WALLING, ALONZO, AND SCOTT JACKSON
1850. The old road to Lexington was part of the ancient Great Buffalo Path, which crossed the Ohio River at the mouth of the Licking River. This pathway continued south to the Dry Ridge Trace at Walton, which connected Lexington and Big Bone Lick in Boone Co. In 1819, twice-daily stage runs carried the mail and passengers from Lexington to Covington. The Wallace family, who were from Delaware, began their trip to Cincinnati in 1801, when Robert Wallace Sr., an artillery officer who had served under Gen. George Washington, moved west to Marietta, Ohio. In 1809 the Wallaces settled in Cincinnati, where they were counted among the city’s pioneers in 1840. Robert Wallace Jr. became an aide de camp to Gen. William Hull as he marched in the War of 1812 to capture Detroit, Mich., from the British. Wallace was captured with the rest of the garrison when Hull surrendered in August 1812. After he was paroled, Wallace returned to Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1816, where he married Jane Eliza Sterrett and became a partner in the Miami Exporting Company with his brother-in-law Jacob Baum. Wallace built a steamboat, the Hercules, which he pi loted from Louisville to New Orleans for the company. While in Louisville, Wallace acquired a family of slaves and from then on was a slaveholding Southern sympathizer. When he returned to the Cincinnati area in 1826, he moved from Cincinnati to Longwood, Ky., so that he could keep his slaves. He first built a log cabin in his woods along the Banklick Turnpike, in which he held a financial and an administrative interest. The new Latonia Springs outside Covington and three miles farther out the turnpike were drawing visitors from Cincinnati and from the South. About 1840 Robert Wallace built a large house with a portico on the ridge overlooking the turnpike. He furnished it with fancy rugs and furniture purchased at his son-in-law’s business, the John Shillito department store in Cincinnati. Wallace borrowed $12,000, using his estate, which was called Longwood, as collateral. In 1841 he found himself bankrupted by the financial crash that had occurred, but his brothers and his son-in-law were able to buy the Wallace farm and the Longwood mansion, and disaster was averted. In 1850 the City of Covington annexed all of the land up to the Wallace farm, which became the southern city limit. Wallace laid out a subdivision on the new Wallace Ave., which ran east of Greenup St. Only a few lots were sold before the Civil War, and the subdivision was closed. The large beech grove from Greenup St. east on Wallace Ave. became a community picnic ground, which by 1880 was known as Wallace Woods. From 1851 to 1854 the Covington and Lexington Railroad was completed west of the turnpike, and Covington began slowly to fill in the undeveloped land north of the farm. With the rumblings of war in 1861, Union artillery batteries were developed on the hills south of Covington and Newport, the cannons targeting the roads to the South. In August 1862, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expanded the batteries
into a defensive line that stretched along the Ohio River from Fort Thomas to above Ludlow. A wagon road, covered by rifle pits, connected periodic batteries. A pontoon bridge crossed the Licking River about where 26th St. in Covington now runs up to the Larz Anderson Battery on tunnel hill. Union general Lew Wallace’s headquarters were located in the Thompson house in the winery that looked out over the Banklick Creek valley toward the Latonia Springs. Martial law was declared in the Wallace Woods area and southward and farms in the area were ordered vacated. A young soldier from Illinois described sleeping in a vineyard with hundreds of other Union troops behind vacated mansions. By mid-October it became obvious that Confederate general Henry Heth was not going to attack Covington or Newport, and within weeks the Union trenches were empty. Col. Robert Wallace died of dysentery in August 1863, and his obituary recounted his military adventures in the War of 1812. It also listed his activities as a leader of the Democratic Party and as the head of grand juries in Covington dealing with slavery issues. After Jane Sterrett Wallace died in 1883, the Longwood mansion and grounds rested in the hands of C. G. Wallace, her younger son, and her orphaned granddaughter Jennie. The land north and west of the Longwood estate was incorporated as Central Covington in 1880. About 10 years later, the residents of the Wallace, Holmes, and Levassor farms petitioned Central Covington to annex them so that the residents could avoid the higher taxes in Covington, which was known to be interested in annexing these farms. C. G. Wallace died in 1893, and Jennie Holmes sued his heirs living in Ohio to force a subdivision of the Wallace farm, permitting settlement of Robert Wallace’s estate. The first lots in the new subdivision were sold in 1894, but construction was slow because of the poor economy. More than half of the lots were built on by 1910 and the remainder were built on by 1920. When Central Covington was annexed by Covington in 1906, the Wallace farms became a neighborhood within Covington. “Covington’s First Suburb—Turning 100,” KE, May 7, 1995, B3. Gastright, Joseph F. Gentlemen Farmers to City Folks: A Study of Wallace Woods, Covington, Kentucky. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Historical Society, 1980. “A Place for Pride to Endure; Wallace Woods Lives as Symbol of City’s Spirit,” KP, November 2, 1995, 1K.
Joseph F. Gastright
WALLER, JOHN, CAPTAIN (b. 1758, Stafford Co.,Virginia; d. February 1823, Bunker Hill, Pendleton Co., Ky.). John Waller, a Revolutionary War veteran and an early settler, who named the town of Falmouth, was one of the eight children of John and Mary Mathews Waller. He enlisted in the American Army on January 7, 1777, and was sworn in by Capt. John Mountjoy. After serving for three years in the 10th Regiment, he was honorably discharged in January 1780 at Philadelphia, having attained the rank of captain. He received a Land
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Office Military Warrant (no. 1567) for 2,300 acres in Kentucky. An 800-acre portion was located in Mason Co. and the remaining 1,500 acres in modern-day Falmouth. John Waller and his brother Edward came west to Kentucky in spring 1784 and helped Simon Kenton establish Kenton Station. The Waller brothers then left the Maysville area and traveled to Blue Licks in modern Robertson Co. There they parted company: Edward went south to the Paris, Ky., area and John moved west down the Licking River to the territory that became Falmouth. John married Garner Routt, the daughter of William Routt of later Bourbon Co., on August 16, 1784, and they had 10 children; the records do not reveal why she left him, taking all their children with her to Western Kentucky, and never returned. Much of Waller’s land was sold and resold several times to settle title disputes. Attempts to resolve the matters in Waller’s favor through the Kentucky state legislature and the U.S. Supreme Court failed. Many of the Waller family’s records that might have shed light on Falmouth’s early history have been lost. A fire destroyed the original Waller cabin near Falmouth during the late 1800s, leaving many questions unanswered. Waller was elected in 1791 as a representative to the general assembly of Virginia. On December 7, 1791, he received a certificate for being a Past Master in the Masonic Lodge. When the trustees of Falmouth held their first meeting in 1794, Waller was appointed clerk pro tem. The selling of lots in the town of Falmouth began on Monday, July 22, 1794, on order of the trustees, and Waller, as clerk, was instructed to advertise the sale. Waller died in 1823 in the two-story log house that he erected on Bunker Hill in Pendleton Co. He was buried, as was the custom at the time, in the garden graveyard on that property. Hartman, Margaret Strebel. Life History of Captain John Waller, 1758–1823. Falmouth, Ky.: Warren J. Shonert, 1985. Kleber, John E. ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992.
Mildred Belew
WALLING, ALONZO, AND SCOTT JACKSON (Walling: b. October 20, 1876, Mount Carmel, Ind.; d. March 20, 1897, Newport, Ky.; Jackson: b. March 1, 1869, Wiscasset, Maine; d. March 20, 1897, Newport, Ky.). Walling and Jackson gained notoriety through their convictions as murderers. Early on the morning of February 1, 1896, young Jack Hewling trudged along an abandoned lane paralleling the Alexandria Pike (U.S. 27) in Northern Kentucky, south of Newport. In the dim light, seeing a bundle of dark clothing lying between two bushes, he stopped to investigate and then retched in horror as he recognized a woman’s body lacking a head. Lurid details of this sensational case appeared in the press nationwide for the next 13 months. Authorities discovered that the victim was four or five months pregnant and that she was wearing tiny, size 3B, shoes from a store in Greencastle, Ind. Ultimately, police found that she was Pearl Bryan,