Joseph Day House, Lexington, Fayette County, KY

Joseph Day House

175 N. Broadway (next S. to Mastin's Inn)
Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky
Built 1804

Source: Old Houses of Lexington, C. Frank Dunn, typescript, n.d., copy located in the Kentucky Room, Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library.

Joseph Day bought a lot fronting 66 1/2 feet on Main Cross St. early in 1804 from Samuel McMullen, and in 1808 sold 33 feet of it to Michael Gaugh, builder and partner of Capt. Mathias Shryock. Gaugh resided in the house next north.

The 1806 Directory (compiled early in 1805) shows "Joseph Day, Bricklayer, Main Cross St." in this block, so he evidently built the house here in 1804.

More than 60 years later, his grandson, Joseph Day, sold the house (April 10, 1866) to Maria J. Smith, wife of Jacob Smith, "the same property which descended by will from Sarah Day."

Mrs. Sarah Day, widow of the bricklayer of early days, in her will dated January 16, 1865, (probably in May) bequeathed "my house and lot on Broadway between Short and Second Sts., to my grandson, Joseph Day, to be placed in trust of my friend John L. Winn until the said Joseph Day attains the age of manhood."

Prof. John L. Winn conducted a school here after the death of Mrs. Day. J.M. Roche, who attended it in the 1860's, says Prof. Will, then an old man, had been the last teacher at St. John's School for Boys on Walnut St. He must have been the First Sergeant J. Winn who signed the notice to the Fayette Hussars to meet to "escort the Nation's guest" (Genl. Lafayette in 1825).

Mrs. Maria Smith (by Geo. H. Stoll, assignee) sold the house in 1878 to Mrs. Jennie A. Thayer, wife of Wm. H. Thayer.

Mrs. Thayer and Husband, "of Chicago, Ill., lately of Cincinnati, O.," conveyed the property to Wm. T, Weathers (1881) and he sold to Geo. H. Stoll., Jr., who conveyed it in 1882 to Mrs. Sallie S. Green, wife of Dr. Beale Green.

Transcribed by pb June 2004