This is likely the first house built on the site of the iron producing Princess Furnace after it was shut down. The house sat at the base of the stone charging wall. The actual Princess Furnace previously sat in the exact same location as this house. Princess Furnace was a short lived operation only producing for a couple of years, 1877 and 1878.Rist,Iron, p93-95
I am unsure of the date of the photo, or the identities of those depicted, but in the photo the house looks relatively new. I have another photo (below) of just the furnace wall, no house, that was taken circa 1879. So it is after 1879. Phalen, William Clifton, between p122-123
Princess Furnace was dramatically different from the other early rural iron furnaces of the general area. It was an iron jacketed furnace, not a sandstone block structure like the rest, and burned coal, not charcoal. When the furnace operation went bankrupt this iron jacketed furnace was disassembled and shipped via rail to Glen Wilton VA where it produced iron for many years.
If you look closely at the house’s foundation stones under the porch, you can see they are made of identical stacked tooled stones. These stones are likely razed castoff parts from the furnace’s iron pouring / molding house and / or the building that housed the furnace’s steam powered air blast system seen in the image below.Lithograph of Ashland
Decades later, this house was the home of my Grand Great aunt, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Walker Meade (1865 – 1961), and her husband Eugene “Boot” Meade (1867 – 1944). The house likely burned soon after Boot died, so 1944 or 1945. Lizzie was the sister of my Great Grandmother, Etta Frances Walker Clark (1867 – 1919).
I grew up about ¼ mile west of this house site, on KY State Route 5 and played sandlot football and whiffle ball with my Princess KY mates in the flat area near the base of this stone wall.
This house and the Princess Furnace were located at the red teardrop marker in this Google Maps Link.
I would like to thank Terry Baldridge for pulling this photo from a pile of photos at the Boyd County Public Library marked as “from out of the general area” and correctly identifying the actual location. A big thanks to Jim Kettel of the Genealogy Room at the Boyd County Public Library for the high resolution scan of their print. And, for the kind help of brother and sister, Robert “Bob” Meade and Ginny Meade Kegley, great grandchildren of Boot and Lizzie Walker Meade, for info on when their great grandparents lived in this house.
Enjoy! Lon
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