Many scenes in the Little Colonel series, from “The
Little Colonel’s Christmas Vacation” through “The
Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding,” take place in Rollington, a
community located down Central Avenue from Lloydsboro Valley, past
The Gables, past Edgewood
and past The Beeches near what is now Highway
22. In the books, Annie Fellows Johnston depicts many Rollington residents
as impoverished, such as in the passage below from
Chapter XII of “The
Little Colonel’s Christmas Vacation:”
But in five minutes, Lloyd… was
listening with interest to their account of a call they had just
made in Rollington. They had been to see a poor washerwoman who had
five children to support. The youngest, a baby who had fits, was
very ill, about to die. At the mention of Mrs. Crisp, Lloyd recalled
the forlorn little woman in a wispy crepe veil, who had enlisted her
sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she and Betty
had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the greater
part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their box of
Thanksgiving goodies.
There was so little poverty in the
Valley that, when any real case of suffering was discovered, it was
taken up with enthusiasm.
“Long before Pewee Valley began developing as a community, Rollington had
established itself as a settlement and overnight stop in the road between
Louisville and Brownsboro,” says “A Place Called Pewee Valley,” prepared by
the Pewee Valley Centennial Commission in 1970 to commemorate the 100-year
anniversary of the town’s incorporation. Rollington and Floydsburg were
actually the first two major pioneer settlements in the southeastern corner
of what is now Oldham County, predating Pewee Valley’s 1870 incorporation by
more than half a century.
During the Annie Fellows Johnston era, Rollington was home to St.
Aloysius Catholic Church, according to “History & Families of Oldham County,
Kentucky: The First Century,” page 262:
…St. Aloysius Roman
Catholic Church was first organized in 1840…The first services were
held in private homes in Rollington…In 1863, the first small mission
church was built in Rollington at a location that came to be known
as “Catholic Hill.” (Note: on the corner of what is now the
intersection of Central Avenue and Rollington Road.) With the
purchase of a small plot of land, a cemetery was laid out and a
small frame gabled church was constructed.
Since the church moved to its present location on Mt. Mercy Drive in
1914, Catholic Hill has been used exclusively as a cemetery. The original
church building was moved and incorporated into another home on Rollington
Road, according to Pewee Valley Historian Gin Chadouin.
The original St. Aloysius Church building on Catholic Hill in Rollington.
Part of it was moved and incorporated into the home below now located on
Rollington Road.
Across Rollington Road from Catholic Hill was the Foley family’s first
home in the area. The Foleys operated a meat market for some years at H.M.
Woodruff’s Pewee Valley
store. In 1903, they bought both the store and the Woodruff’s home
next-door. The original Foley house is still standing on the corner of
Rollington and Central and is pictured below:
Across Rollington Road from Catholic Hill was the Foley family’s first
home in the area. The Foleys operated a meat market for some years at H.M.
Woodruff’s Pewee Valley
store. In 1903, they bought both the store and the Woodruff’s home
next-door. The original Foley house is still standing on the corner of
Rollington and Central and is pictured below:
Annie Fellows Johnston would have passed by the Foley house,
at the corner of Rollington Road and Central Avenue,
on her way to picnicking at the
Old Mill.
Photo from “A Place Called Pewee Valley,” prepared by the Pewee Valley
Centennial Commission in 1970
Below, the Foley house as it looks today.
As shown in Mary Johnston’s sketch above, log cabins were prolific in
Rollington during the Little Colonel era. Many, such as the home of Pewee
Valley blacksmith, and
later Ford auto dealer, Jacob A. and Carrie Lutz Herdt shown
on the next page, have
been destroyed by fire.
Go to page 2 of Rollington >
page by Donna Russell
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