Events Impacting Early Schooling in Ludlow, Kentucky

By a member of the Class of 1969

By Ohio's Sparkling Waters

In 1788, during the post-revolutionary western expansion, Colonel Israel Ludlow, a civil engineer, accompanied by Matthias Denman, John Filson and Robert Patterson was seeking an “inland country of charm and tranquility” and purchased eight hundred acres from John Cleves Symmes along the Ohio River at the Licking River's mouth.

Symmes had purchased two million acres of land from the Confederation Congress in 1787 and hoped to become rich by selling parcels of land to others. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton hired Ludlow to determine the boundaries of the Symmes Purchase, much of which had been disputed. Denman and Filson provided the necessary cash; Patterson found settlers; and Ludlow surveyed the land for sale and platted the town, dividing it into one-half acre lots, and four acre lots for outlying parcels. The men provided the first thirty settlers with two free lots, one of each type. The men named the town Losantiville an attempt at the idea that this was a "city across from the mouth of the Licking River."

Ludlow had married Charlotte Chambers in 1786 and the couple had four children over the next several years. Ludlow died in 1804 in Cincinnati. He was thirty-eight years old.

In 1789, Fort Washington was built on the site. Over the next decade, the population of Ft Washington grew rapidly and citizens decided to change the name to Cincinnati, after the Roman citizen Cincinnatus who rose from plowman to command a high place in military affairs. Cincinnatus was revered as a symbol of virtue by the American founders because he willingly gave up power to assume a peaceful life – an extremely rare historical event echoed by George Washington’s retirement from the U S presidency.


As the population of Cincinnati continued to grow, a lone pioneer traveled about a mile west of Ft Washington, “where the great waterway bent Southward.” He crossed the Ohio River, and built a log cabin on a tract of land known today as Ludlow, Kentucky.

Knowledge of the cabin did not surface until General Thomas Sanford, an Indian fighter, was rewarded for his valiant deeds with a federal grant of 1,200 acres, including the land upon which the unknown pioneer’s cabin stood. Sanford's tract “extended from the Ohio River southward to where the Southern Railway trestle now spans the entrance to Devou Park, and East, to West from what is now West Street to Lagoon Avenue.” By the time of Sandford's arrival, Cincinnati residents had expanded sufficiently westward that rooftops were now visible from the cabin.

Forward Be Our Watchword Ever

Long before the city of Ludlow was settled, or Kenton County was formed, the land was part of Campbell County. The Newport Academy was the first public school built in northern Kentucky on the land now occupied by Fourth Street Elementary School. It was established in 1798 and operated for half a century.


The state of Kentucky had given the city of Newport 6,000 acres in western Kentucky, and empowered the town's government to sell the land to help finance the construction and operation of the first academy in the area.

The state charter required that a 12-member board of trustees be appointed to run the school. The first trustees included Thomas D. Carneal, Thomas Sanford, James Taylor, John Grant, Thomas Kennedy, Washington Berry, Richard Southgate, and the Principal Rev. Robert Stubbs. Most school leaders in those days were Protestant ministers.

The Newport Academy's early curriculum consisted primarily of reading, writing and arithmetic, coursework for which students were charged tuition of $8 per year. For $20 a year, advanced instruction could be obtained in English grammar, Latin, Greek, geometry, astronomy, logic and rhetoric. It operated until 1850, when it was merged with Newport Independent Schools.

A land swap between Sandford and Carneal (a member of the Kentucky legislature who owned land where the Highland Cemetery now stands in Ft Mitchell and helped found the city of Covington in 1815) that brought Carneal to the banks of the Ohio. In 1818, he built the stately Elmwood Hall on present day Forest Avenue. The Carneals' daughter Sally, who was graduated from Madam Legoine's Finishing School in Philadelphia, and Mary, her younger sister, were belles of fine repute who entertained numerous dignitaries who visited Elmwood Hall, including the French revolutionary hero Marquis De Lafayette.

Over time, the socially-minded Carneals grew weary of the wilderness and the property was sold to William Bullock, a gentleman who had grown rich, having purchased Napoleon's coach which attracted many an Englishman to his museum on London’s Piccadilly Square.

While viewing Cincinnati with Carneal from atop “Pigeon Point,” Bullock conceived the idea of building a model city. He engaged I B Papworth, architect to the King of Wurtenburg, to put on paper his dream city of “Hygeia.” But the realities of rural life caused Bullock to abandon his plans by 1831, and Bullock sold the “Hall” and the land to Israel Ludlow, a son of the Cincinnati founder.

In 1840, Kenton County (named for famous northern Kentucky explorer Simon Kenton) was formed from Campbell County, and Ludlow began slowly selling off parcels of land from the estate as the city grew. Selling the total estate was a long process that continued for a century and a half before the final parcel was put up for auction by Ludlow Estate Trustee John L Day, in 1977.

Towering Toward the Sky

The Kentucky Act of 1830 allowed cities to build schools through taxation, if they could get enough votes. But indifference toward schools was widespread. There were 140,000 children in the state between the ages of five and fifteen years but only 31,834 -fewer than one in five - were attending school. The typical school building was in middling to poor condition and the quality of the education received there was almost totally dependent upon the quality of the teacher. It has always been thus. The teachers’ jobs were political and one kept their position by satisfying the local trustees. One third of the adult population could neither read nor write.

William Bullock eventually returned to his native England, but he left an education-related legacy behind in the form of the Bullock family. One of my Ludlow High School English teachers from the late 1960's, and close family friend, was Grace Bullock, wife of Wilfred E. "Shorty" Bullock. She verbally confirmed, before her recent death, that another prominent member of the extended family was Rev Joseph James Bullock who would soon become Kentucky's first State Superintendent.

Headmaster of the Academy at Paris, William Holmes McGuffey published his first McGuffey Eclectic Reader around this time. It became a staple of many Ludlow school children for years. It is said that Professor McGuffey sought to understand the interests, abilities, and comprehension of children by arranging them in groups by age and reading them selected pieces which he intended to include in his readers. His readers also played a major role in promoting the national pedagogy of patriotism most obvious in American history texts, which glorified the founding fathers and proclaimed the greatest nation on earth. McGuffey promised that his readers contained no sectarian or partisan accounts and included solely those values that everyone subscribed to, or should subscribe to. That meant Protestant. McGuffey's Readers sold more than 122 million copies and went a long way toward defining common American values.

On 16 February 1838 the Kentucky Common School System was established. It was a rudimentary system of schools under its first Superintendent Rev J J Bullock. He was the first of seven Protestant ministers to hold the post. Meanwhile, with the state treasury spent, and to preserve its credit, the General Assembly took $583,757 from the school fund reducing it to $850,000. A State Board of Education was formed to oversee the fund, and each school district of 30 to 50 pupils would have a 5-member Board of Trustees with a 5-member Board of Commissioners. By this time, 24 Kentucky counties had fully or partially organized schools. Student tuition averaged $12 and the first census of Kentucky school children was taken. In 1841, Rev Henry Adams of Louisville’s Fifth Street Baptist Church opened the Adams School, one of the first African American schools in Kentucky.

Like Horace Mann and other advocates of a system of common schools for the state, Bullock was interested in eliminating the social distinctions that exalted the upper class while disadvantaging students from poor families. In his view,

“The great object of the Common School Law is to give to every child in the Commonwealth a good common school education… The great principle of the System is that of equality; the rich and the poor are placed on the same footing; and to receive the same elementary instruction… The State has an interest in every child within her limits; and indifference with regard to the beings upon whom all the interests of society are so soon to devolve, is as criminal as it is impolitic.”

In Bullock’s view, the education of all the children of the state would cost much, but it should be obtained at any cost. “It is not true economy to object to a small expenditure for the present, and thereby incur a much greater expenditure in for the future. Nothing is so wasteful as ignorance.”

A decade later, Rev Robert J Breckinridge energized interest in expanded school opportunities for Kentucky children by traveling the state and speaking out for better schools. He became the state’s eighth Superintendent and promoted an expanded school program including a six-month school term, 12-week school quarter, five -ay school week, six hour school day. Instruction included spelling, reading (chiefly from the Bible), writing, geography, arithmetic, US history, general history, English grammar and composition. He pushed for the proper construction and location of school buildings, the establishment of county teachers associations and a state system of schools that included county academies and state universities to train teachers. Under Breckinridge’s leadership school attendance increased from 4,950 scholars in 1841, to 201,223 by 1853. Public schools were established in every county and a permanent state school fund was created. A school tax of two-cents on $100 property valuation was approved by voters and the schools became free. Breckinridge wanted local parents to select textbooks but ultimately that responsibility fell to the state board of education.

Across the Ohio River, Cincinnati continued to grow and was fast becoming the center of business and industry in the region. The Queen City became the first American boom-town of the new west. Most of the people living in the little village that was to have been Hygeia ferried to the big city to work and for the marketplace. By 1860, the town took the name Ludlow and had more than 300 residents. On the 20 March 1864, Ludlow received its city charter from Kentucky Governor Thomas E Bramlette.

In those days city leaders concerned themselves with slavery, the civil war, price-gouging ferry operators (which nearly produced a riot for its potential to starve the town economically), and the emerging class distinctions separating the “riff raff” from the “silk stockings.” Ludlow boasted doctors, railroad engineers, a drug store, a little notion store, a broom factory, a bucket shop, a grocery, a saw mill, a toll gate at the eastern and western edges of the city, four churches (Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Christian) the half-mile “Queen City Track” where trotters ran, corn fields, livestock, and a lumber yard. To keep their children away, Ludlow mothers told their children the lumber yard was haunted after one child was crushed when the pile of lumber he was climbing upon collapsed.

Like a lot of American cities, the town folk were once bamboozled by none other than PT Barnum. Barnum promised ticket holders that a herd of buffalo would be hunted by a tribe of Indians at the track. When a single sickly buffalo and two scrawny Indians appeared, Barnum disappeared, taking the “suckers” gate receipts with him.

The Kentucky legislature chartered the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge Company in 1846, but Ohio politicians delayed approval because of opposition from ferry and steamboat operators, and for fear a bridge would help fugitive slaves enter the state. Designer John A. Roebling finally began construction in 1856, then halted work before the Civil War. When Union generals needed to fortify Northern Kentucky hilltops in 1862, coal barges were quickly assembled to form a pontoon bridge to move troops and supplies. The bridge opened in 1867 as the world's longest suspension bridge, and secured that status until Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. In Ludlow the combination of the high ferry fees and the east–west toll road threatened to starve Ludlow economically and was the central source of frustration to the business community over the years.

Stands Our Own, Our Alma Mater

The first school in Ludlow was held on first floor of the Christian Church at the corner of Elm & Locust Streets. The church used the second floor and the first City Council Meetings were held in the diminutive school room. Prior to incorporation of the city in 1864, the little school had been maintained by the state, but after the local government was organized the Council was informed by state authorities that they would no longer maintain it, but would appropriate $183.00 in assistance. The cost of operation the prior year had been the sum of $450.00. Therefore, it became necessary for some action to be taken to carry on the work of education.

A school committee reported that Ludlow had between 125 and 130 children of school age. But there were strong differences of opinion over the method of raising money. The citizens agreed to a tax to raise revenue for the school but they rebelled against the amount being suggested by state legislators. After much deliberation, a rate of forty cents per hundred dollars valuation on real estate was set, and a poll tax of one dollar was levied. The majority of the people thought the levies too high and strong differences led to bitterness, and a resolute opposition to the tax gained momentum.

The Council was widely criticized but continued its work. George Yates was hired to make a survey and establish corporate limits of the city at a cost of $50.00. The school was placed under the control and supervision of the Council. Mr. A. Kelly was engaged as the first teacher at a salary of $700.00 for a ten months term beginning in September. To further aid the school’s finances, pupils were charged sixty cents per month in tuition.

The colorful citizens of Ludlow were apparently a rough and tumble bunch. In his 1935 History of the City of Ludlow, Judge John M. Hunnicutt suggests there were many hard drinkers who celebrated all events with revelry. At the prompting of the local churches, the city council passed an ordinance “designed against vice and immorality.”

Conquer and Prevail

In 1865, Miss Pauline E. Swift was employed as Ludlow's first female school teacher and plans for the betterment of the school were presented. The plan called for property to be purchased with revenue from a special assessment of thirty cents on one hundred dollars of real estate valuation for a period of two years, but the voters defeated the plan by two votes. The school was busting at the seams. The little single class room at Locust and Elm Streets was inadequate to take care of the ever-increasing enrollment.

In 1868, School Committee Chairman Thomas Venn presented a progressive report to the Council calling for a new school house, a city prison, and a fire engine, all supported by a property tax that is “just and proper” and furthermore, a “duty to society.” Venn told the Council,

“Your committee cannot close without again pressing upon your attention the duty we owe to ourselves, to our children, and to society, that we provide a good school house, good teachers, that the young and rising generation should have such opportunities offered to them so as to improve their minds, to cultivate their intellects, to increase in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, that shall reflect credit upon the Council of Ludlow.”

The following year the Council tried again, placing a $3,000 school bond issue on the ballot, and this time the measure carried overwhelmingly: 53 to 1. The school committee immediately obtained a lot on the south side of Linden Street between Davies and Kenner Streets and the contracting firm of Lyon and Son was hired to erect a new school building on the site. Elsewhere, high schools were beginning to appear to address the increasing national demand for skilled labor.

In 1869, the Cincinnati Base Ball Club, led by future Hall of Famer Harry Wright, shocked the sporting world by becoming the first all-professional base ball team. Dressed in knickerbockers with flashy crimson hosiery, the team became known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The Red Stockings barnstormed the nation coast-to-coast defeating every base ball club it played that year. With their amazing 57-o record, the Red Stockings introduced America to the new game of base ball and put Cincinnati on the sporting map.

Using the Red Stockings as a model, the youth of Ludlow took up baseball in earnest. The sounds of baseball from the Red Stockings home at Lincoln Park carried across the river into the young hearts of the Ludlow boys. At first, games were played on a big field where the Southern Railway now stands. But soon a group of enterprising men headed by Albert Ludlow built an enclosed park on River Road where an old factory once stood. The team drew together the best local talent, and within a few years had added several outstanding players from other cities to form one of the best teams of the day. Teams from St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Providence played the nationally-recognized team in that park. It is said that great crowds, unable to cross the river, would gather on the northern bank of the Ohio across from the park, whenever games were played. The fans were informed of the progress of each game by a park attendant who hoisted large numbers from the roof of the crowded grandstand—in a sort of semaphore system.

As the Years Go By

The first School Board comprised of Fred Gottlieb, C.W. Hardwood, and Levi Bavis, took office in 1870. The new Linden Street School was ready for students. The services of J. Allen were engaged as principal with Miss Ida Kellum, his assistant. The school term opened in September, with an enrollment of 105 pupils. It marked an important milestone in the social development of the city.

The new school was a source of pride in the community. The city was building four foot sidewalks and new homes were under construction and it was said that “harmony prevailed among the people.” A committee of the Council was working on a street plan that would include gas lighting and studying the feasibility of obtaining water from the City of Covington. By the close of 1871, the Council was considering a host of new proposals but a nagging problem with ferry fees remained unresolved.

State Superintendent H. A. M. Henderson issued a handbook for school administration around this time, wherein he describes how science was applied to education with the intent of improving the results.

The graded school, Henderson wrote, is “one in which the scholars are classed according to their attainments, and in which all of a like grade pursue, at the same time, the same studies. It is but applying to education the principle of division of labor which regulate the mechanic arts and commercial pursuits.” This progressive notion of an “efficient” system of schools was written, in 1891, into Kentucky’s fourth Constitution. It required the General Assembly to provide an efficient system of common schools throughout the state.

Writing in The Kentucky School-Lawyer, Henderson described the necessary role of local officials to see to it that it actually happens.

“In the Kentucky system the County Judge occupies a prominent and responsible position. If he is friendly to education he may be a powerful factor in helping the cause forward, by a close and critical inquiry into the manner in which the Commissioner discharges his duty, and insisting upon a rigid observance of the requirements of the law. If he is careless in the discharge of his duties, making no investigation of the way in which the Commissioner has executed his trust, in numbers and cases, the State will pay for services never rendered, and the schools of the county will have to suffer the ruinous consequences of his indifference.”

Henderson expected the local commissioners “to be possessed of moral character and ability to manage the Common School interests of the county efficiently. He shall possess a good English education, and shall be competent to examine [and certify] the teachers…”

The arrival of 1875 found the city to be a beehive of activity. The population was steadily increasing and houses were being constructed year round. In eleven years Ludlow's 300 residents had grown to 1,500.

At the time, thousands of transient men were heading west looking for work and the railroad attracted many of them to Ludlow. But some of the men gave local authorities a hard time and perpetrated serious mayhem in the city. The number of saloons in Ludlow had increased to six and drunken brawls were frequent.

In 1876, the School Board informed the City Council of the ever-increasing enrollment of pupils and the lack of space in the Linden Street School. The School Board recommended either a new school building or an enlargement of the old one. After substantial debate the matter was finally placed before the voters. The prevailing law in Kentucky required that a clear majority of the votes cast was necessary to settle the issue. A special elected was held on 31 March 1877 to decide the issue. Thirty-one voted to enlarge the present structure, 28 registered their choice for a new building, and 12 were against both propositions. Lacking a clear majority, the results nullified action of any kind, and the overcrowding continued in the school.

But the problem was not forgotten. It continued to be brought before the Council by the School Board. The Board, compromised of Thomas Harwood, John McBridge, George C. Jewett, and A.B. Closson, argued persuasively that a bond issue must be passed in the sum of $2,000.00 for the erection of an addition to the school. The issue passed and a contract was awarded to the firm of Buckley and Brangens for the sum of $1,925.00 for the work which was completed before the year ended.

Once the new school addition was ready for occupancy in October, 1878, the city headquarters, the Council’s meeting place and the Mayor’s Court were moved there. For the first time since the birth of the municipal government, the city had a home created by its own efforts.

The entire population of Ludlow was unified at that time to defeat an attempt by the city of Covington to annex the town.

Ludlowites considered the mere suggestion to be an affront, and citizens were openly hostile to the proposition. The Council immediately passed a resolution against annexation, and passed it on to State Representative E Green of the Ludlow district, imploring him to wage open warfare in the legislature in an effort to defeat a bill that had been introduced by State Senator Theodore Hallam. The bill was defeated in the legislature and the city was left intact.

Hail to Thee Our Alma Mater

As the city continued to grow the Linden Street School had once again reached an overcrowded condition. The addition built in 1878 could no longer handle the ever increasing enrollment. To provide some immediate relief, the city purchased a little cottage and lot which adjoined the school on the east side from A. Monroe. In addition, the course of study and character of the school was changing to meet new demands. After completing the Ludlow Elementary School the city’s youth were forced to go to Cincinnati or Covington to further their education. It was not until 1886 that a high school came to be built in Ludlow. A high school department was added to the existing school system, and its first class was graduated in June, 1889, with nine students receiving diplomas.

This new opportunity offered to Ludlow boys and girls again increased the enrollment as many pupils who would have ended their course of study without high school were remaining to further their education in the new advanced department. Soon after, movements were afoot to build a new school building. Finally, in the midst of the gay nineties, a bond issue in the sum of $25,000.00 was passed for the purpose, and a site was selected on Adelia Avenue at Oak Street.

In 1893, streetcar service between Covington and Ludlow began. That same year, the Pullman Company constructed a large plant in the city to repair luxury railroad passenger cars. During the height of operations, the Pullman Shops employed 200 area residents. The shops were destroyed by fire on May 20, 1919.

Beginning in 1895, the Lagoon Amusement Park brought thousands of visitors to Ludlow. The park offered rides, game booths, a dance pavilion, boating, vaudeville shows, high diving, monkey boat races, parachute demonstrations, aerial balloon rides, and a moving picture show, all of which thrilled visitors to Ludlow for twenty-two years. Unfortunately, tragic events conspired against the Lagoon. Famous high diver Harry McGee died while attempting a dive from a platform 103 feet, six inches above the lagoon. At a race on July 30, 1913, one motorcycle rider and nine spectators were killed when Odin Johnson's bike left the track and hit a gas lamp post, igniting a fire that spread throughout the grandstand. Over 100 people from age 5 to 80 were treated for burns and many lawsuits arose out of the tragedy. A destructive tornado hit the lagoon in 1915.

Following these tragedies and with the impending onset of prohibition, reviving the park became a questionable business expense, particularly in competition with Cincinnati's Coney Island. The Lagoon Amusement Park closed forever in 1918. Dancing and dinner parties continued at the pavilion until a fire destroyed the dance hall in 1921.

In 1886, the English-speaking Catholics of Ludlow gained permission to erect a church of their own in the town of Ludlow. St. James Parish School was established. In 1891, the parish bought the Odd Fellows Hall on Oak Street, which was remodeled to serve as a parish school. Sisters of Charity of Nazareth were engaged to conduct the school, which opened in September, 1893. The present St. James School and auditorium was dedicated on March 18, 1912. St. James High School was opened in 1928 and continued in operation through 1947.

Thus did schooling develop and grow in the early days of Ludlow, Kentucky. The modern period of schooling in Ludlow began with the construction of The George Washington Memorial High School in 1932. On the school’s present location at the corner of Elm and Adelia streets, the school was built at a cost of $164,000. When the school first opened, there were only 426 students K-12. The building has since undergone a number of expansions and renovations. Eventually, the name was simplified to Ludlow High School.

According to the 2000 census, of Ludlow’s 2,771 citizens above the age of 25, 40.2 percent are high school graduates while another 35.6 percent possess an associates or bachelor’s degree. The adult population with an advanced degree is 3.6 percent.

The many stories of Ludlow High School since the construction of the current building are being left to another author. But the history of schooling in Ludlow reveals a fairly typical development mirrored by many other small Kentucky towns. As was the case for most Americans, the local schools became a source of pride and economic opportunity for a population that valued hard work and a strong sense of community.

Ludlow High All Hail

It is no coincidence that I have always preferred smaller schools. For this graduate of Ludlow High School, it was simply the way things were supposed to be. In a small school, people got to know each other and everybody got to play. That closeness led to a strong sense of community which carried into the larger society.


But there was always something about the place that could not be replicated just anywhere. Our little town was home to a modest 6,200 citizens but the small-town life I experienced as a child gave way to the larger metropolitan community as I grew. After all, Ludlow residents were closer to downtown Cincinnati’s than most Cincinnatians were.

Some of those childhood memories of Ludlow and the river are burned deeply into my psyche and shaped my view of life as it should be. I remember walking across the Southern Railway Bridge to Crosley field to watch the Cincinnati Reds play in the early 1960’s. I remember finding the body of a classmate’s little sister in the river. I remember being in the school library when I first learned that President John F Kennedy had been shot. I remember our little gym, Rigney Stadium, hanging out at the Dairy Cheer and climbing Pigeon Point. I remember how great the air felt, blowing off the river in the spring. Before air conditioning, classroom windows were always open on those days and I remember feeling the strong lure of the river boats as they steamed into the port of Cincinnati while calliopes tunes filled the valley with a carnival-like atmosphere. It was hard to be in school on those days.

In Ludlow, we were little, amid big, and we benefitted from both.

Alma Mater

By Ohio’s sparkling waters,
Towering to toward the sky,
Stands our own, our alma mater,
As the years go by.

Forward be our watchword ever,
Conquer and prevail,
Hail to thee our alma mater,
Ludlow High, all hail.