504 KENTON, WILLIAM G. their march from Kentucky to Canada. Their purpose was to engage the British general Henry Proctor and his Indian allies. Harrison cornered Proctor on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario, Canada, east of Detroit. The battle was over quickly and Tecumseh was killed while leading the charge. Tecumseh’s death, which collapsed the Indian resistance in Ohio, ended Kenton’s fighting days. Simon Kenton Jr. returned from the war unharmed. Unable to read or write, Kenton struggled to manage his finances and spent much of his later life in poverty. During an 1820 visit to Kentucky, he was imprisoned for more than a year for his debts. He died in 1836 at New Jerusalem, Ohio. In 1863 he was re-interred at the Urbana Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio. Clark, Thomas D. Simon Kenton: Kentucky Scout. Ashland, Ky.: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1998. Crain, Ray. Simon Kenton: The Great Frontiersman. Urbana, Ohio: Main Graphics, 1992. Eckert, Allan W. The Frontiersmen: A Narrative. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. Edmunds, R. David, “The Thin Red Line: Tecumseh, The Prophet and Shawnee Resistance.” Timeline Magazine 4, no. 6 (December 1987–January 1988): 2–19. Kenton, Edna. Simon Kenton: His Life and Period. Garden City, N.Y.: Country Life Press, 1930. Klink, Carl F. Tecumseh: Fact and Fiction in Early Records. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1961. Simmons, David A. “Simon Kenton.” Timeline Magazine 5, no. 2 (April–May 1988): 56– 61.
Stephen M. Vest
KENTON, WILLIAM G. (b. August 28, 1941, Maysville, Ky.; d. November 5, 1981, Lexington, Ky.). Legislator William Gordon Kenton was the son of William Gordon Kenton Sr. and Martha Roden Kenton. It was reported that he founded the Mason Co. chapter of the Kentucky Young Democrats at age 14. An early mentor of his was Albert B. “Happy” Chandler, whom he met when Chandler visited Maysville High School in 1955, during Kenton’s freshman year. After Chandler (1935–1939 and 1955–1959) was elected governor of Kentucky for his second term that same year, he invited Kenton to a ceremony in Frankfort. The school officials made it known that Kenton could attend but would be charged with an unexcused absence for the day, so Chandler moved the ceremony to Maysville. Kenton left his studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., to work in Chandler’s campaign for a third term as governor in 1963; Chandler lost, and Kenton earned his undergraduate degree that year at the University of Kentucky at Lexington (UK). He graduated from the UK Law School in 1966 and began to practice with a firm in downtown Lexington. As an attorney, he represented the cast of a production in Lexington of Oh! Calcutta, a Broadway musical with sexual themes. Kenton won acquittals for his clients, who had been charged with obscenity. He said at the time, “It’s not a question of whether it’s appealing. My responsibility is to represent clients and protect their rights.”
He was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives from the 53rd district in Fayette Co., serving 1970–1971, and from the 75th District in Fayette Co. for five consecutive terms (1972–1981), serving as House Speaker from 1976 until 1981. He was the youngest Speaker in the history of Kentucky and, at that time, the youngest in the nation. Kenton’s grandfather W. T. Kenton was also a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives and served for several terms, and his great-grandfather Eldrige Kenton served in both the Kentucky House of Representatives and the Kentucky Senate in the 1880s. As House Speaker, Kenton was the principal advocate of his era for greater legislative independence and legislative responsibility. His efforts led to the televising of legislative sessions statewide on Kentucky Educational Television. He believed this was the most important reform in the Kentucky House in his time. He helped to make meetings of legislative committees, where witnesses are heard and key decisions made, open to the press and the public. During his years as House Speaker, Kenton also championed meaningful legislative oversight of the executive branch, a departure from the custom and practice then prevailing. A series of revelations concerning no-bid personal-service contracts led to the formation of the Program Review and Investigation Committee of the House of Representatives, a committee that continues to operate. And Kenton initiated and led to enactment an amendment to the Kentucky Constitution to permit the legislature to override a governor’s veto. Even given his ambition for legislative independence, Kenton worked well as House Speaker with three different administrations to produce large increases in funding for education at every level. He also sponsored and led to passage the Homestead Exemption, a tax discount for older homeowners that remains law. Kenton campaigned for reelection on his support for the repeal of the sales tax on food, prescription medicine, and utility bills and for the passing of House Bill 44, which remains a significant restraint on increases in local property taxes. Kenton sponsored legislation to create the Kentucky Cancer Commission and was named its first chairman. He was the principal advocate for the establishment of the Kentucky Horse Park, the tourist attraction located on Ironworks Pk. in Fayette Co. After a brief tussle between Kenton and Governor John Y. Brown Jr. (1979–1983), which Kenton won, the Kentucky Horse Park board was made independent of the Kentucky Parks Department. Without apology, Kenton espoused state government as an agent for social, educational, and economic opportunity for everyday Kentuckians. He thought politics an eminently respectable profession. A master parliamentarian, he is said to have run a “tight ship” as House Speaker. He was a prominent representative of Kentucky in national and regional legislative associations. With his broad body, his resonant, deep bass voice, his ingratiating manner, and his pristine reputation, Kenton became the appealing public face of the state legislature and dominated the Kentucky
House of Representatives during three legislative sessions. He brought order to what had been an often-unruly legislative body. In so doing, he shattered several House Speaker’s gavels and met all jokes about it with good humor. He became known affectionately as “Boom-Boom.” From an early age Kenton had wanted to become governor someday, and he made no effort to hide this ambition. He had begun to appear on lists of potential candidates in an upcoming governor’s race when he was stricken in early November 1981 with a pulmonary embolism that quickly led to heart and kidney failure. He died at the University of Kentucky teaching hospital named for Chandler, his mentor. As he struggled for life and while details of his illness were front-page news for several days across Kentucky, he was reelected to the Kentucky House of Representatives by his constituents in Lexington’s 75th legislative district. Kenton was 40 years old when he died, leaving his wife and two small children; he was buried at Maysville Cemetery. His widow, Carolyn Kenton, was elected to succeed him as state representative in 1982. In a memorial service in the chamber of the Kentucky House of Representatives when the legislature reconvened in 1982, Governor Brown said, “No one person in our lifetime has had such an impact on this body.” A Kentucky Historical Highway Marker at Second and Limestone Sts. in Maysville, in front of the old Maysville High School, honors Kenton. “Assembly Pauses to Honor Kenton,” Lexington Herald, January 6, 1982, A5. “The Lost Leader,” Lexington Herald, November 6, 1981, A14.
Jim Dady
KENTON BAPTIST CHURCH. The Kenton Baptist Church was organized on November 7, 1937, at a meeting of the founders and local Baptist ministers at Kenton Station in southern Kenton Co. The original membership consisted of people from the nearby churches of Calvary Baptist, Hickory Grove Baptist, Latonia Baptist, Oak Island Baptist, and Baptist churches in Elsmere, Independence, and Morning View, as well as three candidates for baptism. The first pastor, Harold Lee Davis Jr., was called to serve the following week. By September 1939, the church’s membership had grown to 57 and the congregation had applied for admittance to the North Bend Association of Baptists (now Northern Kentucky Baptist Association). Weekly ser vices, held in the Kenton Station Rd. church building, began in 1945 after eight years of biweekly worship. In 1952 the church purchased 1.8 acres on Ky. Rt. 177 (Decoursey Pk.) and broke ground for the current facility on April 11, 1965; only the basement was built at that time. On November 14, 1965, after the final Sunday School at the old building, the members marched up Decoursey Pk. to the new church for the first worship ser vice there. Construction on the sanctuary began in July 1970 and was completed in November of that year. Current ser vices continue to be held in this building. The church has from the earliest days been a supporter of missions and various community projects.