PRESERVING OUR HISTORY...
ONE STRUCTURE AT A TIME
The Chalfant Rock House has been stabilized with a new roof and tuck pointing the rock. The house is understood to be the oldest structure in Bracken County and one of the oldest in Kentucky with its two foot thick walls built of limestone field rock. The site where the house is located, on Ky # 8 five miles west of Augusta, is believed to be where Captain John Hedges and Captain Thomas Young, both officers of the Revolutionary Army, on a surveying expedition in 1771, built an "improver's cabin". The question that preservationists and geneaologists are trying to determine is whether the rock house is the "improver's cabin" built from limestone so readily available at that site, or was it built later on. The building had fallen into much disrepair over the years and the inside walls were stripped to the bare rock and the roof removed before any repairs could be made. Thanks to a generous donation from Rosemary Lawson we were able to complete this project and turn the stabilized home over to the owners, Bracken County Fiscal Court. It is our hope that the fiscal court will maintain the building and sometime in the near future continue the restoration project. I should add here that without the initial gift of the house to the Bracken County Fiscal Court from Jan Ray Wills, the nephew of the formers and residents, Bee and Maggie Cox, the building could have been lost. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Jan Ray and also to Rosemary Lawson.
Our most recent project deals with paper rather than bricks and mortar. The Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court has ordered that all Circuit Court records be delivered to the Dept. of Libraries and Archives in Frankfort for safekeeping. This means that local access to these records will be lost; however, they will continue to be available through the Libraries and Archives. With this in mind, BCHS member, Bill Baker is in the process of typing the order books and scanning all of the suppporting documents. This is a monumental task and he and John White have made great strides on this project. Let me step back for a moment and explain that leading up to this project, we had Melinda Wheeler from the Chief Justice's office give a program outlining the purpose of the order to have the records sent to Frankfort and we had another program from Jim Cundy from the Department of Libraries and Archives to explain the process of preserving the records and the public access to these programs once they are in Frankfort. Both programs were open to the public and were very informative. The one thing that I want to mention here is that we are talking about Circuit Court Records (criminal cases, lawsuits, etc.) not County Clerk Records (birth records, marriage records, deeds. etc.). Let me emphasize that the Circuit Court Records are the only ones leaving the courthouse, the County Clerk Records will remain with us and be available locally. To this I would add that, if all goes well with Bill Baker and John White, we will also have copies of the Circuit Court Records locally as well -- lots of typing and scanning -- keep up the good work, gentlemen!
As I mentioned earlier, we had two programs open to the public regarding the Circuit Court Records. To accomplish this, we are trying to be more member and public friendly by having more programs and tours. We have toured the third floor of the Courthouse and marveled at the amount of work the ladies have done with the county records there, we are striving the keep interesting displays in the display case in the courthouse and we are in the process of working with the local schools to have programs to include their 5th. grade Kentucky History classes. All in all we are striving to become better citizens of Bracken County and to make our organization more interesting and user-friendly to the members and general public.
John G. Parker, Pres.
P.S. Anyone wanting to help out with the Circuit Court records should call us and we will have Bill get in touch with you.
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