Kentucky Memories Rowan County 1856-2006 HC Signed Jack D. Ellis Mountain Press

Description: KENTUCKY MEMORIES: Reflections of Rowan County 1856 - 2006 A Sesqui-Centennial Edition Hardcover Written and signed by Jack D. Ellis Very rare volume of local Kentucky history! Including a post card from the area with note from author. Tear on last couple of pages, no dust jacket (not sure if there ever was one?), otherwise in good pre owned condition. Preface by the author: A birthday should be a time of celebrating past events while looking hopefully into the future. In 1856, Rowan County, Kentucky, was formed from sections of Fleming and Morgan counties and was named for U.S. Representative John Rowan. Therefore, 2006 is Rowan County's 150th birthday and should be a time of celebrating the past as well as looking hopefully into the future. This book chronicles much of Rowan's rich 150-year history. We live in the present and anticipate the future based upon our knowledge of the past. By reaching deep into our past we try to understand those people and events that shaped our lives. In reaching into the past and trying to understand those who have gone before us, by studying their character, sensing their spirit, sympathizing with their suffering and savoring their success, we are better able to understand the present as we look forward to the future. Therefore, if any civilization, culture, or community is to advance, it must have a clear understanding of its past. Scientists tell us that by looking through the Hubble Space Telescope flying above the atmosphere they can see deep into outer space and are better able to understand how the universe was formed. Morehead State University, with the help of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has installed a giant telescope on a hill high above Rowan County. Now just suppose that a local historian could stand on top of that hill and by focusing that telescope on this region, could observe the formation of Rowan County. Through that magic telescope the observer could witness the political, economic, cultural, educational, and social development of Rowan County. This book, without the benefit of that magic telescope, uses traditional methods of research in an attempt to reflect many of these past events. Rowan, the 104th county in Kentucky, was carved out of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains from portions of Fleming and Morgan Counties. Morehead, its county seat, soon became known as "The City of the Hills." But hills can be a help or a hindrance in the development of a community. The geography of an area exerts a strong influence upon the character and behavior of its residents. It has been said that the encircling sea around Great Britain helped make the English an adventuresome and resolute people, while the climate of Spain contributed to the Spanish becoming a hot blooded race of people. The great forests of Russia helped develop a stoic, backward nation slow to embrace the commerce and industry of the outside world. Even the climate of Israel and Egypt gives strong evidence that the geography can influence the culture, economy, and religion of a nation. The hills and mountains of Eastern Kentucky seem to exert a strong influence upon the character and behavior of the people who live there. Those born in the hills have a strong spiritual, reverential attraction toward the hills that never seems to leave them. Even though they may move far away during their lifetime, they never seem to get that spirit of the hills out of their mind. "Happy" Chandler, twice elected governor of Kentucky, once said, "Every former Kentuckian I ever met living in another state is either returning to Kentucky, or planning to return." One of the world's greatest mountain climbers, Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to scale Mt. Everest. He once said, "There is a certain quality about a hill or mountain that defies analysis. Call it the spirit of the hill, or whatever you like, but no one has ever explained why hills have such magnetic power over people." That might explain why climbers want to climb them, artists want to paint them, poets want to write about them, authors want to use them as settings for their books, and people born among them remain there, or, if they move away are never happy until they return. Perhaps it is their beauty, their serenity, their endurance and their quietness that not only keeps people living there, but brings them back after they leave. They are like salmon returning to the place of their birth to spawn and die. There is a special affinity between hills and the people who are born there that continues with them throughout their lifetime. When eastern Kentucky was settled in the late 1700s, there were high craggy cliffs and lush green hills heavily forested with virgin evergreen and hardwood trees. The hills and hollows were separated by rushing streams, sometime falling hundreds of feet to the mile. It was into that rugged, isolated, almost impenetrable terrain the hearty Anglo-Saxon pioneers of eastern Kentucky chose to settle. This was such an isolated area that it was almost bypassed during the early westward migration of this nation. Daniel Boone went south and blazed the Wilderness Trail through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Others came from the north, floating down the Ohio River and settled in central Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and the Plains states. So it must have been only the bravest and heartiest of men and women who dared to penetrate, let alone settle, live, and build houses in this rugged region. No roads or rivers traversed this isolated land. It was not on a beaten path to anywhere. To get here you had to be coming here because it was not on the way to anywhere else. But come the people did, and in coming they settled, and in settling they remained, and in remaining they helped over come the social, educational, economic, and cultural hindrance of the hills. Those hardy eastern Kentucky settlers carved out counties, built homes, businesses, town, schools, churches, industry, and infrastructure. The book you are holding in your hand tells how one county broke those barriers of the hills. It reflects Rowan's growth from an illiterate, feud-filled, violent community to a modern educational, cultural, recreational, and medical center in eastern Kentucky.

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End Time: 2024-11-26T15:58:08.000Z

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