"Working Places / Places that Work"

8th Annual Preservation Week 2006 Photo-Essay Competition

1st Place: Andrew Angus, 6th Grade, St. Mary’s School (Paris)

Title:  The Boarding House Reach

Dear Reader:

Imagine it’s 1788 and you’re a farmer who has traveled over 100 miles on horseback, on foot, or in a wagon. You may have encountered black bear, wolves, Indians – who knows? You’ve finally reached a small town called Paris, the county seat of a huge Virginia county called Bourbon, four years before Kentucky became a state. (Bourbon County was then what is now 33 Kentucky counties). You’ve come here, like many other men, to file legal papers at the small log courthouse. Across from the courthouse square stands a noble three-story stone building that we now know as Duncan Tavern, but was then called “The Goddess of Liberty.” This was an important meeting place where you could do business, have a hot meal, drink a glass of ale, and have a dry place to sleep. Some of the famous men who visited the tavern were Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Michael Stoner, and Aaron Burr, to name a few.

Duncan Tavern was built in 1788 by Major Joseph Duncan, and later left to his widow, Anne Duncan. It has blue ash floors, limestone fireplaces, cherry and yellow poplar woodwork, horse hair or pig plaster, and hand-forged iron locks on the doors. In 1803, Mrs. Duncan had a house built onto the end of the tavern for herself and her six children, and she leased the tavern to John Porter of Virginia. We know that in the early years, the tavern had a billiard room, a ball room, and a tap room (where ale was poured).

During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the tavern was used as a proper boarding house, called the Burr House. During the Great Depression (1930’s), the tavern became a tenement house and was not maintained. It got so horrible, by 1940 the City of Paris had condemned it and planned to tear it down.

Mrs. Julia Ardery, in 1940, organized a battle to save the tavern, and she was the first to name it “Duncan Tavern.” “Miss Julia” got the City of Paris to sell Duncan Tavern to the Kentucky Society of Daughters of the American Revolution (K.S.D.A.R.) for the price of $1. She also got the county and city each to donate $2,000 for the tavern’s restoration.

Today, Duncan Tavern is furnished with fine, donated antiques – nothing dated after 1830. Many tourists come to see this oldest tavern in the state and its many beautiful furnishings, as well as the John Fox Jr. Genealogical Library on the ground floor of the tavern. The K.S.D.A.R. still own the building and use it for their state headquarters. Old-fashioned boarding house meals are served there each week, and people can rent the tavern for special events.

The nice lady I interviewed for this essay, Mrs. Kenney Roseberry, was a Regent of the K.S.D.A.R. for 7 years, and is now the Chairman of the John Fox, Jr. Genealogical Library. She explained about how when Duncan Tavern was a boarding house, the table would be very crowded at dinnertime, and when somebody wanted something, they would reach across the table and grab it. This was called the “boarding house reach.” I enjoyed this story, and I enjoyed the cool hand-forged iron locks. It gives me, and probably you, a feeling of excitement to know that when you’re walking around in Duncan Tavern, you’re walking on the same floors that Daniel Boone walked on many years before. If future generations want to feel this same feeling, we must preserve Duncan Tavern today! 

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.