Chapter T of the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky

Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky in partnership with NKY.com The Enquirer/David Sorcher

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

TEWES POULTRY. This small Northern Kentucky poultry dynasty was founded in 1911 by John Henry Tewes Sr. He started the family business in the old Fort Perry neighborhood of Wright... (cont’d on pg. 873)

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

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

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

Dave Adkisson, Treasurer Melanie J. Kilpatrick, Secretary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TACKETT’S MILL. Tackett’s Mill, a small community in southern Owen Co., is located along Ky. Rt. 368, just north of the Kleber Wildlife Area (see Wildlife Areas in Owen Co.) and not far from the Scott Co. boundary. It is within the Harmony Precinct, about 10 miles south of Owenton. The 1883 Lake atlas shows two stores in the area. There was also a one-room school at Tackett’s Mill.

Griffi ng, B. N. An Atlas of Owen County, Kentucky.

Philadelphia: D. W. Lake, 1883.

TACOMA PARK. The site of the Tacoma Park amusement center in Dayton, Ky., was once owned and operated as a farm by Peter Werne. In 1880 Werne sold the farm to Louis Oliver Maddux, who was a partner in the Maddux-Hobart Distillery of Cincinnati. Maddux developed a distillery on the farm and named the business the Winchester Distilling Co. He had a stable, a barn, a millhouse, an office, and a warehouse built on the property and operated the business until 1894, when he became seriously ill with Brights Disease, a kidney disorder. He sold the complex to the Thorne Distilling Company, which ran it until 1906, and then it was sold to the Hazel Gap Distillery, which operated until 1911.

About that time, the Dayton sandbar (site of the Revolutionary War battle Rogers’ Defeat) began to be used as a public bathing beach. Several other beaches were already established nearby along the Ohio River, in Bellevue and Dayton, Ky. (see Ohio River Beaches). At the height of their popularity, there were six beaches along the riverfront: the Queen City in Bellevue, and the Princess, Manhattan, Berlin, and Tacoma beaches in Dayton. It was reported that Tacoma Park was named after Tacoma, Wash. In those days the river water was relatively clean, and most beaches had 1,000 feet of white sand extending into the river. The beaches soon became very popular, and the area was often referred to as the Atlantic City of the West. The Queen City Beach (later known as Horseshoe Gardens) at the foot of Ward St. in Bellevue was the largest and most spectacular one. It had a two-story pavilion that included a large bathhouse, a dining room, and an elaborate dance hall.

After many years of successful operation, problems began to develop along the beaches. River water pollution; lawsuits against owners; and the construction of dams along the river, which flooded many of the beaches, caused most of the difficulties. Tacoma Park fared better than the other beaches, because its owner, Tony Gesser, had anticipated the changing conditions and had begun to make adjustments. He had built a 130-by-150-

foot in-ground swimming pool fi lled with clean water from an artesian well. The pool was accompanied by a modern, 1,000-locker bath house.

Gesser also added to the site a roller coaster, a whip ride, a merry-go-round, and a penny arcade.

He bought the combination dance floor and skating rink that had previously been an attraction at Berlin Beach and moved it to Tacoma. The park gained popularity as an amusement park and picnic grounds. Gesser held marathon dance contests, which created quite a sensation until police later stopped them, claiming that they endangered the health of participants. During the late 1920s, wrestling and boxing matches were staged at Tacoma. In 1927 the park hosted a World Lightweight title fight between Frank “Midge” Guerrea and Sammy Mandell. Well known local pugilist Joe Anderson fought there also. In 1936 a greyhound racetrack, with a 5,000-seat grandstand, was built at Tacoma, and it operated successfully for one season. Early in its second season, the state police closed the track, after a court ruled that gambling on dog races violated state law.

The Ohio River flood of 1937 destroyed much of Tacoma Park and its attractions, and it was not able to completely recover. In 1940 an attempt was made to introduce midget car racing at the park, but the operation was closed after just one season when police discovered slot machines on the premises. The track did not reopen, and the grandstands were later razed. Thereafter, the park was used primarily as a picnic ground, swimming pool, dance

pavilion, and skating rink. For many years the park was owned by Robert J. Lunsford and Stephen R. Rutherford. In 1948 Woodrow and Ruth Bressler built the Riverview Drive-in movie theater at Tacoma (see Drive-Ins), which they successfully operated until about 1960, about which time the pool closed. At that time they sold Riverview to Redstone Theaters, the firm that later also owned the Dixie Gardens and Pike 27 drive-in theaters in Northern Kentucky. The Riverview Drive-in ceased operations in 1982. Tacoma swimming pool’s new owner, Bill Daley, sold the site in 1988 to Riverport Enterprises, which built a $9 million marina called the Watertown Yacht Club, one of the finest marinas in Greater Cincinnati.

Tacoma Park was the second amusement center in Northern Kentucky to be built at the end of a streetcar line: it was at the eastern terminus of the No. 12 Dayton Green Line streetcar in Campbell Co., and the Lagoon Amusement Park in Ludlow was at the western end of the No. 3 Ludlow Lagoon streetcar in Kenton Co. Croyle, William. “100 Years Ago, River Was Clear, Sand White,” KE, July 29, 2003, 12E. Reis, Jim. “Tacoma Park Packed in Fight Fans in Late 20s,” KP, April 22, 2002, 4K. “Summer Fun Spot,” KP, March 11, 1985, 8K. “Tacoma Park Drew Crowds,” KE, February 20, 2000, 1B.

TANNEHILL BROTHERS (Jesse Niles “Tanny” Tannehill, b. July 14, 1874, Dayton, Ky.; d. September

Sax section of the orchestra at the Tacoma Park Dance Pavilion, Dayton, Ky., 1942.

Left to right: Paul Bauer, Charles Tharp, Robert Thoney, and William Bunge.

866 TANNER, MARY ELLEN 22, 1956, Dayton, Ky.; Lee Ford Tannehill, b. October 26, 1880, Dayton, Ky.; d. February 16, 1938, Live Oak, Fla.). The older of these two major league baseball players, Jesse, was a 5-foot-8-inch 150-pound pitcher whose big league debut was with the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1894. He was a switch hitter until 1903, but after that he batted only from the left side. He went on to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Washington Senators, the Boston Americans, and the New York Americans. In 1904, while with Boston, he threw a nohitter against the Chicago White Sox. His lifetime pitching record, for 15 years in the majors, was 195 wins and 118 losses, with a .261 earned run average. Jesse was proud of his hitting ability as a pitcher. He fi nished his career back in Cincinnati and afterward continued to play some semipro baseball. Later he worked in a machine shop, and during those years he was often seen at Crosley Field rooting for the Cincinnati Reds. He died from a stroke in 1956 at Speers Hospital in Dayton, the city where he lived for his entire life, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

He was survived by his wife, the former Beulah Anderson.

Lee Ford Tannehill made his debut with the Chicago team in the American League in 1903.

He was a 5-foot-11-inch 170-pound infielder who mainly played third base and shortstop. He batted and threw right-handed. Lee played for only one major league team, Chicago, for 10 years, and saw action in the 1906 World Series. He played in a total of 1,089 games, with a lifetime batting average of .220. Lee Tannehill died in 1938 at Live Oak, Fla., and was buried nearby at the Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery.

The Baseball Encyclopedia. 9th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1983.

“Former Major Leaguer Dies,” KTS, September 22, 1956, 1.

Michael R. Sweeney

TANNER, MARY ELLEN (b. Covington, Ky., November 9, 1946). Daughter of Robert and Lauretta Baker Tanner, Mary Ellen was raised in Covington and Fort Mitchell. She is a singer of popu lar music and jazz and a Cincinnati television personality best known as a cast member of Bob Braun’s 50-50 Club on WLWT and the former AVCO regional television chain.

Tanner made her public singing debut as a child in the choir of the Main Street Methodist Church in Covington. Her father always encouraged her to sing professionally. At age 12 she appeared at park concerts with the Deke Moffitt Big Band. She sang locally at dances at the Castle Farm on Reading Rd. in Cincinnati, at the Newport Stadium, at county fairs, and in other local settings. After graduating from Beechwood High School in Fort Mitchell (see Beechwood Public Schools), Tanner appeared as a singer contestant on the national CBS television Ted Mack Amateur Hour in 1964.

She attended classes at Northern Kentucky State College (now Northern Kentucky University) and worked as a secretary for a few years before

beginning to sing professionally. She sang with groups such as Dee Felice and his Mixed Feelings Band at regional nightclubs. Later she performed with the Frank Vincent Trio. After a long engagement, Frank Vincent and Tanner were married for a short period.

Tanner studied voice while she performed as a regular on Nick Clooney’s WCPO variety television show in the early 1970s. After guest appearances on Bob Braun’s 50-50 Club, she joined his midday live television program as a regular cast member in 1978 and stayed until it ended in the early 1980s. In addition to her role as a cast singer, Tanner interviewed guests and supported Bob Braun with many program duties.

Following her tenure with Bob Braun, she sang at numerous local venues and served as house vocalist at the Celestial Incline Lounge in Mount Adams in Cincinnati for more than 15 years and later at Michael G’s Restaurant, located on Kellogg Ave. in Cincinnati. Recently she has been a regular singer at Chez Nora’s Restaurant in Covington. She has become one of the Midwest’s most respected vocalists, performing with the Illinois Philharmonic, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Les Brown Orchestra, and others. She has received the local Cammy award for Best Jazz Vocalist multiple times.

Tanner taught as an adjunct professor for 11 years in the jazz department at the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music and recorded numerous jazz albums. She lives in Covington with musician John Von Ohlen, her life partner for more than 20 years.

Jacobs, Gabriella. “A Star Is Born: Ft. Mitchell’s Tanner Is Learning to Wow ’em on Daily Television, Nightclubs,” KP, June 16, 1979, 5K. Kennelly Roberts, Alice. “Vocalist’s Personality Sparkles with Holiday Season,” KP, December 6, 1995, 2K. Pulfer, Laura. “Mary Ellen Tanner’s Song of Her Youth,” CE, May 5, 1998, 1B. “TV Network Films N. Kentucky Girl,” KE, June 29, 1964, 2.

Wood, Mary. “Ft. Mitchell Singer Joins ‘Bob Braun Show,’ ” CP, October 18, 1978, 14.

John Schlipp

TANNERIES. By 1810 at least six Northern Kentucky counties had tanneries to convert leather, as a raw material, into useful items. In those days the hides of cows, calves, horses, deer, pigs, and sheep were tanned and fashioned into footwear, clothing, gloves, saddles, articles used on ships or as parts of carriages, and so forth. Tanning was a timeconsuming task that took up to two years. Initially, the hides were soaked in wooden or masonry vats containing lime. Next, the hides were placed on a beam and the hair and remaining tissue was removed. They were often soaked in a vat to restore pliability and then washed in pure water. The hides were then placed in tan pits containing oak bark and water, where they were allowed to soak to complete the tanning process.

The importance of tanneries in Northern Kentucky is illustrated by Coxe’s listing of manufacturers for the year 1810. Figures were provided for

the number of tanneries by county, the value of the tanneries, and sometimes the number of hides and skins. Six of the Northern Kentucky counties were included in Coxe’s publication. Nine tanneries operated in Boone Co. with a value of $2,510, while two tanneries, valued at $600, were located in Bracken Co. In Campbell Co., two tanneries processed 1,100 skins and hides with a value of $6,050.

Eleven tanneries operated in Gallatin Co. with a value of $1,078. The eight tanneries in Mason Co. processed 3,695 hides and skins with a value of $10,900. In Pendleton Co., two tanneries processed 370 hides and skins with a value of $1,150.

Kentucky historian Lewis Collins reported an extensive tannery in Bracken Co. in 1847. Three men were listed as tanners in the 1850 census for the county: George Donissham, Richard H. King, and Thomas Muller. James Donovan of Brooksville was listed as a tanner in the Kentucky State Gazetteer, Shippers’ Guide, and Business Directory for 1865 and 1866 and for 1873–1874. And George Doniphan operated a tannery west of his home in Augusta.

Two tanners were listed in Campbell Co. during the late 19th century. They were Jacob Daut & Company of Newport during 1883–1884 and Peter Youmans in 1896.

In Kenton Co., many of the 19th-century tanneries, including that of the Burger family in the 1860s and 1870s, operated in the heavily German neighborhood of Lewisburg in Covington. Other Lewisburg tanneries included R. Kessler & Company, Barney Mueller, the Ohio & Kentucky Kid Leather Manufacturing Company, the Renz family, and the Steinharter family.

In Mason Co. George Doniphan, a lawyer and a professor at Augusta College, owned and operated a tannery west of his home in Maysville. Three other tanners in Maysville included P. R. McCordle & Company during 1865–1866, Jacob Outten during 1879–1880, and Poyntz & McAedie during 1873–1874.

Nancy O’Malley, in her publication A Village Called Washington, cites early Mason Co. Court records that mentioned Enoch Barr’s tanyard at the north end of Washington in Mason Co. The January 6, 1829, issue of the Maysville Eagle carried an ad for the sale of Enoch Barr’s tanyard by virtue of a decree from Mason Co. Circuit Court.

The public auction was forced by Thomas Black’s victory over Barr’s heirs in court. The ad noted that the property had formerly been known as Barr & Walton’s Tan Yard.

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

Coxe, Tench. A Statement of the Arts and Manufacturers of the United States of America, for the Year 1810. Philadelphia: A. Comman, 1814.

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

O’Malley, Nancy. A New Village Called Washington. Maysville, Ky.: McClanahan, 1987.

R. L. Polk Company. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory. Detroit: R. L. Polk, 1873– 1895.

Charles D. Hockensmith

TAYLOR, ASA

TANNER’S STATION. In 1789 a Baptist preacher from Virginia, John Tanner, led a settlement party to the area now known as Petersburg, Ky. Tanner built a stockade that became known as Tanner’s Station. He had owned a partial interest in another tract of land in the area but sold it to acquire the stockade parcel from James Garrard. Garrard, the future Kentucky governor (1796–1804), was a politician and fellow Baptist minister who lived near Paris, Ky. Tanner stayed only a few years at the station that bore his name; the Tanners moved west after Tanner’s sons Edward and John Jr. were kidnapped by Indians. The details of the abductions have been recounted in various forms, but it is clear that Tanner moved to track down his children. In 1806 Col. John Grant, a North Carolinian, laid out the 100-acre town of Caledonia at Tanner’s Station.

The town did not become Petersburg until 1818, after the Kentucky legislature approved a formal plat drawn up by Grant’s son-in-law, John James Flournoy.

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

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

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

Matthew E. Becher

TAPPERT, WILLIAM AND HENRY (William Hubert Tappert, b. January 18, 1848, Düren, Rhineland, Germany; d. March 18, 1907, Covington, Ky.; Henry M. Tappert, b. April 9, 1855, Düren, Rhineland, Germany; d. November 17, 1929, Covington, Ky.). The nationally prominent Catholic priests and siblings William and Henry Tappert were leaders of the local German American community (see German Americans). William Tappert, who was studying for the priesthood in Germany, immigrated to the United States in June 1870, completed his studies at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati, and was ordained a priest in September 1872 for the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics). After serving as pastor at the Catholic churches St. Joseph in Cold Spring, St. Mary in Alexandria, and St. John in Covington, Rev. William Tappert became the longtime pastor (1879–1907) of the German American Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington.

There he oversaw the impressive ornamentation of the church in 1890–1891.

Henry Tappert immigrated to the United States in June 1875, studied at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati, and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Covington in May 1879. He served as an assistant pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church, Alexandria, and at St. John Catholic Church, Covington, as well as at his brother’s parish, Mother of God Church. In 1907, after the death of William, Henry became pastor (1907–1929) of Mother of God Church.

William Tappert had been one of the organizers of the Deutsch-Amerikaner Priester-Verein (the German-American Priests’ Society), which, at its

first conference in Chicago in February 1887, appointed him president. At the same meeting, Tappert proposed that the society work for the establishment of a house of refuge for newly arrived German immigrants in New York City. The PriesterVerein also organized a Katholikentag, a conference of both priests and laymen modeled after those offered in Germany, for Chicago in September 1887.

The Chicago Katholikentag (also called the First American German Catholic General Assembly) attracted 2,500–3,000 attendees, who elected William Tappert as vice president. Tappert addressed the assembly on the need for an immigrant house of refuge. He and others began to raise funds for the establishment of that institution near Castle Garden in New York City. It was called Leo-Haus (Leo House; named for then Pope Leo XIII). In October 1888 William Tappert became one of the 14 original members of the newly incorporated Leo House. In 1889 Tappert continued his involvement with the second American Katholikentag, held in Cincinnati. Bishop Camillus Paul Maes of Covington, an Americanist who desired to downplay the ethnic differences of Catholics in the United States, did not personally attend the conference. In summer 1889 Tappert was the official American delegate to the German Katholikentag in Bochum, Westphalia. He returned to Cincinnati to be met by a grand procession through its streets and those of Covington, accompanied by fireworks. William Tappert died in March 1907 and was buried in Mother of God Church, at the base of the church’s Our Lady of Perpetual Help altar.

Rev. Henry Tappert was a German-trained musician, who supported the newer Cecilian reform music of the Catholic church of the period, stressing polyphony and chant, rather than the old German Singmesse (Sing Mass) of Covington’s Bernard H. F. Hellebusch. Henry Tappert’s compositions were published in the popu lar St. Cecilia Hymnal, and his 1929 obituary in the New York Times referred to him as a “noted composer.” He was buried next to his brother in Mother of God Church.

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

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

Paul A. Tenkotte

TARVIN, JAMES P. (b. November 13, 1859, Covington, Ky.; d. August 19, 1907, Cleveland, Ohio).

Judge James P. Tarvin was the son of Henry Tarvin.

His mother was the former Eliza Pryor, daughter of Circuit Court judge James Pryor of Covington.

James P. Tarvin was educated in public schools and then entered the Cincinnati Law School, from which he graduated in 1881. He apprenticed under lawyers Pryor and Chambers. In 1890 he formed a partnership with another lawyer, Walker C. Hall.

In politics he was a Democrat and was chairman of the Kenton Co. executive committee of that party.

867

In 1898 Tarvin was elected to the office of circuit judge, taking office January 1, 1898. He died of asthma at age 47, while he and his wife were staying at the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland. They had just left the home of a friend, Mrs. Eugene Shinkle of Waukegan, Ill. His body was returned to Covington for burial in the Highland Cemetery at Fort Mitchell. His wife, Louella Belt Tarvin, and a stepson, J. W. Belt, survived him.

Highland Cemetery Records, Fort Mitchell.

“Judge James Tarvin Dies in Cleveland,” KP, August 20, 1907, 2.

Kerr, Charles. History of Kentucky. 5 vols. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1922.

US Gen Web Archives. “Kenton County, Kentucky.” www.rootsweb.com (accessed April 5, 2007).

TAYLOR, ASA (b. before 1800, Virginia; d. after 1839, Kentucky). Asa Taylor, an enslaved African American who was living in Kentucky, has been called the fi rst African American preacher in Boone Co. He and his siblings, all enslaved, came to Kentucky with Rev. John Taylor, a Baptist evangelist who had many slaves, from Virginia.

Asa Taylor was one of 31 African Americans who were accepted into the fellowship of the Bullittsburg Baptist Church in August 1800. That summer, John Taylor baptized by immersion a few young people, including Asa, whom Taylor had raised and taught to read. Another man, a slaveholder named Christopher Wilson, was baptized at the same time. Wilson was later called as the first moderator or pastor of the Baptist Church at Middle Creek (present-day Belleview Baptist Church).

Asa Taylor and Wilson often traveled throughout Boone Co. together, teaching and preaching. John Taylor said of Asa, “May he be useful among his fellow Blacks as there is the greatest sphere of his action.”

Asa Taylor’s sister Letty, also raised by John Taylor, did not share her brother’s religious fervor. Letty had so great an aversion to religion that it took stern mea sures by John Taylor to force her to join the Taylor family prayers and worship.

John Taylor described Letty as having “masculine strength” and an unflagging determination. After Asa Taylor’s conversion, Letty was apparently stricken by her own “consciousness of guilt,” and she called upon Asa for his counsel. Asa responded that Letty was “of the Dev il” and was not ready for baptism or acceptance into any Baptist church.

Despite Asa’s assessment of her, Letty made a confession of faith three weeks after Asa’s conversion and was baptized and accepted as a member of the Bullittsburg Baptist Church.

Unlike Wilson, who was ordained May 2, 1807, Asa Taylor was never officially ordained as a Baptist preacher. For the first 18 years of his ministry, the Baptist elders held Asa in tight rein. The church finally relaxed its hold and allowed him to share freely his “gift of exhortation.”

Boone Co. slave schedules indicate that Asa was a slave of several Boone Co. men. When John Taylor left Boone Co. for Gallatin Co. in 1802, Asa Taylor was listed with John Graves. From 1819 to 1835, two other slaveholders claimed ownership

868 TAYLOR, HUBBARD, SR. of Asa. In 1839 the Bullittsburg Baptist Church minutes recorded the request of a “Brother Ezra Ferris, who asked that Asa [Taylor] and his wife, Rachel, be granted dismissal from the Bullittsburg congregation.” It is possible that Ferris, who lived in Dearborn Co., Ind., had manumitted Asa and Rachel. It is believed that Asa Taylor lived at least until 1839; there is no record of his death or his burial.

Jackson, Eric R. Black America Series: Northern Kentucky. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2005.

Taylor, John. Baptists on the American Frontier: A History of Ten Baptist Churches of Which the Author Has Been Alternately a Member. Ed. Chester Raymond Young. 3rd ed. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1995.

Jannes W. Garbett

TAYLOR, HUBBARD, SR. (b. August 2, 1760, Midway, Va.; d. October 7, 1840, Pine Grove, Ky.).

Legislator and judge Hubbard Taylor was the first son of James and Ann Hubbard Taylor Sr. He was the older brother of Gen. James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. James Taylor Sr. was the deputy surveyor for Caroline Co., Va., and when he resigned the post in 1778, his son Hubbard was appointed to be his successor. Hubbard was a militia volunteer during the Revolutionary War, serving in the area surrounding Williamsburg, Va. In February 1780 he came to Northern Kentucky to survey land for George Muse, for Hubbard’s father, and for others. Hubbard returned to his Virginia home in spring 1782 and in that year married Clarissa Minor; they had 10 children.

In 1790 the family moved to a farm named Spring Hill along Boone’s Creek in Kentucky, 12 miles east of Lexington. In 1791 Hubbard came to Northern Kentucky and platted some lots for a town, which he named New Port; his brother James Jr., however, settled in Newport and is credited for the town’s founding and development. Hubbard served as a delegate to Kentucky’s first constitutional convention at Danville in 1784. He represented Fayette Co. in the state’s first legislature, and he was instrumental in the creation of Clark Co. in 1792. He served as a quarter session judge in Clark Co., and from 1796 to 1800 he was a state senator from Clark Co. When his senate term ended, he retired to his home. Hubbard Taylor Sr. died in 1840 on his farm at Pine Grove, Ky., and was buried there in the Taylor Graveyard.

“Interesting Historical Facts,” CJ, April 12, 1873, 1.

“The James Taylor Narrative,” 1840, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society, Alexandria, Ky. Reis, Jim. Pieces of the Past. Vol. 2. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991.

Jack Wessling

TAYLOR, JAMES, JR., GENERAL (b. April 19, 1769, Midway, Va.; d. November 7, 1848, Newport, Ky.). Investor and city founder James Taylor Jr. was the fift h child born to James Taylor Sr. and Anne Hubbard Taylor. His early education was by private tutor, and later he attended the Rappahannock

Gen. James Taylor Jr.

Academy. His father bought from his friend George Muse 2,700 acres of land in Northern Kentucky that included most of modern-day Covington, Newport, Bellevue, and Dayton, Ky. It was land Muse had been awarded for his military ser vice in the French and Indian War; Muse requested, in this transaction, that a 1,000-acre tract, now part of Dayton, be deeded back to two of his daughters, Katy and Caroline Muse. A 200-acre tract on the west side of the Licking River was sold to Col. Stephen Trigg of the Kentucky Court of Land Commissions. James Sr. gave his son James Jr. 500 acres and retained ownership of the remainder. In May 1792 James Jr. arrived in Northern Kentucky to help develop and sell his father’s land. He brought with him three slaves, Moses, Humphrey, and Adam, along with an English army deserter, Robert Christy, and Christy’s wife and their three children.

James Jr. stated that when they arrived in the area, there were about 150 people living at present-day Cincinnati, plus about 50 army personnel. On the south side of the Ohio River, there were just a few squatters living in crude log cabins. The party of settlers who arrived with James Taylor Jr. built several small log cabins and planted about 15 acres of corn, near the Licking River. Taylor walked the land and found a beautiful ridge overlooking the Ohio River, where he planned to build his home. He raised a log cabin there and later replaced it with a frame dwelling, which was destroyed in 1837 by a fire set by a disgruntled slave. Afterward Taylor built the brick mansion now standing in Newport at 335 E. Third St. In 1791–1792, James Taylor Jr. laid out the town of Newport, and in 1793 he marked out the basic route that has become U.S. 27 to Lexington.

When his friend David Leitch died in November 1794, Taylor was named executor of his estate and a year later married Leitch’s widow, Keturah Moss Leitch. James and Keturah Taylor had 11 children, but only 4 survived to maturity. In 1798 Taylor donated land for the establishment of the Newport Academy, the first public school in the Cincinnati area. He also donated another two-acre tract in Newport on Fourth St., between York and Columbia Sts., for construction of a court house and jail.

The Taylor family had two cousins, James Madison and Zachary Taylor, who later became presidents of the United States. In 1803 James Taylor Jr. solicited the help of James Madison, who was then U.S. secretary of state, to persuade the federal government to move the Fort Washington military post from Cincinnati to Newport. As an inducement, Taylor donated five acres of land at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking rivers on which to build the facility. The federal government, in turn, awarded Taylor the construction contract for what became the Newport Barracks. During the War of 1812, he held the rank of brigadier general in the Kentucky Militia. Taylor served under Gen. William Hull in the ill-fated Detroit Campaign, in which Taylor was captured by the British but soon paroled. Afterward, Taylor was made quartermaster and paymaster general of the Northwestern Army. Since the federal government lacked the necessary funds to pay for supplies and equipment for the army, Taylor often helped finance it with his own money and credit. Later, when Taylor attempted to obtain reimbursement from the federal government, he was refused on the basis that his records were insufficient. Many years of intense litigation followed, but Taylor was never fully compensated.

During a storied lifetime, James Taylor Jr. operated ferries across both the Ohio and the Licking rivers, helped to found banks such as the Newport Bank, invested in the mammoth Newport Manufacturing Company, operated saw- and gristmills along the Licking River, was part owner of a saltworks at Grants Lick, Ky., ran a tanning business, and in his spare time was known to collect fossils and hunt buffalo at Big Bone Lick in Boone Co. During Zachary Taylor’s run for the presidency in 1848, election officials came to the bedside of the dying James Taylor Jr. to record his vote. After casting his ballot for his cousin, Taylor reportedly said, “I have fired my last shot for my country.” He died several hours later, at age 79, and was survived by his wife, Keturah, and four children, James III, Keturah Taylor Harris, Ann Taylor Tibbatts, and Jane Taylor Williamson. He was laid to rest in the Taylor family plot at Evergreen Cemetery, in Southgate. James III served as executor of his father’s estate, which included land in 26 Ohio counties and about 60,000 acres in Kentucky. At his death, James Taylor Jr. was said to be one of the wealthiest men in the state of Kentucky, with an estate valued at more than $4 million. Much of his land had been acquired from veterans of the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. Several roads in Northern Kentucky carry the Taylor family name. The community of Taylor Mill is named for the gristmill Taylor once owned on Banklick Creek, at the intersection of Grand Ave. and Reidlin Rd. Likewise, Taylorsport, along the Ohio River in Boone Co., was founded by him. Although the three James Taylors who were prominent in Northern Kentucky’s history are usually known as James Taylor Sr., James Taylor Jr., and James Taylor III, according to The James Taylor Narrative they were actually the fourth, fifth, and sixth males named James in the family line.

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

“The James Taylor Narrative,” 1840, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society, Alexandria, Ky. Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

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

“Sketch of General Taylor’s Life,” CJ, July 28, 1848, 2.

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

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

Jack Wessling

TAYLOR, JAMES, MANSION. See James Taylor Mansion.

TAYLOR, JAMES, NARRATIVE. See James Taylor Narrative.

TAYLOR, JAMES, III (b. August 9, 1802, Newport, Ky.; d. March 29, 1883, Newport, Ky.). James Taylor III was a lawyer, businessman, and actor. He and his twin sister, Keturah, were children of James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport, and his wife, Keturah Moss Leitch Taylor, widow of Maj. David Leitch. James III’s early education was at the private school of Rev. Robert Stubbs, near Newport.

He then studied at the Pestalozzian School of Dr. Joseph Buchanan, near Lexington, and in 1818 entered Transylvania University at Lexington, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1822. He returned to Newport, joined an acting society, and opened a theater at the Newport Barracks. Soon James was considered the equal of any actor of his day; he performed at theaters in both Cincinnati and Newport. He committed to memory many of the works of William Shakespeare and of Lord Byron, which he often recited to family and friends.

In 1823 James III entered the Transylvania Law School, from which he graduated in 1825, and was admitted to the Kentucky Bar. Although he became an accomplished lawyer, he never entered into public practice; instead, he spent his time managing the legal affairs of his father’s vast holdings. At Frankfort on May 20, 1824, he married Susan Lucy Barry, daughter of William T. Barry, Kentucky’s secretary of state. They had three daughters and two sons. When his father died on November 7, 1848, James III was named executor of the estate. Like his father, James III played a prominent role in area business and civic affairs. He was one of the founders of Covington’s Northern Bank of Kentucky and served as its president for 25 years. In politics, he was a Democrat but cast his presidential vote for two Whig candidates, his cousin Zachary Taylor in 1848 and Henry Clay in 1824. James Taylor III died at age 80 and was buried in the Taylor family plot at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

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

“The James Taylor Narrative,” 1840, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society, Alexandria, Ky. Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County, Kentucky. Alexandria, Ky.: Privately published, 1997.

869

Taylor, John. Baptists on the American Frontier: A History of Ten Baptist Churches of Which the Author Has Been Alternately a Member. Ed. Chester Raymond Young. 3rd ed. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1995.

Jannes W. Garbett

Jack Wessling

TAYLOR, KETURAH MOSS LEITCH (b.

TAYLOR, JOHN (b. October 7, 1752, Virginia; d.

April 12, 1835, Forks of the Elkhorn, Ky.). John Taylor, a farmer, a preacher, and a frontiersman, was associated with 10 separate early Baptist Churches in Kentucky. The son of Lazarus and Hannah Bradford Calvert Taylor, he was born in the Virginia Piedmont region, matured in the Great Valley of the Virginia frontier, pushed farther out into the wilderness as a youthful missionary, and farmed in early settlements in Kentucky. Taylor was raised in an Anglican home that in matters of religion used the Book of Common Prayer. His education was sparse. He was exposed at an early age to the economic basis of slavery, the “peculiar institution” that greatly benefited him as a Kentucky landowner.

Evangelical Calvinism, “the gospel of salvation,” swept Virginia’s Great Valley, and after youthful escapades with gambling and fist-fighting, Taylor accepted the Baptist view of salvation that he was taught there. With Joseph Redding as his traveling companion, Taylor began preaching with missionary zeal and powerful oratory.

Taylor married Elizabeth “Betsy” Kavanaugh in Orange Co., Va., in September 1782. One year later, John sold the family’s Northumberland plantation there and sought to improve his economic status in the fertile Bluegrass region, remaining in the Elkhorn Creek area of Kentucky until April 1795. He then purchased from John David Woolper a large tract of land along the North Bend of the Ohio River. He and fellow Baptist preacher John Tanner (of Tanner’s Station, present-day Petersburg in western Boone Co.) joined forces in selling off parcels of the Woolper land, a venture that continued until Tanner’s death in 1812.

In Boone Co., Taylor counted among his assets 400 acres, horses, household goods, and 15 slaves. Taylor and Redding were two of the seven charter members of the Great Bend of the Ohio Baptist Church, renamed the Bullittsburg Baptist Church. Sixteen preachers, most of whom were ordained as the result of Taylor’s ministry, emerged from that church. Taylor baptized two men who were important to the Baptist movement in Boone Co., Christopher Wilson and Asa Taylor, one of Taylor’s slaves.

John Taylor planted Baptist congregations with the same energy and devotion with which he planted his crops. His book A History of Ten Baptist Churches is considered a theological trea sure. John and Betsy Taylor were dismissed by letter from Bullittsburg Baptist and moved to Mount Byrd along the Ohio River in Kentucky, near Trimble Co. He spent his last years at the Forks of the Elkhorn, Franklin Co., and died April 12, 1835. He was buried in a newly created cemetery on a bluff overlooking South Elkhorn Creek.

September 11, 1773, Richmond, Va.; d. January 18, 1866, Newport, Ky.). Keturah Moss, who eventually became the wife of James Taylor Jr., was the daughter of Capt. Hugh and Jane Ford Moss. In December 1790 she married Maj. David Leitch, who owned a farm at Bryan’s (Bryant’s) Station, near Lexington. They settled at Leitch’s Station along the Licking River in Campbell Co., where he built a log cabin. While surveying one of his properties, Leitch slept outdoors in a cold rain and apparently developed pneumonia. A physician from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) was called to treat him, but to no avail; David Leitch died in November 1794, at age 38. He left his estate to Keturah Leitch and named Gen. James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport, as his executor. A romance arose between Taylor and Keturah, and they were married on November 15, 1795, at Tuckahoe, near Bryan’s (Bryant’s) Station, Ky. They took up residence in Newport. Keturah had no children by David Leitch but bore 11 to James Taylor Jr. Only four of the children survived infancy: James Taylor III and Keturah Taylor Harris (twins), Ann Taylor Tibatts, and Jane Maria Taylor Williamson. James Taylor Jr. died in 1848 and was buried in the Taylor family plot at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate. When Keturah Taylor died in 1866, at age 92, she was buried next to David Leitch, rather than James Taylor Jr., but not far from the Taylor family lot.

“The James Taylor Narrative,” 1840, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky.; Campbell Co. Historical and Genealogical Society, Alexandria, Ky. Jones, Mary Keturah. History of Campbell County, Kentucky as Read at the Centennial Celebration of 4th of July, 1876. Reprint ed., Fort Thomas, Ky.: Rebecca Bryan Boone Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1974.

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

Jack Wessling

TAYLOR MILL. The city of Taylor Mill in Kenton Co. derives its name from a sawmill and gristmill once owned by James Taylor Jr. on Banklick Creek (see Banklick Creek and Watershed).

The site of the mill is now at the end of Reidlin Rd., where it intersects with Grand Ave. The mill was built on land that was part of a 5,000-acre patent awarded to Raleigh Colston (see Colston Family) in 1790 for his ser vice during the Revolutionary War. A man named William Wilson leased the mill from Colston and operated it until the land was purchased in 1810 by wealthy landowner James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. Taylor soon learned that John Crittenden also claimed ownership of the mill site, as part of a 5,000-acre tract he owned in the area. Lengthy litigation followed, and in

870 TAYLOR’S BOTTOMS 1825 Crittenden descendants sold their interest in the property to Taylor. With that concession, Taylor owned most of the land along the west side of the Licking River from north of today’s Latonia to the top of the Taylor Mill hill. From that time on, the community, the mill, and the road carried the Taylor name. Court records indicate that Taylor leased the mill and 300 acres surrounding it to George Perry in 1819. When that lease expired, he leased it to James Foley, who managed the mill and the adjoining farm until about 1842. In Taylor’s will, signed in 1844, he bequeathed the 1,200 acres around the mill equally to his four children, James Taylor III, Keturah Taylor Harris, Ann Taylor Tibbatts, and Jane Taylor Williamson. Because of sporadic and insufficient water flow to the mill, it ceased operation in the late 1850s.

Taylor Mill, located south of Covington, was incorporated as a sixth-class city in 1956 but today is listed as a fourth-class city. It now includes communities previously known as Forest Hills, Sunny Acres, and Winston Park. Since the 1960s a number of subdivisions have been built in the city, making it one of the fastest-growing communities in Kenton Co. In 1988 Taylor Mill annexed land along Decoursey Pk., significantly increasing the city’s size. Good leadership and wise planning have made Taylor Mill a model community, with city water, sanitary sewers, and good streets. Much of the city’s progress can be attributed to Cincinnati businessman Afton Kordenbrock, who moved to Taylor Mill in the 1950s. He had been a three-sport star athlete at both Holmes High School and Eastern Kentucky University, and in 1997 he was inducted into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame.

He served on the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission and the Ohio-KentuckyIndiana Regional Council of Governments (see OKI), in addition to being a councilman and the mayor of Taylor Mill for more than 21 years.

A mayor and four city councilmen presently govern Taylor Mill, and the city operates its own police and fire departments. The 2000 U.S. Census listed the population of Taylor Mill as 6,913. In recent years, Taylor Mill has felt the impact of the arrival of Fidelity Investments’s new campus of buildings nearby in south Covington.

Hammons, Michael J. History of Taylor Mill, Kentucky. Covington, Ky.: Sandy Cohen, 1988.

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

“New City Formed on Taylor Mill,” KTS, June 1, 1956, 1A. Reis, Jim. “Suburban Kenton County Slowly Making Its Mark,” KP, February 10, 1986, 4K. U.S. Census Bureau. “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed December 8, 2006).

Jack Wessling

TAYLOR’S BOTTOMS. Taylor’s Bottoms, or Taylor’s Mill Bottoms, or simply “the fi ll,” is the land area situated along Taylor’s Creek between Newport and Bellevue. The area is at a low elevation and easily floods when the waters of the Ohio

River rise. When Gen. James Taylor Jr. owned this land, he used it as a horse racing track. In 1895 a Cree Indian tribe from Montana, in Kentucky as part of a traveling cultural exhibition, once spent a month camping in the bottoms. The area was annexed by Newport in 1911. Both Bellevue and Newport had their waste incinerators and original dumps (land fi lls) in Taylor’s Bottoms, and hence the nickname “the fi ll” began to be used. For many years, athletic fields have been situated in the bottoms: the Bellevue Vets field; another athletic field on land once owned by the underworld’s Sammy Schrader, where the Bellevue Kroger is today along Donnermeyer Dr.; and two baseball fields, known as Newport Recreation Fields No. 3 and No. 4, where the Newport High School is located now.

Newport Recreation had two other fields in Taylor’s Bottoms also: Field No. 1 remains as part of the revamped Ralph Mussman Sports Complex; Field No. 2 was covered over as those changes were made. Newport High’s football stadium opened in the bottoms in 1939. On the Bellevue side of the creek, there are similar athletic fields. All of these fields have been laid out on top of the garbage dumps of earlier years.

Today, an elevated interstate highway, I-471, runs along the Newport-Bellevue boundary. At the south end of the bottoms’ west side is the Newport city garage, home to the town’s fleet of vehicles. From east to west, at this point of the bottoms, are the tracks of the CSX Railroad. A culvert beneath the rails allows storm waters to flow from Duck Creek to the Ohio River, meeting Covert Run (a creek running from the east) to form Taylor’s Creek. At the far north end of Taylor’s Creek, just before it flows into the Ohio River, and under the parking lot of the Party Source store, is a large, now covered, concrete bowl, which funnels the creek water under Fairfield Ave. (Ky. Rt. 8) into the river. When this land depression was open, it was known as “the horseshoe,” a dangerous place for local children, some of whom failed to heed their parents’ warnings and drowned in its slimy water.

In 1901 a streetcar coming out of Dayton, Ky., careened over the embankment into the horseshoe.

There was a dance club near this site for a while during the 1930s, fittingly called the Horseshoe Club. The Bellevue Vets Club, located along Fairfield Ave. in the northern end of the bottoms, appeared after World War II. During the 1960s, local traffic helicopters would land occasionally at the fi ll. Sixth St. crosses the fi ll east to west, so the area is sometimes referred to as the Sixth St. fi ll. At the corner of Sixth St. and Maple Ave. in Newport, a tollbooth once stood, for travelers leaving Newport on the Covert Run Turnpike. In 2004 the new Newport branch of the Campbell Co. Public Library opened on the site where an A&P grocery once stood, just to the north of the tollbooth’s former location.

“Bellevue Fireman Burned at Dump,” KP, August 26, 1940, 3.

“Newport Annexes Sixth St. Tract,” KP, April 20, 1940, 1.

“New Street Is Opened to Public,” KP, November 8, 1929, 1.

TAYLOR-SOUTHGATE BRIDGE. This bridge across the Ohio River was named for three Northern Kentuckians: Dr. Louise Southgate, Covington’s pioneer woman doctor; Richard Southgate, an early local landowner; and James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport. The bridge opened in November 1995, at the site of the demolished Central Bridge, which once connected Newport and Cincinnati. The present bridge has four automobile lanes, an 850-foot span, two approach spans, and two river piers. There is a pedestrian walkway on each side of the traffic lanes. The bridge itself is 1,849 feet long; including its approach ramps, it totals 3,000 feet in length. It links the U.S. Bank Arena (formerly the Riverfront Coliseum) and the other sports and museum venues nearby on the Cincinnati side of the river with the Newport-onthe-Levee entertainment complex and the downtown area of Newport.

The Taylor-Southgate Bridge was built at a total cost of just under $34 million by the John Beasley Construction Company of Dallas, Tex. Once the two river piers were in place and ready, the bridge’s trusses were cantilevered from each side of the river toward the center. Where the two trusses met, the variance was within one inch, which was easily fi xed by jacking up one end before connecting the sections. The new bridge’s daily volume of traffic has increased as the driving public has become accustomed to once again having a bridge at that location.

“Bridge’s Name Official; Taylor-Southgate Replaces Central,” KP, December 1, 1995, 2K. “Cincinnati to Newport: Missed by an Inch,” KP, July 29, 1994, 1K. Cincinnati-Transit.net. “Taylor-Southgate Bridge.” www.cincinnati-transit.net (accessed October 31, 2006).

TAYLORSPORT. The community of Taylorsport in Boone Co. was known as Taylorsville until the Kentucky legislature changed its name to Taylorsport in 1849. Named for Newport’s Taylor family, whose members were involved in its development, the settlement is located along the Ohio River and Ky. Rt. 8, five miles northeast of Burlington. Elijah Creek flows into the Ohio there.

Lots went on sale in the village in 1846. In 1882 the U.S. Census Bureau determined that the geograph ical center of the nation’s population was located less than two miles southeast of Taylorsport. An 1883 atlas shows a few streets platted in town, and there was at one time a post office, which closed in 1909. On April 3, 1974, when hundreds of tornadoes struck the region, one destroyed Morehead’s Marine Ser vice at the town’s Ohio River dock and damaged more than 100 boats tied up there. In 2000 the U.S. Census Bureau reported that there were about 100 people living in the now-unincorporated town of Taylorsport and its immediate environs.

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

“Lots for Sale,” LVR, November 21, 1846, 3.

Reis, Jim. “Taylorsport Is Truly Survivor among Towns,” KP, July 10, 2000, 4K.

TELEPHONE ———. “Tornado Destroys Businesses, Homes,” KP, July 10, 2000, 4K. U.S. Census Bureau, “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed April 7, 2005, for Blocks 3002 and 3003, Block Group 3, Census Tract 704.01, Hebron CCD).

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

TELEGRAPH. The telegraph came to Cincinnati in August 1847 and to Lexington, via Northern Kentucky, in 1851. Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected the long-distance telegraph line only a few years earlier, in 1843. By the end of the 1850s, Maysville had been connected to Nashville, Tenn., via the telegraph (through Lexington), and a line also had been laid northward beneath the Ohio River at Maysville. During the Civil War, the telegraph was in wide use. Confederate raider Gen. John Hunt Morgan had a telegrapher with him in his ranks, who often frustrated his Union counterparts by tapping into lines with bold and cryptic false transmissions concerning Morgan’s location and his intentions. It is also known that the telegraph line to Louisville was operating by September 1862, when the transmission line under the Ohio River at Covington broke. The pontoon bridge, set up in 1862 across the Ohio River to help thwart a threatened Confederate invasion, saved the day as a newly spliced Louisville telegraph connection simply was routed over the pontoon bridge for the short term, serving as a vital link for the Union’s defense of the area.

Telegraph wires were often strung along railroad rights-of-way, and they became the means of dispatch and communication for the trains. The telegraph permitted outlying cities of the Northern Kentucky region, such as Falmouth, to notify Covington that an inbound scheduled Covington and Lexington Railroad train was running on time, for example. Soon important messages were being sent regularly, as commercial telegraph companies were developed. Rail beds today are littered with the remains of a once vigorous telegraph wire network: tilted poles, hollow copper wires, and glass insulators. The Hemingray Glass Company of Covington became the nation’s leader in the production of those glass insulators, which kept telegraph wires taut, parallel, separated, and ungrounded. The namesake of the southern Kenton Co. town of Nicholson, Dr. Henry C. Nicholson, invented an improved system of transmitting messages, increasing the message-sending capability of the wires, and as a result he was sued by inventor Thomas A. Edison for patent infringement. By the 1890s towns along the rails were reporting all sorts of happenings through the telegraph wires. For the new Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad river city of California in eastern Campbell Co., the telegraph assisted its growth and prosperity. Town businesses could order goods and materials via telegraph, and they could be quickly sent from Newport on the train. Being remote no longer meant being isolated for the outlying parts of Northern Kentucky.

In the 1880s Alexander Graham Bell elevated communications to a new level when he successfully transmitted the human voice over wires, in a vast improvement over telegraphy’s fast series of electronic clicks of code. However, the telegraph lingered well into the 20th century, because it was well suited to certain applications of data transfer.

Ultimately, microwave transmission rendered telegraphy’s long-distance hard wiring obsolete.

In 1900 two competing telegraph companies were open for business in both Covington and Newport: in Covington, Western Union was at 636 Madison Ave., while the Postal Telegraph-Cable Company operated from 29 W. Sixth St.; in Newport, Western Union was at 607 York St., and Postal Telegraph was down the street at 326 York. Telegraph keys were set up for special occasions at such places as the YMCA, churches, and poolrooms.

Poolrooms installed them for the purpose of receiving distant horse-racing results, critical to their illegal betting activities. Several individuals became well-known telegraphers, such as young Walter Grimm, who in 1917, at the age of 16, was a station manager in Newport. Telegraph offices moved frequently because neighbors did not like the all-night foot traffic of the strangers who frequented the offices. In 1943, as the telephone appeared in more households in the United States, declining business led the Postal Telegraph-Cable Company to merge with Western Union.

The telegraph offices that once dotted the Northern Kentucky region, bringing early major league baseball game scores, national election results, and other important announcements, have disappeared, along with the square-hatted, bicycle-riding telegraph delivery boys. They have yielded to modern technology, just as telegraphy itself had earlier retired the commercial carrier pigeon to his roost (see Homing Pigeons).

“Church to Have an Electric Wire,” KP, November 3, 1916, 4.

City Directories, Covington and Newport, Ky., for 1880–1950.

Coleman, J. Winston, Jr. Stage- Coach Days in the Bluegrass. Louisville, Ky.: Standard Press, 1935.

“He’s Smallest and Also Youngest Manager at Key,” KP, October 22, 1917, 4.

“Nicholson vs. Edison—Quadruplex Telegraphing,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1879, 3.

“Wager by Wire,” KP, July 29, 1897, 4.

“YMCA to Have Wire Vote Night,” KP, October 31, 1916, 1.

Michael R. Sweeney

TELEPHONE. The telephone came to Northern Kentucky soon after Alexander Graham Bell invented it in 1876. The first phones in Northern Kentucky were owned by businesses, and they had very short ranges: they reached just to the other end of their individual phone lines. Three examples from the late 1870s in Covington include the Hemingray Glass Company, which had a wire running from its Second St. factory to a product showroom in downtown Cincinnati; the Walsh Distillery, also along Second St., which had a telephone connection to its other facility on the north

871

side of downtown Cincinnati; and the Thomas Reed & Son firm, furniture dealers and undertakers, which also had a link to Cincinnati. These companies were near the Ohio River in Covington; from there it was relatively easy to reach the John A. Roebling Bridge and string phone cables across it. From central Covington it was necessary to pay the cost of installing telephone poles.

These were private ventures, since no telephone companies existed yet. In Covington one of the first household telephones, called Edison Telephones, belonged to the well-connected Dr. Richard Pretlow, whose wife proceeded to buzz Covington society with her pioneering telephonic chitchat beginning in 1879. In 1899 one of the first long distance telephones in the area was installed at the Highlands Garden, a drinking establishment along Alexandria Pike in Southgate. It was placed in the beer garden owned by William Kettenacker, who used it as a draw to his business and as a means to reach his customers’ homes in Newport, three miles distant.

The telephone exchange, the very heart and soul of any phone company, came later, allowing users to call many different locations from one phone. Exchanges, staffed by operators, were necessary in an era when phones did not have dialing devices. A primitive exchange, and perhaps the first in Northern Kentucky, was installed on the third floor of a building at the southwest corner of Fift h St. and Madison Ave. in Covington, in 1879.

By 1910 Covington’s “South” exchange had opened at 57 E. 4th St. It lasted until 1940. The first modern telephone exchange for Covington and Newport remains in use at 11th and Scott Sts. in Covington.

Replacing the “South” exchange, this “Covington” exchange “cut in” (consolidated) 6,000 telephones at 10:00 p.m. Saturday, January 20, 1923. About 80 women operators, known as Hello Girls, were hired to work shifts on the second f loor of the new building. Their work facility included a highquality cafeteria and even an emergency hospital.

The $600,000 building, designed by Cincinnati architect Harry Hake, later had its windows filled in with granite panels to protect the electronic switching equipment eventually installed inside. Today, although the Hello Girls are long gone and new exchange names and numbers have been added with increased phone use over the years, land line telephone calls continue to be routed through that subdued and secure structure.

Land line (noncellular) telephone bills today still show “Covington, Ky.” as the place of origin or the destination of long distance calls, the exchange through which those calls pass.

The exchange was the property of the Citizens Telephone Company. That organization was founded in Newport in 1895, and because of its innovative practices, such as the exchange, it won out over the multitude of smaller telephone companies throughout Northern Kentucky. It seemed at first that each little town had its own local operator, party line, exchange, and phone company, but the necessity for connections across the state, the nation, and the world led to consolidation into Citizens. In 1901 the Citizens Telephone Company

872 TEN - EYCK, SIDNEY DEFOREST became a subsidiary of the Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company, but for regulatory reasons, it continued to exist as a separate Kentucky corporation, regulated from Frankfort, Ky. Meanwhile, the many smaller telephone companies, confronted with increasing regulation and the high cost of telephone switching equipment, ceased operation. The Citizens Telephone Company eventually added exchanges with suburban growth in Erlanger (the Dixie exchange, in 1936) and Fort Thomas (the Highland exchange, in 1949). On January 31, 1969, Citizens Telephone had 108,251 phones in ser vice in its system. One of the last phone systems acquired by Citizens was the Consolidated Telephone Company of Boone Co., which it absorbed on May 22, 1967, taking in an additional 12,087 phones.

Boone Co. phones had not all been converted to phones with dialing devices until 1960. In Maysville the city government in 1895 granted the first telephone franchise to Thomas Davis, for the operation of local ser vice for a period of 20 years.

One Northern Kentuckian has the honor of having developed the 1960s telephone marketing sensation the vintage Princess Phone. Bartlett T. Miller from Jonesville in Bracken Co., who rose to a vice-president position within AT&T, envisioned and designed the Princess. Satellites, the computer, the deregulation of the industry, and the invention of cellular technology have brought wholesale changes to the world of the telephone. As the cellular revolution continues, massive hard-wired telephone exchange buildings will soon be obsolete.

“Boone- Co Phone All ‘Dial’ Now,” KP, May 2, 1960, 1K. “Give One Name to Phone Co.” KP, March 5, 1969, 4K. “Local Matters,” DC, February 15, 1879, 1.

“New Telephone Building to House Dixie Exchange,” May 22, 1936, 3.

“6,000 Telephones Answer ‘Covington,’ ” KP, January 20, 1923, 1–3.

Michael R. Sweeney

TEN-EYCK, SIDNEY DEFOREST (b. Sidney Eick, July 22, 1905, Mechanicsburg, Pa.; d. December 22, 1990, Edgewood, Ky.). Sidney Ten-Eyck, a major player in Cincinnati’s rich broadcasting history, was born Sidney Eick but changed his name for professional reasons. At age 17, he served with the U.S. Marines (1922–1925). Through a friend, he met his wife, Dorothy “Dolly” Tretter, and they moved to Covington.

Ten-Eyck began his career in early radio in 1929 at Northern Kentucky’s WCKY, when the station first went on the air. He returned briefly to that same station in the late 1960s before final retirement in 1970. In the 1930s he worked for Cincinnati’s WLW radio, where he was well known for his syndicated Doodlesockers Saturday night comedy program, which included stories of his great-grandfather Tarbaby Ten-Eyck. Among his other characters were a pianist and a violinist, neither of whom could play their instruments. But real musicians would line up to join in the parody.

The famous Mills Brothers performed on his shows, as well as the Clooney sisters (Rosemary Clooney and Betty Clooney) and many other well-known

entertainers. He directed, produced, and ran his own shows. For his “man on the street” program, he dangled a microphone by its cord from a window down to the street. He also conducted live interviews and hosted live music on his shows. During those years, Ten-Eyck’s radio career included a stint as a Cincinnati Reds baseball announcer (1931–1933). He returned to the military in World War II, serving in the U.S. Navy, and received several medals for bravery.

After his World War II ser vice, Ten-Eyck moved to San Francisco and worked for a while in radio before becoming a corrections officer at the San Quentin prison. He worked 17 years in that tough penitentiary. In 1964 Ten Eyck and his wife returned to Northern Kentucky; they lived in Dayton and then in Covington.

Ten-Eyck was a prolific “letters to the editor” writer; he spoke at various high schools in the region, painting a true portrayal of the dire results of a life of crime; he was interviewed by WCET about his early radio days. Four months before his death, his 86th birthday was celebrated by such notable media personalities as Nick Clooney, Len Goorian, Bill Nimmo, Tony Sands, Elsa Sule, and Mary Wood.

In a 1990 Cincinnati Post round-up of “deaths felt around the globe,” Ten-Eyck was included at the end of a list of such notables as a Supreme Court justice, generals, authors, celebrities, and composers: “Sidney Ten-Eyck, 86, of Covington, former broadcaster who worked in Greater Cincinnati radio since the 1920s.” Ten-Eyck was cremated.

Clooney, Nick. “Readers Distill Sayings to Ease Vagaries of Life,” CP, July 11, 1990, 1B. “Deaths Felt around the Globe,” CP, December 31, 1990, 2B. Hicks, Jack. “This Man’s Always Worth Listening To,” KP, November 21, 1990, 1K. Kieswetter, John. “Public Can Add to WVXU’s Audio History of Cincinnati Radio,” CE, March 27, 2000, C1.

“Sidney Ten-Eyck, Radio Pioneer,” KP, December 24, 1990. 4A.

Nancy J. Tretter

TEN MILE BAPTIST CHURCH. The Ten Mile Baptist Church, the fift h-oldest Baptist church in Kentucky, is located north of Eagle Creek at Napoleon in Gallatin Co. It was organized in April 1804 by original members Elder William Bledsoe, who was the first preacher, and his wife; Mr. and Mrs. Preston Hampton; Mr. and Mrs. James Richardson; Solomon and his wife; Mr. and Mrs. Barnet Spencer; Mr. and Mrs. Edward Spencer; John Spencer; and Col. and Mrs. Joseph Spencer. Solomon and his wife are identified in church histories as “colored.” The original location of the church was in Grant Co. about two miles north of Elliston Station. In 1840 the congregation began meeting a short distance away, across the new county line into Gallatin Co., where a new church was built on the site of the present-day church.

David Lillard became pastor of the church in 1806 and continued as pastor for the next 42 years. The church’s history notes, regarding Lillard,

“When he commenced the church it did not exceed 50 members; before he closed it numbered nearly 400.” At Ten Mile Baptist Church and at other churches for which he was a circuit-riding preacher, Lillard baptized more than 4,000 people. Moreover, he was a successful farmer and at one time owned nearly 100 slaves.

Additional churches were also started by the circuit-riding Lillard. Ten Mile Baptist Church originally belonged to the North Bend Association of Baptist Churches, but in 1831, at the instigation of Lillard, the Ten Mile Association of Baptists was organized. The following Baptist churches belonged to the new association: Dry Ridge, Grassy Creek, Lick Creek, Mount Zion, New Bethel, New Salem, Poplar Grove, Providence, and Ten Mile.

These nine churches had a total of 383 members.

Since the Ten Mile Baptist Church existed before these other churches were founded, virtually all of the members of the new churches were former members of the Ten Mile Baptist Church. Many Kentucky Baptist churches during the 1830s and 1840s lost members to Alexander Campbell’s Reform Church (today’s Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ), but the churches of the Ten Mile Association reportedly lost very few members. The creation of new Baptist churches whose members had originally attended the Ten Mile Baptist Church continued: Glencoe, Oakland, Pleasant Home, Verona, Vine Run, and Warsaw all established new churches. After widespread religious revivals in 1842, the memberships of both the Ten Mile Baptist Church and the Ten Mile Association of Baptists grew substantially. In response to its growth, the Ten Mile Baptist Church erected a new church building in 1862, replacing the 1840 structure.

At the Ten Mile Baptist Church’s centennial celebration in 1904, it was estimated that more than 1,000 persons had joined the church during the previous century, under the leadership of 16 different preachers and 25 different deacons. The church did not enjoy the same growth in the beginning years of the new century, but the membership stayed loyal, although preaching dropped to one Sunday per month. Then in spring 1942, the brick church building dating from 1862, which was the Ten Mile Baptist Church’s third home, burned. Skeptics thought the fire would be the end of the Ten Mile Baptist Church, but the church’s membership responded quickly to this loss, and by 1943 a new frame church building had been built. The new building was the catalyst the church had needed, as full-time preaching resumed, the membership grew, and the church’s fi nances improved. Rev. Will Smith, the pastor from 1937 to 1954, served longer than any other pastor in the church’s history except for Lillard, and was responsible for the church’s revitalization. As the church prospered, the congregation erected a new brick church in 1963, which is in use today; it was made possible by a gift from Walter “Jeff ” Hendrix. The Ten Mile Baptist Church, the mother church for so many other Baptist churches in Kentucky, celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2004.

TEXTILES Johnson, Lafayette. History of the Ten Mile Baptist Church of Christ, Gallatin County, Kentucky.

Louisville, Ky.: Baptist Book Concern, 1904.

Kirkpatrick, Edwin. “History of the Ten Mile Baptist Church of Christ, Gallatin County, Kentucky,” 1976, Gallatin Co. Free Public Library, Warsaw, Ky.

Bernie Spencer

TERESITA (WALNUT GROVE). Teresita was the post office’s official name for the southern Owen Co. community of Walnut Grove. The town is located along the Teresita-Shirley Rd., Highway 1476, west of Beechwood and about nine miles south of Owenton. Teresita is within the Harmony Precinct. There is no record of a school ever operating at Walnut Grove, only a post office. Presumably, the area derives its name from a grove of walnut trees. The source of the name Teresita has not been determined. The town sits just north of the Kleber Wildlife Area (see Wildlife Areas in Owen Co.) and only a few miles from the Scott Co. boundary.

TEVIS, WALTER STONE, JR. (b. February 28, 1928, San Francisco, Calif.; d. August 9, 1984, New York City). Writer Walter Stone Tevis Jr. was the son of Walter Stone and Anna Elizabeth Bacon Tevis.

In 1938 Walter moved along with his family to Richmond, Ky., where he graduated from Model High School. After high school he served a stint in the Pacific Theater (1945–1946) with the U.S. Naval Reserves. Tevis received a BA in English from the University of Kentucky (UK) at Lexington in 1949, taught high school at various schools in Kentucky, and was a part-time instructor at UK in 1955–1956.

He completed an MA in English at UK in 1957 and in 1958 briefly taught English at UK’s Northern Community Center (now Northern Kentucky University) in Covington. While a graduate student, Tevis spent many hours at a popular Lexington pool hall, gathering materials for his first novel, The Hustler (1959). He eventually gave up teaching to write full-time, producing six additional novels that center on pool or chess: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963); Mockingbird (1980); Far from Home (1981); The Queen’s Gambit (1983); The Steps of the Sun (1983); and The Color of Money (1984).

Three of his novels were made into movies: The Hustler, starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason; The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie; and The Color of Money, starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. Tevis was married twice and had two children by his first wife. He died in New York City in 1984 and was buried in the Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, Ky. Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin’s 2007 Movie Guide. New York: Signet Books, 2006.

James C. Claypool

TEWES POULTRY. This small Northern Kentucky poultry dynasty was founded in 1911 by John Henry Tewes Sr. He started the family business in the old Fort Perry neighborhood of Fort

Wright. In the early years, the business was known as the Safe and Sane Hatchery, and the incubators were located in the basement of the Tewes’s house.

Tewes soon moved to a 30-acre farm in what is today Edgewood. He patented a process for coloring the feathers of baby chicks with vegetable dye, thereby enhancing the hatchery’s profitability. In the 1920s a dozen eggs sold for 10 to 12 cents; the colored baby chicks, which came to be known as Easter chicks, were sold at the incredible price of 25 cents each.

In 1944 Tewes’s son John H. Tewes Jr. moved the poultry business to a 115-acre farm in Erlanger and changed the focus of the business from hatching to raising chickens, both as layers and for frying or roasting. Initially, chicks were obtained from local hatcheries. As local suppliers went out of business, Tewes Poultry had to acquire most of its chicks from out of state. In the 1950s the firm expanded by adding tan turkeys to its product line.

From 1960 to 1995, Tewes Poultry trucks covered the entire Northern Kentucky region, delivering fresh eggs, fryers or roasters, and, during the winter, turkeys. Later, Tewes Poultry limited delivery ser vice to individuals who were housebound and to local grocers. One of the largest producers in Northern Kentucky, Tewes Poultry sells approximately 3,000 turkeys, 6,500 chickens, and 3,500 dozen eggs annually. In 2001, to accommodate nutrition-conscious customers, Tewes Poultry switched from tan turkeys, which have large amounts of dark meat, to white turkeys because they have more white meat.

In 1958 the farm was physically divided into two sections when the government purchased right-of-way to build I-75 (see Expressways). The family house and the poultry buildings are contained on 37.5 acres. The 56 acres on the other side of the highway lay dormant until 2001, when the Tewes family and Pi lot Contracting Corporation entered into a joint venture to create a business park. John Henry Tewes Jr. brought formal organizational structure to the family business when he created three business entities: Tewes Farm Corporation, the parent company, responsible for the Tewes Business Park; Tewes Poultry Property, which secures the farm’s property; and Tewes Poultry Products, which protects the business products.

John Henry Tewes Jr. and Mary Ratterman Tewes married in 1935 and had 18 children. John died in 1988 and Mary in 2002; they were survived by 17 children. At the death of John Henry Tewes Jr., Daniel N. Tewes became president of Tewes Poultry and Tewes Poultry Products, and Robert A. Tewes was named president of Tewes Farm Corporation.

Account No. 6372900, Kenton Co. Property Valuation Department.

Deed Books 312, p. 14, and C-747, p. 121, Kenton Co. Clerk’s Office.

“Feeding the Thousands,” KP, November 19, 2003, 2K. “Mary Tewes, Tewes Poultry Matriarch, Mother to 18,” KP, March 28, 2002, B5.

May, Lucy. “Northern Kentucky to Get Business Park,” Business Courier, February 23, 2001.

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Tewes, Daniel N. Interview by Blanche Gaynor, March 12, 2005, Erlanger, Ky. Tewes, Daniel N., and Darlene Tewes. Interview by Blanche Gaynor, October 11, 2004, Erlanger, Ky. Tewes, Robert A. Interview by Blanche Gaynor and Paul A. Tenkotte, August 24, 2004, Fort Mitchell, Ky.; telephone interview by Blanche Gaynor, March 12, 2005.

“Trimming of Prices Bad News for Turkeys,” KE, November 1, 2003, A1–A10.

“Turkey Time for Tewes,” KP, November 19, 1999, 1K.

Blanche Gaynor

TEXTILES. The textile trade, originally conducted in colonial homes, had arrived in Northern Kentucky in the form of a business before the 19th century. By 1799 Daniel Mayo and Eli Williams had built a ropewalk manufacturing plant along Columbia St. in Newport. By 1817 the pioneer Indian fighter Jacob Fowler was operating a bagging factory. Sidney Sherman began with a bagging factory in Newport in this same era and also ran a “bullet manufacturing factory” in Covington, supplying the military before he departed, amid much fanfare, to fight in the Mexican War. In 1828 Newport lost out to its neighboring city Covington when Charles MacAllister chose to open his cotton factory on Covington’s riverfront instead of in Newport. Nevertheless, by the 1840s Newport had become the acknowledged local center for fabric production. The Newport Manufacturing Company (see John Wooleston Tibbatts), incorporated in 1831, purchased 27 acres along the Ohio River and built 36 workers’ dwellings, a cotton and a woolen factory, a ropewalk, and a hemp-bagging mill in town. The Cincinnati Daily Gazette recalled that in October 1835 this Newport manufacturing company, employing 329, had manufactured “4,056 batting, yards of Kentucky jeans, 3,716 yards of linseys, 5,299 yards of cotton plains, 200 lbs. of cotton, 2,500 lbs of cotton yarns, 18,284 lbs. of bale rope, and 36,568 yards of bagging.” An expansion plan soon contributed to an increase in annual production of bale rope and bagging. The short supplies of Americangrown hemp and high prices for this product necessitated purchases by the Newport Manufacturing Company of “354,201 pounds of Russia Hemp.”

But ordinarily Newport manufacturers enjoyed access to Mason Co. hemp crops, Ohio sheep farms, and Memphis, Tenn., cotton merchants.

By the early 1840s, William B. Jackson and his brother had opened a business called the Newport Silk Manufacturing Company, and in 1854 the company won an award at a prominent industrial exposition in New York City. By 1843 another new textile firm had opened a steam mill and ropewalk, “the most extensive” in the West.

Newport’s Licking Valley Steam Cordage and the Oakum Manufacturing Company made hemp into thread by machine before laying three or four strands into rope, “from 1 ⁄ 2 inch to 12 inch cable.”

Strong industrial leadership later built for Newport a reputation as a major steel center that lasted well into the 20th century, but as late as 1900, 21 percent of the city’s industrial workers were still engaged in the manufacture of clothing.

874 THACKER, THOMAS The Covington Cotton factory opened in 1828, in a four-story building 120 by 40 feet in size that cost $66,000 to build. It operated 2,288 spindles, employed 60 workers, and produced 4,000 pounds of cotton yarn and 2,000 yards of cloth daily. In 1836 it produced yarn and “wick” worth $75,000 and “cotton gins” worth $35,000. The cotton factory expanded to add the manufacture of jeans and linseys. In 1840 it employed 90 workers, who produced 30,000 pounds of yarns. In 1844 it consumed 850 bales of cotton, made 32,500 lbs of yarn, employed 70 to 100 employees (three-fourths of whom were women), and paid wages of from $1.50 to $3.25 weekly. A 40-horsepower steam engine at the factory used 22,000 bushels of coal. Covington also had three ropewalks. In 1864 a Cincinnati company purchased the Covington cotton factory for conversion to a woolen factory. In 1866 the Glaser brothers were manufacturing wool at Scott and Front Sts in Covington. By 1869, however, the two woolen mills located in Covington were situated at Eighth St. and Madison Ave. and on Pike St. and the Glasers’ operation at Scott and Front Sts. apparently had been closed.

Another Covington merchant, Thomas Bakewell, opened the Covington Bagging Factory at Second and Philadelphia Sts. in town. In the early 1830s, it produced $25,000 worth of finished “hemp goods” per year. In 1836 Covington and Newport produced nearly one-half million yards of bagging for wrapping Southern cotton bales. In 1849 Pepper and Blair operated Bakewell’s former plant, known also as the Globe Mills and Bagging Factory; it was one of the largest processors of hemp in Kentucky. That was just a little more than one decade before the 1860s Union blockade during the Civil War cut off Southern cotton trade; afterward Kentucky’s hemp economy faded.

In 1860 the Cincinnati city directory listed 4 cotton factories, 2 cotton dealers, 12 rope and cordage firms, 2 wool dealers, and 1 woolen manufacturer. After the Civil War, commerce to the east and west of the Greater Cincinnati region accelerated. Cincinnati remained both a “jobber,” or commercial center, and a manufacturing center. Following a wool and woolen fabrics exposition in Chicago, Cincinnati boosters arranged an Exposition of Textile Fabrics in August 1869, inviting manufacturers of cotton, flax, hemp, silk, and wool, and also growers, to attend. This exposition inaugurated a series of general industrial expositions.

In 1866 the Covington city directory listed 2 woolen mills, 1 rope manufacturer, 2 carpet weavers, and 20 tailors and clothiers. Newport had 1 rope manufacturer, 1 cotton-batting factory near the Newport Barracks, and 3 tailor shops. In 1876 Covington listed 4 carpet weavers, 22 dressmakers, 26 tailors, and 8 sewing machine companies, including a branch of the Singer Manufacturing Company at 540 Madison Ave. After the Civil War, new partners set up a national business, the Putnam-Hooker Company, which specialized in Southern cotton goods. In Covington, the Putnam-Hooker Company oversaw the Argonaut Cotton Mill (1892–1915) and the Reliance Textile and Dye Works, which operated

into the mid-1980s, when the market for such processing had declined. The last owner-manager of the firm, by then known as the Reliance Dyeing and Finishing Corporation, was Harold J. Krantz Jr. He recalled that, while employing up to 25 workers, the highly mechanized firm dyed and finished fabric and components for carpet, vacuum cleaner, furniture, and car manufacturers nationwide. It imported cotton and modern synthetics from the South and overseas and dyes from Cincinnati, Germany, and elsewhere. Back in 1891, the Putnam Hooker Company claimed to represent about 30 of the largest cotton and woolen mills in the southern and western parts of the United States.

Established in 1880 with an office in Cincinnati, the Overman and Schrader Cordage Company operated the Eagle Twin Mills on W. Sixth St., Covington. In 1901 it was processing cords and ropes, cotton, flax, hemp, and sisal. In 1888 Covington had three rope and cordage firms in the vicinity of the city’s railroad terminal and commission offices. Newport listed no rope and cordage manufacturing; Bellevue had one such firm; and located across from Cincinnati’s Fulton shipyards, Dayton, Ky., had eight. In 1910 Covington had the Argonaut Cotton Mill, a carpet weaver, 87 dressmakers, and more than 40 tailor shops. Newport had 64 dressmakers, 7 men’s finishing shops, and more than 50 tailor shops. In 1910 Cincinnati listed cotton brokerage offices, mills, and other cotton firms, including the Putnam Hooker Company. In 1926 Covington had the Reliance Company, 36 dressmaking shops, and 15 tailor shops.

Newport had 14 dressmakers and 16 tailor shops.

In 1952 Newport shoppers could purchase ready-to-wear clothing, drapes, window shades, blankets, linens, hosiery, and underwear at the Brandt Dry Goods Store, operated by Albert, August, and Charles Brandt at 906 Monmouth St. David, Oscar, and Nathan Levine operated Hyde Park Clothes, a “clothing manufacturer,” at 603 Washington St. in Newport. In 1962 Newport listed two manufacturers, the Palm Beach Company at the southeast corner of Washington and Fift h Sts., and Hyde Park Clothes, one block away at Washington and Sixth Sts., which operated into the 1970s. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Palm Beach Company, on Kenton Lands Rd. in Erlanger, manufactured men’s and boys clothing. In 1991 the Palm Beach Mill Outlet (“retail”) occupied the southeast corner of Washington and Fift h Sts. in Newport.

The textile industry changed rapidly from natural and synthetic fabrics and dyes to handicraft and manufactured ready-to-wear goods. It also changed drastically with new industrially engineered processes, new household technologies, new patterns of advertising and marketing, and shifting lifestyles.

Hopkins, James F. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1951.

Krantz, Harold J., Jr. Interview by John Boh, July 11, 1990, Covington, Ky. Purvis, Thomas L., ed. Newport, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. Newport, Ky.: Otto Zimmerman, 1996.

John Boh

THACKER, THOMAS (b. November 2, 1939, Covington, Ky.). Thomas Porter Thacker, the son of William T. and Velma M. Arvin Thacker, played basketball on three national championship teams: the NCAA (at the University of Cincinnati, 1960– 1961 and 1961–1962), the NBA (for the Boston Celtics, 1967–1968), and the ABA (for the Indiana Pacers, 1970–1971).

Thacker’s success in basketball began in grade school at the Roman Catholic African American school in Covington, Our Savior. His team played in the Northern Kentucky Holy Name Basketball League, winning the league’s championship in 1955. In 1956, when integration closed Our Savior’s High School, Thacker enrolled at William Grant High School. In 1956 African American schools were admitted to the Kentucky High School Athletic Association. That year his basketball team won the district tournament but lost in the regional tournament. William Grant had a season record of 23-4. In 1957–1958, Thacker’s second year, William Grant High School won the district and regional basketball tournaments but lost in the fi rst round of the state tournament.

The school’s basketball season ended with a record of 26-5. In 1958–1959, Thacker’s fi nal year, his high school won the district and regional tournaments but lost in the quarter fi nals of the state tournament. The school’s season ended with a record of 31-7.

Thacker, still needing a few high school credits to graduate, attended the Holmes High School during summer 1959, then in the fall entered the University of Cincinnati. He earned a BA and an MA there. As a six-foot-two forward, he had a distinguished college playing career that included twice being named a basketball All-American. Following college, Thacker played basketball professionally for a time with the Cincinnati Royals alongside Oscar Robertson. After his NBA-ABA career, Thacker played and coached some minor league professional basketball teams. He also coached the University of Cincinnati’s Lady Bearcats basketball team for a short period.

Thacker was named to the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Northern Kentucky Black Hall of Fame in 1989. He currently lives in Cincinnati, where during his retirement he does occasional substitute teaching for the Cincinnati Public School System.

Fisher, John C. K. “Black Hall of Fame Inductees Transcend Sports,” KP, February 25, 1989, 1K. “Our Savior Wins,” KTS, January 5, 1955, 7A. Reis, Jim. “Many Tried, Few Defeated William Grant in ’50s, ’60s,” KP, February 23, 1998, 4K. ———. “Our Savior Fills Unique Niche,” KP, January 17, 1994, 4K. Straub, Bill. “Brain Busters: Quick Quiz of Forgettable Facts,” KP, August 13, 1982, 5K. Weber, Dan. “Thacker, Hils, Grant Top All-Time Hoop Picks,” KP, December 25, 1984, 10K.

Theodore H. H. Harris

THEISSEN, HELEN MCNEEVE (b. May 28, 1906, Covington, Ky.; d. April 11, 2005, Covington, Ky.). Catholic charities activist Helen Theissen

THIEN, WENCESLAUS

was the oldest of four children of Frank and Ellen “Nellie” Grossman McNeeve. She attended La Salette Academy in Covington, earned her first bachelor’s degree from Sacred Heart College in Cincinnati’s Clifton neighborhood (1928), and received an additional BS in education from the University of Cincinnati (1929). Thereafter, she taught for four years in public schools in Cincinnati’s poorer West End district. Helen married Mark A. Theissen, an aeronautical engineer, in December 1935. He died in 1966, and she subsequently donated the hand-carved Sacred Heart Altar in Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption to his memory and that of her parents.

Active in Catholic charitable causes for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Helen served as treasurer of the Cincinnati Catholic Women’s Association in 1958–1959. Under Bishop William T. Mulloy of the Diocese of Covington (bishop 1945–1959), she became involved in the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women (DCCW), an affi liate of the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW) (see Roman Catholics). From 1958 until 1960, she served as president of the NCCW, then composed of 13,000 chapters and 9 million members. Under Theissen’s leadership and through the influence of Miss Eileen Egan of Catholic Relief Ser vices, the NCCW brought Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997) to its 1960 national convention in Las Vegas entitled “Women in the Sixties.”

The visit was a historic occasion, as it marked the very first time that Mother Teresa had left India since her arrival there in 1929. Still relatively unknown to the outside world at the time, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity later became famous worldwide for their avocation on behalf of the poor. Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Theissen and her sister Rosemary McNeeve became friends of Mother Teresa and sponsored one of the many babies that Mother Teresa rescued from the streets. Theissen also advised Mother Teresa before she opened a facility in New York City.

Theissen and McNeeve dedicated many years to the Diocese of Covington’s annual DCCW Seminary Ball, providing funds for the construction and operation of the Seminary of St. Pius X. The two sisters were also members of the Equestrian Order of the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a society dedicated to supporting hospitals, schools, and orphanages for Middle Eastern children. Theissen received the prestigious Pro Ecclesia medal for her charitable work from Pope John XXIII. She died in Covington in April 2005. Her funeral mass was at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, and she was buried at St. Mary Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

Egan, Eileen. Catholic Relief Services: The Beginning Years: For the Life of the World. New York: Catholic Relief Ser vices, 1988.

“Highest Office Goes to Mrs. Theissen,” KP, September 25, 1958, 1.

Tenkotte, Paul A. “Helen Theissen Introduced Mother Teresa to the United States,” Cathedral Chimes 15, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 1–2.

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

THIEN, WENCESLAUS (b. May 17, 1838, Bokel, Germany; d. November 13, 1912, Cincinnati, Ohio). Artist Wenceslaus Thien (his first name was also given as Wenzeslaus and Wenzel) was the son of Gerhard Thien, a master blacksmith, and Gesina Gerdes Thien. Wenceslaus, born in Bokel, was baptized in the nearby Catholic parish at Aschendorf.

He was the third of five children, and with his younger brother Heribert (Herbert) (1844–1919), he immigrated to the United States. Wenceslaus and Herbert boarded the ship New York at the port of Bremen in Germany and arrived in New York City on August 14, 1866. Twenty-eight years old at the time of his immigration, Wenceslaus was a respected artist in Germany and had earned the recommendation of the bishop of Münster, Johann Georg Müller. In addition, in the winter of 1869 he traveled throughout Europe, further studying Christian art and decoration. Herbert, who had studied at the Gymnasium Carolinum (secondary school) in Osnabrück, was a rector at a rural parish in Germany. The brothers chose Cincinnati as their destination. Herbert completed his studies for the priesthood at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in May 1867.

Wenceslaus Thien was peripatetic, like many artists of his day, first appearing in the Cincinnati City Directory in 1870. He was associated with the Covington Altar Stock Building Company in Covington, which employed fellow artists Wilhelm Lamprecht and Johann Schmitt. By the time that the Covington Altar Stock Building Company moved to St. Vincent’s Abbey in Latrobe, Pa., in the early 1870s, Wenceslaus Thien had set out on his own as a fresco artist; his office was located for many years in the Johnston Building, on the southwest corner of Fift h and Walnut Sts. in Cincinnati.

In 1874 Thien offered Covington artist Frank Duveneck a position in his firm, but the latter declined. By 1892, at the height of its success, the W. Thien Decorating Company had headquarters in Cincinnati’s prestigious Carew Building, on the southwest corner of Fifth and Vine Sts., and included artists L. Emrich and Paul Hein. Thien’s artistic creations, like those of Lamprecht and Schmitt, are still found at Covington’s Mother of God Catholic Church, where he painted exquisite a secco paintings on the ceiling and walls in 1890–1891.

The exact number and location of Th ien’s artistic works may never be known, because ecclesiastical artists often did not sign their creations.

Overpainting has destroyed some Thien works, while the demolition of many fi ne old churches has destroyed others. Nevertheless, Dr. Beate Stock of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has identified a long list of Thien’s works before 1872 through articles appearing in Cincinnati’s GermanCatholic newspaper the Wahrheits-Freund. Still

875

intact are artworks by him and Wilhelm Lamprecht for St. Romuald (L’Église de Saint-Romualdd’Etchemin) in New-Liverpool, Quebec, dating from 1868–1869. Also remaining are creations that he painted for St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in St. Louis, Mo., operated by the Franciscans. That same province of Franciscan priests and brothers, based in St. Louis, employed him as an artist at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio, the size and magnificence of which earned it the title the Cathedral of the East Side; it closed in 1986 and was destroyed by fire in February 1993.

Thien’s 1867 artwork for St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., has been overpainted, as well as his three-month-long decoration of Isaac M. Wise Temple (Jewish) on Plum St. in Cincinnati in fall 1874. Lost are his 1869 works for St. Philomena Catholic Church in Cincinnati (demolished), his 1871 commissions for St. Elizabeth Hospital’s Chapel on W. 11th St. in Covington (demolished) (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center), and his masterpieces for St. Stephen Catholic Church in Hamilton, Ohio. The St. Stephen church was formerly operated by the Franciscans, Cincinnati Province; Thien’s works there were overpainted, and later the building was rebuilt after a fire in 1990. In 1877 Thien painted the walls and ceiling of the old St. Boniface Catholic Church (formerly operated by the Franciscans, Cincinnati Province) in Louisville, Ky., which was replaced by the present structure in 1900. In 1885 he executed frescoes for the old St. John Catholic Church on Worth St. in Covington (demolished).

Wenceslaus Thien remained single throughout his life, devoted to his painting and to his brother Herbert. Rev. Herbert Th ien transferred to service in the Diocese of Covington in 1872 and was a longtime pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport. He returned to Germany and the Diocese of Osnabrück in 1895. Wenceslaus Thien died in Cincinnati in November 1912. His funeral mass was held at Cincinnati’s first German American Catholic parish, Holy Trinity on W. Fift h St., and he was buried at Old St. Joseph Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Central Catholic Church Archive (Diozösanarchiv), Osnabrück, Germany, to Beate Stock, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, October 16, 2006. In Paul A. Tenkotte’s personal fi les.

“Deaths,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, November 15, 1912, 5.

Heller, James G. As Yesterday When It Is Past: A History of the Isaac M. Wise Temple—K. K. B’nai Yeshurun—of Cincinnati in Commemoration of the Centenary of Its Founding. Cincinnati, 1942.

Müller-Koppe, Jens, Historical Research Ser vices, Bremen, Germany, to Paul A. Tenkotte, October 31, 2006. In Tenkotte’s personal fi les.

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

State of Ohio, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death for Wenzel Thien, vol. 924, no. 59,944, for the year 1912.

Stock, Beate, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, to Paul A. Tenkotte. E-mail messages and letters. In Tenkotte’s personal fi les.

876 THOMAS, GEORGE H., GENERAL 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.

“Unser Decorationsmaler,” Cincinnati WahrheitsFreund, February 12, 1873, 221.

Paul A. Tenkotte

THOMAS, GEORGE H., GENERAL (b. July 13, 1816, Newsoms Depot, Va.; d. March 28, 1870, San Francisco, Calif.). The city of Fort Thomas is named in honor of Civil War general George Henry Thomas. A West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican War, Thomas chose to cast his lot with the Union during the Civil War. Following his defeat of the Confederates at Mill Springs, Ky., in 1862, his troops joined Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s forces and fought at Nashville and Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn. Later, Thomas distinguished himself at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga, Tenn. His gallant stand in the second of these battles against twice his numbers won him his nickname, “the Rock of Chickamauga.” Thomas fought with Gen. William T. Sherman in the 1864 Atlanta campaign. In December of that year, he crushed the Confederate Army at Nashville in the most decisive Union victory of the war. Thomas was promoted to major general in the regular army and received a special vote of thanks from the U.S. Congress. He died in 1870 and was buried at the Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, N.Y. “Ft. Thomas Gives Old General a New Sheen,” KP, June 19, 1984, 1K. Reis, Jim. “Civil War Legacy,” KP, February 20.

1983, 4K. ———. “Fort Thomas Named to Honor Union General,” KP, October 14, 2002, 4K.

Bill Thomas

THOMAS MORE COLLEGE. Thomas More College is a Roman Catholic liberal arts college in Crestview Hills, Kenton Co. The Sisters of St. Benedict of Covington established the institution in 1921, under the name Villa Madonna College.

The school was originally located on the Villa Madonna Academy property in Villa Hills. On August 14, 1923, Villa Madonna College received a charter from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It was the first four-year, degree-granting college in Northern Kentucky. The first dean of the college was Benedictine sister M. Domitilla Thuener. Villa Madonna College was established primarily to educate the members of the Benedictine Order who were teaching in the Catholic schools of the region. From the very beginning, however, laywomen were also accepted as students. New teaching certification standards in Kentucky required college-level training for all teachers. This left the Sisters of Notre Dame and the Sisters of Divine Providence, whose members were also teaching in area Catholic schools, without a local college program. During the early 1920s, both orders began plans for college programs of their own. When Bishop Francis W. Howard, an eminent educator, was appointed to the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) in 1923, he quickly saw that it was inadvisable to

President Lyndon Baines Johnson (in academic garb, on left) at the Thomas More College dedication ceremonies, September 28, 1968.

sponsor three Catholic colleges in Northern Kentucky. In 1928 he placed Villa Madonna College under the sponsorship of the Diocese of Covington.

By the spring of 1929, the Sisters of St. Benedict had determined that they could no longer afford to support both Villa Madonna College and the Diocesan Normal School. The sisters decided to close Villa Madonna College and to concentrate their energy in the normal school. On June 4, 1929, the Benedictines’ Villa Madonna College graduated its first and last class. Several weeks later, on June 20, the Diocesan Normal School graduated its first class of scholars. Bishop Howard decided to operate the Diocesan Normal School under the original charter and name of Villa Madonna College. The choice to use the charter and name of Villa Madonna College was primarily based on Bishop Howard’s fear of state intervention. An application for a new state charter would require the college to conform more closely to the state’s view of higher education—a conformity that Bishop Howard found unacceptable. The college was staffed by diocesan clergy and by the Sisters of St. Benedict, the Sisters of Divine Providence, and the Sisters of Notre Dame. The college was moved in 1928 to St. Walburg Academy (see Sisters of St. Benedict) on E. 12th St. in Covington.

The first dean (chief operating officer) under diocesan sponsorship was Rev. Michael Leick (1928– 1943). Other early deans of the college included Rev. Edmund Corby (1943–1944), the Very Reverend Thomas McCarty (1945–1949), and Rev. Joseph Z. Aud (1949–1951). Beginning in 1929, an official board of trustees was established. Members of the board included the bishop of the Diocese of Covington, the dean of the college, and the mothers superior of the Sisters of St. Benedict, the Congregation of Divine Providence, and the Sisters of Notre Dame. Lay members were added to the board in 1967. A student representative was added

in 1970, and two faculty representatives were added in 1971.

Villa Madonna College steadily increased in stature and enrollment under diocesan sponsorship. In order to furnish well-qualified faculty and staff members, the three orders of women religious agreed to divide the departments on an equal basis. In this way, each order could prepare members in specific disciplines. Sisters were sent to various Catholic and secular universities to earn doctoral degrees. Diocesan clergy staffed the theology and philosophy departments. Despite these efforts, the clergy and religious orders of the region could not fully staff the college. Dedicated laymen and laywomen have served as staff members and on the faculty for many decades.

Rev. Leo Streck, headmaster of the Covington Latin School, began offering college-level courses to the graduates of that all-male school in 1934, and he named this new endeavor St. Thomas More College. These classes eventually became accredited through the all-female Villa Madonna College. In 1945 Bishop William T. Mulloy announced that Villa Madonna College would become coeducational. When a flood of male students, especially those receiving the GI Bill, enrolled, classroom space soon became insufficient. In order to solve this problem permanently, the college purchased a large tract of land known as the Klaene Estate in Fort Thomas, Campbell Co., in 1948.

Plans called for the construction of a new campus on the property, and ground was broken for the new campus on April 23, 1950, by the Most Reverend Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, the Vatican’s apostolic delegate to the United States. But the new campus was never built on this site. The property was sold when college officials purchased a new site along Turkeyfoot Rd. in Crestview Hills in 1954.

THOMPSON, EDWIN PORTER

Financial difficulties delayed the construction of a new campus on the Crestview Hills property.

In the meantime, buildings were rented or purchased near the main building on E. 12th St. in Covington to house the growing enrollment. In 1945 classrooms at St. Joseph School along Scott St. in Covington were acquired by the college. Other buildings used for classrooms in Covington included the Mother of God School on W. Sixth St., the Cathedral Lyceum and Columbus Hall on Madison Ave., Aquinas Hall and Bernard Hall North and South along Scott St., Cabrini Hall on 12th St., and Thomas More Hall (an old firehouse) on 12th St. In 1951 Rev. John F. Murphy was appointed dean of Villa Madonna College (he received the title of president in 1953) and remained in that post until 1971. It was under Murphy’s guidance that the college was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1959 and that the new campus was built. In 1966 plans for the new Crestview Hills campus were completed. Ground was broken on May 9, 1966, and construction on the multimillion-dollar project began. The campus was ready for occupancy in January 1968. During the following month, Bishop Richard H. Ackerman announced that the name of the institution was to be changed to Thomas More College, after the lord chancellor of England who was martyred for his faith by King Henry VIII. The college was officially dedicated on September 28, 1968. A surprise guest at the dedication was President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969).

The Thomas More College campus in Crestview Hills has been a work in progress. Marian and Howard Residence Halls were ready for use during the 1968–1969 school year. Ackerman Hall, also a dormitory, was ready during the following year. In 1972 the Science Building was completed, and in 1989 the Connor Convocation Center was ready for athletic competition. More recent additions have included the Holbrook Student Center (1999) and Rev. John F. Murphy Residence Hall (2003). In 1967 the college acquired the U.S. Lock and Dam on the Ohio River in rural Campbell Co. Th is facility has been utilized as a biological field station ever since (see Center for Ohio River Research).

Presidents of Thomas More College since Murphy have included Dr. Richard DeGraff (1971– 1978), Dr. Robert Giroux (1978–1982), Dr. Thomas Coffey (1982–1985), Dr. Charles Bensman (1986– 1992), Father William F. Cleves (1993–2001), Dr. E. Joseph Lee (2001–2004), and Sister Margaret Stallmeyer, C.D.P., who was officially inaugurated the 13th president of Thomas More College on April 28, 2005. Today there are approximately 1,500 students enrolled at the college, both fulland part-time, and two graduate programs are offered (business administration and a masters of arts in teaching).

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

Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Reis, Jim. “Thomas More: College of Many Sites, Missions,” KP, November 25, 1985, 4K.

Saelinger, Sister M. Irminia. Retrospect and Vista: The First Fifty Years of Thomas More College.

Newport, Ky.: Wendling, 1971.

Schroeder, David E. “Thomas More College Archives Inventory,” 2000, Thomas More College Library, Crestview Hills, Ky.

David E. Schroeder

THOME, JAMES A. (b. January 20, 1813, Augusta, Ky.; d. March 4, 1873, Chattanooga, Tenn.).

Antislavery activist James Armstrong Thome was the son of Arthur Thome, an emancipator accused of being a conductor of fugitive slaves in Augusta in Bracken Co. James A. Thome, who was also involved in helping slaves escape (see Abolitionists), was threatened with arrest and imprisonment if he returned to his home at Augusta from Oberlin College, where he was working on a theology degree. The threat had been issued because James had successfully removed a slave, Judah, from Augusta across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, and then on to Canada. Perhaps Thome’s zeal concerning the antislavery movement is best expressed in his own words: “Oh! The slave kitchens of the South are the graveyards of the mind.

Every countenance of their miserable inmates is the tombstone of a buried intellect, and the soulless eye is its dreadful epitaph!”

Arthur Thome (1769–1855) was one of Augusta’s fi rst settlers, quickly becoming wealthy in the flourmill business and other enterprises. His three-story mansion was later the home of the Marshall family, ancestors of Gen. George C. Marshall. At the insistence of his son James, Arthur Thome freed his men and women slaves between 1832 and 1836 and also became one of the area’s most successful conductors of the Underground Railroad, the escape network helping to take fugitive slaves to freedom. One former slave from Maysville reported in the June 1, 1839, issue of the Colored American, published in New York, that the Thomes were highly instrumental in the work of the Underground Railroad. According to slave Robert, “[Arthur] Thome would get out of his bed in the middle of the night to help runaway slaves out of the reach of their masters. He would give them clothes and money and send them across the Ohio River. He was very rich, he said, or he could not live there, meaning, it was understood, that his great wealth made his slave-holding neighbors afraid to injure him.”

Arthur’s son James was educated at Augusta College, where debates on slavery were held as early as 1826. Martin Ruter, the first president of the college, was one of the founding members of the Kentucky Colonization Society, an organization that endorsed sending emancipated slaves to the colony established in the newly formed West African country of Liberia. After graduation from college, James Thome entered the prestigious Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. In 1833 and 1834 he participated in the noted Lane Debates on slavery that caused Theodore Weld, Thome, and 50 other students to leave the Lane Seminary, eventually becoming members of the first theology class at Oberlin College. Thirty of Thome’s letters to Weld,

877

some of which were written in Augusta, were published in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke.

Thome delivered a speech in May 1834 to the Annual Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he became a vice president. In 1836 this group commissioned Thome to examine the results of immediate emancipation in the West Indies, in order to advance the cause in the United States. In winter 1837, Thome penned from his home in Augusta the manuscript for his Emancipation in the West Indies, which was published in 1838.

Not all of Thome’s influential writings were devoted to the cause of the enslaved; he also wrote a lesser-known pamphlet, Address of the Females of Ohio. Thome’s views in the pamphlet were delivered by him at the Ohio Anti-Slavery Anniversary in April 1836 and then later published by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Cincinnati.

Both Arthur and James Thome suffered consequences for their acts of conscience. Family letters on fi le at Oberlin College refer to their plight while they lived in Augusta, where they endured difficulties ranging from harassment to outright threats against their personal safety. As these actions became more severe, the elder Thome and his family sold the Thome mansion and businesses in Augusta at a financial loss and moved to Athens, Mo., where he is credited with establishing another Underground Railroad pathway to freedom.

James A. Thome became an influential minister in Cleveland and Mount Vernon, Ohio. After the Civil War, he traveled to Europe, raising money for the education of former slaves; his Augusta College friend John G. Fee had been similarly engaged at Berea College. Thome’s later years were spent as a successful minister. In 1871 he became pastor of the First Congregation Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., the town where he died of pneumonia two years later.

Miller, Caroline R. “Abolitionists of Augusta’s ‘White Hall’: Arthur and James Thome,” NKH 11, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 2003): 46–55.

Caroline R. Miller

THOMPSON, EDWIN PORTER (b. May 6, 1834, Center, Metcalfe Co., Ky.; d. March 4, 1903, Frankfort, Ky.) Educator and author Edwin Porter Thompson was the eldest son of Lewis M. and Mary R. Thompson. He was 12 years old when his father died, and he soon learned to become a survivor. Before the Civil War he was studying for the bar, but the war dashed his plans for a law career.

During the war, he was a captain and fought with the 6th Kentucky Infantry (CSA). Wounded twice, he carried several bullets in his body to his death.

After the war, he went to Owen Co. and established the Harrisburgh Academy in 1869, which in 1876 became Owen College. The school flourished into the late 1880s. As an academic, Thompson was a mathematician and a linguist. During the course of his lifetime, he wrote six books. Before the war, he published a mathematical textbook, Academic Arithmetic, that was used statewide.

878 THOMPSON, JOHN TALIAFERRO “TOMMY GUN,” BRIGADIER GENERAL Later, in 1868, appeared his History of the First Kentucky Brigade, a 931-page volume. He also authored Young People’s History of Kentucky in 1897, and the same year The Priest’s Temptation was published. Thompson’s most important and lasting work is his 1,104-page The History of the Orphan Brigade (1898). In 1888 Kentucky governor Simon Bolivar Buckner (1887–1891) appointed Thompson as the state librarian; in 1890 Buckner made Thompson his private secretary; and in 1891 Thompson was elected state superintendent of public instruction and served for four years. Afterward, he began to compile Kentucky’s Confederate War records, a project still in process when he died in 1903 at Frankfort. He was survived by his wife of 45 years, Marcella.

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

“Captain Ed Porter Thompson Dead,” Lexington Leader, March 5, 1903, 6.

Frankfort Cemetery . . . in Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1988.

Jillson, William R. Literary Haunts and Personalities of Old Frankfort: 1791–1941. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1941.

THOMPSON, JOHN TALIAFERRO “TOMMY GUN,” BRIGADIER GENERAL (b. December 1, 1860, Newport, Ky.; d. June 21, 1940, Great Neck, N.Y.). Inventor John Thompson was born in the historic Southgate House along Taylor St. (24 E. Third St. today). He was the son of U.S. Army lieutenant colonel James Thompson; his mother was Julia Maria Taliaferro, from a prominent early Campbell Co. family. Among his ancestors were Gen. James Taylor; Dr. Thomas Hinde, Newport’s first medical doctor; and the Taliaferro and Southgate families. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and Dr. Louise Southgate were cousins of his. John T. Thompson’s parents met while his father was stationed at the Newport Barracks.

Thompson’s father planned the artillery batteries across Northern Kentucky in 1862 as part of the defense of Cincinnati during the Civil War. John Thompson had a long and productive military career, but he is best known as the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun. He grew up on various military installations around the United States. In 1877, while living in Indiana, where his father was a professor of military science, he enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington. One year later, he was awarded an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he graduated 11th in the class of 1882. Lt. “Talie” Thompson, as he was then known, served his first duty assignment at Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

Thompson resigned from the U.S. Army in 1914. His career had been distinguished in the areas of ordnance and logistics: he was skilled at moving men and equipment around. He also recognized the need for the army to develop a better gun for the foot soldier, whose weapon had not been substantially improved in 40 years. He went to work for the Remington Arms Company, as their chief engineer in charge of small arms development, and in that capacity he oversaw the construction of two

new small arms factories. With the outbreak of World War I, he was called into ser vice again as director of arsenals, with the rank of brigadier general. In a gutsy move, he halted production of the older guns for a few months while retooling for an improved weapon. He believed that he could manufacture the newer guns twice as fast. He was successful, and soon American soldiers in Europe were carry ing improved rifles, while production at home quickly overcame the shortage.

After World War I, Thompson founded the Auto-Ordnance Corporation. In 1919 he earned his nickname of “Tommy Gun Thompson” when he developed the Thompson submachine gun, and warfare was never the same again. Now a mobile soldier could create a fusillade of bullets that was possible previously only with a Gatling gun. Much to Thompson’s chagrin, his new weapon became the favorite of the underworld. The image of mobsters standing on running boards of speeding black getaway cars holding their blazing tommy guns, however exaggerated, is engrained in the folklore of the roaring 1920s.

Thompson’s son, Marcellus Hagens Thompson, also a West Point graduate, who was a vice president of Auto-Ordnance, was indicted in the early 1920s for sending illegal machine guns to Ireland. A shipment of some 500 guns was uncovered en route, but it turned out that Thomas Ryan, another vice president of the Auto-Ordnance Corporation and a longtime supporter of Irish independence, was the culprit. John Thompson’s wife, Juliet Robinson Thompson, died in 1930. Marcellus Thompson died in 1939, before his famous father’s death in 1940. “Tommy Gun” Thompson was buried on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy in New York; his funeral ser vice was at the Old Cadet Chapel there. He had spent 38 years in service to his country. Inasmuch as war and warfare influence world events, few others from Northern Kentucky have impacted the course of human history more than John T. “Tommy Gun” Thompson.

“Gen. Thompson, 79, Dies,” NYT, June 22, 1940, 15.

Reis, Jim. “Tommy Gun: Newport Native Made Gangster’s Weapon,” KP, October 29, 1984, 8K. Southard, Mary Young. Who’s Who in Kentucky.

Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1936.

THORN HILL DRAG STRIP. Long before the appearance of the Kentucky Speedway at Sparta, there were two other places in Northern Kentucky to race motorized vehicles legally. One was the Florence Speedway along U.S. 42 near Union, and the other was Thorn Hill Drag Strip along Ky. Rt. 177 at Kenton in southern Kenton Co. In the early 1950s, Ralph E. Payne bought more than 80 acres along the Licking River south of Visalia and began clearing the land of its heavy thicket of thornbushes and cleaning up the 40-acre lake on the property. People started coming there to fish.

As the idea of legal competitive drag racing began to sweep the country, the Thorn Hill Drag Strip on Payne’s acreage was born. First it was just dirt and only one-eighth mile in length; gradually the racing surface was paved and the track lengthened to

a quarter mile. This was not only one of the first drag strips in the state, but also one of the first in the nation. Thorn Hill had the first clock-faced starting system in the Midwest. The winner of the first race in 1953 won a case of Wiedemann beer.

Prizes have improved, as stock cars, rail dragsters, and motorcycles have raced at the strip over the years. Families who did not compete came to picnic and watch. It was not uncommon to have a crowd of 1,000. However, newly arrived neighbors nearby often complained about the noise of the high-performance motors. Since 1969 a court order by a judge has restricted racing to Saturdays between 6:00 p.m. and midnight, mainly during the summer months. Many of the nation’s more famous drivers have raced at Thorn Hill. Payne died in 1994; Al Childers, the owner since 1997, attempted to continue the tradition, but the drag strip has not operated in the past few years.

Meiman, Karen. “Speed Seekers: Racing Fever Benefits Small Northern Kentucky Tracks,” KP, August 4, 2001, 6K. “Ralph E. Payne, 88, Brought Joy to Other People with Fishing Lake,” KP, March 2, 1994, 7A.

THREE-L HIGHWAY (LLL). The three L’s of this highway’s name stand for Louisville, Lexington, and Latonia but the initials were never intended to indicate that the highway connected those cities. There was a consortium of horse-racing tracks, called the 3-L Association, in the three cities; that is apparently the first use of the term. The racing circuit consisted of Churchill Downs in Louisville, the Association Track at Lexington, and the Latonia Racecourse near Covington. The ThreeL name was not assigned by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and never appeared on any official state map. The name was shown on a privately published Kentucky Motor Club map, printed in 1921, and also the same year on a Rand McNally Highway Map of Kentucky.

The Three-L Highway in Northern Kentucky ran between Covington and Lexington. and then on to Louisville. The road roughly followed what is known today as Ky. Rt. 17 to U.S. 27 between Butler and Falmouth, and then went south through Cynthiana to Lexington. Few people today are even aware that this once-popular highway existed.

Claypool, James C. The Tradition Continues: The Story of Old Latonia, Latonia, and Turfway Racecourse. Fort Mitchell, Ky.: T. I. Hayes, 1997.

“Highway Open Road One of Best in Country,” KP, November 26, 1925, 1.

Slade, Harold. “LLL Highway Again,” Harrison County Historical Society Newsletter, January 2004.

“Three L Needs to be Finished,” KP, March 17, 1925, 1.

Winn, Matt J. Down the Stretch: The Story of Colonel Matt J. Winn. New York: Smith and Murrell, 1945.

Jack Wessling

TIBBATTS, JOHN WOOLESTON (b. June 12, 1802, Lexington, Ky.; d. July 4, 1852, Newport, Ky.).

John Wooleston Tibbatts, a lawyer, a Mexican War veteran, and a politician, received his BA and JD degrees from Transylvania University at Lex-

TOBACCO

ington and was admitted to the bar in 1826. He opened a law office in Newport. He married Ann Taylor, a daughter of Gen. James Taylor Jr., founder of Newport, and their first home was a magnificent mansion in Newport, at the corner of Third and Washington Sts. Tibbatts held several local offices and became the first resident of Newport to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served in that capacity from 1843 to 1847.

During the Mexican War, President James Polk (1845–1849) commissioned Tibbatts a colonel in the army and called on him to organize the reactivated 16th U.S. Infantry Regiment. During the war he was sent to the Rio Grande River area in the Texas Territory to serve with his father-in-law’s relative Gen. Zachary Taylor. After the war, Tibbatts returned to his law practice in Newport. By 1850 he and his wife had a combined estate worth of $2.5 million, making them one of the wealthiest couples in the state. Tibbatts’s career was on the ascent and he was projected to be the next Democratic nominee for Kentucky governor or senator. However, he fell ill from a disease that he likely contracted during military ser vice in Mexico, his health gradually deteriorated, and he died on July 4, 1852, at age 50. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. http://bioguide.congress.gov (accessed August 31, 2007).

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

TIMBERLAKE HOUSE. Maj. William Thornton Timberlake, a native of Caroline Co., Va., who served in the War of 1812, moved to Northern Kentucky at the end of the war, settling in what is now the town of Dayton, Ky. He married Sophie Berry, the daughter of a respected local family, and then began to acquire land in what is now Erlanger.

His thousands of acres stretched from the presentday Hallam Ave. in Erlanger to Garvey Ave. in Elsmere.

In 1826 the Timberlakes built their home next to the George Town Rd., a rough dirt trail that served as the only direct connection between Georgetown and Covington. It was later transformed into a macadamized thoroughfare, the Covington and Lexington Turnpike, and eventually replaced by the Dixie Highway (U.S. 25).

Timberlake named his two-story colonial brick house Sugar Grove, but it is now known as the Timberlake House. Timberlake and his wife raised three children in the home. The oldest, a daughter named Alice Elizabeth, married a local doctor, John H. Stevenson. When Major Timberlake’s health began to decline in 1855, the Stevensons moved into Sugar Grove.

The town of Erlanger, which developed around Sugar Grove, was first named Timberlake, in honor of the influential family. When the Cincinnati Southern Railroad began to look for a right-ofway for its trains, Dr. Stevenson added his voice to those lobbying for a route through the town. In order to ensure that the trains and the vital eco-

879

Timberlake House, Erlanger, ca. 1888–1889.

nomic growth they represented would come through the town, Dr. Stevenson granted the company land through his front yard for the rail line.

Stevenson also helped to establish what is believed to have been the fi rst school in Erlanger. He donated a former slave cabin behind his home for the fi rst classes in the late 1860s, though the students had to bring their own tables and chairs.

The one small window in the cabin admitted just enough light for the children to see their books.

School was held in the Sugar Grove backyard for some years, until the log structure was no longer large enough to accommodate the growing enrollment.

Sugar Grove received extensive decoration in the form of carved wood, paintings, and intricate ironwork during the next generation. It was carried out by Katherine Elizabeth, the wife of Thomas, one of John and Alice Stevenson’s children. After Katherine’s death, the house passed to a new generation of the family, Thomas and Katherine’s daughter Mary Alice and her husband Mayo Taylor. The Taylor family lived in the home until the death of Mayo Taylor in 1980. At that time the property was sold outside the family.

The home was remodeled after the tornado of 1915 ripped through Northern Kentucky, damaging more than 1,000 buildings across the region. The Timberlake House lost most of its upper story and was remodeled into a one-story structure. To this day, bits of brick can be dug out of the backyard.

The historic home is located at 108 Stevenson Rd. in Erlanger and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1978 a state historical marker was placed in front of the house, detailing the importance of the family and the home in local history.

Onkst, Wayne, ed. From Buffalo Trails to the TwentyFirst Century: A Centennial History of Erlanger, Kentucky. Erlanger, Ky.: Erlanger Historical Society, 1996.

Reis, Jim. “Tornado—Take Cover! Whether Winter, Spring, or Summer, Twisters Frightful,” KP, February 1, 1999, 4K.

Jennifer Gregory

TOBACCO. Tobacco has been grown in every Northern Kentucky county from pioneer days to the present. It was the single most important agricultural product (see Agriculture) from the mid19th century through the end of the 20th century, and the manufacturing of tobacco products served as an economic engine for the region up through the first few decades of the 20th century. Politics and the culture of the region have been significantly linked to tobacco until recent years.

The use of tobacco precedes the European pioneer, since from the earliest times American Indians had used tobacco. American Indian tobacco pipes are a common artifact in Northern Kentucky and date back to prehistoric periods. Many pipes have been discovered at Fort Ancient Indian sites.

Tobacco was the economic salvation of the colony of Virginia and was also important in Maryland and Pennsylvania. As migrants from those areas came to Kentucky, they brought their primary crop with them. To preserve the integrity of the crop, the Virginia legislature sanctioned tobacco inspection warehouses, and such a sanction was given to Limestone (Maysville) in 1797.

Tobacco was important, but it was only part of the Northern Kentucky agricultural mix in the early 1800s. Corn, wheat, hemp, livestock, and a variety of other products that were grown in different regions rivaled tobacco for importance. That scenario changed in the 1830s and tobacco became the cash crop for most farmers in Northern Kentucky for the next 100 years. Tobacco was packed or “prized” in large barrels called hogsheads that weighed upwards of 1,000 pounds. Transport of such large containers favored the counties situated on waterways with access to Louisville, which was

880 TOBACCO

Home Tobacco Warehouse, Maysville.

the most important market for Kentucky growers during the early 19th century. When the Louisville and Portland Canal overcame the difficulty of navigating the Falls of the Ohio River in 1830, and steamboats opened up the Ohio River for traffic in both directions, the tobacco business exploded in the subsequent decade. The two great tobacco-growing regions of the state were in Western Kentucky and in the Northern Kentucky counties from Trimble on the west to Mason on the east. One of the popu lar types of tobacco at this time was called Mason County tobacco, and some of the best of that type was grown in Bracken Co. When the fi rst leaf tobacco fair was held in Cincinnati on May 21, 1858, growers from Bracken and Mason counties won all the major prizes.

By the time of the Civil War, railroads were developed, and Cincinnati became a major tobacco market, as the tobacco could now travel east by rail. Thus the growing of tobacco and its manufacture in Northern Kentucky were stimulated again. Kentucky historian Richard Collins’s History of Kentucky describes some of the tobacco manufacturing in Northern Kentucky counties around 1870. In Covington, there were 8 tobacco factories and 21 cigar factories. In Maysville, 1 large cigar factory is mentioned and several small ones. Augusta is described as an important shipping port for tobacco. In Owenton, there was a tobacco drying house that processed a half million pounds of tobacco yearly. Mount Olivet had four tobacco prizing houses. It is likely that most of the larger towns had small tobacco manufacturers and tobacco warehouses, places where tobacco was packed for market in hogsheads. Auction warehouses came later. Tobacco products at this time were primarily cigars and plug tobacco.

An important event was the accidental development of a new type of tobacco. It has been called white burley, golden burley, and, for most of the state in the 20th century, just burley (see White

Burley Tobacco; Laban J. Bradford). Except for some dark and other tobacco varieties in Western Kentucky, air-cured light burley, the type that started with the Bracken Co. seed, has been grown in most of the state to the present time. This type of burley is bitter and can hold the sweeteners added to plug; in addition, it eventually proved to be the tobacco that was important for flavor in cigarette blends. By the 1890s, Covington trailed only Louisville in the manufacture of tobacco products.

Changes came quickly in the first decades of the 20th century and affected tobacco in diverse ways.

In 1904 the first loose-leaf tobacco auction warehouse opened in Lexington. This innovation provided markets closer to farmers. The second and third auction warehouses opened in Maysville in 1909 and 1910, and soon warehouses operated throughout the state. Maysville and Carrollton were among the leading auction markets in the state until 2001–2004, when contracting replaced most auctions. At the same time as auction warehouses began to develop, the tobacco “wars” in Kentucky started. They had to do with the low tobacco prices offered by the monopoly of the American Tobacco Company. Although less publicized than the violence in the black-patch areas of Western Kentucky, Night Riders burned barns and warehouses and were involved in intimidation throughout Northern Kentucky. The purpose was to make farmers reduce the supply of tobacco so that prices would rise.

The various farmers’ associations wanted members to sell their crops together, to get the highest price.

On March 26, 1908, Night Riders set fire to the T. S. Hamilton & Company’s tobacco warehouse at 4th and Bakewell Sts. in Covington, destroying it, a blacksmith shop, and five adjoining houses, as well as damaging another home and three adjoining businesses. In the same year, the tobacco crop was reduced, and it was reported that no tobacco was grown in Bracken Co. that season. Court cases against the Night Riders, the use of the state militias to keep the peace, and the breakup of the American

Tobacco Company in 1911 ended the tobacco wars.

A final early-20th-century development was the manufacture of cigarettes, which became the most popular way of using tobacco.

An economic downturn for farmers started soon after World War I and did not end until the late 1930s. Tobacco manufacturing faded from Northern Kentucky. However, the tobacco business—farming, warehouses, processing factories, and support businesses—remained important in terms of employment and economic impact.

The number of farms, tenants, and black farmers began a decline that continues to the present. In Northern Kentucky, only Mason Co. had more than 10 African American farmers as of 2002.

The Burley Tobacco Cooperative Association was formed in the 1920s, and most area farmers participated. That group began the administration of the tobacco program established by the U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Acts of 1933 and 1938. This was a program that balanced supply and demand by controls on production and price supports.

It gave tobacco farmers some guaranteed income from the 1930s through the 1990s.

Many tobacco-related problems came to a head from the 1980s to the turn of the century. They include anti-tobacco feeling, foreign competition, labor shortages, and the lure of “town” jobs. International trade agreements meant that tobacco use in U.S. cigarettes could not be legislated. As companies bought cheaper foreign tobacco, poundage allotments fell and the price was adjusted downward. The result was that tobacco became less profitable. Employment in nearby communities and good roads to get to them pulled many off the farms or made them part-time farmers. The labor shortage was somewhat abated by the use of workers from Mexico. It was the tobacco farmers who provided the first work in the region for Latino immigrants, who quickly sponsored other immigrants and moved into other work. The last tobacco redryer, Parker Tobacco in Maysville, closed in the 1980s. In 2000 tobacco companies began contracting directly with area burley farmers, and by 2005 auction warehouses in Northern Kentucky, which at one time numbered in the dozens, had diminished to one, in Maysville. A tobacco buyout in 2004 ended the program that had started during the Great Depression; therefore, in most counties in Northern Kentucky, the largest portion of farm income for the following year came from government payments. After the 10-year payout period ends, the future of farms in the region, whose number has declined by more than twothirds in the past century, is uncertain. As of 2002, Northern Kentucky farms continue to produce tobacco. In that year the number of farms in the region growing the crop ranged from a low of 122 in Gallatin Co. to a high of 423 in Mason Co. Public smoking bans have been discussed in some counties but have been relatively unsuccessful to this point.

Axton, William F. Tobacco and Kentucky, Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1975.

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

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

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“Night Riders Burn Covington Warehouse, Homes Destroyed,” KP, March 26, 1908, 1.

“Tobacco Manufacturing in Covington,” CJ, June 28, 1862, 3.

John Klee

TOBACCO, WHITE BURLEY. See White Burley Tobacco.

TONEY, JOHN E. (b. September 19, 1889, Covington, Ky.; d. December 21, 1974, Cincinnati, Ohio). John Edward Toney, the son of Samuel and Mattie Wells Toney, was a Cincinnati policeman whose reputation as a tough and rugged law enforcement officer earned him the nickname of “Black Chief.” Toney was born and raised in Covington and attended the Lincoln-Grant School.

Joining the Cincinnati Police Department on August 3, 1925, he was assigned to the detective bureau and worked in the West End of Cincinnati. In 1930 Toney received a letter of commendation from the Cincinnati city manager, C. O. Sherrill, for solving numerous murders and other major crimes. On June 1, 1948, Toney retired after 22 years of ser vice on the Cincinnati police force. He had worked the last few years in District 7 in Walnut Hills, where he also resided. Following his retirement, “Pop Toney,” as he was known, was a private investigator until shortly before his death. He was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Dabney, Wendell P. Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens.

Cincinnati: Dabney, 1926.

“John Toney,” CE, December 25, 1974, 2B. “John Toney, 85, the Black Chief,” CP, December 26, 1974, 18.

“West End Sleuth to Retire,” CP, April 16, 1948, 26.

Theodore H. H. Harris

TORNADOES. Although the famed “tornado alley” of the United States is located hundreds of miles west of the Bluegrass State, Northern Kentucky has an extensive and well-documented history of violent weather, and records of tornadoes date back to pre–Civil War days.

The earliest record of tornado activity for the region is from February 20, 1857. No deaths were reported, but according to damage estimates, the tornado’s path covered nearly five miles across Bracken Co. and included the town of Augusta. Buildings, barns, and homes were either destroyed or shifted from their foundations during this storm.

The first account of fatalities from tornado-like storms followed three years later, May 21–22, 1860.

What was termed a “massive storm,” or by some eyewitnesses a “hurricane,” blew through Northern Kentucky and killed almost 100 people. Most of them drowned in the Ohio River while working on coal boats and skiffs. This series of storms, which is believed to have been spawned near Louisville, quickly traveled northeast. Storm reports ranged from Louisville to Lexington and points north through Northern Kentucky and into southwestern Ohio. Three counties in Northern Kentucky were greatly impacted during these two days of stormy weather; Grant, Kenton, and Boone coun-

St. Boniface Catholic Church, Ludlow, showing damage from the tornado of July 1915.

ties reported severe damage, mostly to homes, barns, and fences. Larger structures were not altogether spared, as a brick storehouse and the courthouse at Independence suffered moderate damage.

Aside from the deaths on the Ohio River, three men died locally as a result of falling trees.

There were no fatalities from the 1867 tornado that went through Bellevue and Newport. It arrived between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. on August 26, and its touchdown destroyed six houses under construction. Workers scrambled from rafters to open fields to escape flying debris. A large animal stable was completely lifted up and dispersed in several pieces; some of its timbers were found one-fourth mile away. The Allegheny Belle, moving along the Ohio River with several barges in tow near the Bellevue bank, lost two barges during the height of the storm.

There were many reports of buildings and boats damaged significantly in and around Newport and Bellevue, but no human injuries were reported.

After the storm five or six cows that were recovered were missing their horns; it is believed that windblown debris had knocked them loose.

A tornado of March 25, 1884, did its greatest damage in Harrison Co., practically wiping out the town of Colemansville. This storm eventually raced north to the Ohio River, but damage there was difficult to assess because the area was still cleaning up after the massive flood of one month earlier, rivaled only by the flood of 1937. Reports from residents near the river said most of the flooddamaged homes and buildings were blown over in the high winds spawned during the storm, and coal barges were scattered. One report stated that any damage that happened on March 25, 1884, from the tornado was considered minimal, compared to the damage received a month before, during the immense flood.

The next significant storm with a possible tornado arrived six years later in Newport, on August 2, 1890. The storm whipped down shortly before 1:00 p.m., causing heavy damage in town, mostly east of Washington Ave. Numerous homes were destroyed, and there were accounts of roofs being completely lifted off and two-story brick buildings

receiving substantial damage. Total storm damage was estimated at around $3,000, with no injuries.

The 1800s had only one more documented tornado account in Northern Kentucky. It occurred in Boone Co. in April 1895. No deaths were reported, but damage and injuries occurred in the town of Union when the storm developed, around midday. The force of the storm is believed to have carried a wagon two miles.

The turn of the century brought greater commercial and residential development in Northern Kentucky along the banks of the Ohio River and in surrounding counties. As population increased and people gathered into communities, building additional homes and other buildings, there were more eyewitness accounts of weather incidents and at the same time more opportunities for widespread damage and injuries. On May 20, 1907, the first documented tornado of the century smashed into Covington, downing wires and trees and leaving minor damage. A more impressive storm struck eight years later.

It was termed the “the Big Blow,” and it ravaged parts of Northern Kentucky on July 7, 1915, just after dark. The tornado dropped down on the town of Bromley a little after 9:00 p.m. Damage was considerable, especially in the area of Pike (Ky. Rt. 8) and Main Sts. In minutes, the rotating storm pushed east into Ludlow, where the Lagoon Amusement Park received storm damage estimated at $50,000. Its roller coasters, merry-gorounds, dance pavilion, and famed motor-dome were completely flattened. Two hundred visitors that evening were sent scrambling, but fortunately no deaths, only some injuries, were reported. The tornado did substantial damage to St. Boniface Church (see Saints Boniface and James Catholic Church). Continuing on its easterly path, at approximately 9:26 p.m., the tornado unleashed its largest fury in Covington. Eyewitness accounts recall the tornado staying on the ground for six minutes. The weather bureau reported winds exceeding 60 miles per hour. As the tornado carved through the streets of Covington, substantial damage occurred at 14th St. and Madison Ave., where the

882 TOSSO, JOSEPH entire front of the three-story brick office building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was exposed. Two blocks northeast, at 12th and Greenup Sts., the steeple of the St. Joseph Catholic Church was toppled over and spread across streetcar tracks, along with portions of the J. Donavan Café. In all, the cities of Covington, Bellevue, Southgate, Elsmere, Ludlow, Newport, Dayton, Fort Thomas, Erlanger, and Carrollton were affected by this massive storm, with more than 1,000 buildings and homes damaged or destroyed, with countless injuries, and with costs exceeding $3 million. Three deaths were recorded in Northern Kentucky as a result of the storm, 16 for the entire state of Kentucky, and a total of 36 including Ohio and Indiana. To date, it remains the one of the deadliest tornadoes on record for the tri-state area.

Tornado reports continued to become more frequent with population growth, urban sprawl, and the addition of storm spotters throughout Kentucky. During the period 1950–2003, tornado damage was reported in each of the 11 counties in Northern Kentucky. The National Weather Service (NWS) office located in Wilmington, Ohio, which oversees all storm damage for Northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana, and southwestern Ohio, maintains these records.

The 20th-century tornadoes causing the most loss of life in Northern Kentucky occurred on April 23, 1968. A “family” of tornadoes hit in the early afternoon, killing five, injuring at least 150, and leaving an estimated $3–4 million in damage from Falmouth to Maysville. One tornado touched down shortly after 1:30 p.m., moving toward Falmouth, and continued in its eastern movement for nearly 20 minutes. One-third of the city of Falmouth was completely flattened before the storm moved out of Pendleton Co. A total of 506 persons were left homeless. In the town of Dover, in Mason Co., 93 percent of the homes were reported severely damaged. Four were killed in Falmouth, and some severely injured. The other fatality was in Minerva, in Mason Co. Other locations struck by these tornadoes included Berlin, in Bracken Co., and Maysville. The series of storms also reached beyond the Ohio River, killing 11 in Ohio. The NWS later ranked one of the tornadoes as a possible F4 to F5 in intensity, with winds ranging from 207 to 318 miles per hour. The path was estimated at 79 miles long with a width reaching 550 yards.

The 1974 “Super Outbreak” of April 3 and 4 spared most of Northern Kentucky. Damage assessments and tornadoes were spotted and recorded in Owen, Boone, Robertson, and Mason counties, and there was heavy damage—but nothing like what happened in the eastern states, where many people were killed. This horrific two-day event involved an estimated 148 tornadoes and killed about 330 people in all. In Boone Co. on April 3 around 4:10 p.m., there appeared an F1 to F2 tornado, which grew into an F5 tornado with a width that was estimated near 533 yards at the height of the storm, once it moved over into Hamilton Co., Ohio. No fatalities took place in Boone Co., but 20 persons were injured. All the fatalities from this tornado were recorded in Ohio. It crossed

the Ohio River near Rising Sun, Ind., and entered Kentucky at Bellview, moving northeast just west of Burlington, Ky., before crossing back across the river into Sayler Park, Ohio. In Boone Co., three square miles of damage occurred near Bullittsville, where mobile homes were overturned. In Robertson Co. on the same day, around 6:55 p.m. an F3 tornado with a width of 10 yards traveled on the ground for 19 miles, injuring 27. In adjoining Mason Co., around 8:25 p.m., an F1 tornado with a width of 10 yards was on the ground for .10 of a mile but injured no one. The tornado touched down four miles west of Maysville. Also, in Owen Co., around 5:15 p.m., an F1 tornado with width of 10 yards was on the ground for 31.7 miles, injuring 18. This tornado ended near Bromley in Owen Co. The volatile storm of November 19, 1981, that hit Northern Kentucky was termed the “untimely tornado” or “freak mini-tornado.” This late-season tornado struck around 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday night, leaving extensive damage in a very localized area. Fort Mitchell received the heaviest blow, with a half million dollars in damage. The tornado’s path was very narrow, a maximum of 60 yards wide, and it traveled for a half mile just east of the Dixie Highway, damaging 37 homes or other buildings , along with numerous cars and trees. Two injuries were reported from this storm. The NWS classified it as a F1 tornado, meaning winds were estimated from 73 to 112 miles per hour.

On March 10, 1986, a “cloud-veiled tornado” combined with intense straight-line winds blew through Northern Kentucky. Uncertainty remains about exactly what this storm was or what it should be called, since it has never been classified by the NWS and is not found on the agency’s historical records for 1950–2003. Regardless of its classification, Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties received an enormous blow economical ly that day: $18 million in damage. Some 1,039 homes, plus 24 businesses, had been damaged, some heavily, by the time the “downburst” of wind exhausted itself from the storm and began moving northeast. The storm started just east of Burlington and shot northeast, lasting around 10 minutes and ending in Newport. The path of damage indicated that strong winds had blown in one direction for up to 15 miles; a tornado, in contrast, would have left debris spread out in all directions. Several historic structures in Covington, including the Mother of God Catholic Church, the First Methodist Church (see First United Methodist Church), and the Covington Art Club, were damaged, as well as the Salem United Methodist Church in Newport. To this day, the March 1986 event remains the costliest storm on record; remarkably, no deaths were reported.

“Cloud-Veiled Tornado Skipped across Rooftops,” KP, March 12, 1986, 1.

“Double Tragedy,” KP, March 12, 1986, 3.

“Famous Storms Date Back to 1857,” KP, May 19, 2003, 4K. “Furious Tornado—Houses Blown Down in Bellevue,” CE, August 26, 1867, 3.

Geaslen, Chester F. Strolling along Memory Lane.

Vol. 2. Newport, Ky.: Otto, 1986.

The Kentucky Climate Center. http://kyclim .wku .edu/ (accessed July 7, 2006).

National Weather Ser vice Forecast Office, Wilmington, OH. www.erh.noaa.gov/iln/ (accessed July 7, 2006).

“Newport Not Outdone 1890,” KSJ, August 2, 1890, 3.

“People Died, Boat Sank in ’15 Tornado,” KP, August 21, 1965, supplement, 6K. “Small Towns in 1884 Faced Trial by Wind, Fire,” KP, June 4, 2001, 4K. “Storm’s Fury Strikes Covington,” KP, May 20, 1907, 2.

“Take Cover, Twister Coming—May in Kentucky: Keep Eye on Sky,” KP, May 19, 2003, 4K. “Thursday Storm Listed Officially as Tornado,” KP, November 21, 1981, 2K. “Weathermen Left in the Dark,” CE, April 4, 1974, 8.

Jim O’Brien

TOSSO, JOSEPH (b. August 3, 1802, Mexico City, Mexico; d. January 6, 1887, Covington, Ky.).

Joseph Anguel Augustin Tosso, a musician, was the son of Don Carlos and Dona Maria Grat Tosso. His father was of Italian descent and was a dealer in fine jewels. Joseph grew up among wealth and refinement and was exposed to the arts and music early in life. At age six he was considered a child prodigy, and by age eight he was attending the Paris Conservatory in Paris, France, studying vocal music, violin, and other instruments under the worldrenowned teachers of his day. In 1817 he came to the United States, and in 1825 he was in Cincinnati to play at a reception for the famed French general the Marquis de LaFayette. In 1827 Tosso moved his family to the area and became a professor of music in Cincinnati and a favorite of the daunting Mrs. Trollope, playing concerts and theater music in her legendary bazaar along E. Fourth St. in Cincinnati.

For almost 60 years the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area had the benefit of his fine music and musical productions. He played classical music, but he could also pick up a fiddle and play the most common of tunes. He wrote and often played his most famous piece, The Arkansas Traveler, which became one of the campaign songs later used by the Democratic Party in the 1928 U.S. presidential election. In the 1870s the Tosso family moved to a home named Rose Cottage in Latonia Springs (today Latonia). Later they lived at 25 Powell St. (now 15th St.) in Covington. Tosso often performed in Covington and Newport. He was clearly one of the greatest musicians ever to live in the Northern Kentucky region. Tosso died in 1887 and was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

“Composer of Famous Song was Covingtonian,” KP, June 30, 1928, 1.

Smith, Ophia D. “Joseph Tosso, the Arkansaw Traveler,” Ohio History 56 (1947): 16–45.

TOUSEY HOUSE. In about 1817, wealthy businessman Erastus Tousey bought a plot of land on N. Jefferson St. in Burlington and built the Tousey House, which became a Boone Co. landmark, completing it in 1822. The Touseys were among the first settlers in Boone Co., and Erastus Tousey, with his wife Catherine and family, lived in the house until his death in 1863. After Catherine Tousey died in

TOWNBALL

1895, the house was sold several times before being purchased in 1917 by the Gulley and Pettit families.

They used the house for more than 60 years as a residence and operated a general store in two of the first-floor rooms. Over the years, the building was converted into an inn for visiting judges and other government officials and was later used as office space and a dress shop. Former Boone Co. judgeexecutive Bruce Ferguson purchased the building around 1980 and extensively renovated it. It was sold in 1998 to Dan and Kristy Schalck, who opened the Tousey House Restaurant there in 2001; the restaurant closed in 2006. The owner of the Greyhound Tavern subsequently purchased the home, made restorations, and opened a restaurant there in 2008. Located just north of the courthouse square, the Tousey House is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of the best-preserved residences of early Burlington and was described in the National Register nomination as Federal-style, with a five-bay facade of Flemish bond brickwork.

A semicircular fanlight is over the front door.

Becher, Matthew E., Michael D. Rouse, Robert Schrage, and Laurie Wilcox. Images of America: Burlington. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2004.

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

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

Gabrielle Summe

TOWER UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. In about 1852, Joseph Link and his family moved from Cincinnati to Jamestown (now Dayton, Ky.), and made their home there at the corner of Front and Main Sts. The Links were Methodists, and fi nding no church of that denomination in town, they began holding church ser vices in their home.

In 1853 the Methodist bishop of Cincinnati sent Rev. Joseph Blackburn to Jamestown to start a new church. For a short time, ser vices continued in the Link home, but then they were moved to a small school house nearby on Seventh Ave. In 1855 a man named Carr gave the church a 75-foot-wide lot in town at 522 Fift h Ave., on which to construct a permanent building. At that time the church membership consisted of only about a half dozen families, including the Links, the Peaks, the Van Sants, and the Wrights. Men of the church brought lumber from a mill in Cincinnati and built a small one-room structure. The pastor of the church at that time was Rev. P. F. Tower, for whom the church was named. By 1900 the church had about 250 members and had outgrown its building. In 1914 the pastor, H. D. Cooper, encouraged the congregation to build a new church. The old building was razed and a new one constructed on the same lot. In 1997, with inner-city demographics changing, the Tower United Methodist congregation merged with the Bellevue Methodist and sold their church building in Dayton to the Healing Church of God. Northern Kentucky Views. “Tower Methodist Church.” www.nkyviews.com (accessed March 31, 2006).

“Tower Methodist Episcopal Church,” Tower Church Herald 3, no. 12 (February 2, 1901).

Tower United Methodist Church, 125th Anniversary Booklet, 1853–1978. Dayton, Ky.: Tower United Methodist Church, 1978.

TOWNBALL. Townball was originally a child’s bat-and-ball game played in parts of America, including the Ohio River Valley, during the early 19th century. The game had no formal rules until the 1830s, when a group of young businessmen in Philadelphia adopted the game for recreation and exercise. They codified the sport and created townball clubs with officers and bylaws much like the literary clubs, political clubs, and other civic organizations that thrived in pre– Civil War America.

In May 1858, several members of the Young Men’s Gymnastic Association in Cincinnati, including many Northern Kentuckians, took their fitness training outdoors by playing townball on a field near Newport. The Cincinnati Daily Commercial held that while the majority of participants “had not handled a bat in ten or twelve years,” persistence and practice would soon have them playing with the “skill of schoolboys.” The group named itself the Gymnasts’ Town Ball Club and created a formal orga ni zation. Within weeks, the Gymnasts’ club had spawned two other townball teams, the Excelsior Town Ball Club of Cincinnati and the Kentucky Town Ball Club of Newport. The Kentucky Town Ball Club, led by rising attorneys John P. Jackson and Frederick C. Jones, mostly consisted of Northern Kentuckians from the other two clubs. By September 1858, the Gymnasts’ club had merged into the Excelsior club, and the first official match between Cincinnati area townball clubs occurred on September 18, 1858, at the Newport Race Course. Competing were the Kentucky club and the Excelsiors.

By late 1860 townball clubs had spread to other Northern Kentucky river cities. Covington reportedly had 10 townball clubs, prompting the Covington Journal to declare townball “the rage among the boys of this city.” Townball matches in Covington often occurred at College Square near the intersection of 10th and Madison Sts. Maysville had two townball clubs, the Maysville Town Ball Club and the Union Town Ball Club. Compared to the English game cricket, which was also a regional pastime, townball took far less time to play. A townball game lasted a few hours, whereas a cricket match could take two days to complete.

The Kentucky club version of townball was fastpaced and high-scoring. Inside an 8-foot square, the batsman (batter) and the catcher faced the giver (pitcher), who stood 35 feet away. The first corner (base) was pitched 60 feet from the batsman’s goal, with four other corners spaced 54 feet apart. Upon either striking the ball, swinging at and missing three pitches, or taking six pitches without swinging, the batsman ran to the first corner. A batsman could be put out only if the ball was caught on the fly or the batsman was struck by a thrown ball.

Fielders wore no gloves for protection. The batsman had to touch every corner and could not pass another runner, and no two runners could occupy the same corner. Each team, made up of 15 players,

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brought its own umpire to matches, and the teams mutually selected a referee to settle any disputes.

Townball games lasted four innings with scores sometimes reaching 100 runs per side.

Townball meshed well with urban Northern Kentucky’s growing interest in organized physical fitness. Throughout the 1850s, new gymnasiums in Cincinnati and Covington attracted young Northern Kentucky gentlemen who wanted to build character and muscles. Moreover, military companies like the Covington Fencibles, the Kenton Cadets, and the Kentucky Grays offered physical activity, camaraderie, and competition through parades and drill contests with other military companies.

Townball clubs offered similar benefits.

The growth of journalism in urban America also bolstered townball’s popularity in the Ohio River Valley. Newspapers in Cincinnati, Covington, Newport, and Maysville often reported townball matches. Northern Kentucky townball devotees could also connect with sports enthusiasts in other cities through nationally circulating sporting periodicals like the New York Clipper and the Spirit of the Times, whose correspondents described cricket, townball, and baseball games played throughout the country.

As measured by newspaper coverage, the Kentucky Town Ball Club was Northern Kentucky’s preeminent team. Box scores from Kentucky Town Ball Club matches reveal an economically cohesive membership made up of young professionals, proprietors of small businesses, clerks, and the sons of Covington’s and Newport’s social elite. The Kentucky Town Ball Club even had its own uniform: blue shirts, blue caps, white pants, and black belts with the club’s name embossed in gilded letters. Its apparent class cohesion did not, however, insulate the Kentucky Town Ball Club from the tension between slavery and freedom that permeated life in antebellum Northern Kentucky. The Kentucky club’s members included young men from both abolitionist and slaveholding families.

Townball, as an organized pastime in Northern Kentucky, did not survive the double onslaught of the Civil War and the postwar national baseball boom. The Kentucky Town Ball Club played a sporadic match schedule during the Civil War. Confederate threats to Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, prolonged martial law in Covington, and the absence of young men called to military duty curtailed many social activities in metropolitan Cincinnati, including sporting events. Several members of the Kentucky Town Ball Club served in the Union Army. Col. Fred C. Jones, the club’s president, was killed at the Battle of Stones River.

In the months following the war, Northern Kentucky townball clubs disintegrated; their members dispersed among the baseball clubs that were forming throughout the Ohio River Valley.

Block, David. Baseball before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2005.

“A Game of Town Ball,” CDC, May 14, 1858, 2.

“Sporting Matters,” CDC, July 2, 1860, 1.

Greg Perkins

884 TOYOTA NORTH AMERICA TOYOTA NORTH AMERICA. Toyota Motor Manufacturing (TMMNA), headquartered in Erlanger, was established in 1996 as the U.S. home for Toyota’s rapidly expanding North American manufacturing operations. Ten years earlier Toyota had opened a plant in Georgetown, which is the company’s largest plant in North America; 7,000 employees there produce more than 500,000 Avalons, Camrys, and Solaras annually. In his first address at the new headquarters, Teruyuki Minoura, president and CEO of TMMNA, stated, “I want to establish a sense of community here. I sincerely look forward to building something special.”

With 10 manufacturing facilities in North America, Toyota’s manufacturing process had grown too large to be managed from Japan. Having a parent company in the United States allows Toyota to streamline operations and control purchasing, production engineering, quality control, and production planning. Considering that TMMNA buys more than $8 billion worth of goods and ser vices from more than 500 North American suppliers, consolidation of these key manufacturing functions has helped reduce costs and improve efficiency. In 1998 Toyota began construction on an 843,000-square-foot auto parts distribution center on North Bend Rd. in Boone Co., at a cost of approximately $85 million. This facility became operational in 2001 and holds about 2.5 million auto parts with a total inventory valued at $54 million.

By establishing headquarters and an auto parts distribution center in Northern Kentucky, Toyota has created jobs and has stimulated growth in other companies in the region, including Sachs Automotive in Florence, a supplier of shocks and struts to Toyota. Toyota is also a generous and involved community partner. As the largest U.S. automaker, the firm believes its growth and continued success in the marketplace depend on its ability to understand and respect the unique qualities and different needs of people and their local communities.

Peale, Cliff. “N. Ky. Becomes Toyota’s Parts Hub,” CP, December 18, 1998, 7B. Toyota. www.toyota.com (accessed April 5, 2006).

Gabrielle Summe

TOYS. Northern Kentucky has been home to two notable toy stores and, in earlier years, a manufacturer of baseballs and dolls.

Until the rise of the toy-manufacturing industry in the first half of the 20th century, which brought on the scene companies such as A. C. Gilbert, Lionel, Hasbro, Mattel, Wham-O, and Kenner Products (in Cincinnati), toys for boys were often smaller versions of the tools or implements their fathers used, while the standard toys for girls were dolls and doll accessories. There were some dangerous toys, or at least some toys were perceived to be dangerous. For example, the City of Covington passed an ordinance during the 1880s outlawing toy pistols, with fines of between $10 and $50 plus confiscation.

Toys were sold out of general stores or hardware stores, and for the most part they were sea-

sonal items, available near Christmas. The newspapers advertised the prices and availability of toys.

Sleds generally could be bought at the local hardware store as cold weather approached. In the last quarter of the 19th century, the Covington-born Beard sisters (see Lina and Adelia Beard) wrote books for girls, which included instructions for making and playing with dolls and toys. The Beard sisters’ most famous publication was The American Girls Hand Book, in 1887; it has gone through at least 12 printings.

Between the late 1870s and 1895, dolls and baseballs, both requiring hand sewing, were manufactured in Covington by at least two firms: Wolf Fletcher, at 714 Madison Ave., and Phillip Goldsmith, at Pike and Harvey Streets. Goldsmith merged with Fletcher, and their four-story plant employed as many as 150 people, six days per week, making upwards of 75 dozen balls daily. After an 1891 fire, the company moved into the former Hemingray Glass Company’s quarters along Second St. In 1895 Goldsmith drowned while on vacation in Wisconsin, and his sons moved the operation to Cincinnati. That company evolved into the sporting-goods giant the McGregor Company, which made baseballs in Williamstown, Ky., for many years under the Goldsmith name.

With mass production came the toy store. In Campbell Co., the closest thing to a real toy store was Federle’s general store in Newport, along the east side of Monmouth St., between 10th and 11th Sts., run by the Federle family from the 1920s until almost 1980. It was known to have almost anything one could possibly want or need. Merchandise hung in buckets or sometimes was stored in a corner in the basement, to be found only by Nicholas O. Federle. Federle’s seemed to sell everything— candy, racing forms, cigars, horse bridles, hunting and fishing licenses, lunchmeat. It was known even to sell a few illegal fireworks in the summer; and in the winter, Christmas trees and toys.

Toys sold so well at Federle’s that around 1959 the two brothers, Nicholas O. and William A. Federle, opened a freestanding toy store in a separate nearby building, which featured the various items of the season, all year long. Children and parents from throughout Newport and the rest of Campbell Co. came to Federle’s for the latest fad. Children’s eyes grew big as they came into the store.

Federle’s toy store operated until 1977 or so, when it burned. The general store remained in business until late December 1987, when William A. Federle was found murdered in the side lot of the store.

His death remains one of Newport’s few unsolved crimes. Nicholas, who had retired before his brother’s death, died in 1994 at age 85. The Federles are remembered fondly as friendly proprietors along Monmouth St. The Newport Shopping Center, which opened in 1956, did not include a toy store; Hart’s Hardware and Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store sold some toys, though. The Klingenberg chain of hardware stores and other smaller stores along Monmouth St. sold toy items, but Federle’s was the place to begin shopping, for reasons of price and selection. Only the large department stores in

downtown Cincinnati, of which there were at least 10 by the mid-1950s, and Johnny’s Toys in Latonia had a larger variety of toys.

In Kenton Co., the Johnny’s Toys store began in 1939, when Bill Martin took over Miss Mary’s, a candy and school supply store along Decoursey Ave. in Latonia. Since that time Johnny’s has developed into a small chain of toy stores, not only in Northern Kentucky but also in Greater Cincinnati.

Now in its fourth different location in Latonia along Howard Litzler Rd., in a 44,000-square-foot building, Johnny’s has proved itself the marketing leader in the field. The family-run operation has been able to do things that the large chains could not possibly accomplish. During the 1960s the store ran specific ads in the Kentucky Post that included details of what model electric train engines and cars were on sale that week and the quantity of each available. Johnny’s also advertised on the popu lar Uncle Al Show for children on Cincinnati television. Because that broadcast reached regional markets such as Dayton, Ohio, the Latonia store became a destination for the families of children outside of Northern Kentucky.

Longtime employees have certainly been a key aspect of success for Johnny’s Toys. Some staff members worked at Johnny’s for more than 40 years, and several have passed the 30-year mark. Helen Warren retired after 50 years as the store’s original birthday elf; one year later, because she missed the children who came into the store as well as the feeling of joy she received from working there, she returned, staying until age 79. Warren was in charge of the birthday club; each year she sent birthday cards to as many as 160,000 children throughout Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati. Charles “Ed” Wendt was the specialist who worked in the model railroad section for some 35 years. Other staff greeted youngsters in front of the store’s Birthday Castle, a special area where only the children could go, and where they would receive a free gift. They gained entrance using a key that had been sent with their birthday card.

Today, in the parking lot of the Latonia store, a half-scale trolley, the Otterville Trolley, takes children for a ride to visit the Easter Bunny in spring or, in the fall, to attend a marshmallow roast with ghost stories. A trip to Johnny’s Toys around Christmas always includes visiting with Santa Claus for a few moments. Often, over the years, Santa was played by the husband of Mary Elizabeth Johnson, a 35-year employee who oversaw the important layaway department—he wanted to share in the fun his wife brought home. For many years Johnny’s has rented extra warehouse space as Christmas approached, to store layaway items until just before Santa’s arrival.

Johnny’s Toys is known for its annual train show, which has been held each January for more than 30 years. The store’s bicycle repair shop is akin to an automobile repair operation for the family car. Johnny’s is where girls have gone for the latest dolls, and boys for model ships, airplanes, and rockets. The new Latonia store has a children’s amphitheater for special performances. Other events include the annual Shop with a Cop, a program

TRAFFIC

sponsored by the Covington Fraternal Order of Police. Founder Bill Martin, the marketing genius of Johnny’s, died in 1999.

Kenton Co. department stores such as Coppin’s, JCPenney, Sears, Kmart, and Wal-Mart have also sold toys, offering an expanded selection around Christmas. Some of the smaller hardware stores, such as Landwehr’s in Covington, do the same. In the mid-1920s, Covington’s Landwehr family, who had owned grocery stores near 11th and Greenup Sts., opened their first hardware store on Madison Ave. Bernard Landwehr managed the new store. They had stores at various locations, but by 1951 the Landwehrs had settled into a hardware, gift, and toy store at 826 Madison Ave. Under Bernard’s grandson, Tom Landwehr, the store today sells mainly hardware; various toy lines remain, however.

As the toy industry expanded, Northern Kentuckians became involved in the industry; many work for Cincinnati’s Kenner Products, known as the home of the 1956 classic children’s item PlayDoh. Mary Ann Kelly of Ludlow, a well-known television scriptwriter and author, designed toys in her spare time.

“An Ordinance,” DC, July 25, 1882, 4.

“Charles Wendt ‘Train Man’ at Johnny’s Toys in Latonia,” KP, May 10, 2003, A11.

Cross, Gary. Kids’ Stuff : Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997.

Duennes, Terry. “Ghost Stories Told by the Campfire at Totter’s Otterville at Johnny’s Toys,” KP, October 24, 2006, A2.

Duke, Kerry. “Time for Trains,” KP, January 29, 2005, 5K. “Helen Warren, Toy Store’s Birthday Elf,” KP, February 7, 2006, A11.

“Lessons at Johnny’s Toys,” KP, May 20, 2006, N5.

“Taylor Mill’s Mary Elizabeth Johnson, ‘Ultimate Grandmother,’ Sold Toys,” KP, May 8, 2000, 12A. “Time for Trains,” KP, January 29, 2005, K5.

TRACY, FRANK M. (b. May 5, 1872, Covington, Ky.; d. March 6, 1947, Covington, Ky.). Frank M. Tracy, a legislator and a judge, was the son of Patrick and Julia Aylward Tracy, local grocery owners who were born in Ireland. Frank received his elementary and high school education in Covington, attended St. Xavier College in Cincinnati, graduating in 1892, and then studied law at the Cincinnati Law School, where he graduated in 1894 with an LLB. He also studied at the Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C. Tracy was admitted to the Kentucky bar and became active in Democratic politics. He was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1898, served as Kenton Co. attorney from 1902 to 1910, and was a Kenton circuit judge from 1910 to 1924. In 1924 Tracy formed a law partnership with Maurice L. Galvin under the name of Galvin & Tracy, and the firm represented many large business interests, among them some of the local utilities. Tracy engaged in several civic and charitable interests. He chaired the campaign to build St. Elizabeth Hospital (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center) in Covington and was an exalted ruler of the Covington

Elks (see Civic Associations), a charter member of the Fort Mitchell Country Club, a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a member of the Latonia Jockey Club, and a founder of WCKY radio. He married Margaret C. Brown on April 27, 1904. Tracy died in 1947 at the Arthur Apartments along Greenup St. in Covington and was buried at St. Mary Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.

“His Character Shone in Good Works,” KP, March 7, 1947, 2.

“Judge Frank M. Tracy Dies at Age 74,” KP, March 6, 1947, 1.

Kentucky Death Certificate No. 6598, for the year 1947.

William Terwort

TRAFFIC. The increase of traffic on streets and highways is a serious concern in Northern Kentucky and nationally. The situation is worsened by the public’s choice of the flexibility and convenience of auto travel over mass transit. An OhioKentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) report states that in 2000, among those in Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties using roads to commute to work, more than 85 percent drove alone, while only 3 percent used the bus system. Over the years, numerous strategies have been utilized to relieve traffic congestion. Removal of parking, one-way operations, and designated turning lanes have improved traffic flow. The first traffic signal in a Northern Kentucky town was installed in Erlanger at the intersection of the Dixie Highway and Commonwealth Ave. in June 1928.

A comprehensive plan prepared for the City of Covington by Ladislas Segoe in 1932 emphasized adapting the community to the automobile. Relying heavily on traffic counts and population projections, the plan noted specific locations where widening, paving, improving curves, and eliminating railroad crossings would enhance safety and mobility. Owing to the cost involved, many of the plan’s major features were never undertaken.

These included a proposed regional highway system with three radial boulevards emanating from the downtown Covington area.

By the end of World War II, rush-hour traffic in Northern Kentucky was a serious problem; traffic would back up from downtown Cincinnati across all four Ohio River bridges, through Covington and Newport, to the routes leading to the steadily developing suburban communities. In the 1950s one-way traffic was instituted on the L&N Bridge during the morning and afternoon peak periods. U.S 27 through Newport was made oneway north on Monmouth and one-way south on York St., and a similar plan was put into effect in Covington on Greenup and Scott Sts. Because of the hilly terrain of Northern Kentucky, a street grid system had developed only in the more level river communities. Suburban growth relied on major existing arterials that allowed few alternate routes to bypass blockages or heavy congestion. The opening of the Brent Spence (I-71/I-75) Bridge in late 1963 initially provided major relief to the rush-hour congestion in Kenton Co. However, it was 1976 be-

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fore the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge (I-471) opening alleviated congestion in Campbell Co. It was obvious, even before construction started, that the I-471 link would attract a heavy volume of traffic from the growing areas of eastern Hamilton and Clermont counties in Ohio. However, an OKI study decided against recommending designated higheroccupancy-vehicle lanes on I-471. The Kentucky Department of Highways began a more systematic collection of traffic-count data in the early 1960s, and the Kentucky legislature adopted the 1961 Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) for all roads and streets in the commonwealth. The federal Traffic Operations Program to Improve Capacity and Safety (TOPICS) program in the early 1970s was an attempt to address problems at key intersections. Several of these projects were completed, either as designed or with modifications. A major improvement under this program was the alignment of Stevenson Rd. with Commonwealth Ave. in Erlanger.

By the mid-1980s, the region was exploring “Intelligent Transportation” systems. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) was the leading agency for the ADVANTAGE 75 system to monitor trucking on I-75 from Canada to south Florida.

One of the first monitoring stations was installed in Kentucky on southbound I-75 between Walton and Crittenden. Traffic signals had advanced from pretimed to partially traffic-activated. Later, the signals had been interconnected along the major arterial routes, and the system along the Dixie Highway could be adjusted from the District Highway office in Crescent Park. This system extended along U.S. 42 to Hopeful Rd. and later included Mall Rd. and the segment of Ky. Rt. 18 in Florence, Ky. Urban signal systems were installed in Covington and Newport.

The development of the Advanced Regional Traffic Interactive Management and Information System (ARTIMIS) was coordinated by OKI and fi nanced largely with federal clean-air funding.

An electronic network of fiber-optic cable carries data to a control center in Cincinnati just north of the Brent Spence Bridge. The system includes cameras, changeable message signs, roadway sensors, highway advisory radio, and ser vice patrol vans on Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky freeways. The system, fully operational by late 1996, included several national innovations, among them the 511 highway information hotline.

A Federal Highway Administration report in 1996 compared national travel factors since 1970.

It indicated that the total miles driven had grown 4 times as fast as the population, twice as fast as the number of licensed drivers, and 18 times as fast as additional road mileage. The number of vehicles had increased by 90 percent since 1970. The traffic count in both directions on I-71/I-75 between Buttermilk Pk. and the Dixie Highway at Fort Mitchell was 39,600 vehicles per day in 1965. In 1975 it was 80,800; in 1995, 131,000; and in 2005, 159,000.

As traffic increased, the river crossings again became bottlenecks. The emergency shoulders on both the Brent Spence and the Daniel Carter Beard bridges have been converted to provide additional

886 TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY traffic lanes. The planning under way in 2007 to replace the Spence Bridge structure anticipates as many as seven lanes in each direction. The heavy traffic seeking to reach new attractions on the Newport and Bellevue riverfronts will require a major redesign of the exit ramp at the south end of the I-471 Beard Bridge. A corridor study of the Dixie Highway segment between Florence and I-75 in Covington was completed in 2005. The goals are to improve traffic flow and reduce delay without constructing additional lanes. The volume of truck traffic is steadily increasing. This will worsen congestion, which, in turn, will threaten the long-term viability of some businesses. Residential and commercial development throughout Northern Kentucky continues to outpace the resources allocated to provide adequate roadway access.

America’s Rolling Warehouses. Washington, D.C.: The Road Information Program (TRIP), 2004.

Comprehensive Plan for Covington, Kentucky and Environs, Covington Planning and Zoning Commission. 1932. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1974.

“Erlanger First,” KP, June 28, 1928, 1.

“Eyes on the Roads: ARTIMIS Cameras and Technicians,” CP, October 12, 2002, 1K. Federal Highway Administration. America’s Roads: 1776–1976. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1976.

Tenkotte, Paul A. “Adaptation to the Automobile and Imitation of the Suburb, Covington, Kentucky’s 1932 Plan as a Test Case of City Planning,” JKS 1, no. 1 (July 1984): 151–70.

Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Linking Solutions to Problems. Washington, D.C.: Federal Highway Administration, 2004.

Ralph Wolff

TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY. The Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) was created by the fiscal courts of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties in July 1971. TANK was formed in response to an announcement by the Cincinnati, Newport, and Covington Transportation Company (CN&C) (the Green Line Company), a private transit company, that it would cease to serve Northern Kentucky by the end of 1972. In June 1972 a bond issue to fund TANK was authorized by the governing bodies of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties, for placement on the November 7, 1972, election ballot. The move was timely, since the CN&C Transportation Company halted all operations on November 4, 1972. In that election the voters approved a $5.4 million public transit operating bond issue, with Kenton Co. residents contributing $3.1 million, Campbell Co. residents $1.9 million, and the citizens of Florence in Boone Co. $400,000. The issue passed, in all three counties, by more than 70 percent of votes. Thus TANK was funded and the populace again had an alternative to the automobile.

Preparations were made to get the buses rolling the next morning after the bond issue passed. The newly appointed TANK board arranged during the night for liability and workman’s compensation insurance and made credit agreements for fuel and tires. Arrangements with owners of the now defunct Green Line allowed TANK to lease 58 buses, along

with the Newport storage and maintenance facilities. Also during the night, former Green Line drivers and mechanics were notified that their ser vices would be needed as early as the next morning.

The most immediate problem facing TANK was that it did not have enough operable buses to put on the road. The buses obtained from the Green Line, except for eight purchased in 1967, were 18 years old, on average, and suffered from deferred maintenance. To ensure availability of a large enough fleet of operable buses to meet basic schedules, TANK immediately purchased 20 used buses from the Kansas City Area Transit Authority.

In the next 24 months, TANK launched some major initiatives. The basic fare was reduced to 25 cents, and ser vice headways on many routes were improved to achieve a phased increase of 44 percent more ser vice mileage. In addition, passenger shelters were placed at many boarding locations, and an information center was established to provide the public with continuous schedule and route information.

In 1973 TANK developed new branches of its most patronized route, No. 1–Erlanger-Florence, to serve the rapidly developing areas of southern Kenton and Boone counties, and it established a new route to reach another growing area around Taylor Mill and Independence in southeastern Kenton Co. In Campbell Co., TANK increased ser vice along both Highland and Grand Aves. to Fort Thomas. Rush-hour express runs were reinstituted from Fort Thomas, Dayton, and the Cold Spring–Alexandria area to Cincinnati.

In 1975, having received a capital grant from the federal government, TANK purchased 74 AM General 41-passenger air-conditioned transit buses and was able to retire most of the worn-out Green Line buses. The delivery of the new buses gave TANK a distinctive new look; they were painted white overall with diagonal red, yellow, and blue stripes amidships, representing the unity of Campbell, Kenton, and Boone counties.

As a result of the 1975–1976 OPEC oil crisis, which led to localized gasoline shortages and much higher fuel prices, TANK carried a record 5,731,517 passengers in 1976, almost double the number of persons who rode the Green Line in 1971. This increase encouraged TANK to seek additional public funding; but the voters proved to be fickle. In November 1976 they rejected the proposed onequarter-percent sales tax increase for additional transit operating funds. Faced with a doubling of the price of diesel fuel, TANK was forced to raise its basic fare to 40 cents in 1977 and to curtail much of its late evening and weekend ser vice. Predictably, ridership declined noticeably in 1977.

In 1978 TANK proposed to the voters of Kenton and Campbell counties a permanent fund base centered on a payroll and net-profit tax. TANK employees and their families, along with many other northern Kentuckians, went door-to-door to gain support for the upcoming ballot initiative. The voters passed the issue in November 1978, and TANK was endowed with its first permanent funding base.

During the early 1980s, as gasoline prices stabilized, more people returned to their automobiles

for commuting to work and visiting the doctor or stores, and TANK saw its ridership gradually decline. From a high of almost 6 million passengers in 1976, TANK carried fewer than 5 million passengers in 1982. However, in 1981 TANK secured a federal Urban Mass Transit Act grant to replace its old, cramped, inefficient maintenance and storage facility (a former Green Line streetcar barn) at 11th and Brighton Sts. in Newport. A new TANK office and maintenance facility was constructed on Madison Pike in Fort Wright and dedicated on November 20, 1982 by general manager Stephen L. Morris. Further purchases of 20 new buses between 1980 and 1983 meant that for the first time the entire TANK fleet of 95 buses was air-conditioned.

Public transportation took a backseat in the mid-1980s as the federal government gradually reduced its aid to mass transit. Caught in a financial squeeze, TANK had to raise its basic fare, first to 60 cents and eventually to 75 cents. Therefore, despite a combination of clean, well-kept equipment, convenient schedules, and the establishment of numerous park-and-ride locations, ridership slipped to near the 4 million level by 1989. There was some modest route expansion during the 1980s. A new ser vice was launched to the newly opened St. Elizabeth Medical Center South in Edgewood. Seven trips a day were scheduled, primarily at shift change times, to transport hospital workers.

The 1990s saw a flurry of progress and innovation at TANK. Spearheaded by Mark Donaghy, general manager (1990–2003), the authority began expanding its routes to serve the needs of the developing southern ends of the three-county region.

Ser vice to Northern Kentucky University and the Cold Spring–Alexandria area was expanded, and new ser vice was added to various areas of Boone Co. (centered on Empire Dr.) and to Walton and Hebron. A new No. 2–Airport Express route was instituted between downtown Cincinnati and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, with the schedule primarily aimed at shift change times at the airport.

Not to be left out of TANK expansion plans were the newly developing business districts and the new condominiums along the Northern Kentucky riverfront. On May 6, 1998, TANK launched the Southbank Shuttle, a new bus route linking the downtown business districts of Cincinnati, Covington, Newport, and Bellevue. The Shuttle was designed to join the downtown Cincinnati’s sports stadiums and its retail and restaurant district with both the Covington and the Newport shopping and entertainment districts along the Ohio River and Covington’s Main Strasse Village. The Southbank Shuttle was conceived by TANK, and Southbank Partners, a public-private group, provided marketing support. The shuttle was a complete success, so much so that TANK found it necessary to order new, larger buses in 2001.

One negative development occurred in September 1996, when the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky was notified that its tenancy in the Dixie Terminal in Cincinnati would be terminated on October 18. TANK and its predecessor, the Green Line, had used the off-street structure as

TRANSKENTUCKY TRANSPORTATION RAILROAD INC.

its primary Cincinnati terminus since 1921. However, that development gave impetus to implement TANK’s long-range plan to operate a primary transfer facility in downtown Covington. A new indoor facility, located on the ground floor of the Kenton Co. parking garage on Madison Ave. between Second and Third Sts., was opened on July 25, 1998. Named the Riverfront Transit Center, the facility, designed to serve as TANK’s major transfer point, replaced the former main transfer locations in congested downtown Cincinnati as well as the nonsheltered Third and Madison transfer point in Covington. Almost immediately the new facility was nicknamed the Covington Transit Center by the press and by TANK itself.

Further initiatives by TANK from 1995 to 2005 included assisting employers and social ser vice agencies by instituting reverse commuting ser vice.

For example, people are transported from urban areas to their work in outlying parts of the three counties, where new and more abundant employment opportunities such as the airport have developed. Another TANK innovation to lure people back to public transit was the Guaranteed Ride Home Program. TANK guaranteed its customers a ride home (up to four times per year) if unplanned overtime or a family emergency arose during the workday. During the same time period, TANK also added more park-and-ride lots in the suburbs to enable citizens to avoid the hassle of driving in congested areas.

Another community outreach program instituted by the authority was its Transit Subsidy Program, whereby companies could provide up to $65 per month in tax-free benefits to employees if they used TANK to commute to work. To assist the mobility-impaired, TANK instituted in 1978 its Regional Area Mobility Program, known as RAMP. From a modest beginning using four buses to provide door-to-door ser vice for 80 monthly riders, RAMP had grown by 2004 to serve more than 4,000 people monthly. Also by 2004, TANK had put into ser vice on regular routes 51 low-floor buses, fully accessible to many people with limited mobility. The employees of TANK’s maintenance department, under the direction of Donald Neltner, volunteered their free time to restore the Kentucky, one of the oldest existing streetcars in the United States, for eventual display at the Behringer- Crawford Museum at Devou Park in Park Hills. They also restored a number of historic buses for use in local events and parades.

In late 2003 David Braun succeeded Mark Donaghy as TANK’s general manager. In 2004 the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky operated more than 130 vehicles throughout the three counties of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton (and to downtown Cincinnati) on more than 30 regular and express routes. TANK employed 200 full-time and 56 part-time individuals and carried more than 3,700,000 passengers in 2004.

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

Terry W. Lehmann

TRANSITIONS INC. In 1969 the Northern Kentucky Regional Mental Health–Mental Retardation Board (known then as the Comprehensive Care Center but now as NorthKey Community Care) encouraged the formation of a “substance abuse task force.” Executive Director Dr. J. E. Willett initiated the effort and oversaw the project administratively. The staff person who took up the challenge to help in treating substance abuse was Dr. Clarence Lassetter, a therapist at the center. He was joined by a few citizens who were very concerned about the lack of substance abuse treatment programs for the uninsured and indigent in Northern Kentucky. Th ree of the most committed members of the group were from the same family—Virginia, Margaret, and Larry Droege.

During 1969 the group gained a few more supporters and raised a small amount of money but was stymied by having neither a building in which to provide ser vices nor the funds to buy one. The group often met in the living room of Virginia and Margaret Droege at 1408 Greenup St. in Covington. During one meeting in late 1969, Virginia reportedly looked at Margaret and said, “You know, we could start doing treatment ser vices right here.”

The two women proceeded to move in with relatives and donated their home to the cause. The new agency was named Droege House Inc. and was registered as a nonprofit charity. The first board chair was Tony Wirtz, also a board member of Northern Kentucky Regional Mental Health– Mental Retardation Board.

In 1971 the program grew to include outreach ser vices and a drop-in center on 11th St. in Covington, as a result of collaborations with the Community Alcoholism Ser vices of the federal Office of Economic Opportunities. Locally, the Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission (NKCAC) had sponsored these ser vices. NKCAC’s Alcoholism Ser vices were officially delegated to Droege House Inc. in October 1974. In addition, the Mental Health–Mental Retardation Board and Droege House Inc. signed an affiliation agreement; as a result of the agreement, a nonmedical detoxification unit was established and added to the services at Droege House Inc. In July 1975 Droege House Inc. changed its name to the Northern Kentucky Alcohol Abuse Program Inc. (NKAAP). In the following month, the agency was awarded state formula grant funds to establish a detoxification unit. In October of the same year, the treatment program (a halfway house) moved into what had been the nurses’ quarters at Speers Hospital (see Speers Memorial Hospital) in Dayton, Ky., and that building was renamed the Droege House.

During the three decades since then, the agency, renamed Transitions Inc. in 1984, has focused on providing substance-abuse-related ser vices to assist the indigent, the uninsured, the incarcerated, the homeless, and the working poor of Northern Kentucky. It provides ser vices in three major areas: substance abuse treatment, community corrections, and assistance for the homeless and others with housing problems.

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Transitions Inc. has become known for its innovative programming. Among its many firsts are the nonhospital residential substance abuse program in Greater Cincinnati (1969); the nonmedical detoxification unit in Northern Kentucky (1975); the substance abuse program for offenders (1978); the halfway-house ser vices in Eastern Kentucky (1987); a women’s and children’s substance abuse program (1992); the Oxford House Recovery Group Home (1993); the Community Corrections Advisory Board in Northern Kentucky (the latter became the catalyst to establish the Kenton Co. Community Corrections Advisory Board Inc.) (1996); the Intensive-Out-Patient program for offenders in Northern Kentucky (1997); the first drug court in Northern Kentucky (Kenton Co. Adult Drug Court), of which Transitions Inc. is a cofounder (1998); and a HUD housing grant for the formerly homeless (1999).

From 2000 to 2005, Transitions Inc. was an integral part of the community effort that founded the Life Learning Center Inc., and in 2006 Transitions Inc. was approved to establish a new 100bed treatment facility in Erlanger, as part of the Recovery Kentucky initiative sponsored by Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher (2003–2007). The new facility was under construction in 2008.

On its 35th anniversary, in 2004, the agency owned 16 buildings, including five residential care facilities in Boyd, Campbell, and Kenton counties, and was serving an average of 270 residents per day and an additional 260 outpatient clients per week.

In 2005 the agency’s revenues were $5.5 million.

Transitions Inc. receives clients from across the state of Kentucky but primarily serves Boone, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton, Owen, and Pendleton counties in Northern Kentucky.

Derks, Rose Marie, O.S.F. “Alcohol Abuse Program of Northern Kentucky: A Look at Financial Resources,” 1978, Xavier Univ., Cincinnati.

Eigelbach, Kevin. “Rehab Center OK’d: Erlanger Board Approves Project,” KP, April 25, 2006, 1A. Transitions Inc. Birth of an Agency. 2005. 35th anniversary brochure.

Mac McArthur

TRANSKENTUCKY TRANSPORTATION RAILROAD INC. The TransKentucky Transportation Railroad, better known as the TTI, operates the former Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) track in Kentucky between Paris and Maysville. Originally, it was the Maysville and Lexington Railroad that finished the track between Maysville and Paris, and the first trip was made from Maysville to Paris on March 4, 1872.

The connecting section between Paris and Lexington was part of the Covington and Lexington Railroad, built in the mid-1850s. The road became part of the Kentucky Central Railroad (KC) in 1876. Collis P. Huntington acquired the KC in 1881 to provide linkage for his Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to reach Louisville via Lexington.

In 1891, after Huntington’s railroad empire was thrown into financial difficulties, the L&N gained ownership of the line. Although the L&N viewed the line as having profit potential, demonstrated by

888 TRANSPARENT PIE the substantial depot (see Railroad Depots) it constructed at Maysville (today the police station), the line became relegated to local traffic, unable to generate through traffic. In 1979 the L&N sold this section to the TTI, which uses it mainly for coal hauling, moving Eastern Kentucky coal dropped off at Paris by the L&N and the CSX to a barge terminal on the Ohio River at Maysville. The TTI remains an independent railroad, but the CSX is a major stockholder in the company.

“First Railroad Trip to Paris,” Maysville Bulletin, March 7, 1872, 3.

Herr, Kenneth A. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Lewis, Edward A. American Shortline Railway Guide. 4th ed. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Books, 1991.

Charles H. Bogart

TRANSPARENT PIE. Transparent pie is a delicious dessert, usually prepared as a tart or a pie, which seems to have originated in Maysville and environs. Its origin is unknown, but it dates back at least several generations. Maysville’s oldest residents remember transparent pie as always being part of local life. Rosemary Clooney purchased transparent pie on her visits home, and her nephew George Clooney has been known to transport it to movie sets in Hollywood. The tarts are a featured item of McGee’s Bakery and are even baked at chain store bakeries in the community. Hula Duke, a prominent local preservationist, always served transparent pie tarts to visitors to the community. On a return visit, one of those guests asked to have, once more, some of that wonderful dessert, whose name she could not remember; she asked for “invisible” pie. Recipes for transparent pie vary, but they include eggs, sugar, butter, milk, and small amounts of flour and vanilla, mixed and placed in pie shells. The result is a sweet, rich confection, golden brown on the surface with a light yellow body that is almost clear—giving the pie its name.

Meiman, Karen. “Taste of Tradition from Farms to Kitchens,” KP, January 10, 2004, 3.

John Klee

TRAUTH DAIRY. Louis Trauth Dairy was established in May 1920, when Louis J. Trauth and his wife Clara Stephany Trauth bought a milk route from the Fred Schuerman Dairy, which was at the present site of the Newport Shopping Center. At fi rst the Trauth Dairy operated from a 600-square-foot plant behind the Trauths’ home at 11th and John Sts. in Newport; by 1926 it had been expanded to 1,500 square feet. Despite competition from more than 50 Northern Kentucky dairies, and the impact of the Great Depression and World War II, Trauth Dairy grew from a partnership between Louis Trauth and his two sons into a corporation in 1956. The new corporation acquired the Niser Ice Cream Company in 1968 but did not create its own line of ice cream products (see Candy and Ice Cream) until July 1990; by November 1990 the dairy had introduced more than 43 new ice cream products. Plant im-

provements by 1985 included three multimilliondollar expansions that increased production and distribution. A new ice cream production plant was added in 1993. One of the first dairies in the region to vacuum-pasteurize milk, Trauth Dairy has consistently introduced innovative packaging and products, including tamper-evident packaging, sweet acidophilus milk, and 1 percent plus A/B milk. It is also the exclusive manufacturer of fat-free plus A/B milk, which tastes like 2 percent but is actually skim fortified with calcium and with acidophilus and bifidum cultures—the cultures in yogurt. Twelve varieties of milk, three kinds of cream, eggnog, chip dips, cottage cheese, fruit drinks, and more than 20 flavors of ice cream are manufactured at the Newport plant. Two other distribution facilities operate in Louisville and in Osgood, Ind. In 1997 the dairy was purchased by Suiza Foods Corporation of Dallas, Tex., one of the largest dairy firms in the United States. The Trauth Dairy thereby became involved in a national market, manufacturing ice cream under the Pet and Carnation labels in addition to its own brand and private labels. Today its ultramodern facility covers five city blocks. The dairy has received gold medals and blue ribbons each year for numerous products at the Kentucky State Fair, and Cincinnati Magazine has named its eggnog and sour cream Cincinnati’s best. In addition Louis Trauth Dairy was named the Dairy of the Year in 2003 and the best fluid milk plant in 2004, by the All Star Dairy Association.

“As Other Dairies Vanish, Trauth Company Expands,” CP, July 31, 1984, 11B. “Ice Cream Venture Could Help Trauth Frost Local Competition,” Cincinnati Business Courier, November 29, 1993, 27.

Louis Trauth Dairy. www.trauthdairy.com (accessed April 5, 2006).

Gabrielle Summe

TRIMBLE, MARY BARLOW (b. 1831, Paris, Ky.; d. September 20, 1912, New York City). Mary Trimble was an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage and a close friend of Susan B. Anthony and other suff ragists, such as Anna Shaler Berry, Lillian Blauvelt, Laura Clay, Jessie Firth, Clara Loring, Nancy McLaughlin, Mary Light Ogle, Mattie Bruce Reynolds, and Dr. Louise Southgate.

Mary Barlow Trimble’s parents were Martin and Frances Cantrell Barlow; both parents died when Mary was young, and she went to live with her uncle Col. Joseph Cantrell. She married William Wallace Trimble, a wealthy attorney and legal scholar who lived at Cynthiana. William was the author of Trimble’s Kentucky Digest, which was used as a textbook by the Cincinnati Law School. The couple moved to Covington in 1873, where they lived in a mansion at 1026 Madison Ave. Mary and William had five children.

Like many other women of wealth and position of her day, Mary was involved in numerous social issues, especially women’s property rights and the right to vote. She was one of the founders of the Covington Equal Rights Club. In 1894 Susan B.

Anthony came to Cincinnati to attend the Ohio Women’s Suff rage convention at the Sinton Hall in the YMCA. While in the area, she and the treasurer of the organization, Helen Taylor Upton, stayed with the Trimble family in their Covington home. On other visits to Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, Anthony often was hosted by other local members of the women’s movement, including Anna Shaler Berry. The suff rage organizations fought tirelessly for a woman’s right to vote; however, many of their leaders passed from the scene before the voting rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920.

Mary Barlow Trimble died of a stroke at age 81, at the Gregorian Hotel in New York City, while visiting with her granddaughter, Grace Ludlow.

Mary’s body was returned to Covington, where funeral ser vices were held in the family home on the southeast corner of Madison Ave. and Robbins St. Rev. Macgruder of Covington’s Trinity Episcopal Church and Rev. Plemmons of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Covington conducted her funeral ser vices. Members of the Covington Equal Rights Club attended the ser vices as a body. A special train carried the body and the funeral party to Cynthiana, where Mary was buried next to her husband, William, in the Battle Grove Cemetery.

Her five children, William Trimble, Robert Trimble, Helen Trimble Highton, Grace Trimble Fackler, and Kate Trimble Woolsey survived her.

Each of Mary’s daughters followed in her mother’s footsteps by becoming involved in the women’s rights movement. Grace Trimble Fackler was the most active, although daughter Kate Trimble Woolsey wrote a book in 1903 called Republics versus Woman, in which she criticized governments for not giving women the same legal rights as men. Both of Mary’s sons became successful fi nanciers.

“Death Notice,” KP, September 21, 1912, 7.

“Mrs. Trimble Dies in N.Y. Hotel—Brief Biography,” KP, September 20, 1912, 1.

Reis, Jim. “They Fought to Secure Equal Rights for Women,” KP, August 4, 2003, 4K. ———. “Winning the Right to Vote,” KP, November 8, 2004, 4K.

TRIMBLE, ROBERT (b. November 17, 1776, Augusta Co., Va.; d. August 25, 1828, Paris, Ky.).

Robert Trimble was the second person to serve as a federal judge for Northern Kentucky and the first federal trial judge appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trimble attended Transylvania College in Lexington and was admitted to the bar in 1802.

Before his federal judicial appointments, he served as a member of the Kentucky General Assembly (1802) and as a justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. In 1817 President James Madison appointed Trimble to the District Court of Kentucky, where he served eight years. In 1826 President John Quincy Adams elevated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was believed that Secretary of State Henry Clay, a Kentuckian, was influential in Trimble’s appointment to the Court. While Trimble’s tenure on the Court was brief, due to his sudden and unexpected death, he wrote 16 opinions on a Court that

TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH

was dominated by Chief Justice John Marshall.

He wrote the only opinion in which Chief Justice Marshall was in the minority during Marshall’s 34-year tenure (1801–1835). Trimble died at his home in Paris, Ky., in 1828 of a “malignant bilious fever,” just 27 months into his tenure as a justice.

His close friend on the Court, Justice Joseph Story, said of Trimble, “We are persuaded that if he had lived 10 years longer, in the discharge of the same high duties, from the expendability of his talents, and his steady devotion to jurisdiction, he would have gained still higher rank.”

During the 1829 term of the Court, the justices wore black armbands on their left arms honoring Trimble’s memory. Trimble Co., Ky., was named in his honor.

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

Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

The Supreme Court Historical Society. www.supreme courthistory.org/ (accessed February 5, 2007).

Paul L. Whalen

TRIMBLE, VANCE H. (b. July 6, 1913, Harrison, Ark.). Vance Henry Trimble, a journalist and an author, is the son of attorney Guy Lee Trimble and Josephine Crump Trimble. Vance grew up in Wewoka, Okla., where he attended public school.

When he was 14 years old, he acquired an afterschool job as a cub reporter for the Okemah (Okla.) Daily Leader, and he later worked parttime as a court house reporter, a sports editor, and a city editor for the Wewoka (Okla.) TimesDemocrat. Trimble graduated from Wewoka High School, where he was editor of the high school newspaper, in 1930. Because jobs were so difficult to find and keep during the Great Depression, Trimble worked part-time for various Oklahoma newspapers. In 1932 he married his high school sweetheart, Elzene Miller, and they became the parents of one child, Carol Ann. Elzene Trimble was described as having steel will sheathed in southern charm; she was Vance’s closest friend, his greatest supporter, and at times his most astute critic.

During the depression Vance Trimble resorted to repairing typewriters as a means of helping to support his family. In 1939 he was hired as a copy editor for the Scripps-Howard–owned Houston Press and within six months was promoted to city editor. During World War II, Trimble served for two years with the U.S. Army. Afterward he rejoined the Houston Press, where he held the title of managing editor. In 1955 he was transferred to the Scripps-Howard Bureau in Washington, D.C., and served as news director. While there, he wrote a series of articles exposing nepotism and corruption within the U.S. Congress. That series led to his receiving the triple crown of journalism in 1960.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished Washington correspondence, and the Raymond Clapper Award for the year’s best Washington reporting. In 1963 he left Washington to become editor of the Kentucky Post, in Covington. For Vance, that was like a homecoming, since

his father and both of his grandfathers had been born and raised in Kentucky.

Kentucky Post employees described Trimble as a very demanding boss, nearly impossible to please, who almost daily threatened to fire everyone. However, Trimble also had a compassionate side and was very sympathetic to the personal problems of his employees. While at the Kentucky Post, he designed and built a new home at 1013 Sunset Dr. in Kenton Hills (Covington), with a commanding view of the Ohio River and downtown Cincinnati. In 1974 Trimble was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. He retired from the Kentucky Post in 1979 but remained in Covington.

After 67 years of happy marriage, Elzene died on July 5, 1999, and was buried in Wewoka, Okla.

Vance moved back to Wewoka after his wife’s death, so he could be near her grave. In retirement Trimble has written biographies about Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Kentucky governor Albert B. “Happy” Chandler (1935–1939, 1955–1959), Federal Express founder Fred Smith, and communications magnate Chris Whittle. When Trimble informed his publisher that he was going to write the Walton biography, the publisher told him not to write it because someone was already writing one. Vance became angry and wrote the biography anyway; another company published it. The book was an instant success, selling more than a half million copies. In recent years Vance placed his manuscripts, working files, and correspondence in the Ohio University library at Athens. He also donated more than 3,000 books to the public library in Wewoka. Now in his nineties, Vance Trimble continues to enjoy retirement in the town where he grew up, Wewoka, Okla.

The Cincinnati Post. “Lifetime of Love Goes On.” www.cincypost.com (accessed February 5, 2006).

“Editor in Hall of Fame,” KP, November 1, 1974, 1.

“Editor-Turned-Author,” KP, November 26, 1990, 1B. Hicks, Jack. “The Astonishing Mr. Trimble Never at Loss for Words,” KP, August 6, 1993, 1K–2K. NNDB. “Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.” www .nndb.com (accessed February 5, 2006).

Ohio University Libraries. “Vance H. Trimble Collection.” www.library.ohiou.edu/fi nd/ (accessed February 5, 2006).

“Pulitzer Prize Winner Named Ky. Post Editor,” KP, January 14, 1963, 1K.

Mary Barlow Trimble), daughter of Martin and Frances Cantrell Barlow. From his first marriage he had no children, but by his second wife, Mary, he had five who lived to maturity, Kate, Fannie, Helen, William Jr., and Robert. In 1856 William Trimble was elected Circuit Court judge of the Ninth District of Kentucky, comprising the counties of Bracken, Campbell, Harrison, Kenton, and Pendleton. He served in that position until 1864, when he was elected Circuit Court judge of the Second District. In 1873 Trimble moved to Covington, where he continued his legal practice and earned the reputation of having one of the fi nest legal minds in the region. A voracious reader, he spent much time studying fi ne literature. He wrote extensively; one of his books was Trimble’s Kentucky Digest, which was used for many years as a textbook at the Cincinnati Law School. William’s daughter Kate married Edward J. Woolsey and gained fame as an ardent feminist and women’s rights activist and as the author of the 1903 book Republics versus Woman (see Kate Trimble Woolsey). Judge William W. Trimble was 64 years old when he died in his Covington home, at the southeast corner of Madison Ave. and Robbins St. Funeral ser vices were held at the Cynthiana Episcopal Church, and Trimble was buried in the Battle Grove Cemetery in Cynthiana.

“August Election,” CJ, July 4, 1856, 3.

“Covington Nominations,” CDC, May 23, 1864, 2.

“Obituaries,” KSJ, September 2, 1886, 4.

“R. J. Trimble to Make His Home in California,” KTS, May 25, 1920, 19.

Woolsey, Kate Trimble. Republics versus Woman.

London: Gay and Bird, 1903.

TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Founded in 1842, Trinity Episcopal Church is located at Fourth St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. Its present building was built in stages over the period 1859–1888 to replace a smaller frame building at the same location, built in 1843. Additions and improvements over the years were made by noted architects Herbert Tinsley of Cincinnati, and William

Jack Wessling

TRIMBLE, WILLIAM W. (b. December 31, 1821, Cynthiana, Ky.; d. August 31, 1886, Covington, Ky.). Lawyer, judge, and author William W. Trimble was the son of John and Eliza Porter Trimble. William’s father took great interest in the education of all his sons; he and an uncle of William, Robert Macmillan, a former college professor in Edinburgh, Scotland, homeschooled all the Trimble boys. William Trimble received additional training at a private school in Danville, Ky. He became a lawyer in 1853 and practiced law in Cynthiana for 20 years. He was married twice, first to a granddaughter of Kentucky governor James Garrard (1796–1804), and later to Mary Barlow (see

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Trinity Episcopal Church.

890 TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH Stewart (see Walter and Stewart) and others.

George Roth Jr., a prominent architect and a member of Trinity Episcopal Church, described the architecture of the present church building as an “American Victorian Gothic parish church design.” The most noticeable feature of the church is a magnificent bell tower, which, along with the church’s west facade and its baptistery, was designed by Louis Piket in 1888; the tower houses chimes given to the church in 1888 by John W. and Henrietta A. Baker, prominent Covington residents and longtime members of Trinity Episcopal Church. Howell Louis Lovell Sr. donated the funds for the baptistery. In 1886 Piket also designed the church’s Parish House, called the Guild Hall, which still remains. The architectural firm of Porter, Tyler, Martin, and Roth (George Roth) designed a new Parish House for the congregation, completed in 1959.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, Trinity Episcopal Church contains priceless stained-glass windows, including work of the John Riordan Studio of Cincinnati. The St. Michael Archangel window in the north transept, a gift of the Lovell family, was made by the famous studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany of New York.

Hand-carved furnishings and wall panels were created by female students of renowned artists Henry and William Fry, as well as those of Benn Pitman. Kate E. P. Mosher, a student of Pitman, carved three exquisite wood panels in the altar as well as many of the wall panels.

The Trinity Episcopal Church has been the site of many important Covington events. In 1901 it hosted the 13th Annual State Convention of the women’s suffrage movement. Successful community organizations that received their start at Trinity Episcopal Church include Senior Ser vices of Northern Kentucky (which occupied the lower level of the Parish House for ten years), the Family Nurturing Center, and the Covington Community Center, which was the forerunner of the Center for Great Neighborhoods of Covington.

Groups such as the Kiwanis Club (see Civic Associations) and the Kenton Co. Historical Society (see Historical Societies) have found meeting space at the church sanctuary. The membership rolls of the church over the years read like a who’s who of Northern Kentucky: politician John White Stevenson, columnists Mary T. Hall (see Hall Family) and Annette Cornell, singers Elizabeth Parks and Katherine Hall Poock, architects Otto Dan Wolff and Roth, the Baker family of the Baker-Hunt Foundation, the Confederate Withers family, and horseman Polk Laffoon.

Many clergy have served Trinity Episcopal Church since its founding in 1842. Those in recent times include Rev. Joseph Pennington (1989 to present); Rev. Robin P. Smith (1983–1988); Rev. David Rich (1980–1982); Rev. O. Worth May (1959–1979); Rev. Bruce A. Weatherly (1952–1959); Rev. Paul D. Wilbur (1946–1952); and Rev. C. D. Snowden (1943–1946).

Over the years, Trinity Episcopal Church has been an important part of the Northern Kentucky community and of the Episcopal community, consisting of Trinity, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

in Fort Thomas, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport, and Grace Episcopal Church in Florence.

Trinity Episcopal Church, part of the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington, in 2005 had a congregation of approximately 600 members, drawn from both Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

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

Lexington, Ky.: Diocese of Lexington, 1995.

Roth, George F., Jr. The Story of Trinity Episcopal Church in Covington. Covington, Ky.: Trinity Episcopal Church, 1991.

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

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

John West

TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH. The earliest record of Lutherans in Maysville was found in the German Evangelical Protestant Church, formed in 1869; this congregation worshipped in a building on Second St. and closed about the time of World War I. In 1923, brothers Ewald and Herman Pawset, owners of Wald Manufacturing Company in Sheboygan, Wis., were searching for a new location for their bicycle-parts plant. After they moved to Maysville, their Wisconsin pastor notified Pastor Walter Littmann in Madisonville, Ind., of their change in residence and their need to find a new spiritual home. Littmann visited the Pawset brothers and then moved to Maysville to become a resident Lutheran minister to a new Lutheran congregation. The first ser vice was held in the home of Ewald Pawset on Forest Ave. in spring 1924, with six adults and seven children attending.

An early worship ser vice was held once a month, and biweekly ser vices were instituted as the attendance grew.

In 1929, the Wisconsin-based Carnation Milk Company established a manufacturing facility in Maysville and brought a few more Lutheran employees to the area. The growing church needed more room than the Pawset home provided, so space was located in the Mason Co. Women’s Club, where weekly ser vices were conducted. In the same year, Gustav Reschke, a student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Mo., was sent to Maysville to serve the small church of 15 people as an intern. The vacant German Evangelical Protestant Church on Second St. was given to Trinity, and the first ser vice was held there on September 29, 1929.

Trinity Lutheran Church was officially orga nized in the Missouri Synod by an assembly of six members on October 18, 1929, with four elected officers; Herman Pawset, president; Francis Lindert, vice president; Paul Hillmann, treasurer; and John Bratz, secretary. Five members of the former German Evangelical Protestant Church joined the Trinity congregation, and a Sunday School was also begun.

Alvin Stark, another Concordia student, was sent to serve the small church in 1930. The con-

gregation grew as the area was canvassed for worshippers. The church wanted to have a full-time, ordained minister, so Pastor Reschke was officially called to serve Trinity, and on August 9, 1931, more than 100 people attended his installation ser vice.

The German Evangelical Protestant Church building was purchased in 1954, and a parsonage was built in Deerfield Village. In 1966 the church building was sold to cotton manufacturer January & Wood Company, and the congregation again rented space for worship ser vices. During 1969 property was purchased along Parker Rd., and a new building was dedicated in 1975. The cornerstone from the demolished German Evangelical Protestant Church building is now an artifact at the modern Trinity Lutheran Church. Today, worship ser vices are held in a contemporary-design building with about 40 members.

“A Child Is Born—100 Creches on Display,” KP, December 9, 2004, 4K. “It Happened in Kentucky—Maysville,” KTS, August 6, 1957, 1A. “Minister for Forty Years,” KTS, September 2, 1957, 3A. Pawset, Ken. Telephone interview by Melinda G. Motley, September 26, 2006.

Melinda G. Motley

TRIPLE CROWN COUNTRY CLUB. The Triple Crown Country Club is located in Boone Co. just west of I-75 and the Richwood exit, at 1 Triple Crown Blvd. in Union. This country club was established in 1989, and its challenging 18-hole golf course was ready for use in 1991. The par 72 championship course was designed by Gene Bates, a highly respected designer who was once a golf course architect in the Jack Nicklaus design group.

The Triple Crown Country Club is private and has a membership of more than 350, of which 125 are social members. The general manager since the club’s inception has been Patrick Green, and its only golf professional has been Wayne Oien. The Triple Crown Country Club’s membership includes PGA Tour participant Steve Flesch, who holds the course record of 63, and Steve Cauthen, thoroughbred horse racing’s 1978 Triple Crown winning jockey.

Green, Patrick. Interview by Dennis Van Houten, May 2, 2006, Villa Hills, Ky. “Triple Crown Country Club,” CE, July 20, 2003, H1–H2.

Triple Crown Country Club. www.triplecrowngolf club.com/ (accessed June 23, 2006).

Dennis W. Van Houten

TRIPLER, CHARLES STUART, GENERAL (b. January 19, 1806, New York City; d. October 20, 1866, Cincinnati, Ohio). Gen. Charles Stuart Tripler, after whom Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, is named, made many contributions to military medicine. One of these, providing standard guidelines for military inductees undergoing physical exams, was conceived while Tripler was assigned to the Newport Barracks in New-

TRUE, ARNOLD ELLSWORTH, REAR ADMIRAL

891

port. In 1830, after graduating from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, he was commissioned as an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. His military career spanned six decades (1818–1865), from the Seminole Wars in Florida through the Mexican War and the Civil War. In 1858, while stationed at the barracks in Newport, he published his famous Manual of the Medical Officer of the Army of the United States, which became the bible for other medical officers by standardizing the physical requirements of U.S. Army recruits. It was the definitive guide on the subject as late as the mid-1920s. Tripler also redesigned the army’s ambulance from two-wheel carts to fourwheel wagons, making for much smoother rides.

Tripler died in 1866 in Cincinnati and was buried with full military honors in Detroit, Mich., the hometown of his wife’s family.

Donnelly, Joseph. Newport Barracks—Kentucky’s Forgotten Military Installation. Covington, Ky.: Kenton Co. Historical Society, 1999.

Pacific Regional Medical Command. “Brigadier General Charles Stuart Tripler.” www.tamc.amedd.army .mil/history/gentrip.htm (accessed April 5, 2007).

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

Michael R. Sweeney

TRUCK FARMING. Truck farming was a popu lar profession in Northern Kentucky from the turn of the 20th century until the 1960s. Farmers would bring their crops to the urban areas of Newport and Covington to sell. At least as long ago as 1900, according to existing records, Northern Kentucky farmers met to discuss crop-growing and marketing issues in organizations such as the Campbell Co. Farmers’ Club, the Kenton Co. Vegetable Growers Association, the Pickle Growers of Kenton Co., and the Tri-County Fruit Growers.

An attraction in these meetings was often an extension agent from the University of Kentucky, who would explain the latest developments in farming, such as fertilizing and seed care.

In the 19th century, city markets featuring farmers’ goods had been founded in major cities like Covington, Newport, and Cincinnati. In the 1920s there were farmers’ stands along Philadelphia St. and along Scott St. in Covington, where farmers parked their horses and buggies (in later years their trucks) and sold their produce from the backs of their vehicles. This impromptu market continued on Saturday mornings for years. For daily trade, farmers would take their farm products to the Cincinnati Growers Market located along the Ohio River in Cincinnati. It was not uncommon for farmers to arrive at 3:00 a.m., their trucks loaded with the current crop. This location, known as the Bottoms, was just west of the Suspension Bridge. Commission produce houses such as Castellini’s, which was founded in 1896, Caruso Inc., DeGaro, Flatow, Fries Brothers, Gentile Brothers, and Riley would buy large quantities of produce from the farmers and sell it directly to grocery stores and restaurant owners. These Ohiobased businesses, in which Northern Kentucky

Kruempelmann Farm, Fort Mitchell, ca. 1970.

was much involved, thrived in this location for almost 100 years.

As subdivisions started popping up in suburbs, occasionally farmers would take their trucks to the suburbs or peddle produce from house to house. Newport had peddlers named Sanzenbacker and Torline. With the completion of I-75 in the early 1960s, customers drove to the country to buy produce directly from farmers.

Truck farmers sometimes built market sheds to serve the customers who came to their farms. Ky. Rt. 8 in Boone Co. remains a popu lar weekend destination for many Northern Kentuckians and Cincinnatians, who purchase fresh fruits and vegetables from farming families such as the McGlassons and the Dolwicks. Kenton Co. truck farmers included the Kruempelmann and Kremer families.

The commission houses in Cincinnati were torn down in the 1990s to make room for Paul Brown Football Stadium and the reconfiguration of Fort Washington Way. The businesses either closed up completely at that time or moved outside the Cincinnati city limits. Robert Castellini moved his produce house to Wilder, along the Licking River in Campbell Co. Today truck farmers are dwindling in numbers, although growers can find seasonal farmers’ markets in each county to sell their produce. There

is a farmers’ market in Covington, for which officials are actively planning a more permanent facility. In nearby Cincinnati, historic Findlay Market in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood has operated since 1852.

“Farmers’ Schools—Growing of Truck Crops to Be Discussed before Kenton Countians,” KP, March 3, 1931, 6.

“Fruit Growers Meeting in Kenton,” KTS, August 2, 1957, 2A. Kremer, Julie. Interview by Deborah Kremer, January 31, 2005, Villa Hills, Ky. Maegley, Earl. Interview by Deborah Kremer, November 15, 2004, Villa Hills, Ky. “Truck Growers Elect Officers,” KP, March 9, 1931, 1.

Deborah Kohl Kremer

TRUE, ARNOLD ELLSWORTH, REAR ADMIRAL (b. January 23, 1901, Hallam, Owen Co., Ky.; d. December 11, 1979, Santa Clara, Calif.).

Naval officer Arnold Ellsworth True, the son of L. D. and Nannie True, graduated from Owenton High School as class valedictorian in June 1917. True had hoped to attend law school, but his family’s finances could not cover the costs of tuition, so he pursued an alternate path. He sat for a competitive entrance exam for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and scored well. He obtained an appointment to the academy as soon as he graduated

892 TRUESDELL, CHARLES B. from high school and left Kentucky for Maryland that fall.

True graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1920. Before World War II, he completed two tours of duty with the Asiatic Fleet and trained in aviation at Pensacola, Fla. He also worked as an officer for the Shenandoah and the Los Angeles, two zeppelins in ser vice during the navy’s short-lived experimentation with airships.

In 1929 True completed postgraduate work at the Naval Academy in Aerology and went on to receive a MA in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., in 1931. He then served as a meteorological officer at sea and at the Naval Operations Base in Hampton Roads, Va. He worked with the U.S. Weather Bureau to coordinate Pacific weather reporting, a joint project that paid dividends when the war erupted.

In 1939 True was given command of a newly built destroyer, the USS Hammann. Launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in August, the ship and its crew trained with the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1940 and part of 1941. In May 1941, however, the Hammann was ordered to the Atlantic to aid in the transfer of lend-lease supplies to Great Britain. This move saved it from almost certain destruction in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that December.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Hammann returned to the Pacific and quickly became indispensable, because few destroyers remained at that time. Its crew was instrumental in rescuing survivors from the USS Lexington at the Battle of the Coral Sea. On June 6, 1942, the Hammann itself was torpedoed and sunk while assisting the USS Yorktown, which had been disabled during the Battle of Midway. True refused to leave the sinking destroyer until all his surviving crew members were off the vessel. Because of his delay in abandoning ship, he was still nearby when depth charges exploded, causing him serious internal injury. When True was finally pulled from the sea, he was struggling to hold the heads of two enlisted men out of the water despite his own extensive injuries.

In December 1946, True left the navy on disability retirement. His promotion to rear admiral became effective that same month. After retirement he embarked on a second successful career as a professor of meteorology at San Jose State University at San Jose, Calif. He remained on the San Jose State faculty for the rest of his life and eventually attained the title of professor emeritus.

During the 1960s, True began to offend the navy hierarchy, some of his former academy classmates, and many fellow American citizens as well, when he spoke out against the Vietnam War. He was placed under government surveillance and threatened with court-martial, but he stood firm to his stated belief that U.S. policy in Vietnam ran counter to everything he had fought for during World War II. True’s carefully researched writings and speeches led U.S. senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to achieve a change in military regulations

so that retired navy personnel would be guaranteed freedom of speech on political matters.

In 1971 True was diagnosed with cancer. He declined chemotherapy and radiation in favor of alternative treatment involving the controversial drug laetrile. Despite doctors’ dire predictions, he lived for seven years after his diagnosis in excellent health, continuing to write, travel, accept speaking engagements, and oversee the 1,000-acre cattle ranch he and his wife owned in California. His eventual death in 1979 was primarily attributed to complications from his earlier injuries on the Hammann. True was cremated, and his remains were interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery at Arlington, Va. His numerous awards included the Purple Heart, the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Ser vice Medal, the Victory Medal, and the Bronze Star. His papers are now housed in the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.

Buzzanco, Robert. Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997.

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

Shaw, Norman W. Arnold Ellsworth True: Destroyer Captain, Maverick Admiral. Catskill, N.Y.: E and G Press, 1980.

Deborah Diersen Crocker

TRUESDELL, CHARLES B. (b. April 26, 1890, Fort Thomas, Ky.; d. January 3, 1966, Covington, Ky.). Charles Benjamin Truesdell, a Kentucky legislator, was born on his parents’ farm near the Fort Thomas Military Reservation in what at the time was called the District of the Highlands. He was the son of William H. and Cynthia Anna Eplin Truesdell. Known as “C. B.” or “Truesy” to his friends, he was from a long-established and prominent family in the Northern Kentucky region.

Charles was educated in the Fort Thomas public schools and afterward attended the Campbell Commercial School in Cincinnati, where he studied banking and business law. He also attended Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky. He became a lawyer and the Newport correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He was employed with the legal department of the Union Gas and Electric Company in Cincinnati. Politically, Truesdell was a Republican. He was elected a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1919 and was reelected in 1921 and 1923. In 1921 he was appointed by Governor William J. Fields (1923–1927) as a delegate to attend the unveiling of a Henry Clay statue in Venezuela, celebrating the Panama Congress Sesquicentennial; he graciously declined the honor in favor of Clay’s great-granddaughter.

From 1924 to 1926, he served as a state senator and secured the passage of much important legislation: the bill creating the Kentucky State Parks Commission, the blind pension bill, the bill that eliminated railroad grade crossings, the bill empowering county clerks to issue automobile licenses at more than one place in a county, and the bill that brought about the building of the Mary Ingles

Highway. Other legislation that he wrote included a bill that dealt with the registering of nurses in Kentucky, the original Police and Fireman Pension Fund Act, and a bill prohibiting companies from dumping waste into the Ohio River. Truesdell also assisted in drafting the bill creating the Kentucky State Highway Commission. He sponsored the bill that made Alexandria Pk. a state and federal highway, U.S. 27. In 1932 he was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago.

Truesdell was very interested in improving education in the state, and he served on the Committee for Education while in the Kentucky legislature. In 1920 he secured the passage of a bill raising Fort Thomas from a sixth-class to a fourth-class city, thereby paving the way for the city of Fort Thomas to take the lead in education. As a result, Highlands High School remains a top-ranked school in the state. An avid historian, Truesdell was a founding member of the Christopher Gist Historical Society and the Northern Kentucky Historical Society. He was instrumental in obtaining historical markers for various historical landmarks throughout the state. He used his political influence to advocate for the expansion of the new airport in Boone Co., which is today’s Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Truesdell stands as one of Northern Kentucky’s most influential and leading statesmen. In his later years, he switched to membership in the Democratic Party, because it was becoming difficult to win elected office as a Republican in Campbell Co. at the time.

His wife of 40 years, Estella Josephine Ulmer Truesdell, died in May 1965, and Charles B. Truesdell died the next year at William Booth Memorial Hospital in Covington. He was laid to rest at the Alexandria Cemetery in Alexandria.

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

“Lawmaker Truesdell Dies,” KP, January 3, 1966, 1.

Southard, Mary Young, and Ernest C. Miller, eds.

Who’s Who in Kentucky: A Biographical Assembly of Notable Kentuckians. Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1936.

Robin Caraway

TRUESDELL, HELEN (b. December 6, 1820, Fayette Co., Ohio; d. July 23, 1911, Brodhead, Wis.).

Poet Helen Truesdell was the daughter of Judge Wade Hampton and Mary Pancoast Loofbourrow.

She was a direct descendant of Anne Bradstreet, who was considered to be the first Anglo-American poet of merit in the early American colonies. At an early age, Helen showed a remarkable talent for poetry. She regularly contributed poems to Parlor Magazine, the Ladies’ Repository, and other periodicals. In 1838 she married prominent Virginian Edmund Le Wright, in Fayette Co., Ohio. He drowned several months after their marriage, and Helen poured her heartbreak into verse, composing many poems during this period. In 1839 she married John E. Truesdell, a prestigious newspaper editor from nearby Wilmington, Ohio. Truesdell died in 1852. Helen was a friend of the Smalley family of Newport; she wrote and dedicated a poem to Mrs. Smalley. In 1853 Helen’s poems were

TUBERCULOSIS

assembled and published in a book, Poems by Mrs. Helen Truesdell. Praised for its high poetic merit, it sold successfully. She continued to work on another book, Tales for My Pets. In 1854 she wrote the lyrics to “Away with the Past,” a song whose music was composed by the renowned musician George Washbourne Morgan. Helen lived in Newport in 1856 when her book of poetry was being published in its fift h edition. Her literary attainments brought her much recognition.

In 1859 Helen married Peter Harris in Nashville, Tenn., and they moved to Brodhead, Wis., to be close to relatives. Helen was highly regarded as a writer. During the Civil War, she devoted her literary energies to promoting the Union cause. Peter Harris died in 1883, leaving her widowed a third time. Her remaining years were spent advocating for church and humanitarian causes. Helen Loofbourrow Le Wright Truesdell Harris died in 1911 at age 90, at the home of her sister in Brodhead, and was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Monroe, Wis. Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol. 1.

Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882.

“Death of Mrs. Helen Harris,” Green Co. (Wis.) Independent-Register, July 26, 1911, 1.

“Mrs. Helen Harris,” Green Co. (Wis.) IndependentRegister, August 2, 1911, 1.

Truesdell, Helen. Poems by Mrs. Helen Truesdell.

12th ed. Cincinnati: E. Morgan, 1859.

Robin Caraway

TRUESVILLE. In the mid-19th century, three brothers, George William True, John White True, and Silas W. True, moved from Spotsylvania, Va., into a sparsely settled area along Cedar Creek in southern Owen Co. In 1850 the brothers began to clear the land and till the soil to earn their livelihood. As in most of Kentucky, tobacco was the cash crop, but corn, grains, fruit trees, and vegetables were grown for personal use and barter. The families were semi-isolated by the local topography of hills, hollows, and streams and by the traditionally poor quality of the 19th-century roads.

As the population increased, a small farming community came into existence, which came to be known as Truesville because of the many members of the True family living there. The growing local demand for manufactured goods spurred Silas True to open and operate a general store. By November 16, 1876, the federal government appointed Silas as postmaster and his store served as the post office. The Truesville post office operated until June 30, 1951.

In the 1850s, a one-room school was built to educate residents’ children. The Poe School served the community until 1938, when it was closed because there were too few school-age children.

Truesville’s remaining five school-age students were transported to Peaks Mill in Franklin Co. for their education.

Over time, several trades sprang up in the community. Andrew “Andy” Hodson owned and operated a gristmill on Cedar Creek from 1871 until his death in 1901. He ground corn into meal and

grains into feed for human and livestock consumption. John Rodgers was working as a wheelwright in 1870, and Ronald Henry operated a blacksmith shop in 1880. These trades and others were shortlived, because the community was not large enough to support full-time tradesmen. However, there was a need for part-time tradesmen; for example, Vernon “Scratch” True was both a farmer and a part-time blacksmith who shod horses and mules between 1910 and 1950.

The Old Cedar Baptist Church, also in southern Owen Co., met the hamlet’s early spiritual needs. Then in 1865 the Trues and several other families began to hold church ser vices in the Poe School House. In August 1872, they appealed for help in establishing a church, and the Old Cedar Church pastor, John Alfred Head, led a church committee to help organize a church. By September 1872, the Mount Vernon Baptist Church was constituted and had adopted the Philadelphia confession of faith of the Baptist belief. The first pastor was Thomas Burton, and the first church clerk was James White True, who served until James Luther True replaced him in 1883. The church became a member of the Franklin Co. Baptist Association in 1873. Between 1873 and 1886, the Mount Vernon church sent representatives to the annual meetings of the association. During this period a church was built on a ridge near the Owen-Franklin Co. line.

After a fire in about 1935 destroyed the church and its records, the meetinghouse was rebuilt in 1936.

From 1936 to the present, the church and the adjoining cemetery continue to serve the area. The Mount Vernon Baptist Church was the only church organized in Truesville’s history.

The growing adult population of the community could not be supported by agribusiness, and no other large business existed to employ the expanding workforce. Thus, Truesville’s population began to decline after 1910. High-paying jobs in Ohio and Indiana drew many residents away. Asphalt roads, affordable automotive transportation, out-migration, declining farm prices, and other social and economic issues led to Truesville’s demise. Today, only a few farm families live there.

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

TUBERCULOSIS. This disease, commonly known as TB, was a public health problem in early Northern Kentucky especially for persons who lived in protected settlements or one-room homes, where family members were easily exposed to one another’s cough. Tuberculosis has, in fact, plagued humankind for all of recorded time. Some ancient Egyptian mummies have shown evidence of tuberculosis infection. There are several forms of TB, but the public health nemesis is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium that grows slowly. It also lingers in a dormant fashion, able to awaken when the body’s defenses are down.

893

TB almost always invades the body through the lungs, in the form of infectious balls called granulomas. These can progress to destroy surrounding lung tissue and cause cavities. From there, the infection can spread in the bloodstream to many other organs, including the bones and the brain. The lung disease results in a chronic cough, which constitutes a public health nightmare, since the airborne droplets contain TB and can easily be inhaled by others within close range. Thus the disease spreads.

Once considered a leading cause of death, TB became an important public health issue as cities grew in population and density. The tuberculosis organism cannot live outside the body for long; in order for it to spread, the cough droplets must be inhaled into other lungs before they become dry.

The infectious etiology was not understood until the 1800s. The disease had many names; one was “consumption.” Probably not everyone diagnosed with this malady actually had TB. The nonspecific manifestations were usually chronic fatigue and weight loss, accompanied by a cough. TB often caused a bloody cough and a fever, along with night sweats.

As Northern Kentucky became urbanized, TB grew into a constant public health issue. Soldiers or workers were vulnerable in long-term camps and in close-quarter hospitals. No age group was safe.

Children often contracted the illness from staying close to their parents or from sleeping in the same room as an infected parent. It was not until the 1850s that isolation of patients in sanatoriums was first proposed, and the first U.S. sanatorium opened in the 1880s. In Northern Kentucky, patients were isolated only by the command of their doctors, often in their homes. Strict bed rest was enforced, not only to prevent the organism from spreading but also to limit deep breathing and thus prevent the bacterium from obtaining oxygen.

Physicians performed surgery to collapse the lung so that the TB would be contained, buying time for the immune system to fight the bacterium while it was starved for oxygen.

The public health efforts to eradicate TB in Northern Kentucky were originally aimed at community education, spearheaded by the AntiTuberculosis League, which was founded by the efforts of Dr. Robert Carlton in the early 1900s.

That organization opened a free chest X-ray/TB screening clinic in 1933. In spite of a crusade starting in 1916, Northern Kentucky’s original isolation structure was not opened until 1937. This sanatorium was located in Fort Wright, in the facility formerly known as the “pest house.” Various diseases were isolated there, and it was commonly thought that when a patient went into the pest house, he or she would never come out. In 1945 Kentucky was experiencing the third-highest death rate from tuberculosis in the nation.

The era of the modern tuberculosis sanatorium was ushered in by Dr. Charles J. Farrell (1901– 1977), a TB specialist who staffed an X-ray TB clinic in his medical office, at 10th St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. Farrell was a graduate of St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, and he received his MD from the University of Cincinnati in 1929. He

894 TURFWAY PARK RACECOURSE relentlessly lobbied for the 1947 county levy that funded the Covington–Kenton Co. TB Sanatorium, at the site of the pest house off Kyles Ln. in Fort Wright. Previously, there had been talk of the state’s building one of six proposed tuberculosis hospitals in Northern Kentucky, but the nearest facility was awarded to the Paris, Ky., area. The Kyles Ln. facility provided state-of-the-art isolation and on-site laboratory procedures, surgical treatment, and nursing care. Patients would often stay for months until their TB was dormant or cured. The new $600,000 four-level brick hospital received its first 17 patients on April 15, 1951, with Farrell as superintendent. The patients were residents of the old pest house at that site. The new hospital was a project of architect Howard McClorey.

In the middle of the 20th century, effective drug treatment emerged for TB. Active cases required multiple drugs to eradicate the organism and prevent the emergence of resistant strains. The long-term infectious threat diminished, the need for TB sanatoriums vanished, and the Covington– Kenton Co. TB hospital closed in 1979, two years following the death of Farrell. He had retired in 1976. The former TB facility is now a psychiatric hospital operated by NorthKey. The access road, formerly Sanitarium Dr., has been renamed Farrell Dr. after the sanatorium’s founder.

TB remains a public health issue, but not on the scale of a century ago. The AIDS epidemic has caused a reemergence of several types of TB. All health care workers and others exposed to an active case of TB receive a skin test to see whether they have been infected, and if the test is positive, they are treated or monitored to avoid the emergence of active disease.

Bell, Mary Kathryn. “History of Tuberculosis, Called T.B. in Northern Ky.,” Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. “The Case for Saving Our TB Hospital,” KP, January 14, 1966, 8K. “Dr. Farrell, Retired Founder of TB Hospital, Dies at 76,” KP, June 8, 1977, 1.

“New Hospital to Be Erected for $600,000,” KP, March 26, 1949, 1.

“State Is Third in Tuberculosis Deaths in U.S.” KP, November 19, 1945, 1.

“State to Put Hospital on Site at Paris,” KP, February 16, 1945, 1.

“TB Hospital Here Wins State Praise,” KP, November 31, 1955, 1.

James Farrell

TURFWAY PARK RACECOURSE. From fall 1959 until spring 1986, the horse-racing track in Northern Kentucky located in Florence was named Latonia. It was the second racecourse in Northern Kentucky known as the Latonia Racecourse (the first, which was open from 1883 to 1939, was in Covington). The Florence track properties were sold on April 9, 1986, to Jerry Carroll and James Thornton and renamed Turfway Park. Thornton was a successful Central Kentucky businessman involved in several enterprises, the foremost being Thornton Oil, a chain of fi lling stations– convenience stores scattered throughout Ken-

Opening day at the new Latonia Racecourse, Florence, August 27, 1959. Governor “Happy” Chandler is second from the left.

tucky. Carroll, who had grown up outside Aurora, Ind., had founded a realty company in 1972, a firm that became the most successful developer of commercial properties in Nashville, Tenn. Carroll bought 363 acres in Florence during the 1980s that he intended to develop for commercial uses. The proximity of these properties to the Latonia Racecourse, coupled with Carroll’s interest in horse racing, led him to form a partnership with Thornton to purchase Latonia from its owners, the Delaware North Corporation. Once the sale had been completed, it was agreed that Delaware North would operate the track through the Spring Meet of 1986, after which it would be turned over to the new owners and become Turfway Park. In the time between the track’s spring and fall meets, the new owners spent $2 million on improvements. Turfway ran its first race on September 3, 1986, the Fall Meet’s opening day. It soon became clear, however, that Thornton and Carroll had opposing views on how to operate the business. Carroll, who had a larger stake in Turfway’s success because it was tied to his plans to develop commercial properties nearby, put together a new partnership in August 1987 and he and his partners purchased all of Turfway for $18.2 million. This left Carroll, now the majority interest holder, in charge.

Carroll moved quickly to convert Turfway Park into a modern-day state-of-the-art racing facility. One of his fi rst moves was to hire a capable local banker, Mark Simendinger, as the track’s chief fi nancial officer. Carroll could then focus on shedding his track’s image of being an outmoded small-time race plant. Earlier, he had converted the track’s biggest race, the Jim Beam Stakes, from a Grade III $350,000 race into a Grade II $500,000 event. In 1993, when the purse was raised to $600,000, the Jim Beam Stakes was on

its way to becoming momentarily the top-money prep race leading up to the Kentucky Derby. Also by 1993 Carroll had wrested control of the Spring Spiral Festival, which was tied to the race, from a local committee and had begun to stamp his own mark on the festivities associated with the race.

There followed a remarkable run during the 1990s that saw Jim Beam champions win each of the Triple Crown races (Summer Squall, the 1990 Preakness; Hansel, the 1991 Preakness and Belmont; Lil E. Tee, the 1992 Kentucky Derby; and Prairie Bayou, the 1993 Preakness). In addition, three Beam Champions (Summer Squall, 1990; Prairie Bayou, 1993; and fi lly-champ Serena’s Song, 1995) won Champion Horse Eclipse awards.

In 1998 the Jim Beam Distillers dropped sponsorship of the Turfway race, a new one-year sponsor signed up for 1999, and the race became the Gallery Furniture.com Stakes. For the next two years, the race had no outside sponsor and was run as the Turfway Spiral Stakes in 2000 and 2001 and the Spiral/Lane’s End Stakes in 2002. Stability returned to Turfway’s top race in 2003 when Lane’s End Farm of Versailles, Ky., became the full sponsor of what has become the Lane’s End Stakes. The success story of Turfway’s top race had an impact industry-wide as older Derby-prep races like the prestigious Bluegrass Stakes (now the Toyota Bluegrass Stakes) at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, and even the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, found corporate sponsors and competitively raised their purses.

Under Carroll, Turfway made a mark throughout the industry when on December 28, 1994, the Race Book, a first of its kind (and soon copied) simulcasting wagering operation, was opened. Simulcasting and betting on races from as far away as Australia is now a common way for racetracks

TURNER RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH

and other betting venues to increase revenues. The success of Turfway’s Race Book and the rise of its top race came under the stress of nationwide competition by the year 1999, and Carroll sold the track on January 15, 1999, to a partnership made up of the Keeneland Association, Dreamport (a division of the GTECH Corporation), and Harrah’s Entertainment. Together with a new group of investors, Carroll built the Kentucky Speedway LLC near Sparta, an ultramodern auto- and truck-racing facility designed to attract a NASCAR Racing Circuit event. In 2006 GTECH sold its interest in Turfway Park to the other two investors. Although the Lane’s End Stakes draws crowds exceeding 20,000 and is televised on ESPN, since the new owners took over, Turfway has struggled to make a profit and to keep and expand its fan base.

Mindful of the need to attract new people to the track who might become fans, Turfway has made its facilities available to local groups for special events and meetings. The track has also tried several special promotions, including live-music performances, radio-sponsored promotions, and giving away such things as track calendars, hats, and souvenir drinking glasses. The most successful promotion, and one that has been expanding exponentially, is to cater to younger patrons on Friday nights by offering them a gathering place on one of the track’s upper floors where they can listen to bands, participate in contests and games, purchase dollar beers and hot dogs, and make affordable bets on races, including the popu lar new 10cent superfecta wager, which involves picking the horses to finish in exact one-two-three-four order.

Another successful promotion at Turfway is called Fast Track. Bettors present a personalized numbered plastic card whenever they bet and build up point credits that can be cashed in for such things as free programs, food, souvenirs, or even wagering vouchers. These cards also allow the track to contact bettors who have failed to cash winning tickets, which are sometimes lost or overlooked, and issue cash vouchers to replace the tickets; this unique ser vice at Turfway has drawn national attention, interest, and publicity. Recently Turfway has completed a multimillion-dollar facilities makeover that features such things as a totally revamped paddock and saddling area, a new gift shop, and modernized track food facilities. And true to its traditions, the track once again was on the industry’s cutting edge when in 2005 Turfway became the first track in North America to convert its racing surface to Polytrack, a synthetic material that allows racing to be conducted even in extreme weather. Other North American tracks, including parent-owner Keeneland, have followed Turfway’s lead and converted to Polytrack racing surfaces.

Several states now allow racetracks to have slot machines, video poker, and live poker games on their premises. Tracks in these states have therefore become entertainment destinations featuring hotels, live performances, restaurants, and shopping.

Currently, such gaming is prohibited at Kentucky racetracks, but since Harrah Entertainment is a half owner at Turfway, and since the track is located in populous Greater Cincinnati, the passage

of gaming legislation in Kentucky would most certainly lead to similar developmental capital expenditures by Harrah’s at Turfway Park. Finally, in recent years Turfway has become a proving ground for several talented young riders: female jockey Chris Prather, Rafael Bejarano, and Julian Leparoux have set meet records for wins. However, these achievements have been tempered by a career-ending injury to Prather and Michael Rowland’s death on February 9, 2004, from injuries sustained while riding at Turfway.

Claypool, James C. The Tradition Continues: The Story of Old Latonia, Latonia, and Turfway Racecourses. Fort Mitchell, Ky.: T. I. Hayes, 1997.

James C. Claypool

TURNER, JOHN W. (b. June 5, 1939, Houston, Breathitt Co., Ky.). Basketball-player John W. Turner is the son of John W. Langley and Ellen McIntosh Turner. In 1943 the Turner family moved to Northern Kentucky and John grew up in the West End of Newport, attending Newport public schools. He became one of the greatest athletes ever to graduate from Newport High School (1957).

While there, John earned All-State honors in both football (as an end) and basketball (as a center and a forward). He received several college offers in both sports. Upon graduation the six-foot-five Turner chose the University of Louisville, where he played from 1958 to 1961 under coach Peck Hickman. In his senior year at the University of Louisville, he received All-American honors. Turner went on to play for the Chicago Packers in the National Basketball Association after college. Following his professional basketball career, he played for a basketball team sponsored by baseball’s Cincinnati Reds, while working locally for Frisch’s restaurants and the Alco Door Company. He is a member of the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Louisville’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Turner is retired and lives in Newport.

Louisville. http://uoflsports.cstv.com/ (accessed April 5, 2007).

“Newport’s Turner Chosen All-State,” KTS, March 26, 1956, 3A. Schmidt, Neil. “Kentucky Sports—Turner Honored,” KE, January 26, 1957, C6.

Michael R. Sweeney

TURNER, ULYS R. “RED” (b. March 17, 1916, Middlesboro, Ky.; d. September 6, 1995, Covington, Ky.). Red Turner, a country music performer and a Baptist minister, was the son of James Franklin and Sofa Jane Rose Turner of Bell Co., Ky. Friends said that Turner seemed to be born with musical talent, and he always dreamed of becoming a professional musician. He mastered the banjo, the fiddle, the piano, and the rhythm guitar, in spite of never having taken a music lesson.

Turner married Emma Munday on August 25, 1936, and they had two children. He began his musical career singing over Cincinnati radio station WLW, shortly after World War II. In 1948 he began performing with the Renfro Valley Barn Dance show, which aired on WLW from

895

Cincinnati’s Music Hall during its first year and from Memorial Auditorium in Dayton, Ohio, its second year. The show then moved to its permanent home in a large barn at Renfro Valley, Ky. Also in 1948, Turner joined the cast of WLW’s Midwestern Hayride, which was a popu lar local show during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He and his brother Lige became local television celebrities, singing and playing country music while performing comedy routines. Red also made some country gospel recordings at King Records in Cincinnati, with Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers, as part of the group Brown’s Ferry Four.

Turner was later inducted into the Renfro Valley Hall of Fame, and his favorite guitar was placed on permanent display there. After retiring from show business, Turner became an evangelist. He spoke at numerous churches in the Greater Cincinnati area and founded the Covington Baptist Temple, at 1813 Holman St. in Covington, where he served as pastor for 17 years. He was an avid golfer, often playing with fellow preachers. He spent his later years as a member of the Northern Kentucky Baptist Church in Lakeside Park. Turner died at age 79 in the Garrard Street Convalescent Home, Covington, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Erlanger.

“Red Turner, TV Musician, Founded Church,” KP, September 7, 1995, 14A. “Rev. Turner,” KTS, July 20, 1956, 2A. Turner, James Franklin, son of Red Turner. Interview

by Jack Wessling, May 5, 2006, Cold Spring, Ky. Wolfe, Charles K. Classic Country: Legends of Country Music. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2001.

TURNER RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH. Delegates from several different area churches met to establish the Turner Ridge Baptist Church of Christ in the Pendleton Co. community of Turner Ridge on December 11, 1875. Many people in the community were members of churches located as far away as 10 miles, and they wanted to have a local church in order to avoid traveling under the difficult conditions of the time. Surviving minutes indicate the charter members as Samuel E., Annie Elizabeth, and Missouri DeCoursey from the Short Creek Baptist Church (see Short Creek/Goforth). During the fi rst year there were 23 people added to the church roll. The church met for its fi rst 18 years at the old Turner Ridge School House that once stood at the site of the present Turner Ridge Cemetery. In the early years, meetings were held once a month on Saturday morning and evening and Sunday morning. Subsequently, the church has occupied three separate buildings.

The first building was a small frame church built in 1893, located on a tract of land previously owned by Abraham Turner. A portion of the present cemetery occupies this site today. During this time, the Sunday School was under the direction of James Mockabee. By about 1899 the church minutes started using the name Turner Ridge Baptist Church. There was no church cemetery in those early days; people were buried on farms in family plots. In 1894 the church obtained a tract of land for

896 TURNPIKES, CAMPBELL CO. a cemetery from a man named Sargent, and some of the church’s first members were buried there.

In 1913 Elisa Sharp entered into a contract to build the second new building for the church. The 1893 church building was rolled to the back of the lot, to be used while the new church was being built. After the new church was completed, the old one was sold to Bob Adams, who used the lumber and the windows of the church to build two of the downstairs rooms in a house located on Turner Ridge Rd. The house remains today on the property of Ruth Miller.

In 1925 the old pulpit stand was replaced by one donated by the Falmouth Lutheran Church, which had dissolved its membership. The third Turner Ridge Baptist Church building was built in 1950 on a five-acre tract about a quarter mile from the cemetery, at the corner of Ky. Rt. 22 and Fooks Rd. The property was purchased from the heirs of William Fookes.

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

1994].

Mildred Belew

TURNPIKES, CAMPBELL CO. During the 19th century, the Kentucky legislature chartered private companies to build turnpikes linking the farm communities of the rural southern two-thirds of Campbell Co. with Newport and its surrounding population centers in the north part of the county.

The turnpikes opened markets for farm products and provided access to government offices at both of the county’s seats, Newport and Alexandria. Thus, most roads outside the cities became privately owned. Ideally, the turnpikes would have had a right-of-way 60 feet wide, a macadamized roadway (that is, paved with stones and covered with crushed stone for a smooth surface) about 15 feet wide, and drainage ditches on each side. In reality, the turnpikes were often unpaved dirt, which became a quagmire in wet weather, and so narrow that it was difficult for two wagons to pass each other. Turnpike owners could charge tolls for the use of their roads, but the state legislature regulated the toll amounts. Generally, a tollhouse and tollgate could be erected every five miles. An extra tollgate could be added at a bridge whose construction and upkeep were more expensive. Because the turnpike construction business was at times a perilous economic venture, many of the chartered roads were never built. Successor companies were chartered, and many turnpikes bore several names through the years.

The Campbell Turnpike Road Company was chartered on February 17, 1846, to build a 12-mile turnpike from Newport to Alexandria to replace that section of the old state road authorized in 1818 to run from Newport to Cynthiana in Harrison Co. and extended to Winchester in Clark Co. in 1837. The Campbell Turnpike (now U.S. 27) became the backbone of the county’s road grid.

Along the Ohio River border on the east side of the county, the Twelve Mile Turnpike, chartered on March 1, 1854, traversed 12 miles from the Campbell Turnpike in the Highlands (Fort Thomas)

to Twelve Mile, where the New Richmond, Ohio, ferry docked at Oneonta, Ky. The Dayton and Four Mile Road Company turnpike connected Dayton, Ky., with the Twelve Mile Turnpike, where the latter left the river and turned west to reach the Highlands. Completing the eastern border was the Newport and Dayton Turnpike Road Company’s gravel turnpike and its bridge over Taylor’s Creek, connecting Newport and Dayton.

On the western border along the Licking River, the Newport, Licking, and Alexandria Turnpike Company eventually linked Finchtown ( just north of Wilder) with Alexandria, a distance of 12 miles.

Several turnpikes were chartered to join southern Campbell Co.’s rural communities with Alexandria. The Alexandria and Persimmon Grove Turnpike covered the 5 miles between those two towns in 1865–1866; the Alexandria and Flagg Spring Turnpike, 11 miles, was completed in 1884; the Alexandria and Melbourne Turnpike in 1891; and the Old State Road and the Ripple Creek Turnpike as well as the Alexandria and Licking Turnpike joined Alexandria with separate points on the Ripple Creek Turnpike.

Smaller turnpikes connected communities in southern Campbell Co.: the California, Gubser Mill, and Old State Road Turnpike; the California and Twelve Mile Turnpike; the Grants Lick and Old State Road Turnpike; the Grants Lick Turnpike; and the Claryville, Grants Lick, and Butler Turnpike from Claryville to Alexandria, with connections to the Old State Road Turnpike and to Braysville on the Grant‘s Lick Turnpike. Two turnpikes, the Twelve Mile and Persimmon Grove and the Belmont and Flagg Springs, ran from the Ohio River inland. Several planned turnpikes, such as the Campbell and Pendleton County, the Alexandria and Pendleton County, and the Alexandria and Tibbatts Cross Roads, were never completed.

The population centers in the middle of the county were also connected. For example, the Four Mile Turnpike (later the Four and Twelve Mile Turnpike) covered the 8 miles from the Twelve Mile Turnpike at Brent to the Alexandria and Flagg Spring Turnpike at Brush Creek near Carthage.

Cold Spring and Claryville were joined by the Ripple Creek Turnpike.

Connector turnpikes were also prevalent in the northern end of Campbell Co. The Jamestown (Dayton) Pike, chartered on March 1, 1854, ran 5.25 miles from that town through the Highlands to meet the Campbell Turnpike where the Samuel Woodfill School now stands. The Covert Run Turnpike, 1.5 miles long, began at a tollhouse gate at Taylor Ave. in Bellevue and terminated at the Jamestown Pike (today’s N. Fort Thomas Ave.). Access to Newport from the Bellevue end of the pike was by a pontoon bridge over Duck Creek to Sixth St., or over Taylor Ave. to today’s Cowens Dr. (previously Riverside Dr.). The Campbell Turnpike, at the current St. Therese Catholic Church in Southgate, was connected to the Jamestown Pike in the Highland’s central business district by the Highland Turnpike in 1878. Finally, in 1888, the legislature chartered Samuel Bigstaff ’s Grand Avenue Turnpike to run from Waterworks Rd. (previously Res-

ervoir Rd.) and E. 10th St. in Newport, through the Highlands, to intersect with the Jamestown Pike where Grand now meets S. Fort Thomas Ave. One of the purposes of this road was to give the newly established Fort Thomas Military Reservation in the Highlands direct and quick access to Newport. It also opened the Highlands to development, as the incorporators of the turnpike owned much of the land through which the road ran. The Grand Avenue Turnpike was meant to be an extension of the Cote Brilliante and Ingalls Park (Park, Chesapeake, and Ohio Aves.) developments adjacent to Newport. A 100-foot-wide right-of-way was designated for the turnpike in the Highlands, still evident today where homes in Fort Thomas sit far back from the street, namely on Grand Ave; through Newport the right-of-way was just 60 feet wide.

By the late 19th century, farmers were demanding free access to the population centers, and as automobile use began and increased, drivers called for elimination of the tollgates. Judge Albert Seaton Berry vowed to make the roads free; the Newport Business Men’s Club also backed the free road movement. In response, the Kentucky legislature eventually authorized counties to purchase the turnpikes and eliminate the tolls, but county budgets often prevented doing so. Reactions ranged from fundraising drives to help the county buy the toll roads to destruction of tollgates by masked men and threats against tollgate keepers. By 1916 there were only 60 miles of road on which tolls were still being collected in Campbell Co. Many of the turnpike companies had previously lost their charters for failure to maintain the roads, and the roads themselves were forfeited. Other turnpike owners merely abandoned their roads to the county. The remaining 60 miles were appraised, and on August 16, 1916, four turnpikes were purchased by the county for their estimated values: Licking Turnpike plus Ripple Creek Turnpike, $17,000; Old State Road Turnpike, $7,750; and Twelve Mile Turnpike, $19,300. Some turnpike owners held out and received higher sale prices. For example, Four and Twelve Mile Turnpike brought $14,000, and Grants Lick Turnpike, $5,000; both were purchased in August 1919. When a group named the Campbell County Good Roads Association was formed on December 16, 1921, additional pressure was applied to free the last turnpikes. June 7, 1922, saw the county’s purchase of the Campbell Turnpike for $80,000 and the Grand Avenue Turnpike for $10,000. Finally, on December 18, 1923, the Covert Run Turnpike, the last toll road in the county, was purchased for $2,500, only $900 more than the 1916 estimated value. Thus ended the 100year turnpike era in Campbell Co. In contrast to other sections of the commonwealth of Kentucky, Northern Kentucky received no modern state-built turnpike toll roads during the mid-20th-century years of interstate road building.

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.

Reis, Jim. “Down with the Toll Gates!” KP, July 13, 1998, 4K.

TWIN VALLEY ———. Pieces of the Past. Vol. 2. Covington: Kentucky Post, 1991.

Truesdell, C. B. “Early Turnpikes Which Led to and from the Newport-Covington Area,” Papers of the Christopher Gist Historical Society 4 (1952– 1953): 23–38.

Venable, Robert Michael. Will and Gus. Fort Thomas, Ky.: Privately published, 2002.

Robert Michael Venable

TWELVE MILE TURNPIKE. On March 1, 1854, the Kentucky legislature passed “An Act to Incorporate the Twelve Mile Turnpike Co.,” authorizing the company to build a toll road from the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek at the Ohio River in eastern Campbell Co. to Metcalfe’s Hotel on the Campbell Turnpike, a distance of about 12 miles.

The main purpose for the turnpike was to enable farmers to visit the rural county seat of Alexandria, as well as to transport their crops to urban centers in the county, including the urban county seat of Newport. Using modern-day names, the turnpike began at Oneonta, on Ky. Rt. 8, the Mary Ingles Highway, where the New Richmond, Ohio, ferry docked. The road ran west to where I-275 currently crosses the Ohio River to California, Ohio (Coney Island). There it snaked up the hill to Fort Thomas, Ky., then known as The Highlands. Crossing S. Fort Thomas Ave., the turnpike dropped down a hill to intersect with the Campbell Turnpike at the place where Grandview Ave. now meets Alexandria Pk. The original directors of the road-building corporation were J. W. Albert, George B. Hodge, William Clark. F. Dickey, H. T. Harris, George W. Jones, Thomas L. Jones, John Thomas, and George Ward. The company leased the Twelve Mile Turnpike to others to pave and manage. The building of the road did not begin until about 1858, and progress was extremely slow. It was going to be both difficult and expensive to bridge the Four Mile Creek at Brent, so the state legislature, on January 22, 1867, amended the corporate charter to make the bridge a toll bridge. Tolls paid for crossing the bridge were to be in addition to the tolls for use of the turnpike itself. It was not until April 27, 1867, that completion of the Twelve Mile Turnpike was actually assured. On that date the company contracted with partners William Wilmer and Cornelius Willison of Brent to finish construction of the road, to build a new bridge over Four Mile Creek, and to maintain and operate the turnpike. In return, Wilmer and Willison became major stockholders in the company and were entitled to all tolls for the term of the contract. Wilmer, age 41, was a farmer who had immigrated in 1848 from Prussia. He became the actual manager of the turnpike. The road and the new Four Mile Creek Bridge were completed in a timely fashion, with the road shortened by two miles and ending at Ten Mile Creek instead of Twelve Mile Creek. The roadbed was macadamized, that is, covered with compressed crushed stone. Toll houses and gates were located at the intersection of present-day River Rd. and S. Fort Thomas Ave., at the Four Mile Creek Bridge, and at the five-mile mark within Melbourne.

The Wilmer/Willison partnership was dissolved on May 20, 1881, and Wilmer became sole operator of the turnpike. Throughout the existence of the Twelve Mile Turnpike, the company and its leaseholders were involved in numerous suits over rights-of-way, mortgage debt, and disputes with railroads—notably one suit against the Maysville & Big Sandy Railroad Company for diverting the waters of Four Mile Creek in such a way as to endanger the integrity of the turnpike’s bridge at that location. In addition, residents along the turnpike often complained of road conditions and the “high” tolls, which were actually set by the state legislature. Moreover, the Four Mile Creek Bridge was subject to periodic flooding and had to be repaired or replaced several times. Nevertheless, it appears that William Wilmer’s 28 years of operating the Twelve Mile Turnpike were a financial success for him and provided a quality roadway for his customers until his death on March 18, 1895. In the ensuing years, the turnpike fell into disrepair, and residents and automobile enthusiasts called for the elimination of the tollgates. That did not occur until the county purchased the road for $19,300 on August 22, 1916. Collection of tolls ended on September 16, 1916. By March 1925, the Ky. Rt. 8 section of the turnpike had been rebuilt by the state and was later dedicated as the Mary Ingles Highway.

Original corporate records of the Twelve Mile Turnpike Company, archival collection of Robert Michael Venable, Fort Thomas, Ky. Papers and correspondence of Wilhelm (a.k.a. William) Wilmer, archival collection of Robert Michael Venable, Fort Thomas, Ky. Venable, Robert Michael, Will and Gus. Fort Thomas, Ky.: Privately published, 2002.

Robert Michael Venable

TWIN OAKS GOLF COURSE. This championship golf course owes its existence to the creative vision of a group of prominent local businessmen led by Harvey Myers Jr. It was designed

by Arthur G. Lockwood, one of the most prominent golf course architects in the United States.

The course began as a 140-acre site, 6,600 yards in length; it extends almost a mile along the Licking River in the Rosedale section of Covington, at 43rd St. and Michigan Ave. Numerous old oak and elm trees grow on the beautiful property, which offers an unobstructed view of the river. A nonprofit corporation was established for administering the course, and about 65 charter members purchased stock. The initial list included Stephens Blakely, William Chatfield, Richard Pretlow Ernst, James T. Hatfield, Polk Laffoon, John M. Lassing, John Menzies, Clifford Shinkle, and L. B. Wilson. The stated goal of the orga ni zation was “to establish and maintain a golf course and other outdoor sports and recreation facilities, including tennis, boating, swimming and fishing.” Construction began in 1922 and was completed in about two years. When fi nished, Twin Oaks was only the third 18-hole golf course in Kentucky, the first two being in Louisville. In

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its early years, this was the site of major golf tournaments. The flood of 1937 wreaked havoc on the course and the clubhouse, making major renovation necessary before the opening of the 1938 golf season. In 1956 there was an unsuccessful attempt by a business group to buy Twin Oaks and build a horse-racing track on the site.

Today the well-designed and attractive clubhouse provides an excellent place for area businessmen to entertain clients, have parties, or just relax with family and friends. Reasonable usage rates were set, so that people of modest means could enjoy the facility. Rates for young people were set exceptionally low, to encourage them to become members. The country club continues today, owned by the Swingos family, who in recent years built a new clubhouse to replace the old, higher in the floodplain; the clubhouse is often rented for parties and social gatherings, and the grounds have been known to host other events over the years, such as an occasional circus.

“18-Hole Golf Course Open,” KP, October 31, 1923, 1.

“Race Track Plea Is Made for Twin Oaks,” KP, March 22, 1956, 1.

“Twin Oaks Being Restored for 1938 Golf Season,” KP, 14.

“Twin Oaks to Be Name of New 18-Hole Golf Course,” KP, December 5, 1922, 1.

TWIN VALLEY. Located in Owen Co., this valley hugs the Kentucky River near the Carroll Co. community of Worthville. Included in this basin are the communities of Ball’s Landing, Carter’s Landing, Cull, Danish, Moxley, and Webster Springs.

Settlers arrived, established homes, and began to farm, operate stores, and run freight-wagon routes.

Soon, the neighborhoods the settlers established grew and developed into these communities.

Ball’s Landing had a general store, a pharmacy, a grocery, and a saloon. At one time, this town had three doctors: Attie Lusby, Avery Adams, and J. W. Gully.

Carter’s Landing, on the north side of Twin Creek, consisted of a store owned by William Carter. Up the creek were the farms of Bill Abbott, John Doan, J. W. Tomlinson, and “Aunt Mary Woods,” who also ran a small grocery store in her home. West of the Doan farm was the John Doan Lead Mine. To the east was the home of John Barnett, who was famous for growing fine sweet potato plants; folks from miles around came for the plants.

Farther up the creek was the Webster farm (Webster Springs), noted for its mineral water.

The neighboring farm belonged to Benjamin J. Roberts.

Cull was named for David Cull, who owned and operated the community’s general store; Sam Crawford operated its blacksmith shop. Since Cull was an inland community, dry goods and groceries were shipped by boat to Moxley and hauled to Cull by freight wagons.

In about 1901 or 1902, Harvey B. Ogden and his wife, Mary Ellen, built a small store across the road from the Roberts’s farm. This was the beginning of the community of Danish. On September

898 TWIN VALLEY 2, 1908, a letter signed by the residents of this area was sent to the Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, Washington, D.C., requesting that a post office be established at Danish and that Mary Ogden be appointed postmaster. The request was made because the Rural Route 2 mail from Sanders had been discontinued, leaving the community of Danish without mail deliveries. The request was approved, and the Ogden family operated the post office until just before World War I. The Old Rob-

erts Mill was located across the road from B. Roberts’s farm. This was a water-powered mill that served the community for many years; the Roberts family also ran the local general store. Next to the Roberts farm was a lead mine owned by a Cincinnati firm. Ore from the mine was put in small sacks and hauled by a wagon about five miles to Moxley, where it was shipped away on boats. Farther down the road were the White Chapel School and the Salem Baptist Church (still in operation).

Moxley was settled by the family of Ed and Edith Miller. There were nine family residences, a general store, and two saloons there. Wilson Ball operated the store, Harry Riggs owned one of the saloons, and “Ole Dad” Stout ran the other. About 1902 the Moxley Baptist Church was erected by Ben Spaulding.

Vertical fi les, Owen Co. Public Library, Owenton, Ky.

Doris Riley