Original Photograph Courtesy of Nancy Bray, thanks Nancy!

GRANT COUNTY, HER PEOPLE AND HER HISTORY

A PEEP INTO THE PAST AND A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE
 OF THE BEST COUNTY IN THE STATE
Transcribed by Bonnie Snow

Source:  The Williamstown Courier May 30, 1901
Souvenir Edition reprinted by the Grant County Historical Society September 19, 1981

For many years past Grant County has be conceded at home and abroad to be one of the best counties in Kentucky.  It is well enough at the beginning of the twentieth century to take a retrospective glance at her history, and an inventory of her people and resources, and a peep into her future.  The main portion of the territory that now constitutes Grant county was prior to the war of the Revolution, a part of Fincastle County, Virginia.  At that early date all of what now constitutes the proud Commonwealth of Kentucky was embraced within the confines of a single county, as well as contiguous territory which was later incorporated into the boundaries of other states.  About the close of the War of Independence, or to be historically accurate, in 1776, Fincastle county was subdivided into three counties-Washington, Montgomery and Kentucky, Grant County being a part of the latter.  In 1780, Kentucky County was divided into three counties-Jefferson, Lincoln and Fayette, and Grant became part of Fayette.  Nine years later the county of Woodford was formed and Grant County was embraced within her territory.  Before another change was made Kentucky was admitted into the union as a state, and in September, 1792, Grant County became a voting precinct in the new county of Scott, which had just been created.  In 1794 Bracken County was created and Grant County was made a part of her territory, but not for long, as Campbell County was organized two years later and Grant County changed hands again and at the next secession of the Legislature the county of Pendleton was created and Grant was joined to her.  Thus matters rested for twenty-two years.  All of the time the county was slowly increasing in population and wealth, and as the inconvenience of her people attending courts and transacting their business at the far away county-seat on the banks of the Licking became more and more apparent, the necessity for a new county was evident to her people, and they went to work with a will to get it.  The establishment of a new county became a vital issue in the election of a Representative in 1819.  The mother county, Pendleton, was reluctant to give up so much of her virgin territory.  Those favoring the new county brought forth their candidate, William Littell, an uncle of James A. Littell, who lives north of town at the present time.  The opposing candidates were Elijah McClanahan and Dr. John Bennett.  After a heated and bitter campaign Mr. Littell was successful over his two opponents, winning by a bare plurality of forty votes.  He had promised his people if elected that he would secure for them a new county, and never did a faithful servant set to work with more zeal and determination to accomplish this end than did this farming, school-teacher Representative.  He introduced his bill to create a new county on the first day of the Legislative session in 1820 and daily and hourly he hammered it into his fellow members that he had come to the Legislature as the Representative of his people for the sole and exclusive purpose of having the new county created.  His rough eloquence and persistence won in the end, and on the 12th day of February, 1820, he had the pleasure of witnessing the Governor as he signed his bill creating the new county of Grant.

Grant County was the sixty-seventh county formed in the state, and contained then all of the territory now embraced within its limits excepting a small strip added from Campbell County in 1830, a larger strip secured from the county of Harrison in 1833, and a small cut-off from Boone County in 1868, and a very considerable territory cut off from Owen in 1876.

Just why the county was called Grant is not definitely settled by the historians.  Some say that it was on account of the persistency with which the Legislator Littell asked the Assembly to "Grant" him a hearing on his bill to establish a new county, and that in a spirit of fun when the bill was finally passed, some waggish member had the name Grant inserted as the name of the new county as a testimonial to the doggish persistency of the Representative who had secured its creation.  Another and perhaps a better founded theory is that the county was named for General Squire Grant, of Boone County, who had been a life-long and bosom friend of Mr. Littell.

At the time of the organization of the county, more than eighty-one years ago, the territory embraced within its limits was almost a trackless forest.  Its hills and valley were covered with as fine a growth of hard wood timber as ever invited the woodman's axe.  Game of all varieties abounded.  Its people were few and scattered, living in log cabins and leading an easy, thriftless existence.  The land was practically valueless, measured by the prices then asked and accepted for it.  Yet Grant County even in the beginning was a beautiful spot, and her people, although few and poor, were honest and loyal to the flag and suffered untold hardships and dangers that their posterity might reap the harvest of riches and good government these pioneers had sown.

The first court held in Grant County convened at the residence of Henry Childers, a member of the court about 150 yards from the Dry Ridge Depot.  There were seven members of this court, Jedediah Ashcraft, William Layton, Nathaniel Henderson, William Woodyard, Samuel Simpson, John Sipple and Benjamin McFarland.

The court took steps at its first meeting to raise funds with which to erect the necessary public buildings and levied a poll tax of four dollars on each voter in the county.  At that time there were about 350 tithemen in the county.  Mr. William Arnold was sworn in as Sheriff and Hubbard B. Smith, an uncle of the late Hubbard Smith, was appointed County and Circuit Clerk, to act during his good behavior.  The committee named in the act creating the county to locate the county-seat came to the county in June of 1820, and on the regular court of that month, which fell on the 12th, reported to the court that they had viewed many places in the county as a suitable place for the county seat, and had selected the farm of William Arnold, the Sheriff, as the best and most accessible, with more natural advantages.  They were, no doubt, influenced to make this decision by the liberality of Mr. Arnold, who was an old Revolutionary soldier, to locate the county-seat on his premises.  He donated to the county one acre and a half of land for a public square, and upon which to locate the county buildings, and he further obligated himself in writing to furnish to the county and to all persons building in the new county-seat fire wood and timber with which to build their homes, for a period of seven years.  The report of the Commissioners was accepted and approved by the court, and the new town ordered to be called Philadelphia.  The name, however, was of short duration, as at the end of a month it was discovered that there was another town in the state of the same name, and then, in honor of Mr. Arnold, who had done so much to give the new county-seat a start in life, they christened the new town Williamstown.  Thenceforward all of the courts were held in Williamstown, and at the residence of William Arnold, until the new court house could be completed.

The first term of the Grant Circuit Court was held at the house of Justice Henry Childers on the 5th day of May, 1820, and all of its business was completed and it adjourned in one day.  Three indictments were returned by the grand jury.

The first court house was built by William Arnold at a cost to the county of $2,199.00, to be paid in three installments.  It was a brick building, two stories high, thirty-four feet long, by thirty feet wide.  The first floor was twelve feet high and the second floor eight.  The lobby was paved with brick, laid closely together in cement.  In that day the building was considered a pretentious and commodious one, and it served its purpose well and good until 1856, when the present court house was erected and the old one removed.

The first jail erected in the county was built by Absalom Skirvin on what is now the Methodist Church yard lot.  It cost $220.00.  It was built of hewed logs and dovetailed, and let down the one upon the other.  This jail was two stories high and had two small windows in each story, and it is said that from that jail not one prisoner ever escaped.  When it was torn down and replaced with a new one fifty years ago, it was removed to the farm now owned by D. M. Hall, and there it stands yet in fair and reasonable repair, a monument to the skill of our pioneer fathers and the durability of the oaken logs of which it is constructed.

Williamstown at this early date had but three residences, that of William Arnold being the most pretentious.  It was located near the present residence of McDuffee heirs.  The principal residences of the county extended along the Dry Ridge from Crittenden to Hardscrabble.  Almost all of the land in the county was owned by non-residents, and all of it was covered by Virginia patents two or three deep, which in later years gave rise to much land litigation and gave to the Grant County Bar a fame throughout the state for the ability and shrewdness of her land lawyers.  Louis Myers, who had been called to his reward these many years, was known all over Kentucky as a land grabber, and had in his life time more than an hundred suits in the courts of Grant county alone to test the title to some of the many acres of Grant County he acquired under a dubious or clouded deed.  His correct knowledge of the multitude of old lines and surveys, and his clear and positive memory of numbers and dates were said to be truly wonderful.  While Mr. Myers was always at law with somebody about the title to a tract of land, he was much beloved by the citizens of the county, and represented them in Legislature as many as four times.

At this early date one of the objects of note in the county was a large poplar tree that stood near the Baptist Church, now the railroad depot at Dry Ridge.  It was nine feet in diameter and its magnificent trunk and branches, towering high above the surrounding forest.  Before it was cut down, in 1831, it was known far and near as "the big tree."

Another object of note was the "poison spring," situated just north of the village of Sherman on the Newt. Kendall farm.  The family of Joseph Wheeler, living at the farm now occupied by Joseph Wayland, used the water out of this spring, all taking sick, and dying from some cause unknown to them; but since supposed to have been "milk sickness."  Many believe that it was the water from the spring that killed them, and hence it took the name of the "poison spring," and for many years it was regarded by the more superstitious and less enlightened people as a dangerous and even fatal place.

The pioneers of Grant County were a sturdy people of a prolific stock, and from the day the county was organized it began to grow in numbers and wealth.  No event of more than passing importance disturbed the even tenor of its people's ways.  They labored so far as necessary, hunted days and weeks for game that abounded in forest and dell, built churches and school houses, and cleared their lands and gradually built themselves better homes.

One of the most historic events of the early days was the passing through the county of the Marquis de Lafayette.  He made a tour of the United States in 1824, and came to Kentucky in company with the Post-Master General, Hon. W. T. Berrry.  On his return from Lexington he passed through Williamstown, remaining over night as the guest of William Arnold, whom he had known as an officer in the war of the Revolution, and who received a severe wound at the battle of Yorktown.  As the distinguished Frenchman passed through the county the people flocked to meet him from all points of the compass, and he received them with kindness and courtesy.

Grant County has continued to grow in wealth and people during all of the eighty-one years of her history.  She has met with few calamities and no reverses.  From a population of less than 1,200 in 1820 she has grown to 18, 945, as shown by the census taken in June.  From her poverty she has grown rich, showing a tax duplicate of approximately $5,000,000.00, and from a tithe list of 350 she has increased to a tithe list of 3,600.  From the rude log cabin in which the pioneers found their homes and raised their families she has progressed to costly, comfortable and well built homes in every part of her territory.  From no roads at all and hardly a bridle path that could be called a trail she can boast at the beginning of the new century of five hundred miles of as good macadam turnpike roads as can be found in the South.  These roads were all built by taxation, and are to-day free and in good repair.  They represent an investment of almost, if not quite, $1,000,000.00.  She now has a school house on every hill, a church spire pointing to the sky in every neighborhood and her people are moral, industrious and God fearing.  Magnificent iron bridges span her water courses, and the hum of industry, the sweet song of commerce and trade is heard on every side.

Twice in her history has Grant County been visited by Bubonic Plague, and twice have homes been desolated and her people made to weep for loved ones lost.  The first time that Cholera made its appearance was in 1832, and its ravages were not staid until many homes were made desolate; again in 1852, this dread monster came and drew his loathsome trail across the doorsteps of some of our best people.

The Grant County of to-day is a purely agricultural county.  It is made up of lovely hills and valleys.  The magnificent forest of eighty years ago has fallen beneath the woodman's axe, and even the stumps have disappeared.  Almost every acre of the county has been brought to cultivation.  The county contains within its limits almost two hundred thousand acres of land.  It is all of limestone foundation with clay formation and deep black loam covering the clay.

There is not, and never was, an acre of naturally poor land in the county.  Lying north of Williamstown and extending to the Boone and Kenton county lines, a distance of eleven miles, and lying on both sides of the Dry Ridge with an average width of from five to ten miles in scope of county as fine as can be found in any state in the Union.  It is covered with fine farms and fine homes.  Its blue grass fields are rich in riotous luxury and fine short horns, fine southdown sheep, fine horses, cattle and mules grow into money, while the owners of the soil enjoy the blessings of life.  The finest tobacco barns in the world grace that section of the county.  While the other parts of Grant County are not as rich as the Dry Ridge country, it is all good; and very good; and there are lovely homes, lovely scenery and splendid people in every neighborhood of the county.

The greatest revenue producer in the cereal line in Grant County is the tobacco crop.  White burley is grown exclusively, and last year over 6,000,000 pounds were produced, and it was sold at an average price of six cents per pound, bringing into the county an actual cash $300,000.00.  Corn, hay, wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, sugar cane, fruit of all kinds are grown in abundance, and find an easy market at a fair price.  Fine cattle and sheep, the breeding of good horses and mules, and the raising of hogs for market constitute the principal stock industries of the county.  Of late years the poultry business has been engaging the attention of may of our people, and it is growing with great strides.  In the Dry Ridge neighborhood they raise not less than two thousand pounds of white burley tobacco to the acre, and in some instances have grown as much as 2850 pounds.  In the hills an average crop is 1,000 pounds.  Whatever can be grown in a temperate clime of fruit or crop or stock, or beast, or bird, can be profitable grown in Grant County.

There has been very little emigration to Grant County since the Civil War.  A few Germans of better class and a few Irish have made up all of the emigrants who have come among us.  Our people are to "to the manor born."  Ninety percent of all the people who live in Grant county to-day were born within the confines of the county.  They are a sturdy blue eyed, Anglo-Saxon race. Honest, industrious and frugal.  The Grant County boy has wandered, however, all over the world.  There is not a state in the Union in which one or more is not located, and wherever y9u find a Grant County boy who has become a prodigal son it is not in the sense of wasting his substance, he is growing rich, or at least bettering his condition on foreign soil.  Almost a company of Grant County boys are fighting for the flag in the Philippines, some are in China and Cuba, Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands.  When the Grant County boy goes from home he carries with him his habits of industry, temperance and frugality, a good education and an honest heart, elements that succeed always and everywhere.

The county indebtedness of Grant County is $120,000.00.  The tax rate is this year 65 cents on the $100.00.  The county has one of the best record offices in the state, built at an expense in 1882 of $15,000.00.  It is a handsome building of brick and stone with steel vaults.  The court house is about fifty years old, but will last this generation, or at least until the county gets out of debt.  The present county jail was erected twelve years ago, and is a fine ornate building of brick, with freestone trimmings, two stories high, with steel cages for the prisoners, and it makes a handsome residence for the jailer.  It was built at an expense of fourteen thousand dollars.

The County Infirmary was built three years ago, and is a good one.  The county owns the farm on which it stands, of 150 acres, and paid $50.00 per acre for it.  The buildings cost $7,000.00, and are new and up-to-date.  The infirmary is run on the cooperative plan.  Everything belongs to the county; provisions and far products are raised on the farm, the inmates and keeper's family are supplied, and residue sold.  Under the present management it is thought within two or three years the institution will be self-sustaining.

This is the Grant County of today, with its two railroads and seven banks, its wealth of field and forest, its honest people and its honest hearts, but what of the Grant County of to-morrow?  For the last twenty years Grant County has been gradually improving in material wealth.  Her people, always industrious and frugal, are learning how to take better care of their farms, how to husband the resources of nature at their command, how to build better and more attractive homes; in fact, how to keep up with the procession.  In twenty-five years the wealth of Grant County has almost doubled, and so has its population; in the next twenty-five there is every reason to believe that an equally good record will be made, and if this holds good in all departments of trade, commerce, and in church and school, what a glorious good place will Grant County be in which to live.  In the dim vista of the future we see her roads perfected by modern road building methods, her public buildings bigger and better, all of her streams bridged by fine steel bridges, mansions on every hill, brick school houses in every neighborhood, and churches in every community and upon all a benediction of prosperity and thrift that will bring happiness to her homes and her people.

WILLIAMSTOWN, THE COUNTY SEAT

ITS BEGINNING, GROWTH, AND PEOPLE OF TO-DAY

Elsewhere in this issue we have told how the county seat happened to be located at the place where Williamstown is now; at that day there was no pretension to a town at this place.  There were only three houses here in 1820 and they were only farm houses and widely scattered.  We have also made incidental mention of how the town was first called Philadelphia and the town afterwards re-christened Williamstown.  The growth of the county seat eve after its selection as the county seat was slow and painful.  In 1822 there were twenty-five acres of land condemned by Mr. Arnold for the town of Williamstown which was surveyed and laid off in one-fourth acre lots, and William Arnold, James Collins, William Littell, Wesley Williams, Samuel Williams, Thomas Watson and Absalon Skirvin were appointed its first Board of Trustees.  Several small wooden houses were shortly thereafter erected in the town.  The merchant had come and a new era had dawned upon our pioneer fathers.

The growth of Williamstown contains no event of especial significance until 1856.  At that time there had been erected a row of wooden buildings on either side of Main street, and there was scarcely a brick building to be seen in town.  A child of Mr. Samuel Marksberry was amusing himself in the basement of his father's house by burning some combustible material, when the building took fire.  This house stood where Alvin Lowe's grocery stands now.  The flames spread up and down the street destroying every house and tenement on the west side from where E. T. Cram's grocery now stands to Mill street and the east side from J. H. Webb's store to the residence of Mrs. Lutie Hogan.  This was the first fatal disaster to the new town, and in a very few hours thirty-five families were rendered homeless.  The people, however, were not discouraged, money was made up for the sufferers at home and in Georgetown, Lexington and Frankfort, and the burnt district was rebuilt in substantial frame and brick buildings.

In 1864 the town was again partially destroyed by fire, and again the spirit of improvement rebuilt with better and more substantial buildings, and in 1867 another disastrous fire swept away a part of the town, including the flouring mill of Cunningham & Harrison.  They rebuilt a splendid brick mill, and then the town hall, now know as the Odd Fellows Temple, was built, and other brick buildings followed.

No other disastrous fires occurred in Williamstown until some ten years ago, when a fire fiend or fire-bug took it into his head to burn the town and many a good effort did he make; but the volunteer fire company in every instance confined the flames to the building in which the fire originated.  These fires brought about the purchase of a first-class fire engine and the organization of the present fire department.  At the present time Williamstown is fairly well protected from the flames.  She has a good volunteer fire department, a fine hand power engine, easily handled and moved from place to place, and very effective.  W. G. O'Hara is the fire chief, and he has a corps of good workers under him as fire "laddies."

Of Williamstown churches and schools more will be told elsewhere.  Suffice it to say that Williamstown has six white churches and one colored and one of the best Graded Free Schools with a high school department in the state.  They population of Williamstown as shown by the last census is not large, being only 613; but this is largely accounted for from the fact that her corporate limits are very much contracted.  It has been fifty years since her boundaries have been enlarged and at least half of the population of the town is outside of the corporate limits.  It would not be amiss to say that the real population of Williamstown exceeds twelve hundred souls.

The town is now one of the best inland county towns in the state, a good trading center, with a live, active, energetic people.  Two banks, one building and loan association, four dry goods stores, nine grocery stores, three boot and shoe manufactories, two good roller flouring mills, three blacksmith shops and wagon works, one saddlery and harness manufactory, one newspaper, four hotels, two jewelry and watch repair establishments, one bakery, four drug stores, three meat markets, two hardware stores, one undertaking establishment, one tailor, two cigar manufactories, three livery stables, four saloons, a large telephone system and exchange, long distance telephone connection, three millinery establishments, tow tin and roofing establishments and many individuals engaged in various other lines of trade.  Williamstown has many lovely homes, some of which will be pictured in these columns.  There is no better town in the state, and may she live long and prosper!

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