By Thelma Taylor 1983

It was a hot July 4. I hurried to get ready for a picnic on the creek before I got too much help from my five grandchildren, ages 4 years to sweet 14.

Alice, the junior high kid, wanted to go farther afield than to the creek below the house. "Granny," she yelled over the chatter of her portable radio, "couldn't we go to the historic South Licking River for our picnic?"

"The river is too dangerous for the little ones," I told her. "We are going to the historic waters of Twin Creek."

"What's historic about this place besides you, Granny?" Alice asked.

"Your father lived here all his life," Pamela said.

"That's not history," Alice told her sister. "I live here, too."

"History is daily events that somebody wrote about and kept for future generations," I explained.

"Will you write about today so we’ll be history, too," Carol asked. David wanted a drink and had to go to the bathroom right now! I could see why a lot of history never got written.

Alice couldn't give up the river trip. "If you take us to the river, I can show the little kids where Serena Harden walked to get away from the Indians. Did you know that she walked alone from Ohio to Poindexter when she was only fifteen?"

"Could I show you where Serena walked when she was seven and taken to Ohio by the Wyandott Indians?" I asked.

"Don't tell me she waded Twin Creek? Alice moaned.

"She surely did!" I pointed out the dining room window. "See those cars going down Lafferty Pike? That was an Indian trace. Serena Harden walked down that road with the other prisoners from Ruddle's Fort June 27, 1780."

How could they be prisoners in 1780 when the Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776?" Alice asked.

"That's a long story," I said. "They didn’t see the battles on television screens as we do today. News traveled slowly. Someone had to walk or ride horseback through the wilderness to tell those on the western rim of the country what was taking place. "

"Let’s cut this history lesson short," David said. "Our hot dogs will rot before we get to eat them."

"And we won't get to do anything today to be in history if we don't get started," Carol Ann complained.

"And I've got to go to the bathroom again," Connie wailed.

Pamela the peacemaker suggested that I give the history lesson to them while the little kids played in the creek after they ate. This picnic went like all picnics with small children go. I forgot the catsup. David gulped his food and started catching crawfish. He threw one at Carol Ann. She ran backwards and knocked Connie into the creek. The wading and splashing started.

I gave them empty peanut butter buckets to collect rocks, shells and whatever they wanted to take home with them. The parents collected the little kids and their muddy buckets of shells, rocks and crawfish before I got into my history lesson about Harrison County. Before Carol Ann got in the car, she reminded me, "Write about today, Granny, so we will be in history."

I promised I would. Alice and Pamela changed into dry clothes and we followed the Indian Trace in an air conditioned Ford. Alice was still hung up why Ruddle's Fort was captured by the British four years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. I explained that the 13 colonies that signed the Declaration were on the Atlantic Coast. To the west of them was a long mountain range. Kentucky County, Virginia stretched from the mountain range to the Mississippi River and there was much more land beyond the Mississippi. The British wanted to stop the Colonist from going West. Captain Henry Bird led the British south from Detroit with some Indians break up the small Kentucky settlements and nip the westward movement of the colonists in the bud.

I stopped beside some virgin woods on the Lafferty Pike. I told them this was the way the country was for miles and miles. Huge trees crossed limbs making a shade over a carpet of leaves, dead limbs and roots. They could walk for miles in the shade.

Stories have been handed down through families in the community that Bird had men throw rocks in the Licking River to make a bridge for his six cannons to move across north of the what is now the town of Berry. One cannon was said to have fallen in the river and could be seen for years.

When the Wyandotts reached their village on the Little Miami River in Ohio, the chief had Serena Harden washed and washed in the river. He told her that all her white blood was washed away and she was now his daughter. She said that she was treated as well as his own children.

"When she was 15, the chief chose an Indian husband for her, Alice explained to Pamela, the second grader.

"She said, 'No way and started walking home,"' Pamela said judging from what she thought she would have done.

"She knew better than to refuse the chief. He was trying to be take care of her as his own daughter. She told a squaw that night. The squaw gave her a blanket, told her how to escape and helped her out of the village one night, I explained the beginning of an amazing venture for a 15-year-old in the unfamiliar wilderness.

"It took her four days to get to the Ohio River," Alice said. "She looked across to the mouth of the Licking River. That's where she needed to be. She knew the Indians were following her so she crawled into a rotted log that had one solid end and stuffed her blanket into the open end.

There was a crack in the top of the log."

"And they found her and killed her," Pamela could see no way out.

"No," Alice said. "The Indians crossed over the log. She counted 17. They had a dog with them but it never sniffed out Serena. She said her heart was beating so hard she was afraid they'd hear it. When she thought the Indian had gone, she used a log for a crude canoe and paddled across the Ohio River! I have seen the Ohio River at the mouth of the Licking. It is wide and deep," Alice explained to Pamela.

"Did someone meet her and take her home?" Pamela asked.

"No, but she remembered walking beside the river. She followed the Licking River over 70 miles to Poindexter, just about seven miles from the fort where she had been captured," I said.

"And her mommie and daddy met her there?" Pamela asked.

"No, she came to a cabin at Poindexter where the family took her in ...... She was very weak ... she had eaten two baby blackbirds raw, so it must have been spring. She married John Crawford and had nine children by him. He died and she married Thomas Hutton. They had one son, Thomas," Alice said.

"There is a first grader at Southside School named Thomas Hutton," I told the girls. "Serena's great-great-great-great-grandson."

"Some early history is sketchy ... people traveled light and fast while they were settling in this county. They didn't have time to write things down as they happened.

"But Maggie Leslie wrote interesting stories after her children were asleep. She sat in her kitchen and wrote by oil lamp light; her daughter kept the stories."

At Oddville, Ruth Leslie Judy unfolded the yellowed notes her mother wrote late at night. Alice read aloud:

There was no experience of pioneer life that provided more fun and pleasure than 'sugar making.' Those were grand opportunities for sweethearting among the older boys and girls. Many a happy love match was sealed on the road to and from the sugar camps.

Many weeks of winter were spent in making 'spiles' or spigots from elder or sugar cane. Small troughs, 3 feet long by one foot in diameter were made from tree limbs. Barrels and large troughs were made from giant trees.

Sugaring lasted four weeks, beginning about the first of February. The clarifying agent used in processing sugar and syrup was slippery elm bark. The slippery inside of the bark adhered to the sediment to make the syrup clear.

"They made part of their living from selling maple sugar," Ruth said. "They packed the sugar cakes on flatboats at Claysville, sent it down the Main Licking to the Ohio River and from there down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

"They traded their sugar and other products, like animal hides, to the Spanish for coffee, tea, spices, candle wicks and silver money. They carried their stuff back in burlap sacks on their backs as they walked the whole distance. It took them 30 to 40 days to get back to Claysville."

"Where's Claysville?" Alice wanted to know.

"On the very eastern edge of the county."

On our way to Claysville, we saw the old Oddville school, the first accredited high school in the county. Completed in 1915, its first class had one graduate, Harry Leslie.

Some of the best girls' basketball players in Kentucky went to Oddville. Alice and Mary VanHook were All-Stars.

"We were the Oddville Kittens, and put Harrison County on the map in sports," Alice told my grandchildren with enthusiasm. "We were the smallest school and definitely not a favorite. Some schools had more students in a single class than we had in the whole school."

Mary flipped through a scrapbook. "We enjoyed watching the headlines change. In 1927-28 it was: Ashland is Favorite, Georgetown is Wonder Team, and at the end of the season: Ashland, Georgetown and Oddville are Favorites. In '28-29, the headlines were: Oddville is Favorite in State Tournament, Unbeaten Wonder Team is Victorious, Alice VanHook is Best Guard in State and Mary VanHook is Star."

"We played by the sames rules the boys did, on a dirt courtyard outside in the dead of winter. Coach A. B. Arnold preached about what to eat, but we didn't pay much attention."

"One afternoon we found a whole ham and chocolate pie cooling on the back porch. Mary and I each ate half of a pie and all the ham we wanted. We played better ball that night than we had ever played."

We drove beside Beaver Creek to Claysville where we visited Nell Ross, who had been a member of the Claysville band. "I remember playing for a funeral. Band members wore flashy uniforms, and the big bass drum carried their name in blazing colors with a big red Indian in the center of the drumhead.

"The marshall-of-the-day led the procession down the street, brandishing a shiny sword as he marched in front of the funeral cortege. The band played the funeral dirge slowly; muffled drums rolled in the background. The children sang Flee as a Bird to Your Moutain. I sang lustily and wondered what the words meant.

"We girls wore white dresses and carried bouquets of flowers we had picked in our yards. Each boy had a black ribbon pinned to his lapel to show mourning. Red Man Lodge members, in full Indian dress, joined the mourners.

"A black hearse drawn by four black horses was followed by the family of the dead person. There were few people left in the village to line the street and watch the procession.

Alice asked if there were a historic place where we could eat. "We'll go to Brannock's Store at Kelat. It's been in operation for 100 years. I'll take you by way of Sunrise where Gary Sandy owns a farm.

"Didn't we see him in WKRP Cincinnati?" Alice asked.

"Yes. His father was graduated from Sunrise High School and was good in drama like his son. Gary's grandmother is at a nursing home in Cynthiana."

"Do we have any other celebrities that might make history?"

"Harold Pressman or Lawrence Pressman, which ever he calls himself, was born and raised in Cynthiana. And Herbert Allen Moore lived in Sunrise when he was a boy. He built Mammoth Cave Wax Museum and sculpted all the wax figures that tell about our country's history. He also built Wondering Woods and Tranquil Valley Village which is a way of learning history be seeing and doing.

From Brannock's we started down the winding road to Berry, through some of the highest hills in the county and some of the prettiest scenery.

"Would you like to visit Harrison County's only ox trainer?"

J. R. Kendall lives in the western side of the county at Renaker. He had come in from the farm and was eager to tell the girls about oxen. He had his wife, Mary Frances, show us a picture of Buck and Berry, the last oxen his father owned.

"This country had a lot of trees," he began. "Oxen were ideal for clearing the land because of their strength and endurance. And oxen were easy to handle; the driver could talk to them gently and they would obey every command until they got thirsty. They were slow-moving until they started for water, then they took off and nothing could stop them. If you were riding one, your only hope for staying on was to lodge your knees in the 'sunk place' in front of the hip bone and hang in there.

"When you were thrown by an ox, you were 'busted,' and you landed more solid than when thrown by a horse or mule," he laughed. "When a calf weighed about 300 pounds, it was ready to train. A team was matched in size and color. They were yoked and their tails tied together; they ran together until they got used to wearing the yoke."

"Why did you tie their tails together?" Pamela wondered.

"If we hadn't," Kendall explained, "they would soon learn to turn end for end and flip the yoke over their heads. The collar of an ox yoke is made opposite that of a horse's---the big part of an ox's neck is at the top of the shoulder. They pull with the back of their necks. A chain is run through a metal loop at the top of the yoke between the two oxen and is tied to what needs pulling.

"When a well-trained team of oxen pulled, something moved! When the load refused to budge, the animals got down on their knees and slowly and cautiously put their strength together to dislodge the stump or whatever had to move. They were beautiful to watch, and so gentle. People used whips and lines to guide them, but it wasn't necessary ... it was much more fun to talk to them softly and watch them get the job done."

"Our next interesting person is a schoolteacher," I said, and Alice moaned. "This one is Miss Anne Ammerman, a very tiny woman. Whenever we saw a car coming down the street without a driver, we knew Miss Anne was in there looking through the steering wheel spokes."

Miss Anne told about producing a 200-member cast pageant called "The Father of Our Country," in 1932. Hundreds of people attended the open-air performance; and it was such a hit, she was asked to present it again. She offered Alice and Pamela the history of Cynthiana she had written.

"We'd rather let Granny show us history," Alice said.

"Oh, this television generation!" she wailed as we left.

While Miss Anne taught at Hazel Green Academy in the eastern Kentucky mountains, a presentation plaque hadn't arrived for a ceremony, I began a story told to me by Miss Martha Lindsey. "Miss Anne traced the plaque to the Jackson postoffice and Miss Lindsey volunteered to take her there after school. They found the plaque and started home after dark. The car headlights went out; and along the little-used road, there was no one to ask for help. Miss Anne, who was wearing a light-color dress, walked in front of the car and guided Miss Lindsey five miles by the "light" of her dress. They arrived home at one in the morning."

When we entered Battle Grove Cemetery, I circled to the monument of the 'little boy.' Nobody knows how he died in 1869.

Alice pointed at the statue of Jesse Frazer, a 21-year-old mother that died when her son was born, The family sent a picture of her, wearing a Grecian costume that she had worn in a play, to Italy to have a marble statue sculptured."

The big, tall Confederate monument stands in the center of many small white markers that represent soldiers from the South who fought and died here during the Civil War,

"Which side was Harrison County on?" Pamela asked.

"There were families here who had sons on each side. Bessie Marie Hehr can tell you about her grandfather who came from Huntsville, Alabama to fight for the North."

Bessie showed the children a picture of Thomas Hendrixson who was 16 when he ran away from home to join the Union Army. He was left for dead at a battle on Flat Run Creek (that runs along Oddville Avenue behind the RECC building). An old man who lived in the house at the top of the hill, came down to look over his field after the battle. The creek was running red with blood and beside it lay young Thomas; his horse had stayed with him.

"The old man saw that he was alive and told him to lie still until after dark... the Confederates were camped on Peck's Hill, above the First Methodist Church. That night the man hauled Thomas to the house in a wheelbarrow. A black man took him to the attic, suspended his wounded leg in a leather boot and let water drip from a bucket onto the would until it healed. When soldiers came to the house, a 12-year-old grandaughter went to bed in the room where the attic door was. The grandparents said she was ill and the soldiers didn't bother that room---if they had suspected a solider of the North was there, they would have burned the house.

"The old man had chased Hendrixson's horse into a thicket behind what is now the Harrison Warehouse. My grandfather stayed with the old couple for three years. He couldn't go back to Alabama-he was an enemy. He married Polly Whalen of Oddville and they owned a general store at Broadwell for years. My grandparents died within two days of each other; and Rev. J. R. Jones, of Leesburg Christian Church, suggested they be buried together. Clay Smith of the old Smith-Rees Funeral Home said that was the only double funeral he ever had where the couple died of natural causes. They are buried in the Jacksonville Cemetery.

"This was over 50 years after the Civil War. Grandpa's parents probably thought he had died. He may have if it hadn't been for the kindness of an old man and his wife, their grandaughter, and a black man whose names I don't know. I wish I did; I'm sure some of their families live in Harrison County near me."

"We'll go to Biancke's in Cynthiana to eat," I told them.

"Does Biancke's have a history?" Alice knew it did.

"Biancke's is the oldest restaurant in Cynthiana; Guido and Clementina Biancke opened it in 1896. Amelia Biancke Whitaker will be at the cash register tonight; she was two years old when her father started the restaurant."

Settled in the restaurant, Alice asked how Cynthiana got its name. It is named for two sisters, Cynthia and Anna, who were daughters of Robert Harrison who owned a farm here. I pointed across the street from Biancke's.

"He gave the lot to build that courthouse. He gave ground for the old cemetery and sold his 150-acre farm off in lots to build the town. No one knows what happened to the little girls ... nobody took the time to sit down and write about what happened. Historians have dug into the recesses of history and so far have found nothing."

"Could we go on another visit around the county, Granny?"

"Pamela, we could do this every day for a week and come up with more and more interesting stories about Harrison County. We haven't even scratched the surface today," I told her.

"That's incredible!" Alice mused. "But it certainly beats reading history books."