398 GHENT BAPTIST CHURCH Ghent’s most notable Civil War incident occurred in 1864, when a regiment of African American soldiers arrested a man at Ghent and were subsequently ambushed near Gex’s Landing in Kentucky at the Gallatin Co. line (see African Americans in the Civil War; Gex Landing Incident). After the Civil War, African American members split off from the Baptist Church to form the Ghent Second Baptist Church, which still meets occasionally under longtime minister Rev. John Sharpe. Little is known of an African Methodist church in Ghent that is mentioned in old deeds. An African American hamlet outside of town may have given Black Rock Rd. its name. Numerous fraternal organizations thrived in Ghent from before the Civil War through the early 1900s. Surviving Ghent newspapers mention meetings of the Masonic Order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Order of Red Men, and others. The Masons and the Odd Fellows built tall brick “temples” downtown. In 1856 the Ghent Cemetery began as a group of adjacent cemeteries, one section operated by the Masons, another by the Odd Fellows, and a later third section operated by the Scott brothers, local undertakers. The Colored Odd Fellows added a fourth section for the black community; when the lodge disappeared, that part of the cemetery fell into neglect and was replaced by an African American cemetery southwest of town. There were also women’s clubs and missionary and literary societies. The Caby M. Froman Club is the oldest active club in the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs, and its offspring the Ghent Women’s Club still meets. The once-influential Daughters of the Confederacy is gone. The three-story brick Ghent College was constructed on the west side of town in 1867. After 20 years the college closed and the building was used for Ghent High School. It would be difficult to pinpoint when Ghent reached its peak before its inevitable decline. Perhaps it was in 1899, when Ghent’s newspaper, the Ghent Times, began a run that lasted several years. Roads and shipping improved, and commerce was bypassing Ghent even before the Great Depression came, ending the steamboat culture. Well situated on high ground, Ghent was largely untouched by the flood of 1937—but not unaffected, as the already Depression-weakened Ghent Deposit Bank failed after 50 years in business. In 1932 Ghent’s best-known native, James Tandy Ellis, returned to Ghent in semiretirement. He was a popu lar Chautauqua entertainer, poet, and humorist, and in his widely published newspaper columns he often made reference to characters identified with his hometown. Late in life, he wrote a column lamenting Ghent’s condition. “Today we linger in the cobwebs,” he said. “Our high school gone; our bank gone; our drug store gone, our lumber and coal yard gone. We had a canning factory once, but that evaporated. . . . the town has no scales. We haven’t any hotel, and the tourists lam through town at 70 miles an hour.” Ellis further regretted that Ghent no longer had its flour mill or its bakery, that Scott’s Restaurant on the east side
of town had burned, and that the tavern west of town had closed. The town suffered another indignity soon afterward, when the old college building burned in 1940. In the 1960s industry started to encroach on the town. Ghent prevented construction of a noxious plastics plant to its west, but the Walton Craig house was nonetheless demolished. Kentucky Utilities tore down several antebellum homes in 1973 to build a generating plant a mile east of town. Smokestacks dominate the eastern skyline now, and electrical towers and transmission lines mar the high hills overlooking Ghent. The automobile traffic from Cincinnati to Louisville along U.S. 42 bypassed Ghent completely once I-71 was completed in 1969; today commuters from Ghent can reach Cincinnati, Louisville, or Frankfort in an hour’s drive. In 1977 the Martha A. Graham, the last double-wheeled ferry operating on the Ohio River, ceased operation when Markland Dam was bridged, ending Ghent’s 175 years of shared history with Vevay, Ind. When the elementary school closed in 1972, Ghent lost another measure of local identity. On the site of the old college, the building remains, poorly utilized when not completely vacant. Longtime town mayor Johnny Davis had few successes in preventing Ghent’s decline, which paralleled the decline of tobacco farming, but he did help save Ghent’s post office from closure; and before his death in 1992, he secured a sewer system for Ghent, to be shared by the North American Stainless plant being built west of town. The steel plant later expanded greatly and more plants followed, and with expansions of Kentucky Utilities, Dow Corning, and the nearby Belterra casino complex in Vevay, Ghent is surrounded by development without necessarily benefiting from it. The commonwealth of Kentucky is exploring several invasive options to deal with increased plant traffic through town. Among the Ghent population, formerly consumers of both Cincinnati and Louisville media, the Cincinnati papers now have few subscribers. The sole cable provider picks up local broadcasts only from Louisville, and Ghent has lost much of the affi nity it once shared with the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area. Despite all it has lost, many vestiges of Ghent’s past remain. The Sibley house on Ferry St. may date from Jeremiah Craig’s tenure; the 1833 Theodorick Fisher house and the James Tandy Ellis house (ca. 1861) are now bed-and-breakfasts. The business block on Main Cross is largely empty. A fire in 1915 destroyed several storefronts and weakened the Odd Fellows building; it collapsed suddenly months later and was rebuilt. An arsonist struck the 123-year-old Masonic Building in 1988, and its burned-out shell dominated the downtown for 15 years before being razed. The Ghent Baptist Church continues to meet in its 1843 sanctuary. The Christian Church closed in 1989, and its 1871 building has been rehabilitated for city offices and a proposed museum. An earlier Christian Church building (ca. 1836) is now a private residence.
Entwined with a sycamore tree in the yard of James Bledsoe Tandy’s 1842 house on Main Cross are the remains of what some have deemed the largest grape vine in Kentucky. Across the street, the 1889 Methodist Church is in poor condition; the congregation stopped meeting during the early 1960s. Its previous church building, built in 1859, became the Ghent Deposit Bank and is now the town’s post office, operated by Retta Craig Lykins, a descendant of Benjamin Craig. An earlier Methodist Church building on Union St. became the telephone exchange and today is a private residence. Near the post office are the Charlene McPherson and Evelyn Sanders homes, both former hotels. Many of Ghent’s small frame houses are also quite old. Some have become dilapidated, and concerns over their condemnation played a role in the 2006 election of William Mumphrey, Ghent’s first African American mayor. Noteworthy “Ghentiles” not previously mentioned include Russell Dufour, an entertainer and music teacher who wrote articles on local history in the 1950s and 1960s; Nancy Diuguid, who became a respected theater director in England and South Africa; Pam Browning, a pioneering Kentucky women’s basketball player; Princie Brown, an African American businesswoman; Price Chamberlain, a Cleveland arts figure; Verney Sanders, a Louisville sportswriter; legendary steamboat captain C. J. Dufour; Cliff Snell, a notorious barbecue entrepreneur; Dr. J. Sam Brown, a small-town doctor with a statewide reputation; and the brothers James, Luke, and Attilla Cox, prominent businessmen. In 2000 Ghent had a total population of 371. “Ghent Baptist Church to Celebrate 175th,” KP, August 2, 1975, 1K. “Town of Ghent in Carroll County, Ky. Dates Back to Year 1812,” KP, December 18, 1936, 26. U.S. Census Bureau. “American Fact Finder. Data Set: Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data, Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed April 24, 2006).
Bill Davis
GHENT BAPTIST CHURCH. The Ghent Baptist Church, originally known as the Baptist Church at Port William, was organized on April 5, 1800, as an outcome of a revival held in Port William (now Carrollton) in Carroll Co. Many of its members had been members of the Traveling Church, a church group that migrated from Virginia, fleeing persecution. The new Baptist church of 10 members, constituted at Port William, met at first in homes. Its first building was a log structure at the mouth of McCool’s Creek. In 1814 a brick building was erected near McCool’s Settlement (now Ghent), and the church was called McCool’s Bottom Baptist Church. In 1843 the church built a new and larger building and became known as the Ghent Baptist Church. Donations for the construction consisted of money and farm products, including several barrels of whiskey. This building remains and serves as the present sanctuary of the church.