A short note here of something fascinating I just now learn: the town where the majority of my ancestors, those Sextons who migrated into this area from Tennessee some one hundred and fifty years ago, the Kuttawa Kentucky they knew was moved and submerged under water.
Yeah, I was a bit taken with that news. Move a whole town?! Who ever heard of moving an entire town?!
How this came about - how I came to learn of this astounding news - I stepped into the offices here, and I asked the woman running (an elderly woman and run operate this KOA campgrounds) if there might be a simple manner for locating cemeteries in the area. She thought about it for a moment and then asked me what the area would be. I told her my main focus would be Kuttawa, as that is the name of the town most prominent in my research, but I would probably also be venturing into Livingston County.
I was going to add the communities of Dexter (where I found my 4th great grandfather buried), as well as a few other places in the area I cannot recall at the moment; but before I could attempt to add anything, she told me the cemetery at Kuttawa was moved. In fact, the town itself was moved somewhere back in the 1940s - even an old church building.
When I inquired further, I discovered this unusual 'moving of a town' took place due to the flooding of the Cumberland River to build the Barkley Dam. The same dam I passed along highway 62 when driving to Eddyville these last two days, it came about by a flooding of the river (as did its sister dam, the Kentucky Dam, blocking the Tennessee River). The problem for Kutttawa was someone founded the community in the wrong place.
Thus, there in lies the reasoning behind 'Kuttawa' and 'old Kuttawa'. Old Kuttawa is, undoubtedly, where I lost myself yesterday morning when I wandered this direction from Metropolis Illinois. It would account for the cemetery built into the hillside, as well as the streets leading nowhere - except to the next neighbor's house.
One last comment before I close: it surprised, though not all that much, to hear from the campground mother of how the enormous amounts of hydro-electric power the Barclay and the Kentucky Dams produce in this area - how its being shipped off to Illinois!
Did she mention Illinois or Indiana? That I am not certain of. Either way, it is stunning to me the people of this area, if not the people of Kentucky themselves, are not primary beneficiaries to this effort. A Kentucky town is moved so that Illinois, or Indiana, can have electric power. It makes me wonder where all the power that is produced by the wind turbines back in Kansas goes. To Kansans needing the power; or elsewhere?
A short addendum to this entry: my father, when I relayed this tale his way, it was less of a surprise to him, a town being moved. He told me it happened in Kansas - the town of Wakefield, I believe he told me, somewhere near Manhattan Kansas, it was moved to build the Tuttle Creek Dam.
ReplyDeleteI am so out of touch. This that was such a surprise, it's probably something of great commonality, happening all over the country.