This article was found online through a Google search. I did not purchase or claim any rights to this article/photos. All credits shall be given to Kentucky Historian Henry P. Scalf (1902-1979) and the publisher. Do not publish, copy, print, save, and/or use for any reason this article below titled "Old Home of Betsy Layne Stands, Long Untenanted" by Henry P. Scalf June 1954 FCT. Please contact publisher for copy rights.
OLD HOME OF BETSY LAYNE STANDS, LONG UNTENANTED
An article by Kentucky Historian Henry P. Scalf
~June 6, 1954 FCT
Because the article is so faint, I have typed it as I see. For words I am not certain on I will follow with (?) or ((SP) for spelling). There are typos, joined words, etc. so please consider any grammatical errors and typos as I am typing it as closely verbatim as possible.
Old Home of Betsy Layne Stands, Long Untenanted
Polaroid 1-Minute Photo by The Times
Old home of Tandy M. and Elizabeth Johns Layne still standing at Justell. Betsy Layne railway station and postoffice were named for Mrs. Layne.
By HENRY P. SCALF
Residents of Betsy Layne remember vaguely that the postoffice was name for an old lady approximately 50 years go.
None remember that she was Elizabeth Johns Layne, that she and her husband Tandy Middleton Layne acquired a large farm at the present Justell postoffice and that some time after their marriage on April 21, 1831 they erected a house of logs, still standing on the farm.
These two were the children of pioneers. Tandy M. was a son of James Shannon Layne and Caty Hager Layne. Elizabeth or Betsy was a daughter of Thomas Johns and Nancy Layne Johns. If genealogists are correct, these two were cousins because James Shannon Layne, father of Tandy M. and Nancy Layne Johns, mother of Betsy, were brother and sister.
Their parents had come to this county a decade before they were born from Amherst County Virginia. Betsy’s mother had ridden horse back to Kentucky with one of the children, age about two years, lying in her arms. The farm on which Tandy and Betsy erected their home was a part of the Layne estate.
It was a large farm measured by Floyd holdings today, containing (?) the old surveys say 776 acres. Today, the farm owned by Clabourne Bailey, has been reduced very little and his is approximately 640 acres of the original acres. Chief alienation was when the Pike-Floyd Coal Company put in a mine at Betsy Layne in 1918, and right of way (See Story No. 5, Page 4), story continues > < (Continued from Page One) was needed for a railroad and the land bordering on the riverside was sold. Bailey sold a small tract on Betsy Layne Branch. Two small alienations of title in a century and a quarter and probably longer. Maybe this is a record for this county affected(?) as it is with subdivisions.
Tandy M. and Betsy Layne had children. They were Emma, who married John Powell, Mary, married Harvey Childress, Thomas married Ann Weddington and Jane who married Anthony Hatcher. A small family for those days. As the children came along Tandy M. improved the log house by weather-boarding it. Today, long untenanted it is of two stories sealed(?) of hand planed lumber. Some of the lumber is of the finest quality, prime(?) popular(sp), dressed(?) by hand, a century ago.
A small cramped stairway rises from the front room and goes up to two large rooms upstairs. A leanto(?) kitchen and dining room now falling down were built by Tandy on the west side. Huge chimneys of crude(?) hand-carved native stone stand at each end of the house. A slave house of Tandy’s nearby has long since sacrumbed(sp) to the years.
James Shannon Layne operated a store across the river, near the present residence of James H. Loar, himself a Layne descendent. You could see the Layne mercantile(sp)(?) establishment from Tandy’s home back in the years before the Civil War.
In 1841, typhoid struck the Layne family, some of them married, but all brothers of Tandy M. Three died that year of the disease – William Henry, Sam George, and John Lewis. Two old tombstones, one each for two of the brothers, Sam Goerge and John Lewis with dates of birth and death on them, wre(sp) laying in the grass near the garden of James H. Loar. Mr. Loar repeats an old tradition of how family difference prevented the erection of stones after they were bought.
Some of the early Laynes were buried on the hill overlooking Betsy Layne from the railway side. Here he(?) buried Tandy’s father and mother, James Shannon and Caty. Here he and Betsy are buried. The cemetery site is on the old Tandy M. and Betsy Layne farm.
After Tandy M. Layne died, his wife survived for many years, long enough to be vaguely remembered by octogenarians of today. For a great many years she lived alone. The farm was bought by Dr. S.M. Ferguson in 1876 and tenants lived in the old house ever afterwards. One of them was Richard P. R---inson(?) who occupied it for years.
Dr. Ferguson, who lived near the Pike-Floyd county lines at the present Boldman(?) died in 1904, and he heirs sold the farm to the Big Mud Coal Company, a corporation owned by John C. C. Mayo (yes there are two C.s), Walter S. Harkins and others. Soon afterwards the rail station of Betsy Layne was established. Big Mud Coal Company sold in a short tie to the Olive Hill Brick Company.
The company wanted the co--(?) located here for the making of bricks at Olive Hill. Since a _____(?) was now opened, a postoffice was established and as for naming it what better one than Betsy Layne. Her old house still stood near the mine, people remembered her from years ago. So in naming the town, she was honored, her name being perpetuiated(sp) on one of the Uncle Sam’s far-flung postoffices. Today though, the postoffice serving where she lived is Justell, a named came from Justice and Elliot, later coal co operators that mined there. (Yes I know that doesn’t quite make sense) Betsy Layne serves the people on the side of the river where Tandy M. Layne’s father, James Shannon Layne lived and had a store, Laynesville, the postoffice that originally served where Betsy Layne is now and which was established by and named for James Shannon Layne does not exist.
The railway station remains with name and the old house still stands, recalling that once there lived an old lady who everyone called Betsy Layne.
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End of story.