ART AND ARTISTS “Arnold Estate,” KP, February 23, 1895, 4. “The Death of James G. Arnold,” Covington Ticket, November 17, 1876, 3. Kenton Co. Deed Book 68, May 17, 1888, 95, 96. Kenton Co. Property Tax Records, 1841, 1848, 1858. Kenton Co. Will Book 2, February 5, 1867, 424. Map of the City of Covington from Actual Survey. Rickey, Kennedy, and Clark, 1851. Smith, Allen Webb. Beginning at “the Point,” a Documented History of Northern Kentucky and Environs, the Town of Covington in Par ticular, 1751–1834. Park Hills, Ky.: Smith, 1977.
John Boh
ARNOLD, RICHARD C. (b. May 4, 1906, Squiresville, Ky.; d. October 17, 1992, Columbia, Mo.). Physician Richard C. Arnold was the son of Calvin W. and Margaret Morgan Arnold. In 1931 Arnold graduated from the University of Louisville Medical School in Louisville and was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) the next year. His specialty was urology with a par ticu lar interest in venereal diseases. In 1943 he and fellow researchers Drs. John Mahoney and A. Harris demonstrated that syphilis could be successfully treated with penicillin, a discovery that brought them acclaim worldwide. Then Arnold became involved in heart research. He was an assistant surgeon general of the United States for three years. He spent 31 years with the USPHS before retiring in 1961 and moving to Columbia, Mo. He served as consultant to the United Nations and was the medical director of the Missouri Crippled Children’s Ser vice. Arnold died at his Missouri home, survived by his wife, the former Caroline Hitt, and three children. Hobby, Gladys L. Penicillin: Meeting the Challenge. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1985. Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976. Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune. Obituary. October 19, 1992, 2A.
ARNOLD, WILLIAM, AND THE ARNOLD LOG HOUSE. William Arnold was the first sheriff of Grant Co. and the founder of Williamstown, the county’s seat. The log house that he erected in Williamstown during the early 19th century is now a museum and a memorial to him. Arnold was born in East Jersey (now part of New Jersey) during the late 1750s. At age 16 he moved to Virginia and volunteered for ser vice in the Virginia line during the Revolutionary War. According to family tradition, he held the rank of captain and was a personal friend of the French general the Marquis de LaFayette. Afterward, Arnold settled in Kentucky. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the Kentucky Militia and fought in the militia’s Indian campaigns in northern Ohio. He married Lucy Pryor, a native Virginian, sometime after 1783, and they became the parents of at least six children. William Arnold owned land in Bourbon, Campbell, Fayette, Mason, and Pendleton counties of Kentucky. When Pendleton Co. was formed from parts of Bracken and Campbell counties in 1798, Arnold was chosen as justice of the peace in
the third district. In 1820 that district became Grant Co., and Arnold was sworn in as the county’s first sheriff. The new county seat was established on two and one-half acres of land donated by Arnold, and he also donated the timber to erect the county’s first building. He was instrumental in organizing the first educational facility in Williamstown, the Grant Seminary. Arnold built the county’s first courthouse in Williamstown in 1822 and also set up a sawmill on his farm on High Street there. It is believed that Arnold erected his home on this farm sometime between 1799 and 1811. He used logs from huge yellow poplar trees and other hardwoods to construct a large two-story house, with a connecting kitchen. In 1824, when General Lafayette visited Kentucky, he stopped at Williamstown and had breakfast with his old friend Arnold. By the 1830s Arnold had watched the town that was named for him grow into a thriving village. He died there on November 18, 1836. Arnold’s High St. plantation was divided and passed along to several subsequent owners. In 1853 a number of rooms were added to the log house. The exterior was covered with wood siding, and plaster was used to cover the logs inside. In 1985 local historian Virgil Chandler Sr. learned of plans to remove the building. He uncovered the huge logs that make up the building’s structure and determined that the house scheduled for demolition had been a part of the Arnold estate. Chandler enlisted the aid of the City of Williamstown and the Grant Co. Historical Society in a joint effort to save the house. It was carefully dismantled; each log was numbered; and then the structure was reassembled on city-owned property on Cunningham St., at the site of the Old Grant Seminary. In 1990 a memorial monument was dedicated there to the memory of William Arnold and his contributions to Grant Co. The house contains pioneer-era photographs, furniture, maps, and memorabilia of Grant Co.’s early history. It is open to the public on selected days and by appointment. The Grant Co. Historical Society coordinates the care and maintenance of the property. In spring 2007 the log house was moved again to a location on Main St. in Williamstown. Chandler, Virgil, Sr. “William Arnold, First Sheriff of Grant County and Founder of Williamstown, Grant County, Kentucky,” NKH 2, no. 2 (Spring– Summer 1995): 55– 62. Conrad, John B., ed. History of Grant County. Williamstown, Ky.: Grant Co. Historical Society, 1992.
Barbara Loomis Brown
ARNOW, HARRIETTE SIMPSON (b. July 7, 1907, Wayne Co., Ky.; d. March 21, 1986, Washtenaw Co., Mich.). Author Harriette Louise Simpson Arnow was the daughter of Elias T. and Mary Jane “Molly” Denney Simpson. She attended Berea College at Berea, Ky., for two years, taught for two years in rural Pulaski Co., and afterward graduated from the University of Louisville. She then taught for two years in the public schools of Louisville. In 1934 Harriette moved to Cincinnati and lived there and in Northern Kentucky for the next six years.
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These were very formative and important years for her: she gave herself to reading the classics of American and world literature (Dostoyevsky, Hardy, Tolstoy, Undset, and Zola, among others) from the Cincinnati Public Library while working at odd jobs such as waitressing and typing. She eventually began to work for the Works Progress Administration, where she met her husband, Harold B. Arnow. Before her marriage, Harriette lived for a time in Covington. At the publication of her first novel, Mountain Path (1936), for example, she was living at 1528 Greenup St. in Covington. She may have taken comfort in living in her native Kentucky among a large group of rural migrants like herself. Cincinnati as a destination of Appalachians throughout the first half of the 20th century was well known to Arnow and was surely relevant to her great migration novel, The Dollmaker (1954). In Hunter’s Horn (1944), Cincinnati figures as part of Lureenie’s dream of escape from the confines of the hill country. The difficulties of life for country migrants to the city are dramatically presented in these novels. Arnow is best known for her “Appalachian trilogy,” Mountain Path, Hunter’s Horn, and The Dollmaker. She is also the author of several exceptional social histories of Kentucky’s Cumberland River area, including Seedtime on the Cumberland (1960) and Flowering of the Cumberland (1963). Harriette Arnow died in 1986 on her farm outside of Ann Arbor, Mich., and was buried beside her husband in the John Casada Cemetery, at Keno in Pulaski Co., Ky. Chung, Haeja K., ed. Harriette Simpson Arnow: Critical Essays on Her Work. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1995. “Harriette S. Arnow, 78, Author of The Dollmaker,” CP, March 25, 1986, 3D. Kleber, John E. ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992. Miller, Danny L. “Harriette Simpson and Harold Arnow in Cincinnati: 1934–1939,” QCH 47, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 41–48. Obermiller, Phillip, ed. Down Home, Downtown: Urban Appalachians Today. Chicago: Kent/Hunt, 1996.
Danny Miller
ART AND ARTISTS. Northern Kentucky has produced a range of artists representing nearly every major art genre, including several who attained national and international acclaim. Part of the region’s success in artistic circles is due to the presence of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, which opened in 1869 as the McMicken School of Design. Northern Kentucky artists associated with the academy included Frank Duveneck and Henry Farny, both nationally acclaimed artists whose works can be found today in major collections worldwide. Others, including Charles J. Dibowski and Charles McLaughlin, trained at the Art Academy and went to work in the area as designers and decorators at places such as the Rookwood Pottery. Clement Barnhorn, first a student and later a sculpture instructor at the academy, never resided in Northern Kentucky, but his sculptural figures for the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington became an