Source: The Semi-Weekly Sun, Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky,
18 February 1879.
From the Pine Grove correspondent who signed communications U BET.
As we have no local news worthy of mention this week we thought it might be
of interest to some of your readers to know something of the former history of
our little burg. Although it has borne its present name since the earliest
recollection of the deposer, it has not always done so. From a quarter to a half
a mile from this place stood a store house, known as "Pin Hook," where
our fathers and grandfathers repaired once a week to get the paper and exchange
the common civilities of life. But at present, there are but one or two, at
most, living in the neighborhood who remember so far back as the time its name
was changed to Pine Grove. It was so called from the fact there are a great many
pine trees here, which were not very common in those days, and which was prior
to the days of turnpikes and railroads. After the road from your town
[Winchester] to Lexington was macadamized, and which passes through our little
burgh, it was one of the most important thoroughfares in the State, and
continued so until the completion of the Big Sandy railroad, which struck a
death blow to our former grandeur and happiness, which we will show our
contrast. Then our merchants drove a thriving business; then we had a post
office with two daily mails--morning and evening. As the lumbering stage coach
passed to and from your town [Winchester] and Lexington, could be seen scores of
people awaiting their mails. But, alas! how changed. Our merchants sit
listlessly in their chairs and sigh for the days that were. No more the lumber
of the stage-coach is heard; no more our neighbors rush expectant for the mails.
Alas! we have none now. Change is written upon everything around us. The shriek
whistle of the engine a few miles distant seems to say to us: we have left you
out in the wet; we have broken up your post office; we have taken your daily
mails; superseded your merchants; and intended to have things our way awhile;
and such it seems will be the case. The most noted change in and around Pine
Grove is a change of its inhabitants. With a single exception, not a house is
occupied or a farm owned by those owning or occupying them twenty or even ten
years ago. They have all passed into different hands.
