Sunday, July 15, 2018

Part 5: Sarah Eva Howe's Stroll Through 1890s Carrollton; From "Way Out Past Seminary" to High and Main Streets

In Part 5 of Sarah Eva Howe's "Book of Recollections," Sarah recalls some families living beyond Seminar on 7th before returning to Main and High streets – the heart of old Carrollton, Kentucky. As always, my own comments are in brackets. All parentheses are Sarah's own.

And now I’ll just have to skip around, for when I get beyond the schoolhouse, it is unknown country of my early years. Stamp’s Store was the grocery where Jasper’s is now — Laura Stamp was a very little girl (she afterwards was my nurse when David was born). About ’91, the Garretts moved to town and came to our church, where we saw a lot of them — more about them later; they lived in a big house with large grounds on the other side of the big house where Mr. John Tharp lived for so long. In one of the houses along there lived the Allie Pulliams. ... ; further on lived Mr. Tate, a carpenter, very nice looking old man with a tiny VanDyke white beard, whose son Randall ... was a great baseball player. Miss Mary King and he were sweethearts at one time (opposed by James G. King1. Then at last came the two-story frame in the big farmland that belonged to Grandpa King, of whom in those days I knew less than nothing! I don’t know just when they bought the place and moved to town, but I suppose it was almost 1890; and on the other side of the road (for the “street” had become a “road” a good deal further down toward town) was the Bridges place, a big house, a big farm, and a remarkable family. (More about them later.) The road led on down past the Blue Lick or “Lick Well” as everyone called it, to the river. 

As to 7th Street, from Seminary on out, it was more than unknown to me. Even in 1900 it was still “way out on 7th Street” to me and seemed an immense distance from the heart of town where most of our life went on. I will mention just two interesting families, one of which stayed out in town while the other moved down to Main Street before I really knew any of them. The first was the Marlette family, who seem to have moved out there from upper Main Street — as both George and Charlie worked at the woolen mill — and started a store. (“Artie’s” father it was who kept the store. They probably had French blood — they always had a voyageur-piratical look! — but they didn’t spell their name Marlette then. 

The other family came to Carrollton “way back there.” I don’t know whether they came direct from the old country there or not, but they were from Scotland, tho they had lived in Ireland for awhile, where Miss Lydia, the youngest, was born. Their name, of course, was Shaw. They lived in 1890 in the house where the McCrackens have lived on 7th Street for many years now. Mr. Shaw was, I imagine, brought to Carrollton by M. I. Barker, who with his family caused more speculation and conversation than almost anyone who came in. Mr. Barker, a huge man, gave a lot of people work and made a good deal of money himself. He used to go to Maine every summer to a camp, and from there about 1892 he brought the Maddox family — “Maddocks” I believe they spelled it. They took the house after the Shaws moved down to the big brick on Main Street a little up the street from the “Old Store.” The oldest Shaw, daughter Lizzie, married a Mr. Clark and was already separated from him and living at home when we came to town; she had a boy, Will, a tall, gangling youngster of about 12 or 14. Mary, the next daughter, had married John Lewis, the elder half-brother of George Lewis, who married Ida Booker, Josie King’s friend. Another daughter, Jennie Shaw, . . . studied music. ... Lydia [presumably another Shaw daughter] was “going with” Jim Goslee for a while.  ... 

Jennie was a member of the Methodist Church, as were all of her family except Miss Maggie (and by the way, I left her out in telling about the sisters; ...  She was the one who became matron of the orphanage at Anchorage), who was a strict Presbyterian. ... 


Well, with the exception of a few families I will speak of later who lived on these side streets toward the river (Kentucky) and a few out 4th Street near the factory, I have covered the town away from the waterfront and now, at last, have come to the place where we really lived, which will have to have a diagram all its own. [Unfortunately, I have found no diagram in Sarah's papers.] I will start with High Street [now Highland], leaving out Second, which by that time, mostly because of floods in '83 and '84, were so bad — was being vacated by all the families at all able to go elsewhere and was being known as “Frogtown” already, tho the Albert Jetts didn’t move for several years after 1890 from their big home back of Grandma Howe’s, not till after the funeral of their little boy James, which I well remember (I was about 8 years old, I guess, when he died). Dad [Sarah's husband, William Levi Salyers] was born in the house across the street from the Jetts, but by this time it was in pretty bad shape, and of course Grandad [Charles David Salyers] had moved “out in town” about 11 years before we came.

Here then is High and Main and intersections. I’ll take High Street first, as it will take up less time than the intensely interesting area of over-populous Main Street.


Portion of Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Carrollton, Kentucky, 1898
Coming up the hill from the Kentucky River — only a ferry crossed it then, of course — the first large house was the one newly built on the highest part of that end of town — the Hafford house; but when we came, it was not yet finished, and the family were living in the house afterwards bought and now occupied by John Glauber[?], opposite the Methodist Church. Before the family was able to get into the new home, Mr. Hafford died of a heart attack as he was cleaning up the yard preparatory to moving the family in. This was another remarkable family, and as Mr. Hafford was pretty close kin to Granddad, you should know about them. Mrs. Hafford was a Malcolmson from back of Lamb[?] or near where the Lamsons lived; Mr. Hafford's Uncle or Cousin Eben, as the Salyers boys called him sometimes, was the son of one of the Lamson girls (Uncle Wallace’s sister or aunt, I’m not sure which, but Mrs. Adkinson, mother of Buford and Austin Sr., was another sister. I must ask Cousin Ed, but I believe Grandad’s mother was a first cousin of Mr. Hafford and the Adkinson boys’ mother. 

Mr. Hafford was a very just, fine man, tho he claimed to be an atheist follower of Tom Paine — an agnostic, rather. Mrs. Hafford was a woman of strong character, strong likes & hates, but devoted to her family and very shrewd to say the least, in a business deal.  ... The boys of the family, except Wilbur, the baby, had died young, one as a small child, another was drowned, and Will died of heart failure just a little while before his expected wedding day. The girls were all good looking; all were smart and given good educations, but Lida was the most brainy and talented of all. Julia married T. H. Karn of Owensboro and lived there many years. (Lida went to high school there and stayed with them.) They had one child, Hafford Karn, who died in his second summer on a visit to Carrollton. Except for Wilbur’s children, long after, he was the only grandchild of this large family. Lucy married George Winslow, but not till about 1892; Mary married Sid[?] Wood some time later; Nettie never married at all, nor did Flora; Nell and Linda both married rich elderly widowers with grown children. Wilbur married a Southern girl and became a specialist (eye ear etc.) and lives in Waycross, Georgia. But when we went to Carrollton he was a very small boy, Lida next older than he was, two years older than I, or eight years old, and Nell, next older, was about twelve.

That was certainly a lovely yard to play in, full of flowers and fruit trees, and especially fine apple trees. When Wilbur was able to pull a little wagon, he sold apples from his own tree, about 15 cents a dishpan full — the juiciest eating apples I ever ate.
 

Between the Hafford's new house and the church was a pasture, a steep hill going down just like the church yard does, with quite a big pond at the bottom. This used to freeze over, and lots of people went skating on it, tho most preferred “Winslow’s pond” farther up High Street. It made a good coasting place, too, but I didn’t believe I ever went on it; mostly little boys went there, and Mama was always afraid I’d get hurt.

Across from the Haffords on the other corner of 3rd and High lived Mrs. Webster and the boys, but before that Mrs. King and Mr. T.C. King and Ernest, their little boy, lived there (she died last year — her son Ernest, also dead, was the husband of Mary Masterson, who lived in Louisville). They were there just a little while after we came to live at Uncle Joe’s,2 then the Websters moved in. Mr. Webster kept a grocery at the corner of 3rd & Main opposite Howe Bros. — of which more “anon.” Mrs. Webster was not (as I said a little previously in my narrative) the half-sister but the step-daughter of Mr. Lowe, the Englishman, I remembered afterwards.  ...  She had a little daughter, Cora, and she married Harry Grigsby, whose son Harry Jr.was Bob's3 good friend when he was in school and even afterwards in Lexington where Harry was in business.



                                ********************  To Be Continued  ********************

1James Guthrie King, grandfather of Sarah's future husband William Levi Salyers
2Joseph Brown Howe, brother of William Levi Salyers
3Sarah's son Robert King Salyers (1907-1977)



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