North Broadway, Lexington, Fayette
County, Kentucky
Built 1841
Source: Old Houses of Lexington, C. Frank Dunn, typescript, n.d., copy located in the Kentucky Room, Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library.
When Jabez Beach (stage coach builder - 1838 Directory) bought this house in 1841, it had just been built by Wm. Newberry, prominent coach-spring and iron-rail maker.
Newberry bought 25 feet fronting Broadway from Cincinnatus and Gideon Shyrock early in 1841. He built the house partly on the next lot of Perry Gaugh, so when Beach sold the house to James Fishback Drake in 1843, Drake had to buy 6 1/2 feet from Gaugh, "it being part of the ground on which the house of Drake was by mistake built and now stands."
Mrs. Frances E. Overton* acquired the house and conveyed it for "love and affection" to her son, James M. Overton, in April, 1853.
Wm. Campbell bought it in 1858 and he and his wife, Grizilla, sold it in 1869 to John O. Hodges.
Hodges, "of Harrison County, Ky." sold the house to Mrs. Fannie A. Pew, wife of John Pew, in 1876.
The late Miss Lucy Collier conducted a school here for many years.
*The death of Col. James Overton, a highly respectable citizen, who emigrated a few years ago with his family from Virginia", was reported in the Lexington newspapers to have occurred March 27, 1820. In his will he left his estate to his "affectionate wife, Frances E. Overton", to pass on to their sons James, Richard and Charles, when they became of age. He said his son Samuel has been "handsomely provided for by his Uncle Samuel."
Transcribed by pb October 2002