THE RIVER CITY NEWS MORE COVINGTON NEWS THAN ANY OTHER SOURCE
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by Michael Monks
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EXCLUSIVE
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In the late nineteenth century at the corner of Lynn and Greenup Streets, there likely lived a shoe repairman, a couple seamstresses, a butcher, carpenters, and steel mill workers. The homes of those people were torn down in the late 1930s, but many of their belongings survived underneath the former Jacob Price housing project. "Somebody on that block made or repaired shoes," said Jeannine Kreinbrink of K&V Cultural Resources Management. "We found a lot of shoes but they were shoes that you threw away because they were too worn to fix. We found scraps where he was cutting out heels and soles so we have the leather scraps."
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The cobbler had neighbors, too. "We've got a lot of thread spools, so at least two women who lived there were seamstresses, and we've got a bunch of cut tin scraps, so a guy who rented on the corner in the 1870s was a tin cutter, and big cut animal bones out of one the outhouses that certainly came from the butcher shop," Kreinbrink said. "We can actually match deposits with individuals so our hope is to recreate that neighborhood through the second half of the 1800s to the early twentieth century."
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Kreinbrink and her team spent twenty-two days digging beneath the former Jacob Price site where six outhouses, three cisterns and other items from four or five former homes remained relatively intact underground. She explained that in those days people not only used an outhouse as a restroom but also as a trashcan. "Outhouses are interesting in many ways because people threw things in there that they didn't think people would look at again, so you look in there and you see secrets, like people who wanted to grow their hair back or liquor bottles," she said.
Kreinbrink and her team spent twenty-two days digging beneath the former Jacob Price site where six outhouses, three cisterns and other items from four or five former homes remained relatively intact underground. She explained that in those days people not only used an outhouse as a restroom but also as a trashcan. "Outhouses are interesting in many ways because people threw things in there that they didn't think people would look at again, so you look in there and you see secrets, like people who wanted to grow their hair back or liquor bottles," she said.
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The items discovered underground, such as torch supports and trellises and lots of glass containers, are an important link to Covington's past. "They can be connected to households and certainly addresses and time frames, so, say the house is occupied from 1850 forward, we can trace the deed history so we know who owned it every decade and we can luckily in the urban area look at the Covington city directories and figure out who lived there," Krienbrink explained. "We have the occupation history of those lots and it gives us the background, the ethnicity, the religion, where they came from."
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The lots on the site examined by Kreinbrink's team were the only ones not totally disturbed during the construction of Jacob Prince in the late 1930s. The historical underground investigation happened just before another development is set to take the place of Jacob Price: River's Edge at Eastside Pointe. Construction could not begin on that mixed-income housing development until the underground dig took place as part of a federal law connected to the Hope VI funds that are paying for River's Edge.
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The new construction will be the third such major development on the site since the middle of the 1850s. Originally, the area was part of 370 acres owned by the Western Baptist Theological Seminary which purchased the land in 1835. Eventually the seminary sold most of its acreage for development, keeping only twelve acres for its school and public square and twenty-two acres for Linden Grove Cemetery. The site that became Jacob Price and will now become River's Edge was originally developed as three subdivisions: the First, Second, and Third Baptist.
The new construction will be the third such major development on the site since the middle of the 1850s. Originally, the area was part of 370 acres owned by the Western Baptist Theological Seminary which purchased the land in 1835. Eventually the seminary sold most of its acreage for development, keeping only twelve acres for its school and public square and twenty-two acres for Linden Grove Cemetery. The site that became Jacob Price and will now become River's Edge was originally developed as three subdivisions: the First, Second, and Third Baptist.
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"It's really interesting because we span that entire time frame of that part of Covington from when it was first laid out to when the first houses were torn down to make Jacob Price," Kreinbrink said.
"It's really interesting because we span that entire time frame of that part of Covington from when it was first laid out to when the first houses were torn down to make Jacob Price," Kreinbrink said.
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Now that excavation and field work is over, Krienbrink and her team (which is subcontracted through Mid-South Cultural Resource Consultants which is contracted by the Housing Authority for these purposes) will begin work on a formal report. "We have two weeks after we're done with field work to put this document together," she said. "It says we got everything out of that corner that we could get in terms of artifacts and information, so let them go ahead and start building and then we have a year to finish our research and all the analysis and then put a report together that will be reviewed by everybody." She said that copies will be kept at the library and stored at the state level and that much of the information will be incorporated into an educational program for the schools. There will also be a public presentation on the discoveries at the conclusion of the research.
All photos provided by Jeannine Kreinbrink.
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