District 2

pg 457

171/171
Sylvester Combs 42 M farmer KY
Lucinda 35 F KY
Ann E. 12 F KY
James E. 8 M KY
Joseph L. 5 M KY
Mary J. 2 F KY

pg 466

279/279
James Combs 74 M farmer $12,500 MD
Julia 43 F KY
Theresa 3 F KY
John WILLIAMS 14 M KY

"James and Robert Combs are listed among the founders of St. Francis Church by Webb(1). Goad recalled that Major Sylvester, Robert, and James Combs, sons of Scott County's James Combs, had emigrated from Scott to Monroe County, Missouri, near Clinton( 2). Perhaps for a while James and Robert Combs had moved from Scott County, Kentucky, for they do not appear on the 1806 petitioners' list. James Combs is listed on the 1810 Scott tax list.

The date of James Combs' coming to Kentucky is also subject to dispute. His descendant, the late Fannie HALLEY Kerr wrote that he came here in 1792 with the St. Mary's emigrants, and was at that time twenty years old. She had him traced back four generations to Enoch Combs, born in England in 1638. In 1829 he bought Jeremiah TARLTON'S tavern and log home, and that property became his family's home until 1892-1893 when it was torn down by his daughter Mary Theresa and her husband Edmund Payne HALLEY to make way for a new home( 3). Goad says that James Combs "came out with us in 96'"( 4).

James Combs' first wife Matilda died February 12, 1839. On February 8, 1844 he married Julia Peters WILLIAMS. He died in 1852, his will listing children Sylvester, James, Robert, Margaret, Elizabeth, Susan, Sarah, Theresa, and the heirs of Ann. Witnesses were Robert LEE and Patrick H. COONEY(5).

COMB'S tavern was apparently an important place to travelers, Ebenezer Hiram STEDMAN, chronicler of the paper industry, recalled his July 1833 trip to the Forks to look at an old paper mill which he ultimately purchased. "Leaving Georgetown from Franklin County," he wrote, "we are in high spirits & when we got to Combs tavern near the Cathlick Church we all got a drink of Good old Bourbon Sperits."(6)

Robert Combs, brother of James, died in 1818. His will referred to property in Kentucky and Maryland. To his wife Rebecca he gave sixteen negroes and their increase, naming all sixteen. They were to receive after her death "their full and perfect freedom provided nevertheless if they or anyone of them should behave in a manner displeasing to my beloved wife...she or he shall be sold for a term of years not more than seven nor less than four years and the money applied to my beloved wife's uses." Three other negroes were to go to his "beloved mother Margaret NORRIS of Saint Mary's County, Maryland, and after her death, to Rebecca."

The first of the Elkhorn region Catholics had been on their way to the Nelson County settlements when they learned that land in what was to become western Scott, northern Woodford, and eastern Franklin counties, was for sale. Recognizing its value as compared to land farther west, they chose to settle in what has become the famous Inner Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky.

Most sources give the year of settlement as 1786, the same year that nearby Georgetown was settled by a group of Virginia Baptists. The date comes into question when one searches the 1790 tax list and finds only Henry CLARVO listed among the early known Catholic folk. However, by 1793 there were twenty-five Catholic families occupying the region which later on came to be know as White Sulphur ( 7). In 1792 Scott County was created from a part of original Woodford, and in 1795 Franklin County had it inception.

Published Sources list several families as having been the original Forks of Elkhorn Catholics. Included are those headed by James LEAKE, Thomas Courtney JENKINS, James GOUGH, Ignatius GOUGH, John Baptist GOUGH, Robert Combs, James Combs, Jeremiah TARLTON, George TARLTON, Thomas WORLAND, Barnaby WORLAND, Bennet GREENWELL, Henry GREENWELL, Ignatius GREENWELL, and Mrs. Ann JAMES.(8) Again, this list presents difficulties, as there were other families in the parish when Father BADIN arrived in late 1793. The FENWICKS were especially prominent. These people were farmers and millers who almost immediately experienced success and its resultant wealth. Anxious to get on with matters of their faith, they wrote to Bishop CARROLL for a priest and promised to see to his support.(9)

By 1793 Scott County Catholics were planning their first church in anticipation of the coming of a priest.(10) As the year came to a close, a very special young priest was on his way West to organize his first parish. Neither he nor his prospective parishioners could have come close to anticipate the dramas to ensue, in which they would all play major and frequently conflicting roles."

(1) Missionaries of Kentucky, 1787-1826-27, Webb, 89
(2) Reminiscences, Chronicles of St. Mary's, Goad
(3) Letter from Fannie Halley (Mrs. W. Graham) Kerr, 1974, author's collection
(4) Reminiscences, Chronicles of St. Mary's, Goad
(5) Scott County Will Book M-33
(6) Bluegrass Craftsman, Dugan & Bull, 149, 150
(7) The Catholic Church on the Kentucky Frontier (1785-1812), Sister Mary Ramona Mattingly, 1936
(8) History of the Catholic Church, White Sulphur, Webb & Curry, 1922
(9) Ryan quoting letter from Father Badin to Bishop Carroll February 26, 1805.
(10) The Catholic Church on the Kentucky Frontier (1785-1812), Sister Mary Ramona Mattingly, 1936