A story in the newspaper last week told
of the razing of the Pewee Valley station. The 93-year-old structure,
according to the Times was "a symbol of what long time Pewee residents
consider the Oldham County town's finest period -- 1867, when the depot
opened, through the early 1900s." Victorian gingerbread that once
proudly adorned its front had been removed in later years, but otherwise
its appearance must have been much the same as on the gala opening day.
The automobile put an end to its usefulness by 1933, and since then no
trains have stopped there.
Miss Mary G. Johnston,
daughter of Annie Fellows Johnston, author of the "Little Colonel"
books, recalls the station in its heyday when "each evening it was a
scene of great excitement when horse-drawn rigs met the men as they
returned from their offices in Louisville. And ice-cream never tasted as
good as it did on the station platform with cinders in it."
I have never been a resident of Pewee
Valley. In fact, I have been there very few times in my life. But to
every Louisvillian of the female gender and my vintage, Pewee Valley is
surely a perennial land of romance peopled still by Mrs. Johnston's
unforgettable characters. Nothing that happens there, even the razing of
an antiquated railroad station, can leave me quite untouched. For here
was the opening scene of "Two
Little Knights of Kentucky ." Into "the little country depot" where
"a long row of icicles hung from the eaves" and the wind "shivered down
the long stovepipe inside the waiting room" came the two McIntyre boys,
Malcolm and Keith, to bring their
adventure with Jonesy and the bear.
Surely, to this same station, must have
come Betty, Joyce and
rich Eugenia to join the Little Colonel's
house party. On this same platform, suitcase in hand, must have
stepped wayward Ida Shane on her way to
boarding school in Lloydsborough Valley. And from this station, too,
a radiant Lloyd must have set forth
with Rob Moore on her honeymoon in that most
romantic book of them all, "The Little
Colonel's Knight Comes Riding."
When Mrs. Johnston was asked by countless
readers if Lloydsborough Valley was a real place, she wrote in 1929:
"You will find it on a
map of Oldham County under the name of Pewee Valley, but will still
never find it now along any road whatsoever where you may go on a
pilgrimage, for the years have stolen its pristine charm and it is no
longer a storybook sort of place.
"But 30 years
ago, wandering down its shady avenues was like stepping between the
covers of an old romance. One had only to stroll past the little country
post office
to feel the glamour of the place and meet a host
of interesting characters. In those days the post office, at nine
o'clock of a summer morning, was the social center for an animated half
hour or more.
"The smart equipages
of summer residents were drawn up to the front of it. Old family
carryalls loaded with children in care of black mammies joined the
procession, and pretty girls and their escorts on horseback drew rein in
the shade of locusts arching the road... "There was much visiting back
and forth among the carriages while they waited. Picnics and parties
were planned, invitations given and accepted, recipes exchanged and
gossip passed from group to group. A stranger seeing the gay assemblage
would conclude that the whole world was on holiday."
Pewee Valley began life under the
unglamorous name of Smith's Station. The Louisville Herald of August 13,
1922 credits one Tom Smith,
"a relative of Henry Clay," with its founding in 1852. Mr. Smith was
manager of a general store and train station agent when the first
railroad line was built. Henry Smith, a relative of the aforementioned
Tom, served as one of the town's original trustees and laid out its
streets, planting many of the ash, maple and locust trees that give the
avenues their names today.
There are two schools of thought about
the changing of the town's name. One story gives the credit to
Noble Butler, the
grammarian, and a group of servants who gathered at the Smiths Station
house. Another legend says the change was accomplished by the trustees,
when the town was duly incorporated by an act of the Kentucky
legislature on March 21, 1870. Both stories agree, however, about the
appearance of a small brown bird at the psychological moment that
uttered the cheerful call, "Pee Wee," furnishing the inspiration for
half of the town's title. The "Valley" part remains a mystery, since
Pewee "claims a greater elevation than any hill in Jefferson County."
In COLLINS'S "History of Kentucky" (1874
edition) this town is described as "the most beautiful of suburban
villages of Louisville; 17 miles from that city on the L, C and E rail
road; has three churches (Presbyterian,
Episcopalian, Roman
Catholic); two hotels, four stores, one physician, population about
250." Five of the town's original seven trustees were prominent
Louisville men who went daily to their business in the city. These were
Orville Truman, John M.
Armstrong, Milton M. Rhorer, J. George Dodge, and Charles B. Cotton. Mr.
Smith and William Keely were the two others. Some of the well-known
Louisvillians who had homes in Pewee Valley in the 1870s included
John Van Horne,
Alexander Craig,
Judge P.B. Muir, Jonas H. Rhorer, Major Charles J. F. Allen and
Thomas P. Barclay.
Older Louisvillians remember spending
summers at the Villa Ridge Inn, which later became the
Confederate Soldier's Home. "The
Locusts," too, operated for awhile as a summer boarding house.
The Kentucky School for Women,
established in 1860, flourished for a number of years and was one of the
valley's assets. We have room to mention only a few of those whose lives
were linked with Pewee Valley. These include the families of
Col. George Weissinger,
Hoadley Cochran,
George Weissinger Smith,
Thomas Floyd Smith,
Charles Ross, Darwin Johnson,
Milton H. Smith,
Powhatan Wooldridge, the
Rev. Peyton Hoge, James
Buckner, Misses Kate and Florence Matthews,
Merton and Miss Fanny Craig, Mrs. Albert
Willis, Miss May Dulaney,
Frank Gatchel and many
others.
Miss Johnston still lives in her mother's
home, "The Beeches." Little girls and
those no longer girls still make pilgrimages to the "Land of the Little
Colonel," which, as Mrs. Johnston once wrote, is like
"all Gaul, divided into three parts. One lies in
Kentucky, one in the country of Imagination, and one in the dear demesne
of Memory."
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