Daviess County, Kentucky

“ There were men in Kentucky who regarded themselves as leaders in Society and above being held to account for unworthy and lawless acts. Colonel Joseph Daviess, then District Attorney of the United States and a Federalist, perpetrated a brutal assault upon a private citizen. ”

“ DAVIS COUNTY is in the third tier west of the Mississippi River on the south line of the State and embraces an area of five hundred three square miles, as the southern tier of townships is divided by the State line. It was formerly included in the original county of Demoine and afterwards in Van Buren but was created with its present boundaries in 1844 and named for Garret Davis a Kentucky statesman. ”

“ Miss Maria Thompson Daviess, author of The Melting of Molly, was born at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in October, 1872, the descendant of the famous Joseph Hamilton Daviess, the granddaughter of the historian of Harrodsburg, whose full name she bears, and the niece of Mrs. H. D. Pittman and Miss Annie Thompson Daviess, the Kentucky novelists. Miss Daviess was graduated from Science Hill Academy, Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1891, after which she studied English for a year at Wellesley College. She then went to Paris to study art at Julien's, and several of her pictures have been hung in the Salon. ”

“ Sunday, April 7.—The committee met in council at Brother Turley's. Brother Erastus Snow made a report of his visit to the judges at Jefferson city. A letter from the prisoners at Liberty was read and Daniel Shearer and Heber C. Kimball were appointed to see Mr. Hughes and get him to go to Daviess county and attend the sitting of the court there.
We continued our travels across the prairie, while the brethren at Far West, anxious for our welfare, gave a man thirty dollars to convey a letter to us in Daviess county, and return an answer. ”

“ Ordinary amendments are proposed by a three-fifths majority in each house, and are also subject to popular approval. With the usual exceptions of criminals, idiots and insane persons, all male citizens of the United States, who are at least 21 years of age, and have lived in the state one year, in the county six months, and in the voting precinct sixty days next preceding the election, are entitled to vote. The legislature provides by law for registration in cities of the first, second, third and fourth classes—the minimum population for a city of the fourth class being 3000. ”

“ From Pike courthouse to Perry courthouse. From Columbia to Liberty, by Casey’s creek salt-works. From Hopkinsville, Kentucky, by Williams, to Madisonville. From Smithland, in Livingston county, by Story’s ferry, to Waidsborough. From Burkeville, in Cumberland county, by way of Crocus creek, to Creelsburg, Russell county. From Midway, (formerly Centreville,) in Livingston county, by Ford’s ferry, to Equality, in Gallatin county, Illinois. From Hardinsburg, by the way of Cloverport and Hawesville, to the Yellow Banks in the state of Kentucky. ”

“ DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808–1889) , American soldier and statesman, president of the Confederate states in the American Civil War, was born on the 3rd of June 1808 at what is now the village of Fairview, in that part of Christian county, Kentucky, which was later organized as Todd county. His father, Samuel Davis (1756–1824) , who served in the War of Independence, was of Welsh, and his mother, Jane Cook, of Scotch-Irish descent; during his infancy the family moved to Wilkinson county, Mississippi. ”

“ There is a circuit court in each county, which must hold at least three terms a year. The State is divided into districts, in each of which a circuit-court judge is elected for a term of six years. There are also quarterly and county courts in each county. Police courts may be established in each city or town. Counties are divided into from three to eight districts, in each of which one justice of the peace is elected. Counties have fiscal courts which consist of the judge of the County Court, together with justices of the peace ”

“ The financial board of the county is composed of the county judge and the justices of the peace, or of the county judge and three commissioners elected on a general ticket.
The municipalities are divided into six classes according to population, a classification which permits considerable special local legislation in spite of the constitutional inhibition. Marriages between whites and persons of negro descent are prohibited by law, and a marriage of insane persons is legally void. ”

“ And again, where a statute is remedial and enlarging, it will not be held to control the operation of a previous one. The general character of these statutes is enabling. The act of 1776 allows femes covert to go before a mayor; that of 1785 to appear in court and acknowledge a deed. Where is the inconsistency between the two? If the latter is a repeal of the former, we have never found it out in Kentucky. There are more conveyances of land there than in any other state, and much land is owned by non-residents. ”

“ Father Badin died at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1853. He was the author of several Latin poems in hexameters, among them being Carmen Sacrum, a translation of which was [Pg 31] published at Frankfort; Epicedium, an elegy upon the death of Col. Joseph Hamilton Daviess at the battle of Tippecanoe; and Sanctissimae Trinitatis Laudes et Invocatis (Louisville, 1843) . His brief in memoriam for Colonel Daviess is his best known work and, perhaps, his masterpiece.
Bibliography. Sketches of Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky, by M. J. Spalding (Louisville, 1846) ”

“ The following properties were also entered in the National Register but were excluded from a previous notice:
KENTUCKY, Boyle County, Danville, Carnegie Library (Danville MRA) , Center College Campus (03/28/86)
KENTUCKY, Knox County, Corbin, First Christian Church (Corbin MRA) , S. Kentucky and W. First St. ”

“ And yet we shall discover differences. These people—these groups of twos and threes and hundreds, lounging, sitting, squatting, taking every imaginable posture that can secure bodily comfort—are they in any vital sense new Kentuckians in the new South? If you care to understand whether this be true, and what it may mean if it is true, you shall not find a better occasion for doing so than a contemporary county court day.
AUCTIONING A JACK.
The Kentuckian nowadays does not come to county court to pick a quarrel or to settle one. ”

“ The Mormons of Daviess county have also left their farms, and have encamped for safety at a place immediately on the east bank of Grand river, called Adam-ondi-Ahman. The numbers are supposed to be about two hundred and fifty men, citizens of Daviess county, and from fifty to one hundred men, citizens of Caldwell county; both parties have been scouting through the country, and occasionally taking prisoners, and threatening and insulting each other, but as yet no blood has been shed. I have ordered all armed men from adjoining counties to repair to their homes ”

“ When Kentucky came to have a legislature of its own, it decreed that each of the counties in the state should receive six thousand acres of land wherewith to start a seminary; and that all these county seminaries were to train students for this long-dreamed-of central institution. That they might not be sent away—to the North or to Europe. When, at the end of the Civil War, a fresh attempt (and the last) was made to found in reality and in perpetuity a home institution to be as good as the best in the republic, the people rallied as though they had never known defeat. ”

“ Conceding that the county had the power to build the bridge, (as was determined by this court on the former writ of error,) the averments of the plaintiffs' petitions were not sustained by the evidence adduced at the trial, and the contract sued on was not made by the county in the mode provided by law. The statute law of Kentucky applicable to such contracts made by a county is found in article 17, § 1, c. 28, of the General Statutes of that state: Section 5. 'The county court is a court of record.' (Page 307.) ”

“ He comes into the county court, this old African, because he is a colored Kentuckian and must honor the stable customs of the country. He does little buying or selling; he is not a politician; he has no [124] debt to collect, and no legal business. Still, example is powerful and the negro imitative, so here he is at county court. It is one instance of the influence exerted over him by the institutions of the Kentuckian, so that he has a passion for fine stock, must build amphitheatres and hold fairs and attend races. ”

“ In the Act of 1776 for dividing Fincastle county, Virginia, the ridge of the Cumberland Mountains was named as a part of the east boundary of Kentucky; and now that this ridge had become a part of the boundary between the states of Virginia and Kentucky they, in 1799, appointed a joint commission to run the boundary line on this ridge. A dispute with Tennessee over the southern boundary was settled in a similar manner in 1820. [8] The constitution of 1792 provided for manhood suffrage and for the election of the governor and of senators by an electoral college. ”

“ Extract of a Letter from General Atchison to Governor Boggs, Dated—
Liberty, September 27th, 1838.
The force under General Parks is deemed sufficient to execute the laws and keep the peace in Daviess county. Things are not so bad in that county as represented by rumor, and, in fact, from affidavits I have no doubt your Excellency has been deceived by the exaggerated statements of designing or half crazy men. I have found there is no cause of alarm on account of the Mormons; they are not to be feared; they are very much alarmed. ”

“ But after business was over, time hung idly on their hands; and being vigorous men, hardened by work in forest and field, trained in foot and limb to fleetness and endurance, and fired with admiration of physical prowess, like riotous school-boys out on a half-holiday, they fell to playing. All through the first quarter of the century, and for a longer time, county court day in Kentucky was, at least in many parts of the State, the occasion for holding athletic games. ”

“ There are two societies in Kentucky, one at South Union, in Logan County, on the line of the Nashville Railroad, and one at Pleasant Hill, in Mercer County, seven miles from Harrodsburg. They are both prosperous. ”

“ In the eastern part of the state where crops are generally light, Indian corn, oats and potatoes are the principal products, but tobacco, flax and cotton are grown. The thoroughbred Kentucky horse has long had a world-wide reputation for speed; and the Blue Grass Region, especially Fayette, Bourbon and Woodford counties, is probably the finest horse-breeding region in America and has large breeding farms. In Fayette county, in 1900, the average value of colts between the ages of one and two years was $377.78. ”

“ KENTUCKY, Shelby County, Shelbyville, Tevis Cottage (Shelbyville MRA) , 607 Washington St. (09/28/84)
KENTUCKY, Shelby County, Shelbyville, Wickland (Shelbyville MRA) , 169 Kentucky St. (09/28/84)
NEW YORK, Warren County, Glens Falls, Ordway, Jones, House (Glens Falls MRA) , 142 Warren St. ”

“ Carlisle happens to be in the adjoining county.”
“Here, sir, we’re not here to be examined by you, as if we were in the witness box,” cried Watson, who hoped to carry the situation through with a strong hand. He would try a little bluster.
A sarcastic smile crossed the firm face of Major Lightfoot. “Don’t try to bluff me,” he said quietly but sternly; “for it won’t work. I see very clearly that you fellows have never been in Fleming County, nor do I think you have ever been in Kentucky at all, for the matter of that. 79 You certainly talk more like Yankees than Kentuckians.” ”

“ From Bolivar, in Polk, by Greenfield, in Dade county, thence by Oakland College and Sarcoxie, to Neosho, in Newton county, once a week, on horse-back. From Warsaw, in Benton, to Buffaloe, in Niangua county. From West Port, Jackson county, to Van Buren, in Arkansas, once a week, on horse-back. From Jefferson city, via Stones Port, to Columbia in Boon county, once a week, on horse-back. From Benton, in Scott county, to Mills Point, Kentucky, via Miller’s Steam Mill, once a week, on horse-back. From Tuscombia, in Miller, to Springfield, in Green county. ”

“ Several bloody feuds, innumerable assassinations, demoralized courts, the purchase with money of slayers, anarchy in its most atrocious and hideous forms—such has been the history of Breathitt County since the days of the Civil War.
Breathitt County is not a remote section, out of touch with civilization, where ignorance might be pleaded in extenuation of the shameful lawlessness. Breathitt County has furnished men of brains, of power, and of the highest integrity.
In Breathitt County, as well as in all the other feud-ridden sections, the good citizens are in the majority. ”

“ KENTUCKY, Taylor County, Campbellsville vicinity, Hiestand, Jacob, House, W of Campbellsville off KY 210 (02/10/83)
KENTUCKY, Taylor County, Campbellsville, Campbellsville Historic Commercial District, Roughly bounded by Columbia Ave., Broadway, 1st, Hotchkiss Sts., Central Ave. (both sides) , and RR tracks (02/10/83)
MICHIGAN, Cheboygan County, Cheboygan, Newton-Allaire House, 337 Dresser St. ”

“ According to the settled course of decisions in the highest court of Kentucky, the justices of the peace do not form a necessary part of the county court, except when sitting as a court of claims, or when engaged in appropriating the revenues of the county, levying taxes, laying charges upon the county, submitting questions of taxation to a popular vote, and making subscription to stock in railroads. ”