 |
Built in 1787 by Alexander Scott Bullitt.
A view of the frame portion of the present Oxmoor house
occupied by William Marshall Bullitt. The dwelling, sketched above from
an illustration in Colonel Thomas W. Bullitt's "My Life at Oxmoor", included
four rooms and a central hall, in which there was a stairway of walnut,
prettily carved, leading to two attic rooms above.
The brick front was built by William C. Bullitt, early in the
last century. |
18
The Bullitt Family. Chapter I.
CAPT. Thomas Bullitt, a distinguished soldier in the French and Indian
wars, headed a surveying party which journeyed from Virginia to the falls
of the Ohio in July, 1773, and in August of that year laid out a town.
Twelve years later, his nephew, Alexander Scott Bullitt, after a brief
residence in Shelby county, on Bull Skin creek, moved down to the settlement
at Falls of Ohio. On a farm of a thousand acres on Beargrass creek, nine
miles from Louisville, he built his first home, a log cabin. He named the
farm Oxmoor, from the celebrated Oxmoor, of Tristam Shandy, and on this
farm lives his lineal descendant, William Marshall Bullitt, and his family,
the property having been in possession of the Bullitts from that day when
Alexander Scott Bullitt and his bride, Priscilla Christian, came to make
the Kentucky home of this branch of the Bullitt family that has figured
prominently in the social and professional life of Louisville ever since.
Alexander Scott Bullitt, the son of Judge Cuthbert Bullitt,
of the General Court of Virginia, preferred coming to Kentucky to fight
Indians
19
to staying at home and studying law. His fifteen-year-old bride, Priscilla,
was the daughter of Col. William Christian and his wife, Annie Henry, a
sister of Patrick Henry. Col. Christian, by a patent of 1780, was granted
2,000 acres of the Beargrass land which had been surveyed in 1774, and
on it, in 1780, there was a considerable fort, Sturgis Station, occupied
by from twenty to forty families. Thither Col. Christian, of Virginia,
sent his slaves ahead to prepare a dwelling, and he with his family arrived
to settle in August, 1785 Col. Christian was killed by Indians in 1786.
Two years after building the log cabin above the spring of Oxmoor, the
Bullitts erected a frame house where their children, Cuthbert, Helen Scott,
Anne and William C. Bullitt, were born.
Alexander Scott Bullitt, after the death of his wife,
Priscilla, married a widow, Mrs. Mary Churchill Prather, a sister of Col.
Samuel Churchill, Armistead and Henry Churchill, prominent Louisville men
of affairs. The Bullitts and the Churchills were intimate friends. Alexander
Scott Bullitt was one of the eleven State Senators in the first Kentucky
Legislature, June 4, 1792. He was elected Speaker of the Senate and re-elected
for twelve years. He was the first Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky in May,
1800. Bullitt county was named for him.
20
In September, 1819, William C. Bullitt married Mildred
Ann Fry, a daughter of Col. Joshua Fry and his wife, Peachy Walker, of
Albemarle county, Va., who emigrated to Kentucky, and have other descendants
in Louisville in the Speeds. Col. Fry was commander of a regiment in the
French and Indian war, 1754, in which George Washington served as lieutenant
colonel.
William C. Bullitt built the brick front of the Oxmoor residence,
completing the structure as it now stands. Here ten children were born
to William C. Bullitt and his wife, and three of these have descendants
in Louisville; Sue Bullitt, who married the Hon. Archibald Dixon, of Henderson,
the mother of William B. Dixon; Helen Bullitt, who married Henry Chenoweth,
the mother of Mrs. John Stites, Miss Fanny Chenoweth, Mrs. Hugh Barret,
Mr. Henry Chenoweth and Dr. James Chenoweth; and Col. Thomas Walker Bullitt,
long prominent in Louisville as a lawyer and citizen, who married Priscilla
Logan. Col. Bullitt was the father of William Marshall Bullitt, Alexander
Scott Bullitt and Keith Bullitt. His other children do not make their home
in Louisville.
The youngest member of the family is Master Benjamin Logan
Bullitt, the infant son of
21
Mr. and Mrs. Keith Bullitt, who leave shortly to take up their residence
in Seattle.
Cuthbert Bullitt, the brother of William C. Bullitt, married
Harriett Willett and had a son, Dr. Henry M. Bullitt, the first dean of
the Kentucky School of Medicine and the city's first health officer.
Dr. Bullitt married Julia Anderson. They had one daughter,
Virginia Bullitt, who married John Cood, the mother of Helen Cood, who
married Owen Tyler.
Dr. Bullitt married a second time, Mrs Sallie Paradise, and
had four daughters, Elizabeth Bullitt, who married Charles N. Buck, former
Minister to Paris; Mrs. Julia Bullitt Rauterburg; Mrs. Edith Bullitt Jacob,
wife of Mayor Charles D. Jacob, and Miss Henrietta Bullitt. Priscilla Bullitt,
a daughter of Cuthbert Bullitt, married A. A. Gordon, and their daughter,
Harriet, married Logan C. Murray.
The eldest child of Alexander Scott Bullitt, Anne Christian
Bullitt, was married on February 4, 1819, to John Howard, of Maryland,
a lineal descendant of two acting governors of that province, namely, Commander
Robert Brooke and Colonel Thomas Brooke. She is ancestress of the Courtenays.
Her daughter, Annie Christian Howard married October 13, 1842, Robert Graham
Courtenay, of Crown Hall, Ireland, who
22
located in Louisville in 1882, subsequently becoming a prominent man
of affairs, firm member of Thomas Anderson and Company, director in the
Bank of Louisville, director of Louisville and Frankfort and Lexington
and Frankfort Railroads, administrator of the John L. Martin estate, and
president and engineer of the Louisville Gas Company. Five of their children
figured in Louisville affairs.
The eldest daughter, Julia Christian Courtenay married
Hector V. Loving, and has in Louisville the following children: Mrs. Julia
Loving George, mother of Julia Courtenay and Robert George; Laura Loving,
the wife of D. C. Harris, and Emma Loving.
Two other daughters, Emma and Helen Martin Courtenay,
make their home on Fourth street.
A son, Thomas Anderson Courtenay, married Jane Short Butler,
and has the following children residing here: Thomas Anderson Courtenay,
Jr., William Howard Courtenay, II., and Jane Short Courtenay, wife
of Henry S. Tyler.
Another son is William Howard Courtenay, chief engineer
of the L. & N. Railroad, whose wife is Isabel Stevenson Clark. They
have two sons, Erskine Howard Courtenay and James Clark Courtenay.
23
|
