Oxley's Addition to Shepherdsville

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Back when I first arrived in Shepherdsville to teach at the old Shepherdsville High School what was then Second Street turned north near the school cafeteria and became Carpenter Street. Then some years later, when the Paroquet Springs area opened up, the town re-opened an old street named Vine Street that ran from Carpenter Street to the new shopping area.

Then in 2010, the town decided to honor the school's former basketball coach and renamed Second Street, part of Carpenter Street and Vine Street all as Joe B. Hall Avenue. But do you know where the names of Carpenter and Vine Streets originated?

Well, it all began in 1857 when B. F. Oxley bought a couple of adjoining tracts of land that lay between the town's old boundaries and the lands known as the Paraquette Springs.

These two tracts were originally a part of Peter Shepherd's 900 acre patent on the north side of Salt River. Following a trail of land deeds, the ground that Oxley bought passed through the hands of William Pope who deeded it back to Peter Shepherd's granddaughters, Sally and Charlotte Shepherd in 1827. They sold about six acres of it to Lorenzo Hogland who held onto it until Oxley bought it from him.

The approximately 21 acres that Oxley bought from Wilhite Carpenter took a longer route getting to him. The Shepherd sisters sold it, along with other lands to Francis Maraman in 1828. It was near here that Maraman operated a ferry across Salt River. After he died, his heirs sold it to their brother Henry O. Masden in 1842 who continued to run the ferry business nearby until a flood washed away his ferry boat. He sold multiple tracts including the one we're following to Wilhite Carpenter in 1856, and Carpenter, who was also the County Judge at the time, operated the ferry for a while; but he sold the 21 acres to Oxley the next year.

Benjamin Franklin Oxley was not a local businessman. He was born in 1831 in Scott County, Kentucky to Clare and Philadelphia (Oliver) Oxley. The family then moved to Missouri where their last child Frederick G. Oxley was born in 1834.

According to one report, Clare Oxley joined the forces fighting the Mexican-American War, and died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Christmas Day, 1847. The 1850 census found his widow living in Platte County, Missouri with her sister Elizabeth Cockrill, her mother Elizabeth Oliver, and three of her sons, Thomas, Benjamin and Frederick. Benjamin, now 18, was working as a merchant's clerk.

Benjamin was still in Platte County in September 1857 when he purchased the two tracts of land adjoining the east side of Shepherdsville from Hogland and Carpenter. He may have visited Shepherdsville on occasion, but he never lived here, and may well have never seen the ground he was buying.

Oxley's plan was to subdivide the ground into residential lots and sell them for a profit. He had a grand drawing made showing the lots and their nearness to the railroad, the town's churches, and the nearby spa, all enticements to encourage buyers. We've included a version of his drawing here.

Streets were drawn on the plan and given names, including an extension of Second Street as the addition's southern boundary. He named the new street running northward from Second Street as Carpenter Street, likely for Wilhite Carpenter, the ground's former owner. Also added was a new east-west street to be called Vine Street.

Of course the lots and streets were just lines on a piece of paper then, but it looked like a good plan as Shepherdsville was now a stop on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, opening it up to access and growth.

On October 12, 1857, an advertisement appeared in a Louisville newspaper announcing, "Only $5 cash and $5 a month is the terms of the sale of lots to come off in Oxley's Paraquette addition to Shepherdsville this afternoon."

Then the next day, the paper reported, "We understand Mr. Oxley's sale was largely attended at Shepherdsville yesterday and the bidding spirited. There were forty or fifty lots sold at $15, $20, $30, $40, $50 and some at $60 per lot. They were bought principally by the Germans and Italians of this city who intend building on them immediately."

Lest you think the lots were very cheap, $15 in 1857 would buy about $545 worth today; and $50 then would be worth over $1,800 today.

Likely as an inducement for more sales, an unknown writer shared the following statement in the October 31st issue of the Louisville newspaper.

"Some two weeks since we attended a sale of lots in Oxley's Paraquette addition to Shepherdsville. The sale was prompt, and bids were as brisk as though money grew on trees. The best oak and hickory timber is plentiful in this locality. The addition is laid off between the town proper and the springs, and for a carriage, wagon, or plough manufacturer, or a cooper, it struck us as being a rare chance for an enterprising mechanic, while the abundance of iron ore in the neighboring hills will render it a profitable investment to establish a rolling mill. There can be no doubt of one fact, that the natural advantages , with the enterprise now at work, will make Shepherdsville a desirable manufacturing town and a place of considerable note."

While it's true that the railroad was opening up the town, and that there had been considerable iron ore taken out of the hills south of town and turned into products in a local business, Shepherdsville was, and would remain a small country town for some years to come.

The number of lots said to have been sold were likely an exaggeration, but we do find deeds signed that fall for at least 20 lots. Then in May 1858, the auctioneer S. G. Henry & Co. advertised another sale of lots with a special train taking buyers to the site free of charge; and 20 more lots were sold and deeded that month. Fourteen more lots were sold in June, and another 22 in July. it seemed like things were going well.

However, sales slowed and only 14 lots were sold during the rest of the year; and only 7 more in 1859. Still he had sold 97 of the 149 lots laid out in the plan. I imagine one challenge he likely faced was getting all those monthly payments collected, and it appears that some of them ended up back in his hands by default.

He continued to live in Missouri during the sale of lots in this ground as late as 1859, but in the 1860 census he was located with his brother Frederick in Louisville. Both were described as druggists. It appears that Benjamin's brother-in-law James H. Oliver handled the paperwork as his attorney in fact for the deeds.

By 1870, Benjamin and his family, along with his mother, were living in Cincinnati where he continued to work as a druggist. By 1880, his wife Evelyn had died, and Benjamin and his three children were still in Cincinnati. However his brother Frederick had started a business making staves for barrels and Benjamin was now a part of this trade. Known as the F. G. Oxley Stave Company, the business eventually had offices in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. The company had an exclusive contract with the Standard Oil Company to provide staves for barrels.

I lose track of Benjamin until August 1898, when, after selling as many lots as he could over 40 years, he agreed to sell the remaining lots in Oxley's Addition to Shepherdsville to Lizzie Herps and W. C. Morrison. He was living in Boyle County, Kentucky at the time.

He appears in the 1900 census in Danville, Kentucky as the manager of a stave store, living with his two daughters. Then on April 12, 1910, Benjamin died in Boise, Idaho where he had gone to live near his daughter.

His grand plan for Oxley's Addition had not worked out the way he'd hoped. His scheme of roadways had mostly disappeared, and the number of folks actually living in his Addition had greatly dwindled. When Herps and Morrison bought its remains, they made a list of the first owners and who the lots now belonged to; and they made the plat drawing you see here that showed what had actually occurred.

No Carpenter Street nor Vine Street could be found on that drawing, but they still existed on the old original plat, and they would reappear. Today Carpenter Street weaves its quiet way northward, exiting onto Highway 44 next to the railroad, a final reminder of the dream of Oxley's Addition to Shepherdsville.

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Copyright 2024 by Charles Hartley, Shepherdsville KY. All rights are reserved. No part of the content of this page may be included in any format in any place without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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