Combs Ferry Was Once a Thriving Community

The Combs Ferry com­mu­ni­ty was set­tled soon after James T. Woodward com­plet­ed the Combs Ferry Turnpike (1857) and had the fer­ry moved to a new land­ing at the end of present-day Amster Grove Road (1858).  

Woodward, who owned much of the old John Holder plan­ta­tion (more recent­ly the Shely farm), sold a house and tract of land along the Kentucky River to Lewis Adams and Henry Calmes Jr.  There the part­ners erect­ed a steam-pow­ered saw mill and grist mill (1860). The mills stood on a tract of land on Amster Grove Court now owned by Hope Broecker. Her home has an ancient stone chim­ney that may have been part of one of the asso­ci­at­ed res­i­dences. No defin­i­tive remains of the mills can be seen today. 

Near the end of the Civil War (1864), Calmes sold his share of the mills to Lewis, and Lewis in turn sold to broth­ers Willis F. and John W. Martin. John had enlist­ed in the Union Army in 1861 and was appoint­ed com­mis­sary sergeant of the 20^th Infantry Regiment. His med­ical dis­charge in 1862 stat­ed, to my sur­prise, that he was “suf­fer­ing from atro­phy of the left thigh; the leg was ampu­tat­ed five years ago.”

A large boil­er pro­vid­ed steam to the Martin broth­ers’ saw mill and grist mill via under­ground pipes. They also had sev­er­al boats, a black­smith shop, and a machine for turn­ing out 12,000 to 15,000 shin­gles per day. The saw mill pro­duced an aver­age of 8,000 board feet of lum­ber a day (one test run turned out 18,000 board feet). John W. Martin also ran a large lum­ber­yard on Hill Street in Winchester.  After John died in 1888, Annie Scott acquired the 22-acre mill tract. The mill washed away in the Great Flood of 1890.

The 1877 map of Clark County shows a school house (abbre­vi­at­ed “S.H.”) at Combs Ferry. Our local school author­i­ty, Jerry Cecil, has not turned up any oth­er evi­dence for a school at that loca­tion but, he added, “many of the ear­ly schools did not last long.”

John’s broth­er, Freeman T. Martin, had a fruit house at Combs Ferry where he pur­chased and stored apples for mak­ing brandy. The apples must have been for Ben F. Allen, who oper­at­ed a store and dis­tillery at Combs Ferry. Allen adver­tised that he would pay 12½ to 15 cents a bushel for apples. He also took in apples in exchange for coal and hay. In 1880 Allen got into trou­ble with the I.R.S. for sell­ing his apple brandy with­out pay­ing the tax. They seized 15 bar­rels of brandy and briefly sequestered his cop­per stills, worms and mash tubs. He kept his store going to pay his debts. The fed­er­al action caused Allen some tem­po­rary finan­cial prob­lems but he was soon back at the dis­tillery, which he ran till his death in an auto acci­dent in 1900.

O’Connell “O.C.” McCuddy also had a dis­tillery at Combs Ferry, which was destroyed along with his house in the flood of 1890. A some­times car­pen­ter and fer­ry­man, he owned the fer­ry for a brief time. After his wife Martha pur­chased Grimes Mill in Fayette County, O.C. ran the mill until bad health forced his retire­ment (1906).

Another res­i­dent, Edwin R. Scott, ran a store at Combs Ferry. He report­ed sales of near­ly $1,000 dur­ing the 1879 Christmas sea­son. His store washed away in the 1890 flood, but he rebuilt and car­ried on. With the rise in riv­er lev­els after com­ple­tion of the dam at Valley View, Scott had to ele­vate his store to keep the slack­wa­ter out. In 1894, a post office was estab­lished at the store, and he was named post­mas­ter. The gov­ern­ment did not accept the name he sub­mit­ted and des­ig­nat­ed the office as Sanger. (This explains the name Sanger that appears on ear­ly topo maps of the area.) In 1904 Scott was indict­ed in fed­er­al court for using stamps to pay for mer­chan­dise.  The post office closed that year.

There were oth­er dis­til­leries in the neigh­bor­hood, of the ille­gal vari­ety. John and Henry McKinney and their broth­er-in-law Hampton Turner were charged with oper­at­ing a moon­shine still. Henry and Hampton got off free, while John, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been arrest­ed for run­ning a still in Estill County, received 30 days.

Zol Amster, per­haps Combs Ferry’s most promi­nent res­i­dent, pur­chased from Annie Scott 22 acres known as the Combs Ferry mill tract (1907). The tract extend­ed from near the mouth of Lower Howard’s Creek to the Combs Ferry land­ing. More specif­i­cal­ly, the land encom­passed the area between the River Club (also called the Winchester Club that stood on a small lot at the mouth of the creek) and Woolcott’s sum­mer cot­tage (Woolcott owned the fer­ry and landing).

In 1924, Amster had the prop­er­ty sur­veyed and sub­di­vid­ed the prop­er­ty, and, thus was born the Amster Grove devel­op­ment, which will be the top­ic of the last Combs Ferry installment.

Many thanks to Hope Broecker and Ryan Sparks for lead­ing me on a walk­ing tour and shar­ing their knowl­edge of the Amster Grove neighborhood.