Richwood, Kentucky

500 Confederate cavalry attack Union lines at Snow's Pond. Commanding officers report is here.

This card is dated 1924, and says it's the Perrin H. Hunter House, rfd Walton. Perrin was an art collector who had made his fortune in the manufacture of carriages. You may know it as Rosegate. Or you may know it from the 1883 Atlas of Boone County which refers to it as the Marion Grubbs Home. Or, you may know it as the scene of the infamous Kiger murders.

Sketch of vicinity of head qtrs. U.S. forces, Snows Pond, Kentucky

Message from Union Headquarters at Snow's Pond, here.
Snow's Pond's on Old Lexington Pike between Walton and Richwood.

President Hughes of the Richwood Deposit Bank is on
the right, standing in front of the bank.

Richwood Deposit Bank embezzlement uncovered because
banker regularly tips barber fifteen cents? Read all about it, here.
(The bank can be seen in the far left of the depot image, above)

Margaret Garner was a slave on the farm of Archibald Gaines when,
on January 27, 1856, she and her family tried to escape north,
to their freedom. Caught in Cincinnati, she elected to kill her
children rather than to see them taken back to Richwood and
slavery. She murdered one daughter before being restrained.
You can read more about it here, or the Enquirer's later day story on
the events, here.

Toni Morrison, 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, based her novel Beloved on this Richwood story. The link to the book on Amazon is at the left.

While Morrison's work is fiction, there is also an intricately researched book on the facts of the case, Steven Weisenburger's Modern Medea. It deals with the events, the trials, the legal issues, and the people involved. I highly recommend it to you. The link to it on Amazon is at the left.

The Gaines farm, known as Maplewood, is the site of the
Margaret Garner Archeology Project. The farm is just west
of Richwood Presbyterian. Their web site has scenes of
some of the farms early buildings. Here.

There's a very large white house just north of Walton on the Dixie
Highway, which was the home of Abner Gaines. The Gaines that
owned Margaret Garner was Abner's third son, Archibald. Archibald
bought the Richwood farm from his brother, John, the oldest Gaines son.
John left Kentucky when he was appointed Governor of the Oregon
Territory by President Zachary Taylor. He was Taylor's
second choice. The first choice, an Illinois Congressmen named
Abraham Lincoln, declined the honor.