418 GRASSY CREEK CHRISTIAN CHURCH Hills was home to Sanders and his descendants until 1883. It was also the site of many political meetings during the 1830s and 1840s, especially during the buildup leading to the Mexican War. This unusually constructed home was built on 750 acres that Ann Nicholas Sanders, the fi rst wife of Lewis Sanders, inherited from her father, George Nicholas, a politically powerful Lexington attorney. Lewis Sanders began construction on the foundations and barns in 1819. The main house, which dates to 1823, was built chiefly by slave labor of notched logs, shingles, and rafters hewn and shaped by hand on-site. According to biographer Anna V. Parker, there was no sawmill available. A stickler for detail, Sanders had his men age the cut flooring in the farm pond for two years to season it before they used the boards as planks. The main floor of Grass Hills has two large front rooms about 20 feet square connected by a 15-footwide main corridor. At the far end of the hall is a dining room with a large kitchen adjacent to the right side. On the left are two small bedrooms. Another three bedrooms, used for guests, are behind the right chimney corner, and a narrow, winding staircase leads around the chimney to an upstairs bedroom. A large veranda fronts the hall, and a small porch at the back is accessed by a door out of the dining room. The two front rooms have large wood fireplaces. All of the rooms are plastered except for Lewis Sanders’s own room on the left, which has exposed rafters and chinked logs. There are traces of early Georgian moldings, and some of the staircases are typical of early log construction. In the hall and right (east) large room, Greek Revival elements were added in the 1830s or 1840s, at a time when Sanders hosted many political events at Grass Hills. The basement includes a wine cellar, and when two families occupied the house, Lewis Sanders’s kitchen was located there as well. Upstairs are two large rooms, each with a separate stairway, and a wide hall between them. Grass Hills included the rambling main house, the barns, several outbuildings, a large pond, a 25acre orchard, a racetrack just beyond the front-yard fence, and fields of experimental grasses, grains, hemp, and other crops. In addition to thoroughbred racing horses, Sanders imported strains of Merino sheep and shorthorn cattle. He became an expert and a judge of Kentucky’s hemp and wool production. His longtime friendship with the Dufour family of Switzerland Co., Ind., gave him an interest in vineyards and wine production as well. There is a Kentucky State Historical Marker at Grass Hills, and on August 22, 1975, the house was listed on the National Register of Historical Places. About 91 acres were taken from the Grass Hills estate when I-71 (see Expressways) was constructed through Carroll Co. Parker, Anna V. The Sanders Family of Grass Hills. Madison, Ind.: Coleman, 1966.
Diane Perrine Coon
GRASSY CREEK CHRISTIAN CHURCH. This church, located in northwestern Pendleton Co., was organized in 1838 with 13 charter mem-
bers. The first church building was constructed of logs and was located along the South Fork of Grassy Creek, but the church building was later moved to a parcel of land donated by Richard Mullins, who had moved to the area from Virginia. In 1851 the original log church was replaced with a frame structure. In 1895 the interior of the building was remodeled so that it had an arched ceiling and a new platform with windows at the rear. The flood of 1937 damaged the interior of the church, requiring extensive repairs, and the building was also raised up on a three-foot foundation. Nevertheless, several subsequent floods did damage to the church over time. The building was raised again in the 1940s and a basement was added. In 1963 a building fund was started with the idea of moving the church to higher ground. In March 1964, one of the worst floods filled the church with water about four and a half feet deep in the auditorium. Then, on January 31, 1965, shortly after the morning service, a fire broke out in the ceiling of the building and the entire structure burned to the ground. The congregation rebuilt on higher ground, next to the old Richard Mullins homestead, on land willed to the church by Theodore Blackburn. On June 27, 1965, a groundbreaking ser vice was held and construction began. In spring 1974, the church began work on a new parsonage, where the Richard Mullins homestead once stood. Belew, Mildred Boden. The First 200 Years of Pendleton County. Falmouth, Ky.: M. B. Belew, n.d. [ca. 1994]. “Roads Damaged; One Bridge Washed Out by Sunday’s Storm,” KP, June 27, 1928, 1. “Rural Store Fills Niche for Village,” KP, May 19, 1993, 9A. “Society—Grassy Creek,” KP, May 7, 1931, 6.
Mildred Belew
GRATZ. Located on the western edge of Owen Co., the community of Gratz sits on the eastern shore of the Kentucky River, six miles west of Owenton along Ky. Rt. 22 and 28 miles upriver from Carrollton. A bridge at Gratz carries Ky. Rt. 22 across the river into Henry Co. It is believed that the city was named for Benjamin Gratz Brown, the grandson of Kentucky’s first U.S. senator, John Mason Brown, whose family owned most of the land in the area. A post office was established in 1844 as Clay Lick, from the name of the local creek that empties into the river, but in 1851 the post office was renamed Gratz. There was a resort hotel on Clay Lick Creek, which catered to travelers and their desire for sulfur water, and a saloon was located nearby. The town was surveyed in 1847 and incorporated as a sixth-class city in 1881. The city’s three landings were once congested, with wagons busily off-loading coal, hardware, and general merchandise for inland Owen Co. The population of Gratz reached its peak of 300 residents around the year 1900; at that time the town had four churches, two schools (one for whites and one for African Americans), two hotels, a bank, three medical doctors, two drugstores, a dentist, an opera house, a band, and a baseball team. Showboats such as
Billy Bryant’s visited Gratz annually. During the last quarter of the 19th century, Cedar Grove College operated in Gratz, and a student there for a short time was Judge James W. Cammack Sr. A lead mine flourished nearby in the early part of the 20th century. About that same time, there was a ninth-grade school at Gratz. The building it used is today’s community center. In recent years, Ky. Rt. 35, which runs along the Kentucky River through Gratz, has been improved and widened as part of a general upgrade to facilitate access to the new Kentucky Speedway at Sparta. In the year 2000, the Gratz population was 89. An Atlas of Owen County, Kentucky. Philadelphia: Lake, 1883. Dias, Monica. “Town Bristles at Flow of Trucks to Speedway,” KP, April 25, 2000, 1K. Houchens, Mariam Sidebottom. History of Owen County: “Sweet Owen.” Louisville, Ky.: Standard, 1976. Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1984. U.S. Census Bureau. “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed February 21, 2005).
Doris Riley
GRAVES, BARTLETT (b. November 22, 1766, Louisa Co., Va.; d. January 6, 1858, Erlanger, Ky.). Bartlett Graves, an early landowner and politician, was the son of Thomas and Isabel Bartlett Graves. He came to Bryants Station in Central Kentucky in 1785 and in the 1790s moved to Newport. There he became a representative to the state legislature and accumulated substantial amounts of property. He moved to modern-day Erlanger shortly after 1800. About 1806, he was widowed for a second time; he later married Elizabeth Leathers, the daughter of John Leathers, who owned much land in the area. In 1813 Graves purchased 500 acres, on which much of the city of Erlanger now stands, for $1,375. In 1819 he completed a large colonial home built of bricks made by slaves on the site. He named his home Walnut Grove and established a plantation on the property, where he lived for the rest of his life. Graves remained active in public affairs. He served as sheriff of Campbell Co.; was instrumental in the building of the Covington and Lexington Turnpike, which ran near his property in Erlanger; and was also involved in the creation of Kenton Co. from Campbell Co. in 1840. He raised a family of 13 children. Walnut Grove was sold to the Bedinger family after Graves died, and when the property was subdivided, the streets were named Bartlett and Graves in honor of this early settler. Graves died in 1858 and was buried at the Florence Cemetery in Boone Co. Onkst, Wayne, ed. From Buffalo Trails to the TwentyFirst Century: A Centennial History of Erlanger, Kentucky. Erlanger, Ky.: Erlanger Historical Society, 1996. Reis, Jim. “Erlanger Pioneer and Land Owner Bartlett Graves Played an Active Role in the Life of His Community,” KP, May 17, 1993, 4K.
Wayne Onkst