Harrison County Sites Listed on the Register of National Historic Places

LISTED!

There are 25 places in Harrison County which have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, when the Harrison County Courthouse was listed.  The last was the Handy House on November 25, 2005.

That's more than forty years of work at identifying and in helping to preserve sites that are deserving of the recognition and protection!

The next time you are driving around Harrison County, see how many of the following sites you can see:

1.  Harrison County Courthouse (100 Main St., Cynthiana) ~ Listed December 6, 1974
2. Monticello (aka Thomas Jefferson Megibben House; Monticello Heights, Cynthiana (The house was severely damaged by a fire in July, 1985; its ruins, except for the carriage house, were demolished.)) ~ Listed December 31, 1974 
3. Poplar Hill (aka John William Kimbrough House; 901 Millersburg Pike (East of Cynthiana on KY 32) Cynthiana) ~ Listed November 7, 1976
4.  Stony Castle (West of Berry on Lafferty Pike, Berry) ~ Listed December 12, 1978
5.  Episcopal Church of the Advent (122 North Walnut St., Cynthiana) ~ Listed December 22, 1978
6.  Kimbrough-Hehr House (U.S. 62, Broadwell) ~ Listed  April 20, 1979
7.  William T. Lafferty House (548 East Pike St., Cynthiana) ~ Listed April 10, 1980
8.  Cynthiana Commercial District (Pike St. from Church to Main Sts., and Main St. from Bridge to Pleasant Sts., Cynthiana) ~ Listed October 19, 1982
9.  Wesley Roberts House (113-115 North Main St., Cynthiana) ~ Listed November 10, 1982
10.  Joel Fraizer House (Off KY 982, Cynthiana) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
11. Haviland House, aka Stone House on Haviland Lane (Off U.S. 62, Cynthiana) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
12. John Hinkson House (Off U.S. 27, Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
13. John Lair House (Old Lair Rd., Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
14. John McKee House (Cook Rd., Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
15. Samuel McMillan House (Off U.S. 62, Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
16. Joseph Shawhan House (Off U.S. 27, Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
17. Smith House (Off Lair Rd., Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
18. Stone House of Indian Creek (Off U.S. 62, Cynthiana) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
19. John Williams House (Off KY 32/36, Shawhan) ~ Listed June 23, 1983
20. Archaeological Site No. 15HR4 (Address Restricted, Lair) ~ Listed February 20, 1986
21. Spur Gasoline Station, aka Jay's Cars Office (201 E. Bridge St., Cynthiana) ~ Listed April 27, 1987
22. Coleman-Desha Plantation (aka the Duffy House, the Oaks, and the Newkirk House; 1416 U.S. 62 E (Oddville Pike), 1 mile northeast of Cynthiana) ~ Listed February 26, 1993.
23. Confederate Monument in Cynthiana (Located in Battle Grove Cemetery, 531 East Pike Street (0.75 mi. E of jct. of S. Elmarch Ave. & Pike St.), Cynthiana) ~ Listed July 17, 1997
24. Second Battle of Cynthiana Battlefield (1 mi. N of Cynthiana, E of KY 36) ~ Listed September 6, 2002
25. Handy Farm (aka Ridgeway; U.S. 62, Cynthiana) ~ Listed November 25, 2005 (Visit Friends of Ridgeway Historic Community Center on Facebook for the most up-to-date information)

To find out more about these and other sites in Harrison County visit

https://npgallery.nps.gov/nrhp

or let your fingers do the walking over to

www.HarrisonCountyKy.US

and look for the link to "History on the Hoof."

Do you think there is a site, a home, a building, or some other structure or something to be added to this list?  Then maybe you should contact the Harrison County Historical Society for more information.  It is a bit of work to get listed, but then the results are nothing less than HISTORIC!

The Harrison County Courthouse was added to the list in 1974.

Fifteen Stripes, One for Kentucky

DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know that the U.S. flag once had fifteen stripes?

It was on January 13, 1797 that George Washington approved adding two stripes, one for Vermont, one for Kentucky, to "Old Glory."

One of ten historic American flag stamps issued in 1968.

This fifteen-stripe flag is the same one which flew over Ft. McHenry during the War of 1812, you know, the flag that was the subject of Francis Scott Key's little ditty that became the National Anthem.

You can read more about that flag at a page at the Smithsonian's website entitled, The Star Spangled Banner: The Flag That Inspired the National Anthem.  Even more information is available at another Smithsonian page.

What did they do with Kentucky's stripe?  I will have to look that one up ...

The "Star-Spangled Banner" once flown over Ft. McHenry.

What Kept People Busy in 1850?

In the effort to fill in the blanks of a genealogy, one part of the record is largely overlooked, the documentation of what kept people busy from day to day. What did people do? How did they make a living? Where or to whom did one go to get a horse shod or a cabinet made?  The answers to those questions with regard to the 1850s have been around for a while, thanks to the efforts of two men named Thomson and Bassett.  Read the article, "What Kept People Busy in 1850?"

Harrison Heritage News (April 2014)

The latest edition of the Harrison Heritage News was mailed a couple of weeks ago.  What, you don't have one?  Well, you've got to be a member of the Harrison County Historical Society to get one!  It is too late to have joined yesterday, but today and tomorrow are viable options, which brings me to the subject of the feature article for this month's issue, the title of which, "Before It is Too Late Too Soon", is very apropos to the message expressed so far.

The article is about Berry, Kentucky in the 1910s, a time before World Wars and Depressions when Harrison County's second largest community (after Cynthiana) basked in what seemed to be an aura of boundless energy and enthusiasm.  Work could be hard, but people still had time to have fun, and if you grew up there in the early decades of the 20th century, you might not want to trade that time of your life for anything else or any other place in the world.

A budding interest in genealogy combined with the opportunity to travel in the 1990s allowed me to capture such sentiments as expressed by my great-aunt, Martha Elizabeth (Elmore) Byerley (1906-1998) nearly eight decades later.  She spent her preteen years living life, having fun, and, yes, going to school at Berry.  The stories she told are short and entertaining and . . . maybe best of all . . . she took albums full of pictures to illustrate the "good ol' days," some which have been reproduced on the front page of this issue of the Harrison Heritage News.

So, don't you wait to until it is too late too soon to get your copy of the April 2014 issue of the Harrison Heritage News today!  Visit www.HarrisonCountyKy.US/Historical-Society for membership information.

~

     “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”—Dr. Seuss

We've Moved . . .

Welcome to The County Line, a companion blog to www.HarrisonCountyKy.US.  Announcements concerning the site, recent additions, new databases, new articles, and maybe a little original content not found at the site, will be posted here in the future.

One can keep up with this blog or follow the posting of updates on Twitter at Twitter.com/harrisoncokyus.

I have been busy updating the site, tweaking it a little, proofing the links, and will be adding even more in the near future.  One of those improvements has been to move the site to a new Internet Service Provider (ISP).

For several years now the site has been hosted by a free ISP account I have had with Comcast.net.  The address for the home page looked something like this:

http://home.comcast.net/~harrisoncountykyus/

. . . and the portion above served as the prefix to all of the other pages at the site.

While just typing in "www.HarrisonCountyKy.US" would get you to the home page of the site in a process known as domain forwarding, many of the pages would show the full address, and that address is also what would appear in searches using Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other sites.

So, if you have bookmarked or favorited any pages at HarrisonCountyKy.US, you can either edit them individually in your browser, deleting the prefix described above, or go to the same page using the links provided on the new home page and then bookmarking the page again.

The home page at the new ISP will have a new background and layout, so you will know that you are at the new site of the old site.

And don't forget to delete your old bookmarks, or you will be going nowhere, when we want you to be coming back to . . .

www.HarrisonCountyKy.US

P.S.  I am a newbie to blogging and to Twitter, so please bear with me if any extraneous posts or errors should appear on these pages.  Happy Hunting!