The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1921-04-08
Federal Hill" And The Birth
Of my Old Kentucky Home"

About one mile from Bardstowr
over the horseshoe bend in Beech
Fork River, in Nelson County, Ky.
is the old Rowan estate and home OF
Federal HILL" famous in song and
story and pictures as the place where
in the summer of 1852 Stephen Col
Inns Foster wrote the words and mus
ic of "My Old kentucky Home" This
is the house and estate Of 236 acres
which the people of Kentucky are in
vited to purchase and preserve as a
state park in honor of the song. 1t
is one of the most historic places in
the whole middle west, dating back
in 1795, when John Rowan, then a
brilliant young lawyer, born in
Pennsylvania, built it in the midst
of a 1 ,5O0-acre plantation, and made
It the center of the political, legal
and social life of the Kentucky of the
olden time.
Judge Rowan was to become con-
gresham, United States senator,
chief justice of the state and to die
as commissioner of the United States
to define the boundary line of Mex
leo in an effort to avoid the war of
1S47. He was a great lawyer, ia
nous in the practice of civil and GRIM
inal law, strong before juries because
of his profound reasoning and elo-
quence. At IA he had, with his faith.
err, fought Indians in the West and
was dead shot. He fought one of
the earliest and most deadly duels in
the states history, and in his will
left his duelling pistols to his closest
son to be handed down and used only
in "the defense of his honor" The
Willis recorded in Louisville.
Tried To Avoid Office.
Judge Rowan loved the practice of
law and tried to avoid public office.
Some of the greatest early lawyers
of Kentucky studied in his office. He
accumulated q great fortune for those
days. He had a residence in Louis
Vile and made it his home for some
years, dying there in 1S43. He en-
tertained Lafayette on his visit in
1924, paying all the public expenses
and taking him to Federal Hill for a
rest. Judge Rowan is buried in the
family cemetery at Federal Hill. His
children and grandchildren have mar
ried into noble families in Europe
and have won distinction in many
ways. One married grandee of
Spain and was lady-in-waiting to the
ueen, another was Princess Rospig-
lioso, of Italy, and others married
into the English and French peer
ages.
Young John" Rowan, who sue
ceeded his father on the Federal Hill
estate, was remarkably handsome, ac-
complished end eloquent. He, too,
was duellist and a dead shot. He
declined nomination for governor
and to Congress and refused all Of
flee except once to carry his district
for the Legislature. President Fill
more induced him to become min
lister to the two Sicilies. where he liv-
ed for several years at Naples and
Rome and returned in 1872,
The old home at Federal Hill Is
filled with history. General William
Lytle was a nephew Of the elder
Rowan and often visited there. He
wrote the famous poem, II am Dying,
Egypt Dying" There also visited
Theodore O'Hara author of the
''Bivouac of the Dead" The house
is filled with antique mahogany and
rosewood furniture, fine paintings
and historic souvenirs 1t is essen
TALLY a manor house of the old type,
well preserved and crowded with ira
ditions, tragic, romantic and historic.
Born Near Pittsburg.
Stephen c. Foster was not a Ken
tuckian. He was. born on the fiftieth
anniversary of the Declaration of In
dependence in 1925, in village near
Pittsburg. He was cousin of the
Rowans thru the Barclay family of
Pennsylvania. One of Fosters sisters,
Charlotte, who had a beautiful voice
and musical talent of her own, died