938 WASHINGTON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH restored theater reopened with a black-tie gala celebration on November 25, 2006. The Historic Washington Opera House. “Washington Opera House History.” www.maysvilleplayers.com (accessed August 18, 2007).
WASHINGTON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. This church’s congregation held its first meeting in the home of Isaiah Keith on April 24, 1792, in Washington in Mason Co. Its first officers were Isaac Cannon, Edward Harris, Andrew Henderson, Isaiah Keith, and Dr. John P. Campbell, who as one of the eight early Presbyterian missionaries to the area helped organized the church. In 1790 Washington was the second-largest city in Kentucky (which was not a state until 1792). The minutes of Kentucky’s Transylvania Presbytery first mention the Presbyterian church at Washington in 1793. The church’s first regular pastor was another of the early missionaries, Rev. Robert Wilson, who was installed in 1799; he also helped establish churches in Augusta and Maysville. Also in 1799 the church was transferred to the Washington Presbytery. The Washington Presbyterian Church’s first building was built in 1806 of brick and had a high ceiling; it was furnished with high-backed pews. A cemetery near the church was later destroyed by road construction. In 1815 the church was transferred to the West Lexington Presbytery. The 1806 building was torn down in 1844, and a second building was erected at a cost of $2,500 that same year on the site just opposite the present Washington Presbyterian Church. It was of similar construction but had a gallery for black servants. After this structure was deemed unsafe and torn down in 1868, the third (present) building, a framed one-room building, was built in 1870–1871 for $4,000. In 1936 the Washington Presbyterian Church celebrated its 144th anniversary. Rev. William S. Smythe was its pastor, and the elders were David Rannells, who had conducted a classical school in the city for approximately 40 years, William Richey, and Isaiah Thompson. The church has a vibrant history of missionary work. Mary Wilson (daughter of Robert Wilson) married Rev. Lorin Andrews, and the couple served as missionaries in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in late 1827. The church also had several sewing societies and ladies aid societies. The Ladies Missionary Society was organized as early as 1886. The First Mission Study Class distributed pigs to collect money for the Leper Fund and also sent boxes of bedclothes and clothing to mountain schools. Allen, James S., and Ruth R. “The Church with Its Cherished Memories since 1792 Organized in 1796,” 1972, Washington Presbyterian Church, Washington, Ky. Green, Thomas M. ed., Weekly Maysville Eagle, December 27, 1871.
Alex Hyrcza
WASHINGTON TRACE RD. A trace is a path or trail, usually of trampled vegetation, inadver-
tently left by animals or human beings as they travel from one place to another. In early historic times, numerous traces were made by animals such as bears or migrating bison (see Buffalo Traces). Many of our modern highways follow early bison traces. There were also trails or traces left intentionally by pioneers and explorers such as Daniel Boone, who marked his Wilderness Road by notching trees along the way. Washington Trace in Campbell, Bracken, and Mason counties is a road that roughly follows a trail left by early settlers traveling from Northern Kentucky toward the town of Washington in Mason Co., just outside Maysville. In the early days, the trace evidently began where today’s Four Mile Rd. and Fender Rd. intersect in Campbell Co. From there it went out Fender Rd. to Four and Twelve Mile Rd., then to Twelve Mile Rd., and then to today’s Washington Trace. The trace then meandered southeast through the towns of Carthage and Flagg Springs, where it began to follow present-day Ky. Rt. 10. It went through the towns of Peach Grove, Brooksville, Powersville, and Germantown, and when it neared Maysville, it followed for several miles present-day U.S. 68, going toward Blue Licks. The trace ended at Simon Kenton’s block house in Washington. Many noted Northern Kentucky people lived along the trace. William Kennedy and his son James built a log cabin at Flagg Springs in 1789, from which they surveyed much of northern and eastern Campbell Co. They were also buried near the trace. Elijah Herndon built a home for his family there in 1818, and the structure still stands today. His daughter Demarius Herndon White and her husband, Joseph Jasper White, raised their family at Carthage, on the trace. Demarius wrote an interesting diary from 1879 to 1883 about her everyday life there. Early preacher and builder James Monroe Jolly built at least two churches along the trace and was the pastor of the one at Flagg Springs. Absolom Columbus Dicken lived most of his life near the trace and referred to it in his Civil War diary. The executed Confederate Civil War veteran William Francis Corbin lived along the trace and was buried on his farm beside this historic road. The land along Washington Trace today remains relatively undeveloped. Wessling, Jack. Early History of Campbell County, Kentucky. Alexandria, Ky.: Privately published, 1997.
Jack Wessling
WASHINGTON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. The church currently known as the Washington United Methodist Church was the second Methodist church established in Kentucky and has been a constant religious presence in Mason Co. since its organization in 1786. Thomas and Sarah Stevenson, settlers from Maryland, sponsored the Methodist church at Washington. Lewis Collin’s History of Kentucky notes that the Stevensons were on the second flatboat down the Ohio River, landing at Limestone Landing in present-day Mason Co.; the earlier settlers of the
area had come by canoe. While living at nearby Kenton’s Station in 1786, the Stevensons entertained Rev. Benjamin Ogden, a Methodist preacher. In that same year they built a cabin near Washington, Ky.; Ogden returned with his church elder, James Haw, and the church now named the Washington United Methodist Church was established. From this beginning until 1818, circuitriding preachers ministered to local Methodists in the courthouse, in homes, and even in the local jail. The first log church, built in 1818, was replaced in 1826 by a stone church located in town on the corner of Main and York Sts. The Methodist Episcopal Church, as this church was known at the time, prospered until the issue of slavery split the Methodists nationally in 1845. The Washington Church reorganized as the Washington Methodist Episcopal Church South, and a new church building was built in 1848. That building served the congregation for more than a century. It was sold in 1969 and now houses an interdenominational church museum that is open to the public. By 1939 the local church had shortened its name to the Washington Methodist Church. Several pastors of note served the church around the turn of the century. Rev. Urban Valentine William Darlington served from 1896 to 1900 and later became bishop of the Kentucky Methodist Conference. Rev. J. J. Dickey was pastor at the Washington Methodist Church in 1902, 20 years after he had gone to Jackson, Ky., while a Presbyterian and organized Jackson Academy (later Lees College, and now part of the Hazard Community and Technical College) there. In 1899 a parsonage was purchased in Washington on Main St., but a new parsonage was built behind the church in 1955. During the pastorate of R. C. Mynear, in 1966, a decision was made to build a new church building. Land was purchased from an estate known as Cedar Hill, and the new church was dedicated on October 19, 1969, with Bishop Roy Short and the church’s new pastor, Jackson Brewer, on hand. The year before, several groups had united nationally to form the United Methodist Church, so the church in Washington became the Washington United Methodist Church. The church building sustained heavy damage in January 1975 as a result of arson, but the damage was repaired and the church reopened that August. “Arson Destroys Church,” KP, January 22, 1975, 1K. Collection of the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, Ky. Collins, Richard H. History of Kentucky. Vol. 1. Covington, Ky.: Collins, 1882. “To Rebuild Gutted Church,” KP, January 24, 1975, 4K.
John Klee
WASTE DISPOSAL. Northern Kentucky was no more advanced in its early methods of waste disposal than the rest of the nation. Depending upon where people lived in Northern Kentucky, their trash was dumped in privies or local sinkholes, thrown in nearby rivers and streams, burned, or put in open dumps. Many in rural areas relied on the barrel and the match or disposed of trash on