 1985 by the architectural team of Jack Kidwell and Michael Hurdzen paved the way for the 2003 face-

lift by Brian Hundley, a protégé of noted golf course designer Arthur Hills. Nearly every hole at the golf course was remodeled in some manner, and the course was lengthened to 6,471 yards. There is a new irrigation system, the course’s fairways and bunkers were reconfigured, and seven new greens were built. The course rating rose to 71.2, a stroke tougher, and the slope is now 131, up from 125 as determined by the Greater Cincinnati Golf Association. Women’s par is 71. The head golf professional since 1978 has been John Steinbrunner.

Summit Hills Golf and Country Club is a fullservice private club with dining facilities, a fullsize swimming pool, and tennis courts. In 2006 the golf membership was 380 and the total club membership almost 550.

“Loss $20,000 as Fire Sweeps Summit Hills Country Club,” KP, December 1, 1931, 1.

“New Golf Course and Country Club Planned in Kenton County,” KTS, September 26, 1929, 8.

Dennis W. Van Houten

SURTEES, ROBERT L. (b. August 9, 1906, Covington, Ky.; d. January 5, 1985, Monterey, Calif.). A legendary cinematographer known for his beautiful Hollywood golden-age camera work, Robert Lee Surtees won three Academy Awards for the MGM classic fi lms King Solomon’s Mines (1950), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and Ben-Hur (1959). Surtees was one of the few cinematographers from the studio system to adapt successfully to the contemporary, more independent era of motion pictures in the 1960s. He was the son of James D. and Elizabeth R. Sayers Surtees, and public records indicate that the family moved across the river to Cincinnati before Surtees attended school.

While a student at Withrow High School in Cincinnati, he became interested in photography. Before long he became a serious photographer and was retouching photographs in a Cincinnati portrait studio.

In the late 1920s, Surtees moved to Hollywood and lived next door to the head cameraman for Universal Studios, who gave Surtees an entry-level position as a camera assistant to famous cinematographers such as Gregg Toland and Joseph Ruttenberg. During his early technician years, Surtees was sent to Universal Studios in Berlin, Germany, to develop his craft further. Subsequently, he worked as a camera assistant at various Hollywood studios during the 1930s before settling at work with MGM, where he officially became director of photography in the early 1940s. In 1944 he received his first Oscar nomination, for Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.

Surtees’s popularity grew from his lush location images captured in color fi lms such as King Solomon’s Mines (1950), for which he won his fi rst Oscar. Surtees helped establish the realistic look in Technicolor with innovative camera fi ltering and lighting techniques. Film historians have suggested that post-Renaissance impressionist artists inspired his work. His photography for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) helped place that fi lm among the best black-and-white

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works of the legendary fi lm director Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli acknowledged in his autobiography that without Surtees the fi lm would not have captured the contrasting affectionate and cynical moods for which it is remembered. Surtees achieved these effects by the use of lush, velvety black and intensely white images. Years later he successfully revived his black-and-white fi lm noir style for Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), during a largely color era of modern fi lms.

Robert Surtees was a leading pioneer during the introduction of wide-screen motion pictures.

Most notable was his artistry in the Broadway-toHollywood adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s legendary musical Oklahoma (1955), released by 20th Century Fox. In 1955 American Cinematographer reported that for Oklahoma Surtees capitalized on the wide-screen format by creating visual images that seemed to wrap around the viewer, staging the characters to move within a more stationary wide-screen frame, and engaging his illumination skills to focus attention on subjects with distinctive key lighting. Surtees also introduced a modern, clean treatment of the vast Western and rural themes in the backdrops of Oklahoma, inspired by the paintings of Peter Hurd. The continued success of his many widescreen works peaked with two MGM movie remakes: one of the memorable spectacle Ben-Hur (1959), for which he won his third and final Oscar, and the other of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), in which he demonstrated his skillful lighting of seascapes.

Surtees’s other notable fi lm highlights include Quo Vadis (1951), Mogambo (1953), Raintree County (1957), The Graduate (1967), Sweet Charity (1968), Summer of ’42 (1971), and The Sting (1973). Variety described Surtees as “a prolific fi lmmaker and persistent competitor.” With 16 Oscar nominations, some twice in the same year, Surtees’s successes ultimately were the reason for the change in Academy Award rules, limiting cinematographers to one nomination yearly. When Surtees retired in 1979, he held the highest number of Oscars in his category. In a career spanning more than 50 years, 35 of them as a director of photography, his name was credited to nearly 100 feature fi lms.

Surtees and his wife Maydell had four children, including cinematographer Bruce Surtees. Robert Surtees died in 1985 and was cremated; his ashes were scattered over Point Lobos, Monterey Co., Calif. A Kentucky Historical Marker in his honor is displayed at Covington’s Goebel Park, Fift h and Philadelphia Sts. “Covington-Born Oscar-Winner Dies,” KP, January 8, 1985, 2B. Digital Content Producer.com. “ASC Hands Out Student Heritage Awards.” http://millimeter.com/ news/video_asc _hands _student/index.html (accessed January 25, 2006).

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.

“Lenser Robert Surtees, 78, Dies: Won Oscar for ‘BenHur,’ ” Variety, January 16, 1985, 8.

862 SUTHERLAND, LOIS OGDEN Lightman, Herb. “Shooting Oklahoma! in Todd-AO,” American Cinematographer 36, no. 4 (April 1955): 210.

Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia. New York: Dutton, 1994.

Minnelli, Vincente, and Hector Arce. I Remember It Well. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.

Nicholas, Thomas, ed. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Vol. 4, Writers and Production Artists. Chicago: St. James Press, 1996.

John Schlipp

SUTHERLAND, LOIS OGDEN (b. April 3, 1921, Campbell Co., Ky.; d. April 26, 2002, Fort Thomas, Ky.). Lois Ogden Sutherland, an educator and a journalist, was the daughter of dentist Dr. Max Ogden and Nell Young Ogden. She graduated from Holmes High School in Covington in 1939.

When she went to the University of Kentucky (UK) at Lexington, her experience writing for the school’s student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, prompted her to major in journalism. After earning her BA in 1943, she began reporting for the Cincinnati Times-Star and became one of the first American women to cover major sporting events and to do locker-room interviews.

As World War II was winding down, Lois met and married William “Bill” Sutherland of Fort Thomas, who became a well-known local photographer. They had three children. For most of their 56-year marriage, they lived on a California, Ky., farmstead that had passed down through Lois’s family. It was part of a land grant given to the Young brothers by George Washington in payment for surveying work they did in Northern Kentucky.

During the late 1940s, Lois Sutherland’s career began evolving when she went to work for Fox and Hound Magazine in Lexington. She later did public relations work for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati and, a few years later, began substitute teaching in Bellevue. She taught English at Campbell Co. High School from 1958 to 1966 and, after earning an ME from Xavier University, Cincinnati, in 1967, taught English and journalism at UK’s Northern Community College in Covington.

That institution was replaced by Northern Kentucky University (NKU), and Sutherland became a charter member of the NKU faculty, serving as its first journalism instructor and as the founding adviser of its student newspaper. In 1977, when NKU was large enough to establish a Communication Department, she was named interim department chair and guided its first year of operation.

Even after retiring in 1987, Sutherland remained engaged in work at NKU and in journalism. She supervised NKU journalism interns into the 1990s, wrote a regular column for the Campbell County Recorder through 2000, and did occasional freelance writing for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her name lives on at NKU in an annual award presented to the outstanding member of the student newspaper staff. She died in 2002 and was cremated.

“Lois Sutherland, 81, Post Sportswriter, Professor,” KP, April 27, 2002, 8A.

Mayhew, Chris. “Lois Ogden Sutherland, 81, Had Passion for Journalism,” CE, April 27, 2002, 12B. Steely, Will Frank. Northern: Birth of a University.

Cincinnati: Gateway, 1993.

Turney, Michael L. “Evolution of the Northern Kentucky University Communications Department,” November 1991, Northern Kentucky Univ. Communication Department, Highland Heights, Ky.

Michael L. Turney

SWEENEY, BILL (b. March 6, 1886, Covington, Ky.; d. May 26, 1948, Cambridge, Mass.). William John Sweeney was the son of John M. and Mary Knagge Sweeney. His father was an Irish-born salesman. Bill graduated from St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati in 1904 and began playing baseball in a Saturday league in Norwood, Ohio.

When he was 18, he started his baseball season with Toledo, Ohio, in the American Association.

He finished the 1904 season with Rock Island, Ill., of the Three-I League that operated throughout the Midwest. At the end of the 1906 season, the Chicago Cubs drafted Sweeney. He was 21 years old when he made his major league debut on June 14, 1907. On June 20, 1907, after a slow start, he was traded to the Boston Doves. There he started as a third baseman and moved to shortstop. In 1910 he found his position as he became an outstanding second baseman.

In 1911 he married Katherine Leonard; they had five children. The year 1911 was also marked by a 26-game hitting streak for Sweeney. In 1913 he tried to use his baseball fame as an actor during the off-season, when he appeared at the Orpheum Theater in Cincinnati; he received high praise for his acting performances. At the time, he was living at 324 Overton St. in Newport. He also raised money for the victims of the Ohio River flood of 1913 in Newport, by accepting a bit acting part at the Temple Theater in Newport. Eventually, the Sweeneys moved to Cambridge, Mass., and Sweeney built a successful insurance business and became a public speaker. In 1914 the Chicago Cubs offered him a 50 percent raise, a signing bonus, and a three-year contract. While he was playing in Chicago, however, his baseball career declined. He played his last game on October 5, 1914, and soon was released. He retired with a lifetime batting average of .272 and focused his attention on his insurance business and his family. He had played eight seasons in the major leagues, appearing in 1,031 games, mainly at second base for the Boston Doves of the National League, beginning in 1907.

Sweeney, remembered as a player who loved baseball, died of a heart attack in 1948 in Cambridge and was buried in the St. Joseph Cemetery at W. Roxbury, Mass.

The Baseball Biography Project. “Bill Sweeney.” www .bioproj.sabr.org (accessed September 25, 2006).

James, Bill, et al., eds., Stats All-Time Major League Handbook. Skokie, Ill.: Stats, 1998.

“Old-time Player Taken by Death,” CTS, May 27, 1948, 27.

Reis, Jim. “Bluegrass Players Left Mark,” KP, December 20, 1993, 4K.

Steven D. Jaeger

SWEET, KATIE (b. August 31, 1957, Covington, Ky.). Hollywood child star Katherine Marie “Katie” Sweet was discovered in 1959 by Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, who needed a precocious two-year-old for a part in one of their upcoming television shows.

From there, Sweet’s career blossomed. She appeared on television in Ben Casey, The Danny Thomas Show, The Lucy Show, Wagon Train, The Joey Bishop Show, Lassie, The Farmer’s Daughter, My Favorite Martian, Hank, and Bonanza. Her movie roles included appearances in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, in Crimson Kimono, and in Fine Young Cannibals. By 1970, however, Sweet’s acting career (once likened to that of Shirley Temple) had ended at age 13. She did not make it to the Broadway stage, even though she recorded a few songs such as “I Love to Rock” in 1960. In 1967 she attended Turkeyfoot Junior High School in Kenton Co., while living with her grandparents. Later, Sweet and her family moved to Hollywood, Calif., where they lived near the corner of Hollywood and Vine Sts. Today, Sweet lives in California with her two daughters.

Bird, Rick. “Queen City Star Power,” KP, August 25, 2007, A1.

Reis, Jim. “1967 a Banner Year for Education,” KP, August 24, 1992, 4K.

SWEET OWEN. Sweet Owen has three designations. First, it was the nickname applied by Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge after his overwhelming 1853 victory in Owen Co. earned him reelection to the U.S House of representative from Kentucky Eighth District, a district traditionally dominated by the Whig Party. After the 1853 election, Breckinridge always referred to the county as “Sweet Owen” and friends and family began to call his young son John Witherspoon “Owen County.” Following the election, the unnamed town around the current intersection of Ky. Rts. 22 and 845, four miles east of Owenton, near the modern Eden Shale Farm, also became known as Sweet Owen, the second designation.

When a post office was established there in 1873, Sweet Owen became the town’s name, and the name remained after the post office closed in 1902.

The third meaning of “Sweet Owen” generally refers to the county of Owen. It is a term of affection or endearment for the entire county, suggesting that it is a wonderful place in which to live. The idea has stuck, as evidenced by one of the histories of Owen Co., which is subtitled “Sweet Owen.”

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

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

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

SWOPE, SAMUEL F. (b. March 1, 1809, Bourbon Co., Ky.; d. April 19, 1865, Falmouth, Ky.).

Lawyer and politician Samuel Franklin Swope attended Bourbon Co. public schools and later attended Georgetown College at Georgetown, Ky.

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He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1830, setting up his practice in Falmouth in 1832.

Swope was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1837, where he served for two years.

He then served in the Kentucky Senate from 1844 to 1848. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1855 and served until 1857. At the end of that term, he resumed his legal practice in Falmouth, where he lived until his death at age 56.

He was interred in the Riverside Cemetery in Falmouth.

Infoplease. “Swope, Samuel Franklin.” http://infoplease .com (accessed November 26, 2005).

“Samuel F. Swope Is the American Party Candidate for Congress,” CJ, May 26, 1855, 2.

“Swope Elected to Congress from Tenth District,” CJ, August 11, 1855, 2.

SYNAGOGUES. Throughout most of the 19th century, there were too few Jews living in Northern Kentucky to warrant the establishment of synagogues. By the turn of the 20th century, however, more Jews had settled in Newport and Covington, and in 1897 the Jews of Newport founded the United Hebrew Congregation with an initial membership of 31. This assembly met in temporary quarters for several years, but by January 1905 it had purchased the building of the Fift h Street Christian Church at 117 E. Fift h St. and converted it into a synagogue. The United Hebrew Congregation was Orthodox, meaning that it retained traditional practices such as allowing only men to conduct ser vices and providing separate seating for men and women in its sanctuary. Over the years, one or more smaller prayer groups broke away from the United Hebrew Congregation, most likely because of personality conflicts rather than philosophical disagreements, but none of these groups survived long. From about 1918 until about 1925, for example, a congregation called Ohave Sholom (lovers of peace) worshipped in a house at 430 W. Sixth St. in Newport.

The Jews of Covington established a congregation in 1906. It was usually called the Temple of Israel, but its name sometimes appeared as Temple Israel or even as Heichal Israel, in Hebrew. Like its Newport counterpart, this congregation was Orthodox, and in its early years it met in temporary quarters, including the Kentucky Post building on Madison Ave. In November 1915, however, the Temple of Israel moved into a Neoclassical synagogue that it had erected at 107 E. Seventh St., between Greenup and Scott. Designed by local architect George W. Schofield, this building was square and had a two-columned portico and a small cupola. Its main-floor sanctuary had a seating capacity of about 200, and in the basement were a small kitchen, a classroom, and living quarters for a caretaker. The campaign to construct Covington’s first synagogue was spearheaded by the Russian-born insurance agent Maurice A. Chase; the money for the building came from a variety of sources, including fundraising activities orga nized by the ladies’ auxiliary of the Temple of Israel and donations from both inside and outside the city.

Temple of Israel. Built in 1915, it was demolished in 1937.

The Temple of Israel remained in its original building until 1937, when the federal government acquired the block where it stood to build a new post office and a courthouse. The congregation again had to meet in temporary facilities as it awaited construction of a new synagogue, but because its Seventh St. building had not yet been demolished, members of the congregation decided to use it for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the New Year and the Day of Atonement) in the fall of 1937. They broke the seal on the building and held ser vices there. Taken to court for trespassing, they won acquittal by arguing that because the government had not yet paid for the appropriated building, it still belonged to the congregation.

With the proceeds from the sale of its old synagogue, the Temple of Israel congregation constructed a new building in Covington at 1040 Scott St., at the corner of Lynn. Designed by Cincinnati architect Leslie Moss and dedicated in March 1939, it was a functional structure with little character. It had a sanctuary with gender-segregated seating on the main floor and a social hall and small stage in the basement, together with a kitchen, a coatroom, and a three-room apartment. It is believed that money donated by Jewish gamblers from out of town helped support the synagogues of both Covington and Newport.

Lay leaders were extremely important to the functioning of Northern Kentucky’s synagogues, for they had rabbinic leadership only sporadically.

It appears that the first rabbi to serve in Newport was the Lithuanian-born Samuel V. Levinson, who had immigrated to the United States around 1885 and arrived in Kentucky in 1901. By 1906

Levinson had been replaced by M. Partnoff. He was followed in 1908 by Joel Salaman, who also stayed for only a few years. Rabbi Levinson remained in Northern Kentucky, however, for it is reported that he served as rabbi at the Temple of Israel in Covington in 1911 and stayed with that congregation until around 1930, when he was succeeded by Rabbi Jacob Jacobs. The first rabbi to serve the Temple of Israel in its Scott St. synagogue was Alfred Seelig, a refugee from Nazi Germany who arrived in 1939 and remained until 1942, when he was succeeded by Rabbi Gerson Frankel and then by Rabbi David Gurewitz, both of whom served short terms. In the meantime, Newport’s United Hebrew Congregation seems to have gone for long periods without regular rabbinic leadership; only occasionally do city directories indicate that the congregation had a rabbi: Harry Finkenstein in 1926, for example, Abraham Lobel in 1928, and Morris Harris in 1938. The clergymen serving Northern Kentucky’s Jewish congregations often were accorded the title reverend rather than rabbi, suggesting that they had not been formally ordained. Moreover, some of Northern Kentucky’s rabbinic leaders held additional jobs and served their congregations only part-time.

For instance, Rabbi Levinson ran a variety store on Scott St. in Covington while he was the Temple of Israel rabbi in the mid-1920s, and Rabbi Frankel of Newport worked also as a kosher slaughterer in a Cincinnati meatpacking plant.

By the middle of the 20th century, a great many Jews had left Northern Kentucky (many moving to Cincinnati) and few new Jewish families had moved into the region, so activities in the

864 SYNAGOGUES local synagogues were considerably reduced after the 1940s. During the 1950s, ser vices were held at the Temple of Israel only on the High Holidays, and the congregation ceased functioning around 1960. Its synagogue building, falling into disrepair, was sold to the Church of God congregation in 1973 on the initiative of Abraham Wander, one of the few remaining stalwarts of the congregation. Proceeds from the sale were donated to charity. Similarly, the United Hebrew Congregation

closed down permanently around 1966, and its building was sold to the Apostolic Temple of Newport in 1969. An attempt by a small group of Jewish residents to revive congregational life in Northern Kentucky in the late 1960s had failed by the early 1970s, and no other attempts have been made. With no synagogues remaining in the region, Jewish residents of Northern Kentucky seeking congregational affi liation have joined synagogues in Cincinnati.

Lapides, Leslie. “Judaism Then and Now,” KP, March 19, 1983, 1K. Lassetter, Leslie A. “Covington’s Schule, the Temple of Israel,” 1976, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Reis, James. “Remnant of Jewish Community Remains,” KP, August 17, 1987, 4K. Weissbach, Lee Shai. The Synagogues of Kentucky: Architecture and History. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1995.

Lee Shai Weissbach