Russellville Historic Homes Tour and a Pet Show

Yesterday started out very rainy and dreary. My motivation for the day was lacking right from the beginning. We had a late start at school and then we proceeded to have a total meltdown over English. We persevered and I think he was starting to understand how to diagram sentences better when we were through. Homeschooling is definitely not easy some days!

This week is the annual Tobacco Festival for our county. They have lots of activities that happen throughout the week. Since our morning started out so rough, we decided to head to the Historical Homes Tour that they were having a 2:00 p.m. yesterday. I love history and living down here there is a lot of old history. Logan County is pretty much awesome.

Here is a short tour of some of my favorites for you-

Getting ready for the tour

 
This is the Convention House of the Confederacy. It was built in 1820. It was the site of the Confederate Convention held in November 1861. Delegates from forty-three Kentucky counties met to form a provisional government for the Confederate State of Kentucky. Russellville was capital of the Confederacy for three days. Two-thirds of Logan County considered themselves confederates during the Civil War even though Kentucky was considered a Union State. They were never able to break away like they wanted.


This is Logan County's fourth courthouse. This is a replica of the original fish weather vein that sat atop the previous courthouse in town. The story is that Jesse James shot it when his gang robbed the local bank or that a drunk confederate soldier shot it. There are three bullet holes in the original weather vein that is on display at the Saddle Factory Museum in town.
 
 This house is just a neat looking house. An architecture known for this design built this house. A couple from Oregon found it online, bought it, and moved to Logan County to restore it.

This is the Bibb House. It was built by Major Richard Bibb, a Revolutionary War officer, who freed his slaves in 1929 on his own conviction that it was wrong to have them. He even paid for their passage back to Liberia of those that chose to leave. One of Major Bibb's sons, John, developed Bibb lettuce. John Bibb refused to share the seeds of his lettuce while he was alive but after his death the seeds were shared and that is how we have Bibb lettuce today.

This is the Slaughter-deGraffenried House. It was built by a son-in-law of Major Richard Bibb and also the home of Thomas P. deGraffenried when he was a boy. deGraffenried went on to become a lawyer in New York and upon his death he gave Russellville one million dollars to be used for the education of the citizens. 

This is the Morehead House and it has a narrow crawl space tunnel under the street to the house in the next picture. It is believed to be associated with the underground railroad. 
 
 The Edwards-Atkinson House is the location of the other side of the crawl space tunnel.
 
 The Methodist Temple was built in 1854 but the church was organized around 1808. It is the oldest congregation in Russellville.

Browder-Wegener House built in 1850. At one time this was used as the faculty house for Bethel College.

This house is across the street from the Browder-Wegener House and was occupied by a preacher and his family. One of the preacher's daughters used to stand out on that little balcony with the iron fence around it and watch the happenings taking place at the house across the street which was occupied with the Bethel College faculty. She later wrote a book about it called 'The Preacher had 10 Kids.'

This is the original cast iron fence outside of the Trinity Episcopal Church built in 1836. There were many of these fences around town during this time. 
 
First Baptist Church built in 1899. Isn't is beautiful? This is where Evan and I will go to have a pancake breakfast Saturday morning before we watch the reenactment of the Jesse James Gang robbery that happened right across the street.

The Southern Bank of Kentucky built in 1857. It was robbed in 1868 by the Jesse James Gang and it was their first documented robbery. During the Civil War one million dollars was removed from the vault here and hidden to avoid being taken by soldiers. 


A picture of the businesses that surround the square in town. Most of these buildings have the original front to them that they would have had long ago. Just picture the street as dirt with horses and people walking.
 
 
 
That is just a peak into what we learned yesterday. There are 36 historical homes and they are so close together that you can walk to all of them on this tour.
 
After the tour we came home and got our dog Peaches and went to enter her in the local Pet Show. Evan had so much fun doing this!
 
Waiting for the show to start. 
 
In line as number seven waiting to do a walk-by in front of the judges.
 
These girls brought their goats which I thought was pretty cool.

Showing off our Peaches!


 
Peaches won second place for smallest dog and third place for healthiest looking dog. He is a proud owner :)
 
 
What a fun day we ended up having after a not-so-fun morning. We came home and went to bed only to be startled awake at 10:30 last night by both of our phones and the weather radio going off for a tornado warning in our county. A tornado never transpired, thankfully, but it sure was hard to get back to sleep after that!
 
I will post a weight loss update tomorrow since this post was so long.
 
Jenn






No comments

Post a Comment