Three Forks of the Kentucky River Historical Association

Biography

"Greys Bend"

A Lutes Family History, Page 1

by Willie Hartman Lutes

Far up in the northeast corner of Lee County, Kentucky there lies a strip of tree clad hill country, known as Greys Bend, isolated in the monstrous expanse of forest and mountain that shadows and protects it. The North Fork of the Kentucky River, flowing silently between high, sandstone cliffs, wraps about this land of hills and valleys like a curving arm; embracing it on three sides, as if protecting it from unseen enemy.

Greys Bend is, always has been, the home of the Lutes clan, and the rocky wagon tracks of road that winds up from St. Helen follows an old, trail, an old route of march; the same trail my ancestors followed, when they drove their ox teams up the Boone Trail out of Virginia in the early 1800's.

In this country of forests, man loves his trees. Oak, gum, pine and chest-nut cast their pattern of sunlight and shadow over the rustic cabins, sheltering coolly the rocky trails that wind through the hills. Beyond there is only the vast silence of deep forests, staggering up the face of the mountains; the rolling yellow grasslands along the river; the colored fire of wild-flowers ringing the foothills; the great stands of tall mountain timber in the mountain ledges. Greys Bend had carved itself from out of the mountains, out of the forests, and whatever lay beyond was endless frontier. For many years there had been the circuit preacher traveling his long and lonely route through the wilderness. Marriages and baptisms were delayed or set to the time of his arrival and in the periods between his visits each man was preacher in his own household. So they built first the little log school house which they called "Gum Springs", after the spring which gushed from the rocks and flowed down to the hollow, where it eased to a quiet flow as though hushed by the trees. They used this building also for a church, a place for social gathering and the people came to sit in awe that there should be a church in this place.

Then came the general store, the black-smith shop, the gristmill. With man hacking a way of life out of the forest, came horses, oxen, cattle, mules, come women and children. And where there had been only the hills and river, there was now the cooperage with its iron rims and spokes and wooden wheels, and the blacksmith shop, an inferno of heat and glare and sound of file and ringing anvil. And they called this small village that sprang up in the lower end if Greys Bend, Red Brush. And Red Brush grew. The men came from the mountains with their wagons and their horses and after a time their women, too, saw a need in the wilderness, and beside the cooperage, Simp Lutes built his general store. And inside the store it was cool and dim, and there was an odor of flour and wood and rope, spices and molasses and leather, tea and dry goods and dust. On the sloping porch men sat and spit; played checkers and whittled, and up the creaking steps women came to buy their coffee and tea, their calico and spices. And there was never a hill man whose boot tracks could not be traced from the store to the blacksmith shop, from the shop to the cooperage.

Births were recorded in a page of the family bible; when death came another stone was placed in the family burying ground behind the cabins, and as the years passed the names of the mountain men who rested in the shade of the trees were many: Lutes, Creech, Bradley, Kincaid, Lucas, Brandenburg, Shackleford, Snowden, Abner, Mann, Hilton English, Scotch, German, and Irish. And these names were the soul of the back country of Kentucky Territory. Direct, hard, strongmen born of these names; men who had come up the Boone Trail, out of Virginia, through Cumberland Gap; over the mountains and down river valleys, to build their cabins in this primitive Kentucky wilderness. And mindful of what had made them, forest, Indian, hardship, they were ready to cry out to the world and die trying it: "We are Kentuckians, and we are proud of it."

Although the years have accounted for many changes in this land of the Lutes forbears, the language of the people still bears the flavor of their ancestors, who spoke the Chaucerian tongue. Like their ancestors many of these mountain people used earthy Anglo Saxon: "holp" for help, "seed" for seen, "hit" for it, etc. Language experts who have visited this area say they have discovered more than 1200 words used by these hill people that are spoken nowhere else in America. And bathed through it is in the bright Kentucky sunshine this land was once the "Dark and Bloody Ground"...."The land of the Long Hunters"... ."The land of the Tall Mountain Men"...and even today it serves as a grim reminder of the terrible prices paid. If you visit Greys Bend today you will find it in some ways much the same as our forebears knew it; in other ways it has changed. When you leave the blacktop road at St. Helens, you leave the present and go back into the past. The rough gravel road that takes off into the hills follows the same route our ancestors traveled; the same road, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather knew. Up through the hills and hollows, it winds and twists, sheltered coolly by the tall stands of timber that grow on the mountain slopes.

Three miles to the north, as you drive out of the dark depths of a deep hollow you will come to an old cross roads store. On the weather-beaten front hangs a crudely lettered sign which reads, "Primrose". This old store is about all that is left of the place once known as Red Brush. That pile of stones covered over with honeysuckle vines is where the blacksmith once stood. Where the gristmill stood is a dense patch of weeds and briars. The old Simp Lutes store building still stands in the hollow. It looks forlorn and desolate and like a building that has died and been embalmed. Mice play in the empty darkness where Simp once served calico and spices to the mountain women that walked up the creaking steps. The sloping porch where men sat and spit and played checkers still clings to the front, its sagging roof and rotting floor boards a mute reminder of days long past.

As you stand here gazing upon the ghostly remains of these old buildings something inside you seems to whisper, "This is your heritage". And the disfiguring scars left by the years disappear; the buildings seem clothed in the strength of freshness of these bygone days of yesterday. The present fades; the past rises to a picture... from over the hill come the ox teams of our ancestors---4he black team of mules with the clanking trace of chains are driven by young Joe Lutes on his way to the grist-mill.

The young man wearing the blue uniform with the corporal's stripes is William Clayton Lutes, just arrived home from the Civil War. The pretty girl wearing the gabardine dress whom William is talking to is Sirilda Thompson, who was soon to become William's bride.

That tall man there lounging in the doorway is Charles Lutes, older brother to William. And on and on, down through the years....my father, my uncle John, my uncle Willie, once knew and walked the streets of Red Brush, a place that flames no more; its days are a tale that is told. It lives with its memories and ghosts. Once it lived, now it is dead.

About a mile up the road from Primrose you will see old Gum Springs schoolhouse. Here, down through the years, came the Lutes', to learn their "readin, writen, and numbers". My father, my grandfather, and all the other Lutes' learned their ABC's in this old one room school house. The cool waters of Gum Spring still gush from the moss-covered cliff indeed a moment of an era, long since passed.

As you leave Gum Springs, the old trail winds and twists like a scared serpent up through the tree clad woods of Greys Bend land, country as beautiful and scenic as any you will ever lay eyes on. You are now in the land of the Lutes clan, and the North Fork of the Kentucky River forms a great loop around three sides of a land of hills and valleys in which none but Lutes' or their relatives live. You could walk the length of Greys Bend, some three or four miles, and never get off Lutes land. Here, descendants of John and Priscilla Mann Lutes, still live on the land handed down to them by their forebears. Here in 1868 my father was born, in a log house up in the northwest part of the Bend. My grandfather drew his first breath of Kentucky air here in 1843. My great-grandmother, Priscilla Mann was born here in 1798. Before that this land was wilderness and Indians walked it, and the countless winged creatures of earth and sky had enriched it with their droppings and their bones.

Three miles up the road you turn off onto a rough rocky trail that leads up the floor of a deep hollow. Here, sheltered coolly by tall stands of mountain timber, under whose limbs Indians walked, lies the old Lutes place, where my great grandparents, John and Priscilla Lutes once lived, and where my grandfather, William was born. For over 148 years this has been Lutes land. Five generations of the family have lived in this land which lies in a great fold of the river.

The log house, with its "dogwalk" through the middle stands in the hollow, sheltered coolly in old lilac scented bushes (the rest of this sentence is unreadable). The barn stands on a hill overlooking the house, and the rocky path worn smooth by five generations of Lutes comes up from the road, goes round the house, and up to the barn.

You will be greeted by Oscar Lutes, a kindly gentleman of 68 summers. Oscar is a great grandson of John and Priscilla Lutes and, with his sister Nattie, has lived on the place since their parents, Frank and Nancy Kincaid Lutes passed away. Frank was the son of Christopher Lutes, third born son to John and Priscilla.

Nattie is an invalid and bedfast, so Oscar does all the cooking and housework. After he has cooked you a good old Kentucky dinner which you will long remember, he will take you up on the hill back of the barn to the old Lutes graveyards. Here, beneath the spreading branch of the mountain pines, and the giant oak and gum trees you will find the graves of our ancestors.

Get out your notebook and pencil for you are going to find history here in this old graveyard, and if you will take down the names and dates of these old weather-beaten stones you will have added much to your store of knowledge in regards to the early Lutes family.

Here, beneath the honeysuckle and morning glory vines, sheltered by the spreading branches of giant oaks under whose limbs Indians have walked you will find the grave stones of John and Priscilla Mann Lutes who lived and died in these tree clad hills. Lonely, peaceful, and still, is the resting place of our forebears. You sit down to rest and admire this beautiful spot.

A fox hark shatters the stillness. Yes, this is real stillness; not silence, but stillness. A stillness composed of natural sounds; the sounds of hill country; muted sounds, somehow muted by the forest itself....lean spotted hounds chasing a fox over the distant hills; the soft sweet tinkle of a cowbell; the murmur of a mountain spring; the chocking rattle of a woodpecker tapping on a dead tree; sounds that somehow seem to be a part of this hill country.

As you walk slowly back down the rocky path; the path worn smooth by five generations of Lutes, there is an air moving, a coolness of breeze and water. Looking off at the mountains you see waves of heat, watery and white in the distance. It is a beautiful view. The blue, tree-covered Cumberlands stretch for miles, their lofty peaks propping up the sky. Far down in the hollow you can see the old house. On a green slope of pasture below the barn some horses graze, the work horses, Oscar's saddle horse of the Lutes stable.

As you climb into your car the evening sun is sinking over the distant hills, casting dark shadows, vignetting with flattery the beauty of the majestic Cumberlands, laying fog mistily gauze in the hollows. And as you drive slowly down the rough rocky trail that leads back to the outside world, you forget there is such a work as civilization; that is the farthest thing from your mind, after seeing this land of the Lutes clan, looking like it always has bean here, unchanging, forsworn by the chemistry of forest and mountain and wilderness never to change.