JAMES KENNING HOUSE

#135 E. 3rd St., Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky
Built 1838

James Weir, occupant of the historic home next west ("James Weir House") built this attractive domicile before 1838. He and his wife, Frances Jane, sold it to James Kenning. The deed said the property line, beginning on "the North-east side of the Winchester Turnpike" skirted the west side of "the Brick house on the premises" to the "plank fence," dipped back to a "notch at stable," along the stable and back to the "Turnpike Road," on which it fronted 84 feet.

Weir gave Kenning the use of the water from his pump, and also of "an alley 12 feet wide along the south-east side of said premises." He stipulated that "no trees shall be planted near enough to the division line to incommode the occupants of said tenements or to injure the house."

Kenning died a few months after making his will July 31, 1843, and directed "that my house and lot in the City of Lexington, bought of James Weir, be rented out and two-thirds of the rent go to the Orphan Asylum of Lexington, and the other one-third to the poor Widows and Orphans of Lexington and Versailles."

He appointed as executors his friends, James Weir and M.C. Johnson, of Fayette County, and David Thornton, of Versailles, to carry out the respective requests cited above and to distribute his bequests "to the old Methodist Preachers."

He willed funds to David Kenning, Sully Kenning, Rachel Hobbs and Patsy English, children of his brother, Wm. Kenning.

In 1863, Kenning's executors leased (99 years) the house to Henry Duncan, who owned and resided in the "James Weir House."

The house next door (No. 139) built later, was conveyed forty years afterward and, in citing the 99 year lease, the deed stated that "This is for the residue of said term."

James Weir, Jr., apparently had built the house before 1838, as the directory of that year lists, "______ Berry, (Weir & B.) res. E. Third bet. N. Mulberry and Walnut Sts." and "Weir & Berry, rope manufacturers, r.s. N. Mulberry bet. Third and Fourth Sts."

Benj. Berry, father-in-law of James Weir, Jr., was a wealthy Fayette County farmer and evidently used this merely as a town house in his visits to the rope-walk back of it.

Upon his death during the second cholera plague (will probated August, 1849), Berry made bequests to his daughter Frances Jane Weir; sons, Dr. Reuben B. Berry, Henry K. Berry and Benj. Berry, and son-in-law, Dr. Beverly Miller, husband of Berry's deceased daughter, Lucy Miller.

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

Transcribed by pb, July 2006