Winchester natives who made their mark

We con­tin­ue this series on Winchester res­i­dents of 1810 by con­sid­er­ing three who went on to achieve some noto­ri­ety after leav­ing Clark County.

Silas W. Robbins

Silas Webster Robbins (1785–1871) was born in Connecticut, grad­u­at­ed from Yale College, then attend­ed Tapping Reeves’ cel­e­brat­ed Litchfield Law School. We first learn of Robbins in Winchester when he announced in December 1809 that he planned to open a school on Water Street (now Maple). His notice in the Kentucky Gazette set tuition at $3.50 per quar­ter for read­ing, writ­ing, and arith­metic; $5 for English gram­mar; $6 for book­keep­ing; $8 for Greek and Latin; and $9 for trigonom­e­try, sur­vey­ing, nat­ur­al and moral philosophy.

In 1811 Robbins hung out his shin­gle and announced that he “will punc­tu­al­ly attend the cir­cuit courts of Fayette, Madison, and Clarke, and will faith­ful­ly dis­charge any busi­ness in his pro­fes­sion.” The fol­low­ing year he returned to Connecticut to mar­ry Caroline, the daugh­ter of U.S. Senator Uriah Tracy.

Like many oth­er Winchester attor­neys, Robbins invest­ed his earn­ings in local prop­er­ty. In 1816 he acquired 224 acres just north of town from Joseph Foreman. Robbins was resid­ing in a brick home on the place in 1824, when finan­cial prob­lems forced him to cede his inter­est to his broth­er Moses. Robbins served as a cir­cuit judge and, accord­ing to one source, “was appoint­ed Judge of the Supreme Court of his adopt­ed State.” I have been unable to ver­i­fy the latter.

“Due to the strong prej­u­dice in the state against Yankees,” Robbins moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1841 and took up the prac­tice of law there. It was inevitable, per­haps, that he would cross paths with a ris­ing young attor­ney named Abraham Lincoln. To give but a few exam­ples, in 1845 Lockridge v. Foster et al. was argued before the Illinois Supreme Court. Robbins rep­re­sent­ed the plain­tiff and Lincoln the defen­dant. Then in 1847 Robbins and Lincoln worked togeth­er as a legal team for the defen­dants in Hill v. Masters and Goodpasture.

James Dunnica

James Dunnica (1789–1867) was a car­pen­ter and builder in Winchester. He mar­ried Philadelphia Thomas in 1812 and built a brick house at the south­east cor­ner of Main and Hickman Street on land he pur­chased from David Dodge. In 1814 he sold the house and lot to Chilton Allan. The next year, when James and Philadelphia sold the last of their Winchester prop­er­ty, they were res­i­dents of Woodford County.

The cou­ple moved to Cole County, Missouri, along with many oth­er Kentuckians. In 1825 Dunnica was named one of the first trustees of Jefferson City, which became the cap­i­tal of Missouri. From 1827 to 1834 he served as a jus­tice for Cole County. Dunnica won the con­tract to erect the brick State House for $25,000. The leg­is­la­ture assem­bled in the new capi­tol in 1826. He then super­in­tend­ed con­struc­tion of the Cole County cour­t­house. Dunnica, “a mas­ter stone­ma­son,” also built the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. This mas­sive lime­stone prison com­plex oper­at­ed from 1833 until 2004 and is now a his­toric land­mark and tourist attrac­tion. An ear­ly Missouri gazetteer stat­ed, “The cit­i­zens of Cole are much indebt­ed to Mr. James Dunnica for the taste­ful archi­tec­ture at Jefferson [City].”

William Vaughn

William Vaughn (1785–1877) was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and came to Kentucky with his par­ents at an ear­ly age. At 18 he appren­ticed to Lawson McCullough, a tai­lor in Lexington. After his appren­tice­ship he mar­ried Lydia Wing Allen and moved to Winchester, where he estab­lished him­self as a tailor.

Vaughn pur­chased a lot from Jesse Garner at the north­west cor­ner of Main and Hickman Street and built a house there. He joined “an infi­del club” in town, but soon had a change of heart. In October 1810 Rev. James Quisenberry bap­tized Vaughn at Friendship Baptist Church (where Winchester Cemetery is today). He was licensed to preach at Friendship in 1811, was ordained at Lulbegrud Church in 1812, and began a sto­ried career as a Baptist minister.

Vaughn’s first church was in Montgomery County, his sec­ond in Mason County. He estab­lished a church at Augusta where he preached and taught school, then moved to Fleming, where he bought a farm and preached at sev­er­al church­es. In 1829 he debat­ed the renowned Alexander Campbell, a founder of the Disciples of Christ. After a brief stint with the American Bible Society, Vaughn moved to Bloomfield in 1836. He preached there until 1868, when he became dis­abled from a fall.