By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing, Inc. Sunday, October 22 marks the 110th anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt famously requesting a second cup of coffee while dining at Nashville’s fashionable Maxwell House Hotel and commenting that it was “good to the last drop.” Roosevelt’s quip was seized upon by two southern Kentucky natives –…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing, Inc. In the first quarter of the 20th Century, Kentuckians embraced the last living Confederate veterans as treasured heroes of the past and found a variety of ways to honor their legacy even if it was a somewhat romanticized view of “The Lost Cause.” Twenty-first century minds have…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing, Inc. Kentucky has lent numerous native sons and daughters to sister states throughout the country. Many are familiar with Gov. Preston H. Leslie of Glasgow who served both the Commonwealth and the Montana Territory while fewer may realize Lexington-born Missouri Sen. David Rice Atchison may have been President…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing Inc. Contemporary Americans occasionally speak of religious persecution in our country today; their examples are greatly different than what Colonial Virginia residents knew and endured. Still ruled by Great Britain, the Church of England was the state church and the government mandated adherence to its structure. Baptists and Presbyterians…
By Sam Terry Managing Editor Jobe Publishing, Inc. “The harvest moon was shinin’ on the streets of Shelbyville, When Gen. Henry Denhardt met his fate. The Garr boys was a waitin’ They was out to shoot to kill, Death and Gen. Denhardt had a date.” Brig. Gen. Henry H. Denhardt of Bowling Green, a former…
By SAM TERRY progress@jpinews.com On September 18, 1840 Constantine Samuel Rafinesque died in Philadelphia, 14 years after he is said to have put a curse on Transylvania University where he had been a professor of botany and natural science. Rafinesque was born in 1783 in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople, his father a French merchant…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing Inc. September 12, 1910 – With only 12 members remaining, the Shakers of Pleasant Hill near Harrodsburg, Kentucky faced their colony’s demise and contracted to sell their 1,800 acres of land and buildings to Col. George Bohon. In return, Bohon agreed to care for them and allow them…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing Inc. The events of the summer of 1833 were recalled in Rev. William M. Pratt’s diary entry for November 23, 1854. “Preached the funeral today of ‘old King Solomon,’ seventy-nine years old. He was born the same year with Henry Clay, and had drunk whisky enough to float…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing Inc. Few contemporary Kentuckians can fathom the idea of building a home or business in a town that was starting from scratch with nothing more than a tract of land. For residents of Eddyville in Lyon County in western Kentucky, August 28, 1959 was “Dedication and Free Deed…
By SAM TERRY Managing Editor Jobe Publishing Inc. Former Kentucky Governor Thomas Metcalfe died of cholera on August 18, 1855 at “Forest Retreat,” his Nicholas County home built by his own hands. At age 16, Metcalfe was apprenticed to his older half-brother, John Metcalfe III, to learn stonemasonry, a craft that would carve a place…