Mystery house on Paris Road explored

After writ­ing about Rotherwood last week, I decid­ed to get to work on a mys­tery house on Paris Road that stands between Rotherwood and the Royal Oak sub­di­vi­sion. For years, this old, desert­ed house has been slow­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from view behind a copse of sur­round­ing trees. From what I can tell, the house at one time must have been a man­sion on the same order as Rotherwood. 

I found the house list­ed in a sur­vey of his­toric prop­er­ties con­duct­ed by the Kentucky Heritage Commission. While rec­og­niz­ing its sig­nif­i­cance, the com­mis­sion could not vis­it and pho­to­graph the house because per­mis­sion could not be obtained from the out-of-state own­er. Their brief descrip­tion clas­si­fied the house as a “brick Queen Anne style residence.” 

My search for the orig­i­nal own­er then turned to an exam­i­na­tion of his­toric coun­ty maps. The house is not found on the Hewitt map of 1861. However, a house does appear on the Beers and Lanagan map (1877), which locates the house on the east side of Paris Road and the north side of Hood’s old road. It was list­ed as the home of “W. Vanmeter.” As shown on the accom­pa­ny­ing map, Hood’s Road once ran just north of Dr. Washington Miller’s Deer Lawn Farm (the present Royal Oak Estates). It appears to be in the same loca­tion as the mys­tery house. 

William Cunningham VanMeter (1836−1915) hailed from a Dutch fam­i­ly that came to America in 1663. William was the sixth son of Abram VanMeter, who moved to Fayette County from the South Branch of the Potomac in Virginia (now Hardy County, West Virginia). Abram brought his fam­i­ly to Fayette County in about 1838. William matric­u­lat­ed at the University of Virginia at age six­teen (typ­i­cal for the time), but no record of his grad­u­a­tion could be found. He mar­ried Mary Sudduth, a daugh­ter of Thomas G. Sudduth of Clark County. After resid­ing briefly in Fayette, the cou­ple moved to Clark County, where their daugh­ter Alice was born. Shortly after the Civil War, William pur­chased 100 acres of land from his father-in-law. The tract lay on the east side of Paris Road and north of Hood’s Road. 

William took up farm­ing at his new farm. He focused on stock rais­ing and became a not­ed breed­er of Shorthorn cat­tle. (Another branch of the VanMeter fam­i­ly were pio­neers in the county’s short­horn busi­ness.) William and Lewis Hampton trav­eled to England to pur­chase a stock of blood­ed Shorthorns. Later, he bought a bull named “Duke of Thorndale” at auc­tion; his bid of $17,800 set a record for bulls sold in Bourbon County. William reg­u­lar­ly showed his short­horn bulls at region­al agri­cul­tur­al fairs and fre­quent­ly took home prizes for best in show. He also served on the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Kentucky Shorthorn Association. 

When near­ing retire­ment, William sold his home­place and 143 acres for $14,000 and moved to Shelby County, where he resided with the fam­i­ly of his son-in-law, Nelson R. Rash, and con­tin­ued for a time as an active trad­er of short­horn cat­tle. He moved to Middlesboro a few years lat­er, again fol­low­ing his daugh­ter Alice’s fam­i­ly. William died of Bright’s dis­ease in 1915. His remains were returned to Clark County for bur­ial in Winchester Cemetery. 

Evidence for William C. VanMeter build­ing the mys­tery house is strong. There was no house there in 1861. William pur­chased the prop­er­ty in 1867, and the house appears on the 1877 map as the home of W. Vanmeter. When he sold the farm in 1899, the deed stat­ed that the sale includ­ed the “dwelling house.” 

My con­tin­ued search for proof turned up a num­ber of sur­pris­es, which will be explained in next week’s fol­low-up article.