GIBBS, CLINTON
During its history, the Ghent Baptist Church has assisted in the constituting of 14 Baptist churches. In Kentucky the churches were White’s Run Baptist Church (1810), Craigs Creek Baptist Church (1816), Four Mile Baptist Church (1820), Sharon Baptist Church (1825), Carrollton First Baptist Church (1849), Dallasburg Baptist Church (1851), Jordan Baptist Church (1867), Ghent Second Baptist Church (1871), Ohio Valley Baptist Church (1976), and Prestonville Baptist Church (1990). In Indiana the new churches were Indian Creek Baptist Church (1810), Bryants Creek Baptist Church (1815), Log Lick Baptist Church (1818), and Long Run Baptist Church (1818). The churches at Craigs Creek, Log Lick, Four Mile, Sharon, Ohio Valley, and Prestonville no longer exist. In August 1871 the blacks in the congregation expressed a desire to form a church of their own, and the church issued letters of dismission to any who requested them for that purpose. As a result the Second Baptist Church of Ghent was formed. When the present church building was built in 1843, space was provided for a cemetery. By 1880, however, the cemetery was full, and by 1911 the cemetery became so neglected that relatives were asked to move the remains of their loved ones to other cemeteries. The graves were removed and the area planted in grass and trees. In 1900 the Ghent Baptist Church and 11 other churches formed the White’s Run Baptist Association. Improvements to the Ghent Baptist Church property in subsequent years included stainedglass windows, electric lights, a new steeple, and new pews. A parsonage was built in 1914, a Sunday school annex was add in 1923, and a new education building was erected in 1969. In April 2000, the church celebrated 200 years of ministry. On several Sundays during the time of celebration, former pastors returned to preach. Ghent Baptist Church has had a total of 52 different pastors during its many years of ministry to the community. Minutes of the Ghent Baptist Church, 1880 to the present, Ghent Baptist Church, Ghent, Ky.
Ken Massey
GHENT COLLEGE (HIGH SCHOOL). Ghent College in Carroll Co. was founded in 1867, when local citizens, led by James Frank, formed a corporation creating a private nonsectarian college for white students at Ghent. A three-story brick college was built on the western edge of town the following year, at a cost of $31,700. The U.S. Mail steamboat line donated a bell for the new building, which had four classrooms on the ground floor, residences for students and the president on the upper floors, and a dumbwaiter that carried meals from the basement kitchen to a second-floor dining room. It was a coeducational institution with three departments: primary, academic, and collegiate, the latter offering degrees in both classical and scientific courses of study. The college’s first president was Ebenezer N. Elliot, the editor of the collection Cotton Is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments (1860) and a past president of some small colleges in Mississippi. El-
liot left to become principal of the Carroll Seminary in Carrollton and was replaced by James Shannon Blackwell, a linguist and philologist who later taught at the University of Missouri at Columbia. H. E. Holton became president in 1870. John A. Reubelt, a distinguished German-born linguist and author who had recently been expelled from Indiana University at Bloomington and from the Methodist Church in a doctrinal dispute, replaced Holton in 1871. Reubelt resigned in 1875, and the presidency was filled for five years by William J. Barbee, a Mississippi teacher and the author of Physical and Moral Aspects of Geology. A native of Kentucky, Barbee had obtained a medical degree before becoming a Disciples of Christ minister. Reubelt’s and Barbee’s terms were the highwater mark for the college. It declined later, during G. C. Crowe’s five-year tenure as president that began in 1880. In 1883 a local newspaper made an oblique reference to “discouraging circumstances” at the college. Author James Tandy Ellis, who had attended the school, attributed its decline to “religious bigotry,” which troubled the college even though it had been founded on nonsectarian principles. The trustees invited the commonwealth of Kentucky to acquire the property for an agricultural and mechanical college; failing that, the college was closed in 1887, and its last president, John Thomas Walker, returned to teaching in Owen Co. During its 20-year history the collegiate department granted 17 BAs and 14 MAD (maid of arts) degrees. The college building was sold to the Ghent Independent School District, which reopened it as a grade school and the Ghent High School in 1889, graduating five students in 1893. This high school remained for decades a small, underfunded school that seldom employed more than five teachers or graduated more than seven high school students in any given year. Ghent Independent School District merged into the Carroll Co. educational district in 1936, and the Ghent High School was closed; its students were sent to Carrollton High School in Carrollton. Elementary classes continued in the old college building until a fire destroyed the landmark on New Year’s Day 1940. On the old college grounds the Works Progress Administration constructed an elementary school building that served Ghent students from 1945 until its closing in 1972. The property today is in private hands. Bevarly, R. W. “History of Education in Carroll County,” MA thesis, Univ. of Kentucky, 1936. Gentry, Mary Ann. A History of Carroll County, Kentucky. M. A. Gentry, 1984. ——— , comp. Memorable Events: 1890—1990. Carrollton, Ky.: MPS Publishers, 1990.
Bill Davis
GHENT SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH. The Ghent Second Baptist Church is an African American congregation meeting at 405 Liberty St. in Ghent in Carroll Co. It was established by black members of the Ghent Baptist Church and of some other churches. Records are not extant as to the charter, the founders, the first pastor, and the officers of the church. In 1873 Nellie Slaughters came
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to teach in the public schools and is credited with having organized the church’s first Sunday school, and she was its first superintendent. It is believed that this school gave birth to the church and that the congregation worshipped in a livery stable on the east side of town. In 1879 a local white citizen by the name of Turner gave money to purchase, for $85, the front half of lot 93 (now 405 Liberty St.), on which a church building was erected. In the same year, Simeon Dillard, a trustee of the church, bought lot 88 (now 404 Union St.), located behind the church, which later was sold to the Colored Baptist Church and became the site of the church parsonage. On March 18, 1924, the church purchased the Richard Brightwell family cemetery, located at the southeast end of Carroll St., for $300. Additional property was purchased in 1995 and 2003, and as a result the church owns all the land between 405 Liberty and 404 Union Sts. During the 1970s and 1980s, men from the church along with men from the Carrollton Second Baptist, the Warsaw Second Baptist, and the Park Ridge Baptist churches in Gallatin Co. formed the TriCounty Chorus. This group often sang at church and community events throughout the area. The year 2002 witnessed the formation of a mass choir, directed by Raymond Brightwell. Anna Anderson and Richard Brooks were the organists of the group. Ghent (First) Baptist Church Minutes, Ghent Baptist Church, Ghent, Ky. Hampton, G. A., ed. “Historical Sketch of the Ghent Second Baptist Church,” 2002, Second Baptist Church, Ghent, Ky.
Ken Massey
GIBBS, CLINTON (b. August 8, 1891, Petersburg, Ky.; d. May 1, 1979, Cincinnati, Ohio). Organist Clinton Gibbs was the son of Frances Gibbs. By 1900 the Gibbs family was living along Wayne St. in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati. In 1926 Clinton Gibbs became the organist for the African American First Baptist Church in Walnut Hills, located just to the east and behind the former Lane Seminary complex along Gilbert Ave. Gibbs had studied music theory at Holderbach College with Prower Symon, once an instructor at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Gibbs also served at Carmel Presbyterian and the St. Andrew’s Episcopal churches in Cincinnati. He was the director of the Queen City Glee Club and was on the faculty of the local Lillian Aldrich Settlement School of Music. He became the vice president of the Cincinnati branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians and was a member of the Masonic Order (see Masons). He was affectionately called “the Professor.” Gibbs, who never married, died at his home at 2819 Preston St. in Walnut Hills in 1970, and after ser vices at his beloved First Baptist Church, he was buried at the United American Cemetery in the nearby Evanston neighborhood of Cincinnati. “Clinton Gibbs,” CE, May 5, 1970, 18. “Clinton Gibbs Ser vices Tomorrow,” CP, May 6, 1970, 50.