122 BROOKSVILLE AND OHIO RAILROAD bring success for several decades was the Brooksville and Ohio Railroad, which operated from May 21, 1897, until June 6, 1931. Brooksville High School won the state basketball championship in 1939 by defeating Hindman. Brooksville was the home of a Hollywood actor and director, Don Galloway (1937), of the Ironsides television series. A well-known writer, Ed McClanahan, was also born in Brooksville. McClanahan has authored several books, including The Natural Man, as well as contributing articles to nationally recognized magazines. Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers. History of Bracken County. Bicentennial ed. Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers, 2002.
Caroline R. Miller
BROOKSVILLE AND OHIO RAILROAD. The Brooksville Railroad (BRR) was built in 1897 to connect Brooksville with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad at Wellsburg Junction, along the Ohio River in Bracken Co. The rail line began at Wellsburg, followed Locust Creek upstream to Goose Creek, and then proceeded southward to Brooksville, for a total distance of 10 miles. The BRR carried farm goods and lumber from Brooksville to the outside world and acted as a funnel for the movement of finished goods into Brooksville, the county seat. From its beginning, the BRR was barely profitable, and it quickly proved unable to generate sufficient money to keep the roadbed and equipment in compliance with state and federal regulations. In 1918 the BRR went into receivership, and formal passenger ser vice was discontinued. In 1919 it was sold to a group of local businessmen and renamed the Brooksville and Ohio River Railroad (B&OR). The B&OR lingered until 1931, using a motorized section handcar with a trailer to move goods. Having lost its local business to trucks, and its rail bed having been condemned as unsafe by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) on April 11, 1931, the B&OR received permission from the ICC to abandon its line. Two road tank cars (not owned by BBR) were left landlocked at Brooksville by the abandonment and were later removed by trucks. During its life, the BRR-B&OR owned six locomotives, but only two were on the property at any one time. Recorded passenger equipment consisted of one combination coach. Leming, John E., Jr. “Bracken County and the Brooksville Railroad Company,” NKH 3, no. 2 (Spring– Summer 1996): 52–56. Sulzer, Elmer G. Ghost Railroads of Kentucky. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1967.
Charles H. Bogart
BROOKSVILLE ASSEMBLY OF GOD. The Brooksville Assembly of God began at the home of Mrs. Russell Mattox on Parina Rd. in Bracken Co. in 1935. During that year, revival ser vices were held in the Asbury Schoolhouse until the congregation was able to have a permanent church building built on a lot donated by William Butler. In the early 1940s,
the church was relocated to the corner of Miami and Frankfort Sts. in Brooksville. After holding ser vices at several more locations, the Brooksville Assembly of God moved in 1952 to a site on Frankfort St. in Brooksville, where it remains today. Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers. History of Bracken County. Bicentennial ed. Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers, 2002.
Caroline R. Miller
major remodeling of the structure was undertaken, in the course of which an organ and chimes were installed. The current worshippers have maintained an active membership, and the Brooksville Methodist Church continues to serve them with updated facilities and ser vices. Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers. History of Bracken County. Bicentennial ed. Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers, 2002.
Caroline R. Miller
BROOKSVILLE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. The Brooksville Christian Church, located on Miami St., was the first church within the city of Brooksville and the second Christian Church organized in Bracken Co. The congregation dates to 1842, when 190 persons voiced their support for this nondenominational church. The congregation stayed intact until 1873, when 60 members left to establish the Christian Church in Powersville. The congregation of the Brooksville Christian Church worshipped in the city’s courthouse until 1859; then a lot was purchased for the construction of a house of worship that was completed in 1860. This structure was of wood, measuring 40 by 60 feet; its area was extended significantly in 1916. The building was destroyed by fire in 1923, with only a few items escaping unscathed. The next church was constructed of brick and dedicated on June 15, 1924; two minor additions, a baptistery and an entrance accessible to the handicapped, have since been made. The congregation of the Brooksville Christian Church remains large, just as it was in 1842; many of this church’s worshippers travel from distant parts of the county to attend ser vices. Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers. History of Bracken County. Bicentennial ed. Brooksville, Ky.: Bracken Co. Extension Homemakers, 2002.
Caroline R. Miller
BROOKSVILLE METHODIST CHURCH. The Brooksville Methodist Church was assembled in 1866 at Brooksville in Bracken Co., after a trying number of years during the Civil War. The earliest congregation worshipped in the open under a tree at the home of Caleb Tarleton and was led by Methodist circuit riders who had come into Kentucky from Virginia. Among the charter members of the Brooksville Methodist Church in 1866 were Judge Adamson, Anderson Field, H. A. Lee, and Caleb Tarleton. Church ser vices were for a time held in the carpenter’s shop on Church St. in Brooksville, before the group started purchasing brick and other building supplies with which to build a church building. However, the Civil War halted the building’s construction, and most of the bricks had to be used for other purposes. In 1866 timbers were cut and the Brooksville Methodist Church’s first and only permanent building was erected on Woodward Ave. in town. The church bell was a gift from Henry Ferber, who had purchased it from the owners of the Magnolia excursion boat, which had sunk in the Ohio River. The stained-glass windows were installed in 1913, under the leadership of Rev. Price Smith. In 1944 a
BROSSART, FERDINAND (b. October 19, 1849, Buchelberg, Bavaria; d. August 6, 1930, Melbourne, Ky.). Ferdinand Brossart, who became a bishop of the Diocese of Covington, was the son of Ferdinand and Catherine Dissel Brossart. The family immigrated to the United States in 1851 and lived in New Orleans until an outbreak of yellow fever prompted them to move to Cincinnati. There they became members of St. Michael Parish. In 1861 the Brossarts moved to the Gubser’s Mill area of Campbell Co., Ky. Ferdinand Brossart received a good classical education at St. Francis Gymnasium in Cincinnati and began his studies for the priesthood at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Price Hill. In 1868 George A. Carrell, bishop of Covington, sent him to Louvain University in Belgium to complete his studies. On September 1, 1872, Bishop Augustus M. Toebbe of Covington ordained him a priest at St. Mary Cathedral (see Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption). Brossart began his ser vice as a priest of the Diocese of Covington in the Bluegrass area of Kentucky, first in Cynthiana, then in Georgetown. After being made pastor of St. Paul Parish in Lexington in 1878, he distinguished himself in the early 1880s by ministering to victims of a smallpox epidemic in that city. His courageous ser vice to the sick when other clergymen had refused to serve earned him the admiration of Protestants and Catholics alike. Bishop Camillus P. Maes appointed him pastor of the Cathedral Parish in Covington and vicar general of the diocese in 1888. Brossart’s efficiency and competence in this prominent role as assistant to the bishop made him a good candidate to succeed Bishop Maes when he died in 1915. On November 29 of that year, he received word that Pope Benedict XV had appointed him the fourth Bishop of Covington. Archbishop Henry Moeller of Cincinnati consecrated him bishop at St. Mary Cathedral on January 25, 1916. He remains to this day the only priest of the Diocese of Covington who became its bishop. As head of the diocese, Bishop Brossart introduced new regulations for its administration, created the Board of Charities, established the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Boy Scout troops in diocesan parishes, and implemented the new 1917 Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church. After America’s entry into World War I in 1917, the governor of Kentucky appointed Brossart to the District Committee of the State Defense Council; apparently the anti-German sentiment of the time had not adversely affected the reputation of the German-born bishop. In 1920 Bishop Bros-