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By Jesse Shanks
After studying the family history for some months, I determined that it was time to do some research on the ground and make my first ever full-fledged visit to Kentucky. We organized a trip where I would fly from Oakland to meet my parents in Louisville and then spend several days in Meade County for research, visiting some cemeteries and sites I had only read about, along with meeting some real live relatives that I had never met. I arrived in the late afternoon on Wednesday and we drove southwest to Brandenburg. Our first stop was the location of the site of the Brandenburg Ferry on the banks of the Ohio River, one of the main reasons for the existence of the town. Brandenburg has had a fascinating and tragic history which includes a major flood in 1937 and a horrific tornado in 1974, which leveled the town.Thursday morning started at the Ancestral Trails Historical society office in the Hardin County History Museum in Elizabethtown. Among many interesting nuggets, I found a picture of Charles Ignatius Corbett, brother of my great-great-great-grandfather, George Washington Corbett. Also, in a Meade County History, I found the following about Flaherty, Kentucky, “The first log cabins were built by J.I. (1821-1873) and Ellender Newton; Sylvester (1818-1865) and Sara Ann Wheatley; Dr. L.J. (1806-1886) and Louisa M. Berry; John B. (1791-1861) and Monica Whelan, and Michael (1806-1874) and Ann (Brown) Whelan.” John B. Whelan was born in Maryland before the Whelans moved to Washington County, Kentucky where his brother, my great-great-great-grandfather, Michael Josiah Whelan was born. Both are buried with their wives in the cemetery at St. Martin of Tours in nearby Flaherty. When I had been through most of the Meade County material in the office, it was recommended I visit the Brown-Pusey House two blocks over on Main Street. Built in 1825, this was the Etown's first safe haven for travelers and had hosted General George A. Custer and Jenny Lind in the 1870's. The Georgian mansion now houses The Pusey Room Museum genealogical library. They were very helpful and provided folders to look through containing information gathered by surname. The folder for Corbett seemed slim, but in it I found a pedigree tree that contained two names I had hoped to find: the parents of Nancy Bannister. She married James Corbett in the early 1840s and they were the progenitors of the Meade County Corbetts through their sons George Washington and Charles Ignatius. My parents picked me up and we headed north, back toward Brandenburg.
Doe Run behind the Inn
After passing by the house where my grandmother Frances lived in for a time near Doe Run, we made a quick stop by the Doe Run Inn to take a look at the lay of the land. Doe Run Inn was once the mill of the area south of Brandenburg. Squire Boone discovered the creek, along with John McKinney, in 1778, and named it Doe Run Creek. It was so named due to the many deer in the vicinity. The creek was blessed with sulfur and salt licks, making it attractive for buffalo and elk.
The mill was built around 1790 by Jonathan Essery, and was originally known as Stevenson's Mill. It was made of local limestone and timbers that were hand-hewn with walls two feet thick. Thomas Lincoln worked as a stone mason on the newer section of the mill, which was constructed in 1800.Next stop was Cap Anderson Cemetery on High Street in Brandenburg for the first round of searching for ancestor graves. In this case, my parents already knew the location of the ones we were most interested in. We found my great-grandfather Ed Roberts and his wife Emily Powell. Buried nearby were Ed’s older brother Frank Roberts. Also located here were Powell patriarch William Alfred and his wife Alice Ann Dow. Nearby were his sons James and Lloyd Powell. Buried with Lloyd was his wife Dora. Across the street was the Catholic St George Cemetery. St. George Catholic Church was dedicated November 19, 1892 and the cemetery was established in 1902 on land donated by the Sebastian family along Hwy 448. The first church was struck by lightning in 1919 and destroyed. A new building was also struck by lightning in 1920 and destroyed. Here we found James Powell’s wife, Hallie Gilpin Powell, Neb Powell and other recent Powells. We called our cousin Jimmy Whelan and his wife Connie, who happened to be in town. They came and met us and we drove over to the Jailhouse Pizza, which is housed in the actual old Meade County Jailhouse on Main Street.
Detail of Ed Roberts grave marker inscription: "He has been a kind and affectionate husband, a fond father and a friend to all"
Jailhouse Pizza
One the Saturday, we headed out to visit the Powell Cemetery located not far from Doe Run in the woods off Olin Road. We were able to get close but called Alice Scott, local historian and niece of my great-grandmother Emily Powell, to find out the exact entry to the site. As we walked in we found the cemetery to be in cleared section of the woods and nicely kept up. This cemetery contains many unmarked graves and a memorial to those pioneers has been erected to honor John William Powell, Nancy Mason Powell, Martha Ann Green Powell, Hugh Powell, Alexander MacDonald, Mary Powell and more.
Next stop was St Martin of Tours Church in Flaherty. The first church building dedicated to St. Martin of Tours was built in 1848. Before the erection of the church, Mass had been held in private homes for almost three decades. A dedication ceremony took place at Flaherty on the 14 Nov 1894 with the Rt. Rev. W.G. McClosky D.D., bishop of Louisville presiding. Pulling up near the gate of the cemetery, we started on the west side and worked around the North, then east and finally center. I found some very significant ancestors going back 200 years, including Will Whelan, Loma Corbett, Fladge Corbett, Michael Whelan, Ann Brown Whelan, Wilson (Monk) Whelan, Elizabeth Gristy, Peter Brown, Lucy French Whelan and Thomas Whelan. But I didn’t find all the ancestors I wanted among the thousand grave sites and it was nagging at me a bit.On the way out of Flaherty, we passed by the house where my great-grandparents Will and Loma Whelan lived across the street from the church. My mother mentioned that “grandmother had wanted to live where she could go to mass every day.” Nearby was her daughter (and my great-aunt) Mary Lottie’s house. Next up was a visit to Fort Knox, the massive military base that is such a large part of the local landscape. Many of my ancestors and their relations were affected when the US Army began training near Stithton, Kentucky in 1903. Some land was leased in 1918 and more was purchased in 1931. The base became a permanent garrison and fixture for this area of Kentucky. On the base is St. Patrick’s Cemetery, where many members of the communities that occupied the are before the base came are buried. Here we found markers for such intriguing ancestors as Charles I. Corbett, his wife Kate Buckman, Teresa Shircliff Buckman, Arvin Campbell, and Absalom Ray. The day ended with a visit to our cousin Jimmy and his wife Connie’s house in Doe Valley. Interestingly, the lake in Doe Valley is man-made and covers the location of Will and Loma’s farm. We looked through some photo albums and talked about Shug, Pat, Monk, Bernie, Mary Lottie and Preacher (the Whelan siblings, children of Will and Loma).
Will and Loma Whelan Grave Marker
The next day was Sunday and we attended a lovely morning brunch at the Doe Run Inn. I met several relatives and had a great conversation with Alice Scott and her husband Jack. I also met Lloyd Powell III, grandson of Lloyd Powell, who was the older brother of Emily Powell. He served as School Superintendent in Meade in the 1920s and we have a letter of recommendation he wrote for my grandmother when she left school.
After the brunch we headed out to Woodspoint Wilderness, which consists of land that was owned by the Dow family, ancestors of Alice Scott, in the 1800's. After the turn of the century, the land was sold out of the family; then in 1960, Jack and Alice Scott bought the land and began to create what has become a nature refuge and retreat center bounded by Otter Creek Park on one side and by Fort Knox land on the other.
Native Americans figure prominently in the history of the area. One account describes one of the last Indian skirmishes in Kentucky which took place here "in the forest downstream from the Rock Haven Landing". Shawnee chief Tecumseh met in conference near the mouth of Otter Creek with the tribes of the north and tribes of the south in an attempt to form an Indian confederacy to repel the white settlers in the Ohio valley. Jack took me on a ride around the property on his 4-wheel “Mule” tractor. We passed by the intriguing cabin they had built at Piomongo Point named for a chief of the Mingoes, visited the ponds stocked with fish and some other notable sites on the land. Later, I followed Jack’s daughter Ann on hike to Froman’s Hollow. There is a small campsite on the creek under an old beech tree, covered with names going back more than 70 years. In 1940, Jack and Alice carved their initials on the tree. Late afternoon arrived and we reluctantly left this place of beauty and history.On Monday, we drove to Jimmy’s house and picked up him, Connie and his sister Patty for a trip across the Ohio River to visit the Overlook Restaurant for lunch. Charles and Mary Agnes Whelan met us there and four cousins were present. Patty and Jimmy are the children of Pat Whelan, the oldest son of Will and Loma Whelan. Doris is the oldest daughter of Irvin Whelan and Mary Agnes is the daughter of Wilson Whelan. After a visit to Charles and Mary Agnes’ house in the back woods of Indiana near Alton, we headed back over the river to stop one last time at Jimmy and Connie’s where we celebrated Patty’s upcoming birthday.
Paddlewheeler on Ohio River
Even though it was getting late in the day, I wanted to go back down to Flaherty and make one more run at the cemetery at St. Martins. For one, I had not found Mary Melissa Brown, first wife of Felix Thomas Whelan and my great-great-grandmother. The previous evening my mother had visited the web site for the church and found their recently uploaded key to the locations of the grave sites. I annotated a list of the graves I wanted to find with their designations and it seemed like it was going to be a lot easier. All we had to do was figure out what each designation meant and how to apply it. In the center section, I found Sarah Ellen Lancaster, who had married two of the Whelan sons of Michael Whelan, Charles Kendrick and Daniel O’Connor. Using the location of that site, we were able to locate several more from my list including Hilda Whelan, daughter of Thomas and Mary Melissa, who lived to the age of fifteen. We found Sallie French, sister of Thomas Whelan’s second wife, who had married his brother John Alexander Whelan. Then we found Mary Melissa and beside her the infant twins that she apparently died giving birth to in 1884. My mother found Valentine Brown, Mary’s father and Elizabeth Ann Elder, Mary’s mother.
The daylight was fading and the irregularity of the rows in the older center section made it difficult to count to row fourteen, the location where George Washington Corbett and his wife Fannie’s final rest was apparently located. Finally, I just started at the last maker in the last center section row and began looking at one after another. Suddenly I ducked under the branch of tree in the middle of the row and there was a large stone there that had “G.W. Corbett Mary F. his wife” on it. I had found the marker of these great-great-great-grandparents in the last possible moment as the gloaming overcame the cemetery.
This seemed to complete the trip and the next day I boarded a plane back to California. But I already had a list places to revisit and visit for the first time and knew I would come back to Meade County again. A special thanks to my mother and father, who mad this trip possible and were able companions on it.
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