Hearne History - Page 356

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and in connection with Hon. Garrett Davis, his friend and neighbor, he obtained and personally superintended the shipment of "Lincoln guns"--arms for the friends of the Government, that were taken into Bourbon and adjoining counties. It was the first act in the drama which saved Kentucky to the Union, or rather which gave courage and hope to the friends of the Union in Kentucky to save themselves and the State from the vortex of rebellion. In all the subsequnt struggles, through emancipation, and to this time, Mr. Hearne has been the unyielding friend of the Union and the Government. Early in 1861 he sold out his interests in Paris, and after remaining out of business during 1861-2, he removed to Covington, Ky., where he very soon engaged in the jobbing shoe trade, and subsequently in the shoe manufacturing business in Cincinnati. Calling to his aid all the new machinery and improved methods in his business, he made it highly successful and remunerative. Mr. Hearne has not courted public life. Except, perhaps, a term or two in the city government of Paris, and more recently of Covington, he has not sought or filled public places.

He had been for many years a prominent, zealous, and active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, when, in Sept., 1865, the Kentucky Conference of that church met in Covington, Ky., the home of Mr. Hearne. The trying times through which the country had passed had engendered animosities which seemed to be especially virulent, and promised to be lasting in the church; and at the conference it became quite apparent that the ostracism of Union men, which prevailed largely in some localities in social life, had reached and promised to display itself in the courts. This was met promptly by the Union ministers and laymen, and under the leadership of that noble old preacher, Rev. John C. Harrison, sustained by Revs. John G. Bruce, Daniel Stevenson, and others, men of great firmness of purpose and of conceded beauty of Christian character, on the part of the ministers, and of Jonathan D. Hearne, Hiram Shaw, Sen., Dr. P. B. Tevis, and others, on the part of the laymen, the memorable withdrawal of the large part of the ministers of intellect and power from the Church South took place--an event of great value and interest to the church and to the country. The consultations were held at the home of Mr. Hearne, where eighteen preachers determined that to maintain their self-respect and manhood necessitated withdrawal from the Southern Methodist

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Notes:

Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.


Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.