ALL THE PIKE COUNTY Vertreeses are directly descended from Captain John Vertrees, who looms large in the history
of Hardin county, Kentucky, and in the story of the Severns Valley and the region where now is Elizabethtown. Records
show that official orders, court edicts, etc., in the very early settlement were given publication in the Kentucky
Gazette and "at the door of Captain John Vertrees, a place of public worship, immediately after divine service."
This, in the year 1796, is the first mention of a place of public worship in the history of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
John Vertrees was a Baptist and his house was a place of Baptist worship; the Baptists being the pioneers in the
valley, no other orthodox denomination having representation on the waters of the Severns for many years thereafter.
In the shadow of a green sugar tree, near Haynes' Station, a Baptist organization, with no certain place to worship,
had been established June 17, 1781. Elder John Gerrard was ordained its first pastor. He had come out to Kentucky
in 1779, with Jacob Van Meter (Vanmeter), Sr., ancestor of the Pike county Chenoweths, and the Van Meter sons,
daughters, sons- and daughters-in-law, landing at the falls of the Ohio (now the site of Louisville) in the fall
of that year, removing to the Severns Valley in 1780.
Elder John Gerrard had married Susan Van Meter, daughter of old Jacob, before the migration to Kentucky. She was
a sister of Mary Van Meter, the mother of Abraham, James Hacklee and Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth of the early Pike
county settlement. She was also the sister of Margaret Van Meter, who was the mother of Mary Haycraft, wife of
Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth of the pioneer Hinman Chapel neighborhood, and of Nancy Haycraft, wife of Captain John
Vertrees's son, John Vertrees, Jr.
Elder John Gerrard exercised his functions as first pastor for those pioneer Kentucky Baptists for only nine months.
Compelled to seek game for his table in the forests, he and others who were on a hunt were surprised in the thick
woods by a band of Indians; all, except the pastor, succeeded in escaping. Elder Gerrard, being lame, was taken;
whether he was slain outright, burned at the stake or kept in captivity the remainder of his days, was never known.
The elder Jacob Van Meter and his wife (ancestors of scores of Pike countians) were in the original constitution
of this early Kentucky church, as was also the younger Jacob Van Meter. The descendants of the first Jacob Van
Meter were said by the historian, Haycraft, in 1869, to number upwards of 3,000, scattered over nearly all the
states of the union.
This first church was called the Regular Baptist church of Severns Valley. In later days, the same church existed
in Elizabethtown, being known as the United Baptist Church of Jesus Christ, called Severns Valley, being in 1869
the oldest Baptist church then maintaining an existence in Kentucky. All of its original members, including its
first preacher, Elder Gerrard, emigrated from Virginia. Like the grave of Moses, the place of sepulchre of the
first preacher, Gerrard, is not known to this day.
The numerous Pike county descendants of those first Baptist in the Severns Valley of Kentucky may feel some curiosity
as to how their ancestors appeared when they met for public worship on the Lord's Day in the time of the Revolution.
For their information we herewith repeat their story as related to the historian, Samuel Haycraft, Jr., brother
of Mrs. Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth and Mrs. John Vertrees, Jr., and published by Haycraft in 1869 in the Elizabethtown
News. The younger Van Meter had then been dead only a few years, having died when near 95; he had been a Baptist
for 84 years. His story, as repeated by Haycraft, follows:
"They then had no house of worship. In the summertime they worshiped in the open air; in the winter time they
met in the round log cabins with dirt floors, as there were then no mills or plank to make a floor. A few who had
aspired to be a little aristocratic, split timber and made puncheon floors.
"The men dressed as Indians; leather leggins and moccasins adorned their feet and legs. Hats made of splinters
rolled in buffalo wool and sewed together with deer sinews or buckskin whang; shirts of buckskin and hunting shirts
of the same; some went the whole Indian costume and wore breech-clouts. The females wore a coarse cloth made of
buffalo wool, underwear of dressed doeskin, sun bonnets, something after the fashion of men's hats, and the never-failing
moccasin for the feet in winter; in summer time all went barefooted.
"When they met for preaching or prayer, the men sat with their trusty rifles at their sides, and as they had
to watch as well as pray, a faithful sentinel kept a lookout for the lurking Indian.
"Now, gentle and fair reader, I beseech you not to blush or be ashamed of your forerunners; they were the
chosen of God and nature's nobility. There was no distinction or turning up of noses in that day; each was his
other's equal; they were brothers and so esteemed and loved each other.
"No burdened field of corn; no waving fields of wheat came to the harvest; no potato crop burrowed the earth.
The wild game that roamed the forest was the only dependence the first year; the rifle was indispensable. It was
made common cause, food was obtained at the risk of life. The unsuccessful hunter lacked nothing. The man who brought
down the buffalo, the deer or bear, divided out and all had plenty.
"When news reached a fort that Indians were around all were upon the alert, the men seeing that their weapons
were in order, and the women, God bless them, went each to her neighbor and inquired, ‘Have you plenty of meat?
If you have not, I have it.' And immediately there was an equal division. The dried venison, called ‘jirk,' was
the bread; the fat, juicy bear the esculent; the bulky buffalo, the substantial; and the turkey the dessert; nobody
had the dyspepsia and all had good teeth. But soon the brawny arm leveled the forest; fields were opened and a
plenty of the substantials of life soon blessed their labors.
"Often has the writer (Haycraft) heard old people talk with great fondness of old forting times as a green
spot in their history; they loved to dwell upon the scenes of early trials and dangers, when men and women were
all true- hearted and no selfishness."
The Vertrees, Van Meter, Hobbs and Haycraft families had a neighbor in the valley by the name of Christopher Bush,
who had a large family of sons and daughters. The younger Haycraft, the historian, says of the sons that they were
"stalwart men, of great muscular power, who had no backout in them, who never shunned a fight when they considered
it necessary to engage in it, and of whom nobody ever heard one cry ‘enough.'" One of the sisters of these
huskies married a man named Tom Lincoln, who by a former wife had had a son named Abraham, who in the nation's
hour of trial became its president. To this daughter of Christopher Bush fell much of the care of rearing and educating
the future president.
At this time, on Nolin Creek into which the Severns emptied, dwelt another family, whose illustrious name may be
read on a memorial stone in the court house park in Pittsfield, the family of Hodgen. The settlement on Nolin Creek
was then in Hardin county. This settlement centered around Hodgen's Mill, where now is Hodgensville, Kentucky,
county seat of Larue county, which was cut off from Hardin in 1842. Hodgen's Mill was then the seat of Robert Hodgen
and his wife, Sarah Larue (LaRue), whose son, Jacob Hodgen, came to Illinois in the 1820s, stopping first at Jacksonville,
coming then, in the early 1830s, to Highland, four miles south of present Pittsfield, then, in 1836, to the new
town of Pittsfield, where he built a house at what is now 233 West Adams Street, known for many years as the old
Scott house.
Here, in this early home of the Hodgens, the pioneer group that constituted the early Christian church in Pittsfield
was wont to worship before there was any church building in the town. Here Jacob Hodgen's son, John Thomson Hodgen,
destined to become president of the American Medical Association and to give to the world the benefit of the "Hodgen
splint," still in use in surgery, was reared. The famous surgeon was the grandson of Robert Hodgen and Sarah
Larue, who founded Hodgen's Mill (present Hodgensville), Kentucky.
Though the families of Robert Hodgen and John Vertrees later intermarried, the two families in those early days
were pitted against each other in a bitter struggle. This struggle arose out of a county seat war that raged for
years between the settlement in the Severns Valley and that at Hodgen's Mill on Nolin. Each settlement demanded
that it be made the county seat of Hardin county. In one camp were the Hodgens, Larues, Philipses, Ashcrafts, Kirkpatricks,
Kostars, etc.; in the other the families of Vertrees, Van Meter, Helm, Haycraft, Hobbs, Hynes, Churchill, Miller,
Bush, Bruce and others, the settlers of the valley being rather the most numerous.
There was hot blood all the time from 1784 to about 1803 and sometimes this hot blood boiled over and led to personal
encounter. Says Haycraft, speaking of this period:
"Particularly at the annual elections the feeling could not be controlled and during that period was the occasion
of at least fifty combats of fist and skull, there being no pistols, knives, brass knucks or slungshots used in
those days. The only unfair weapon used to my knowledge was by a young man by the name of Bruce, who had his shoes
pointed with iron or steel, something like gaffs, he himself being addicted to chicken fighting."
Haycraft further relates, "On one occasion, when quite small, I remember to have seen about twenty couple
fighting at once at the end of Main Cross street (Elizabethtown), near where the bridge now stands. I think that
was the last conflict."
At the January court term, 1795, held at the house of John Vertrees, action was taken for erecting the court house
in the valley and letting it to the lowest bidder. At the ensuing March term the Hodgens and the settlers around
Hodgen's Mill still wanting the court house there, the Justices ordered "that it be advertised that the Court
have no objection to the public buildings of Hardin county being erected in any convenient place where the largest
superscription may be made for; provided, a sufficient superscription may be made by the next May Court."
At the May term, the superscription failing, the Court ordered that the court house be built in the valley and
the contract was cried off to John Crutcher, gentleman, at 66 pounds, "to be built agreeable to a plan which
was read at the Court House door," presumably at the door of Captain John Vertrees.
Court then adjourned "till Court in course to be held in Elizabethtown," this being the first time that
the Vertrees settlement was designated as Elizabethtown. The place was named in honor of Colonel Andrew Hynes'
wife, Elizabeth, and was laid out on 30 acres of land which Colonel Hynes set apart in 1793 for the erection of
the county buildings.