"Historic Places at the Crossroads"

6th Annual Preservation Week 2004 Photo-Essay Competition

First Place: Katie Donohue

Title: One of History's Hidden Treasures

Dodging yet another thorn bush, I once again found myself wondering why I was so intent on finding an old building in the woods. There were certainly many other endangered houses in Lexington that wouldn't require an hour's worth of searching to find. I had discovered the hard way that a house could have an address without being anywhere near a paved road. The residents at the last home we had passed confirmed that a stone house was about a quarter-mile beyond the creek. They waved in the general direction where the path to the house began. Not seeing a path of any kind, my father and I had simply started muscling our way through the brush towards a vague outline on the horizon. As I rounded the next clump of trees, all of my grumbling vanished. Standing before me, proudly erect, stood a charming two-story cabin.

The Shryock house. Feeling steeped in a time from long ago, I approached he building and began to set up my camera. This action disturbed a gathering of wild turkeys just inside the doorway, and they flew off in an uproar of feathers. Surveying the house, I noticed two crumbling windows and an ell that broken down long ago. Not knowing if it would be safe to wander inside, I had to be content to observe the house from the outside only. The stonework frame had held sturdily for 200 years despite weathering and a lack of upkeep in the past 50 years. After taking some photographs, I hiked slowly back to the car still marveling over the house and the history it represented.

In the early 19 th century, the Scotch-Irish began to migrate toward the western frontiers in search of good land and social acceptance. As they began to build houses for their families, they used the stone masonry skills that had been carried with them from Pennsylvania. The most fashionable architecture pattern was Pennsylvania's English style house. The stones were fitted and laid without mortar to form a one or two story house with a gable roof and two chimneys. The door was placed front and center with evenly spaced windows on either side. The walls were two feet thick with two rooms per floor and enclosed corner staircases. The designs were both fashionable and practical, providing shelter from weather and Indian raids. While building their stone houses, the frontiersmen added their own addition to the English style by constructing side windows to light their attic. As the Scotch-Irish migrated from one frontier to another, they built their stone houses leaving reminders of their large contribution in settling America's western frontier of the time.

John Fredrick Shryock was a Scotch-Irishman who moved to Kentucky with his wife, Frances, around 1790. Upon his arrival he was deeded 99 acres of land near David's Fork. In 1815, Frederick Shryock purchased an adjacent tract of land from his brother, Jacob Shryock. A letter, dated 3 Nov. 1941, from Miss Lorena T. Lowell, a great granddaughter of Frederick, states:

"(John) Fredrick Shryock owned 800 acres of land in Fayette Co., KY, which is the very finest land in all the county. The stone was taken from the quarry on the farm and the timber was all cut on the place. The woodwork in the house is all walnut and the walls are about 18 or 20 inches thick. It is now used and has been for many years used as a tenant house."

I found this letter in the book, The Shryock Line, compiled by Mrs. W. Harvey Johnson, a descendant of the Shryock line. The letter went on to say how beautiful the house must have been in its time, and Miss Lowell marveled at how it still retained so much of its majesty. When I saw the building myself, I realized what she meant. The house appeared as a frozen fragment of history, waiting to come alive again. Built in the fashionable English style of that time, it remains as one of the nine surviving stone houses from that time period in Fayette County.

Though the structure of the house still holds, it is in great need of
restoration. Hidden in the woods, away from normal traffic, the house has not been visited by vandals. The damage has come from lying abandoned for years and surviving against the elements. The residents of Fayette County may not realize it, but this house has come to the ultimate crossroads: To be or not to be? The house can't answer that question. It is now up to the people of Lexington, Kentucky, to decide if this house will continue to stand proudly on our land or eventually collapse to rubble.

As I stood at the base of the house, imaging how it must have looked back in the glory days, I also ventured to imagine its future. It was then that I realized I did not have to let fate decide which direction the house would take at this crossroads. Perhaps now I can play a role in preserving the Shryock house and the history it holds. I hope that when the people of Kentucky answer the house's unspoken question, to be or not to be, they will answer, "To be." And the Shryock house will not be forgotten for generations to come.

This essay and photograph(s) are the property of Preservation Kentucky, Inc. and Kentucky Heritage Council and that any use of the photo or essay must be approved by PK and KHC.