Reviewed by Donna Beeson in Newsletter of the Friends Of the Knox County Public Library Volume 10, Number 2; Summer 2003:

"Many of us have good memories of our home town and growing up years. Judy Coomer, Knox County Public Library employee, has shared her poignant remembrances in which the Shady Grove General Baptist Church, in Poole, Kentucky, played such an active role.

Most information is given on the formation of the Baptist Association which claims legitimate ancestry from doctrines and disciplines of early English General Baptists. Because of persecution, Puritans and Separatists left England seeking religious freedom in the New World. The first Baptist church recorded in America was organized in 1639 at Providence, Rhode Island, by Roger Williams. Baptists spread as the population moved west.

In 1826, fifty-year-old John Pool loaded an ox-cart and moved his wife, Jane Huston Pool, and ten children, from Bardstown, Kentucky, to the wilderness of Henderson County, Kentucky, where he purchased 2,400 acre land grant for a horse and a rifle. There, this mill-wright and his son, Thomas Jefferson Poole, founded a horse-drawn mill and the town named Pool's Mill. John gave land for Columbia Common School there in 1850.

Shady Grove General Baptist Church is the first church of historical record in Poole, Kentucky. Joining Union Association in 1842, the church had fifty members.

This well-documented 283 page volume includes a 26 page historical Membership Roll of the Shady Grove Church, biographical sketches of many ministers who served there through 1980, genealogical information on John Pool and his twelve children, photos, and an every-name index. It is available at the Knox County Public Library and the McGrady-Brockman House. Copies may also be purchased by contacting the author."