Hensley Settlement (Kentucky)
36.669444444444 - 83.528333333333Koordinaten: 36 ° 40 '10 " N, 83 ° 31 ' 42" W
Hensley Settlement is a living history museum in the Appalachian Mountains. It is located on Brush Mountain in Bell County, Kentucky in the United States. The settlement is part of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and is located about 15 km north of the visitor center of the park near Ridge Trail. It comprises twelve log cabins, a smithy and a Einraumschule. A now well restored house also served as a storage space for groceries. The settlement was founded by the two brother Sherman Hensley and Willy Gibbons, and most of the inhabitants belonged to one of the two families. The last inhabitants of the settlement was Sherman Hensley, he left the village in 1951. Both the school and the total of about 45 buildings and the agricultural area was restored in the 1960s by the Job Corps to its original state.
Background
The settlement has its origins in 1845 when Governor William Owsley five hundred acres on Brush Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains to the brothers C. and RM Bales left. These leased it to John Nichols and Jim Nelson, which largely used for grazing management. They cleared the land and made other improvements, such as the construction of shingle-roofed log cabins made of chestnut wood.
Hensley
1903 Barton Hensley Sr. acquired the entire property and divided it for his large family in sixteen individual plots of land on. The pig Sherman Hensley and his wife Nicey Ann, daughter of Barton Sr., based an existing log cabin on their assigned 21 acres. The couple purchased a further 33 acres of land with it. The following year, also Niceys niece Nancy and her husband Willy Gibbons moved to the self-sufficient village, whose inhabitants mostly wore one of the surname Hensley or Gibbons. The village was never connected to the mains, there was a running water in the houses, modern roads or other amenities. The settlement was virtually self-sufficient, all that was needed, was cultivated, grown or manufactured here. The residents walked or used for larger distances the horse. A fountain house was used as a storage room for food.
Schoolhouse
In 1908, the Bell County provided a teacher for the newly installed Einraumschule available. Originally, the school house was little more than a mounted shed that was built so that the Superintendent of Schools of the county agrees to terminate a teacher for the education of the children of the village. At this school, all school children were taught to eighth grade. Until the school closed in 1947, served consecutively four different buildings as Brush Mountain School. The last school house was a log cabin that has been heated by a stove made of cast iron with wood and coal. The school furniture were made of wood and cast iron.
Later years
Your greatest strength reached the settlement with about one hundred inhabitants in 1925. During the Second World War many of the residents moved away in order to enter either in the military or to accept work in the coal mines. Nicey Ann Hensley died in 1937. 's Population kept going back, and from 1949 Sherman Hensley was the only remaining inhabitants. As Hensley eventually left the property in 1951, the settlement gradually fell into disrepair. Hensley died in 1979 and is buried next Nicey Ann in the cemetery of the village, where there are also 36 more graves.
Presence
The settlement was founded on July 4, 1959 part of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. The National Park Service and the Job Corps began in 1965 with the restoration, the 45 buildings and agricultural facilities were restored to their original condition.
The National Park Service operates the Appalachian Hensley Settlement in the form of a living history museum and May-October tours of the settlement on.