Last year’s final Throwback Thursday of the year was the 400-year-old story of
“Auld Lang Syne.” This week, as the year comes to a close, we thought it would be fun
to share some New Year’s traditions from around the world. With the arrival of a
new year comes new beginnings and opportunities. For thousands of years, cultures
across the globe have established habits that bring good luck to a new year.
When the Soviet Union was established in the early 20th century, Christmas trees were
banned. Instead, Russians decorated spruce trees for the New Year, finding a new
way to decorate a traditional Christmas tree. The idea of decorating a tree to
welcome the New Year has outlived the Soviet era.

Some common New Year traditions around the house can be simple. Open the
windows and doors to make sure the old year leaves and the new year can arrive.
Clean your home on New Year’s Eve, so good luck can stick around and not be
washed away on New Year’s Day.

Embrace your heritage around the New Year, too. These old customs still ring true
around the world. “Auld Lang Syne” is a Scottish song, and the Scots celebrate the
last day of the year with a huge party and holiday called Hogmanay, that originated
with Vikings thousands of years ago around the winter solstice. They believe it’s
good luck and should be celebrated if a tall, dark-haired man enters your home
bearing gifts on New Year’s Day.

Don’t forget New Year’s foods from around the world. Indulge in foods shaped like a
circle or rings, as they bring good fortune and coins of wealth around the year, like
donuts, bagels, pretzels, and beans. The famous Southern Cajun hoppin’ John recipe
calls for black beans, collard greens, ham and cornbread. Eating long noodles ensure
a long life, especially in Japan.

In South America and Europe, eat exactly 12 grapes to ring in the New Year. It brings
good fortune, as it was practiced by the wealthiest of the feudal era. The French
added champagne to the mix in the 1800s.

Some cultures even say the color of your underwear on New Year’s determines the
shape your year will take. White is peace, red is love, and yellow is for luck.
We wish you a very Happy New Year.

We’ve shared stories of how transportation shaped the history of Bowling Green’s
development. First was the Barren River, then the L&N railroad, followed by federal
highways as the automobile became mainstream just before the interstate system.
The main entrance into Bowling Green from the north was over the College Street
bridge, and major commercial and automotive businesses popped up along College
into the 1940s and ‘50s.

The modern auto district was where the Circus Square area is now. A car boon
meant a need for auto shops and dealers, gas and service stations, hardware and
grocery stores, all amenities of modern living. Businesses like these thrived around
the blocks where the Bowling Green Ballpark, SKyPAC, downtown parking
structure, and even BGMU on Center St. now sit. This area was part of the historic
Shake Rag district and African American community too.

One of the most memorable businesses was Powell’s Service Station at 731 College,
where the parking structure is now. It was known for modern architecture, white
and blue tiles with blue streamlined piping. The Kirtley Furniture Store opened in
this area in 1939, and has since moved to State St. and changed names to today’s
United Furniture.

It’s interesting to note that all the major street names in this area have changed over
the years. So many buildings are no longer standing. That’s another reason why it
can be difficult for us to tell these stories. When this street changed to that, and that
became this, and buildings were lost, they all become mere memories that rely on
–hopefully – existing photos or old maps to decipher. One of these days, we’ll do a
segment on these old street names. For now: College Street was Bridge and Summer.
Center Street was Green. Kentucky Street was Mechanic. Sixth Avenue was Madison,
7th was Shelby, and 8th was Washington. Simple, right?

They’ve officially been rockin’ for 50 years. 2023 is the 50th anniversary of southern
Kentucky’s classic rock radio station WDNS. The mighty D93 station is in beautiful
downtown Bowling Green on College Street. This week’s Throwback Thursday topic
is a time capsule in itself. Walk into D93’s station and it feels like you’ve stepped
back into 1973 where it all began.

In March of 1973, the station began broadcasting at 98.3 megahertz. Branded D98, it
was a beautiful music format. A few years later, it changed to adult
contemporary. It wasn’t until 1991 that it became the classic rock station we all
know and love. It said adios to the 98 frequency and became D93 in 1995.
Memorabilia from rock history is scattered all over the place. The mothership studio
barely has room for a live D.J. and a guest or two. A wallpaper border with planets
in outer space sets the mood for the mothership. Its walls are covered top to
bottom with rock albums, posters, stickers, and autographs. Ancient cassette relics
are stacked on shelves, next to a list of over 100 rejected band names handwritten
on a dry erase board.

There’s something cool about this place. When you take a step inside, you feel like
you’re backstage before the band goes on. The voices you hear on D93 throughout
the workday are real time locals – somewhat of a lost art in the world of modern
radio. These characters have a classic sound all their own.

The Tony Rose Morning Show with Dr. Bob Arizona and Nerdman Captain Chris
wake you up with the likes of “stuff what happened on this date” and “Weird Al
Yankovic selector gizmo thingy.” Sheila Ash takes the wheel on the air as you head
into the mid-morning, before Bryan Locke helps you eat lunch midday. Tommy
Starr’s Afternoon Rock Show winds down your workday into the evening drive time.
Grammy and CMA award-winner Greg Martin of The Kentucky Headhunters hosts
the weekly Lowdown Hoedown on Mondays. Mellow Matt Pfefferkorn of Mellow
Matt’s Music & More local record store spends his Sunday nights hosting dead air.

Here’s to another 50 years of classic rock on D93, still rockin’ on College Street.

This week’s Throwback Thursday story was inspired by the Landmark Association of Bowling
Green. As the association shared stories of the homes and businesses on its Christmas on
College Hill tour last weekend, one of the spaces mentioned is a familiar College Street
business. The Gerard-Bratcher building at 943 College Street is nearly two hundred years old,
and has also been featured for the past several years on the Unseen Bowling Green downtown
walking tour every Fall.

Built just after 1850 by John Claude Gerard, the structure on the corner of 10th and College Streets
has a storied past as a funeral home for over a century. John Claude Gerard was a furniture and
cabinet maker whose skills in coffin building became crucial to the city around the Civil War in
the 1860s. Anyone who’s taken the Unseen Bowling Green downtown walking tour over the past
five years may remember the macabre and ghostly stories told about the unique pulley system
the Gerards established on this building’s second floor that allowed coffins to easily be removed
from its second story window and laid into a funeral carriage sitting on the street at ground level.
The Unseen stories say staff has been known to hear what sounds like coffins or bodies being
moved across the second floor at the current Bratcher attorney office that inhabits the space.

According to the Landmark Association, John Claude Gerard opened his woodworking shop in
1843 as a furniture maker, but soon became the only undertaker operating in the city for many
years. The need for coffins became so critical during the Civil War that the city had to open
another cemetery, Fairview Cemetery. This building is just a couple blocks away from the
Presbyterian Church that we have shared stories about, which operated as a Civil War hospital.
The Gerards operated the undertaking business until selling it to J.C. Kirby and family in 1989,
having operated for over a century.

The Gerard name is associated with many buildings and even modern businesses in the
Fountain Square area, like the home of current-day Gerard’s 1907 Tavern restaurant and the
former Gerard Hotel on Park Row. The law offices of Pamela C. Bratcher currently operate in
the Gerard-Bratcher building.

It’s been 225 years since the founding of Bowling Green. History is a collection of stories.
Heading into the holiday season, we are grateful for over two centuries of stories being told
about our community. This week, we go back to our American Revolutionary War-era 18th
century roots to tell the story of Bowling Green.

Brothers George and Robert Moore served their new country in the War for American
Independence. Colonists who took up arms against the British in Virginia, they were rewarded
by their new country after the Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1783. That was the case for
many colonials who were gifted land grants after the war, in what was then considered the wild
western wilderness. Kentucky joined the union as the fifteenth state in 1792.

Before the Moore brothers journeyed through the new state, there had been a long line of early
pioneers and hunters that had already established small settlements. One nearby was
McFadin’s Station, near Cumberland Trace and Drakes Creek. The Moores stopped to
rest at this place before continuing a little further westward and stopping near what is now
Downtown Bowling Green.

The Moores donated two acres that the County’s first council and courthouse would be built
upon, which is now where Fountain Square Park sits. 225 years ago, in 1798, the very first city
commission meeting was held, and the people dubbed the place “Bowlin Green.” Thus, Bowling
Green was officially founded.

It would take more than a decade for the city to officially incorporate in 1812, and as the wild was
still in the wilderness of the area, contention arose between another Revolutionary War veteran,
who had also received a local land grant. John McNeel, known as John the Turbulent for
biting a man’s ear off in a bar argument, owned land on the other side of Barren River near
the Weldon Peete Park area. Calling his town Jeffersonville, McNeel spent years trying to move
the county seat there, going so far as moving a courthouse piece by piece across the river.

The City of Bowling Green seal features the year 1798. We would be remiss not to mention this
quasquibicentennial milestone before the end of 2023.

A few years ago, Throwback Thursday told the story of the duel in Dueling Grounds Distillery in
Simpson County. This week, thanks to help from Kentucky historian and south central Kentuckian
Sam Terry, we revisit some Simpson County’s dueling grounds history. We know there were at
least 40 famous duels here in the early 19th century around the Linkumpinch Farm area. But
why?

In November of 1779, a couple of surveyors were laying out the border between Virginia and North
Carolina, which would eventually become the line between two new states formed in the 1790s:
Kentucky and Tennessee. Somewhere along what is now the border between Kentucky’s Simpson
County and Tennessee’s Robertson County, something went wrong. Robertson was incorporated
27 years later in 1796, and Simpson County came along 40 years later in 1819.

According to Sam Terry, surveyors Walker and Smith were stuck on a cloudy day that prevented
them from being able to use astronomical observations to draw a proper line – resulting in that
triangular Kentucky dip into what should have been Tennessee along the boundary line. The
surveyors also said iron ore in the area caused confusion with their compass needle. The area
was deemed a “no man’s land” for the next 50+ years, as the 600 or so acres in that triangle
were often disputed between the states.

Duels were illegal. But, if men wanted to press their luck and duel anyway, they could do so in
“no man’s land,” where it could be disputed in which state the duel took place. And thus,
at least 40 known duels took place here, wherever here was.

On top of that, in 1859, a Tennessean named Middleton claimed 101 acres of his land protruded
into Kentucky and was inside this no man’s land. Surveyors returned to the area and a new
assessment agreed with Middleton, possibly thanks to a whiskey trade.

Dueling Grounds Distillery in Franklin, Kentucky is named for this area, just a couple miles north of
the Tennessee border. Franklin even celebrates its heritage with live action duel re-enactments.

The Kentucky Museum at Western Kentucky University has been one of our Throwback
Thursday sponsors for years. One of the great things about the museum is that it’s always
working on curating new exhibits or updating its current galleries. In September, the Stitches
in Time exhibit officially opened. This week, we take a closer look at this exhibit and learn more
about quilting in Kentucky.

The museum has been home to many historic quilts for years, but the
ones on display now are a little bit different than the others you may have seen the
last time you visited the Kentucky Museum. The new exhibit is the result of a three-year project
headed by Luce Term Assistant Curator of Folk Art, Jackson Medel. The project was funded by the
Henry Luce Foundation out of New York City, whose mission is to deepen knowledge and
understanding in the pursuit of a more democratic world, by nurturing knowledge communities
and institutions and fostering dialogues.

The Stitches in Time exhibit features 30 of the Kentucky Museum’s over 330 quilts, each with its
own historic and cultural significance, covering over 300 years. Museum visitors are able to see
a quilt created by George Washington’s niece-in-law; a 66-thousand piece quilt created by a
New Zealand immigrant in the 1930s; a quilt with a Henry Clay portrait,
showcasing this famous national statesman and Kentuckian; another with a portrait of Father
Thomas Merton, well-known poet and essayist, who resided in the Abbey of Our Lady of
Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Bardstown; and quilts created with the help of Florence
Peto, a prominent figure in the 20th century quilt revival and 1980 Quilters Hall of Fame inductee.

Kentucky has a rich quilting heritage, and we would be remiss not to mention the National Quilt
Museum in Paducah, which hosts annual events that bring quilters from around the
globe to Kentucky.

The Stitches in Time exhibit is on display through July 2025.

The 1899 Kentucky Governor’s election threw the state into chaos.  Both candidates claimed to have won.  After Democrat William Goebel was assassinated, the two parties in the General Assembly met separately. Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Beckham was sworn in to succeed Goebel while Republican Governor William Taylor locked himself in his office. Both men mobilized their own militias.  The whole nation waited for open warfare to break out.

Before settling who would govern the state, the hunt began for the assassins. Arrest warrants were issued charging five men with the murder of Goebel. Caleb Powers was discovered escaping Frankfort, disguised as a soldier. He already had a pardon from Governor Taylor, which was ignored. Powers, as Kentucky’s newly elected Secretary of State, had an office, alongside Governor Taylor’s, in the Executive Building from which the assassin’s shots were fired.  According to his own staff, Powers had encouraged armed men to descend on Frankfort to intimidate the General Assembly.  Allegedly he gave the key to his office to Henry Youtsey, who worked in the Auditor’s office. Youtsey testified that he gave that key to Jim Howard, along with some special ammunition.  Howard allegedly pulled the trigger. 

Powers, Youtsey, and Howard were all tried, found guilty, and handed life sentences. Caleb Powers appealed. In his third trial, he took the stand and spoke for seven hours in his defense, before he was found guilty again and, this time, sentenced to death.  He would eventually be pardoned in 1908 by Republican Governor Augustus Willson. In 1910, he ran for office again and won. Caleb Powers spent eight years representing Kentucky’s 11th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, demonstrating that the state could forgive and forget. He spent the same number of years in Congress as he did in prison.

Meanwhile the courts also ruled on who was governor. On April 6, 1900, the Kentucky Court of Appeals, then the highest court in the state, sided with the Democrats. Republicans appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who refused to hear the case, with only Justice John Marshall Harlan, from Kentucky himself, objecting.

With these rulings, William Taylor, wired his state guard’s Adjutant General, telling him to dismiss the soldiers guarding the state house and surrender his office. Afterwards, Taylor fled to Indianapolis before being indicted as an accessory himself. Kentucky tried to have him extradited, but the Indiana Governor, a fellow Republican, refused. In 1901, men tried to abduct him so he could be returned to Kentucky to stand trial, but that effort failed. Even though he was pardoned in 1909, Taylor never returned to Kentucky permanently. The only governor from Butler County died in 1928 and is buried in Indianapolis. 

The 1899 Kentucky Governor’s race was a rollercoaster ride that sent a local man, William Taylor of Butler County, to the Governor’s mansion, but only for 50 days. Taylor was born in a log cabin on the Green River near Morgantown.  Lacking formal education, he still became a lawyer, County Judge, and Kentucky Attorney General.

With Democrats favored to win in 1899, only Taylor worked for the Republican nomination, which he easily won. State Senator William Goebel of Kenton County went into the Democratic convention in third place but, after 24 raucous votes, beat several rivals to be his party’s candidate for governor.

By Election Day, issues and personalities split Democrats, and Taylor won by less than three thousand votes. He was inaugurated on December 12th as Kentucky’s 33rd Governor. With charges of voter intimidation and irregular ballots, however, the General Assembly threatened to reverse those results.  

On January 30, 1900, William Goebel approached the Old State Capitol. As President of the Senate, he would lead the deliberations on whether his opponent, William Taylor, had bested him in the race.

 That morning was unusually quiet, even after angry citizens had flooded into Frankfort to witness these events. Mountain men had arrived, weapons in hand, one saying ominously “if the election were overturned, there would be a shoveling of dirt.”  As Goebel neared the Capitol, shots rang out and he fell to the ground.  The bullets came from the Executive Building next door.  Inside that building, Governor Taylor marshaled the State Guard and placed a Gatling gun outside his office.  He ordered the legislature to adjourn, and armed soldiers barred them from meeting.  

Democrats, however, met in secret at the Capitol Hotel where Goebel was under the care of doctors.  On January 31, they came, one by one, and voted unanimously to declare William Goebel the lawfully elected winner.  That night, Chief Justice Hazelrigg swore him in as 34th governor. To keep it safe, the record of the vote was smuggled out beneath the dress of the Railroad Commissioner’s wife.

William Goebel died of his wounds on February 3, the only U.S. Governor ever to be assassinated, and his Lieutenant Governor, John Beckham, was sworn in as Kentucky’s 35th Governor. With two rival Governors, each with their own militia, and the General Assembly’s Democrats and Republicans meeting as separate legislatures, the state was on the verge of civil war.  Tune into next week’s Throwback Thursday to see how Kentucky survived these perilous times.

As we finish up this month of haunted or chilling Throwback Thursday stories, our final October
tale is about Western Kentucky University ghosts. We’ve told stories of campus ghosts in years
past, this week takes a new ghostly Greek view instead. Thanks to Tamela Smith and the WKU
ghosts site for these unusual stories involving fraternity houses of campus’ past and present.
For any of you WKU Greeks out there: can anyone verify these?

The former Sigma Alpha Epsilon, or SAE, house that was on College Street is top of the list.
These stories are corroborated in articles from the College Heights Herald student run
newspaper printed in 1992 and 1997. They say the house was a Civil War hospital, haunted by
a ghost known only as “Kevin,” courtesy of a Ouija board experiment. Kevin was supposed to be
a young soldier who died in the home and never left. They say he was seen in a long military
coat and on the old dance floor.

More from the old SAE house, they say some students were studying during finals week in the
days before cell phones. The house’s answering machine kept coming on without the phone
having rung. When a student commented on it, the phone finally rang, but no one was at the
other end. They say Kevin’s favorite number is seven, as odd things like lights turning on and
off, fans falling off shelves, and doors slamming always happened in room seven.

A College Heights Herald article from 1981 tells stories about the Lambda Chi Alpha house on
Chestnut Street. The Tudor style house was built in the early 1900s. Brothers tell stories of a
ghost that enjoys using an old typewriter in an otherwise empty room, and another ghost that
once started a fire in the old fireplace when no one else was awake. A young girl was allegedly
killed at the home before the fraternity bought it, and her figure has been seen on the lawn.

In 1985, a young Delta Tau Delta named Bill died at the house in the middle of the night
from a blood clot. We found the College Heights Herald about his death. The brothers say Bill’s
spirit never left and continues haunting his old room at the house.

The Kappa Sigma men say their own house has a presence, a cowboy named Jim – another
Ouija board discovery. Jim allegedly has his own daily routine of haunts in certain rooms and
times.

The WKU Alumni Center started offering ghost tours this fall. The tours visit many other campus
buildings with known paranormal activity and ties to the supernatural. Read professor Lynwood
Montell’s books – the retired professor of Folk Studies and Anthropology used to take classes to
stay the night inside Van Meter Hall. you don’t want to be alone there in the wee hours of
morning.

Find out more about WKU ghosts and tours on the WKU site.