Hill (now High) Street, Lexington, Fayette
County, Kentucky
Built 1839
Source: Old Houses of Lexington, C. Frank Dunn, typescript, n.d., copy located in the Kentucky Room, Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library.
Jesse Bayles, "brickmaker and brick layer" (1838 Directory) purchased two lots on "Hill St.", each fronting 73 feet, from Gen. John McCalla, the deed dated December 7, 1840. One was on the west side of "William Wilson's lot on which he resides" and the other on the east side.
He built a pretentious domicile for those days and furnished it sumptuously. He had slave servants in the house and employed a large number of slaves in his brick business. In November, 1842, Bayles and his wife, Mary Jane, mortgaged "the lot and two-story brick dwelling house situated thereon on Hill St."
Nearly a year later, he had to mortgage "the house and lot at present occupied by him," the other "Hill St." lot and his brickyard "on the Tates Creek Road" (East High St.). The deed included "three slaves, six head of horses, five milch cows all I own, 15 head of hogs, also two carts and gear, one water dray, a hack and harness and all the brick now in my yard." But that wasn't all: "The household and kitchen furniture in the house now occupied by me, the time of the slaves hired by me the present year and used in brickmaking and laying, being 19 in number, including men and boys and two women at my house; the amount due me from the interest I have in the Theatre buildings, also 50,000 brick at John W. Hunt's and all the brick, sand and other materials now on hand or hereafter to be purchased."
The home was sold at public auction to meet the mortgage and Edward Oldham bought it.
Its beautiful architecture - conceived by John McMurtry evidently, as the first mortgage was taken December 14, 1840, by Benj. Ford, who was McMurtry's builder - must have attracted the eye of Senator James B. Beck.
Beck bought the house in 1848, just after his marriage in Louisville February 3 to Miss Jane W.A. Thornton (of Loudon County Va.) stepdaughter of Governor James Clark , of Kentucky, and daughter of Geo. W. Thornton, grand-nephew of George Washington.
It must have proved a delightful home for the "honey-mooners" and have been responsible for Beck re-locating on High St., but a few doors away, several years later. However, a country estate seems to have appealed to him in 1853, as he sold the High St. house to Wm. Boyce that year and removed to a farm on the Nicholasville pike.
Wm. Boyce and Eliza, his wife, sold the property October 1, 1854, to Dr. Henry J. Peck. Dr. Peck, who returned to Louisiana after disposing of his "Col. Patterson residence" in 1845, seems to have again made Lexington his home. He not only bought the Bayles' home but 60 feet more frontage on the west, from E.W. Craig's executors in January, 1860.
By September, 1860, Dr. Peck decided to sell the place, and Mrs. Mary K. Ferguson bought it. As she resided there for several years, it has been known to the present generation as the "Ferguson House."
Transcribed by pb October 2002