(Regarding visiting Casey county we posted the following on the ALLEN newsgroup website) For what it's worth... We just finished a ten day genealogy research trip to Kentucky. Thought other researchers would appreciate some suggestions for Kentucky "on the ground" research. We first visited the Filson Club in Louisville for the better part of two days. It's a good starting point for genealogy in Kentucky. Plenty of good motels and restaurants in the greater "Looavull" area. We especially liked the Bob Evans restaurants for excellent food at good prices. Just east on US 65 is Frankfort, the state capital, an old fashioned river town. Must be that half the houses in town are over a hundred years or more with a couple still in use that were built in the first decade of the 19th century. Holiday Inn is the only motel within walking distance of the Kentucky Historical Museum building, which houses the state genealogy research library. It's a brand new building furnished with all the genealogy tools: scads of family, county and regional state books, lots of photocopy machines and computers for Internet as well as library material locating; lots of comfortable work desks; and many census microfilm readers as well as lots of microfilms. My wife hated to leave the library but we had a schedule to keep. Enroute to Lexington we stopped at the Kentucky Horse Park dedicated to Kentucky race horses as well as saddle horses. Like mash whisky their race horses are among the best in the world. The Kentucky Horse Park located in the middle of hundreds of bluegrass horse farms is well worth the stop even if you are not a horse lover. And the grass does have a bluish tint. While at Lexington we took a break from genealogy research and visited the Berea area where we had dinner in the old Daniel Boone Tavern located on his original trail from the Cumberland Gap. Berea College is an arts school where the students learn wood working, quilting, loom rug making, etc. which are for sale in the student run store. The town is given over to antique stores as well. We left Lexington south on US 68 and visited Pleasant Hill, one of the last Quaker villages in the USA. It is set in beautiful rolling bluegrass countryside with stone fences and huge shade trees. Then it was on the Harrodsburg Fort State Park, the first white settlement in Kentucky. It is well worth a couple of hours to see how our ancestors lived in the late 1700s on the frontier of our new nation. We then headed for Casey, Lincoln, Adair and Green counties for on-site research on our ALLEN ancestors. The court house in each county was a must for original land deeds, wills, court orders and marriage bonds and recordings. The county clerk's people in every instance were gracious and tolerant of genealogists. Some counties have taken very good care of their ancient records, preserving them in transparent plastic while other counties are letting them crumble to dust. We also hit the county public library in each county and in every instance found a genealogy section and an active genealogy society. It was humorous to walk in and have the librarian tell us "It's in the back room (the genealogy section)" before we even open our mouth. You get the impression they see lots of us genealogists, even in counties way off the beaten path. It was so exciting to find my gggg-grandfather's original homestead at the Casey courthouse and then get to walk the ground where he built his log cabin and planted his first crop. Even found the old family graveyard with a headstone for one of his sons being born in 1806. Plus there were many unmarked field stones on the graves of the oldest inhabitants. Enroute back to Louisville we also stopped at Abraham Lincoln's birth place just south of Hogdenville on state 61 which is worth a visit if only to see the hundred foot tall oaks that Lincoln's father Tom had to cut down to build the cabin Abe was born in. They have preserved parts of the original cabin's timbers and used them to build a reproduction of the original cabin built inside a truly majestic marble monumental building. Also saw the spring where Abe's family drew their water. We found very good highways with minimal traffic throughout the state, even in the off-the-path counties. After having visited probably half the states in our nation we nominate Kentucky as perhaps the prettiest state of them all. Of course mid May is probably the best time of year to visit since the temperature got above 80 on only one of the ten days there and then with relatively low humidity. We stayed at the Brown Motel in Liberty, Casey county and ate at the "Bread of Life" for breakfast and lunch and at "Whiskers" for dinner. Great home cooking in both cases. Gladys Thomas and Noreen at the public library in liberty were so helpful in digging out books for us. We can't thank them enough! Adair has an excellent Best Western on the Cumberland Parkway. We did not stay over night in Lincoln or Green county. Hope this aids in planning a genealogy trip to Kentucky. You will enjoy visiting the timbered hills, grassy meadows and tinkling creek beds where our courageous ancestors turned their dreams into our nation's reality. Yours truly, Bill and Loydean Allen end -----Original Message----- From: StallMW5@aol.com <StallMW5@aol.com> To: KYCASEY-L@rootsweb.com <KYCASEY-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Wednesday, May 05, 1999 9:57 AM Subject: Re: [KYCASEY-L] Casey County Fair to have Genealogy >That is a wonderful thing to do, and I will be excited now to visit Casey Co. >again for more information. My Aunt from LA is planning a visit to KY this >summer and I plan to bring her my Mom and another Aunt to Casey Co. >Maybe I can meet more cousins . >Wilma from Owensboro,Ky > >