Dear Subscribers to the Greenup County, Kentucky Rootsweb Mailing List, Here is a portion of the notes written by Lot Ravenscraft in December of 1929. Lot Ravenscraft wrote about his grandfather John Pratt and included many valuable and interesting items of information pertaining to Greenup County, Kentucky. The Lot Ravenscraft memoirs are on file at the Clark County, Kansas Historical Society in Ashland, Kansas. Lot Ravenscraft was born in Ohio in 1856. He was a son of William Harrison Ravenscraft and America Pratt. America Pratt was a daughter of and the fourth child of John Pratt and Eliza Bellow/Bellew. Thus, Lot Ravenscaft was a grandson of John Pratt (1800-1849). Note that Lot Ravenscaft stated that Jonathan Howard Pratt was a son of John Pratt and Eliza Bellow. Jonathan Howard Pratt was "my mother's oldest brother", according to Lot Ravenscraft. Therefore, Jonathan Howard Pratt was the firstborn child of John Pratt and Eliza Bellow. William Fletcher Pratt (born about 1827) was an OLDER brother of America Pratt (born about 1828), but there was only one brother who fit the requirement of being the OLDEST brother of America Pratt. That brother would have to occupy the position of the firstborn son and firstborn child of John Pratt and Eliza Bellow. That child was Jonathan Howard Pratt, who was born about 1823 in Kentucky or Ohio. The son of John Pratt and Eliza Bellow whose name Nina Mitchell Biggs (author of ~History of Greenup County, Kentucky~) did not know was Jonathan Howard Pratt. I have found Jonathan Howard Pratt (also known as Howard J. Pratt and J.H. Pratt) in Gallia County, Ohio in 1850 and in Wea Township, Miami County, Kansas in 1860 (known as Lykins County in 1860), 1870 and 1880. Through the help of researcher Julie Bissell Tupker, I have J.H. Pratt in 1900 in Spring Hill, Johnson County, Kansas. Jonathan H. Pratt apparently died between 1900 and 1910, since his widow Josephine was enumerated in the 1910 Census of Johnson County, Kansas. Josephine was Jonathan Pratt's third wife. His first wife was Sarah Morton and his second wife was Mary Talbot(t). The Ravenscraft Notes: (p. 172, Ravenscraft Family Notes Written by Lot Ravenscraft, December 1929) "In writing this I feel that my children may have some desire to know something about their antecedants as I have in my later life. On my father's side I have but little knowledge. My children's grandfather's name was William Harrison Ravenscraft; that his father came down the Ohio River and settled in Ohio, near Portsmouth in the year 1812 --- came from Old Virginia. (Note: it was the grandfather of William Harrison who came from Old Virginia to Pennsylvania with his father, John who came from Pennsylvania.) My father was raised a bound boy --- terms were that he was to have a horse, saddle and bridle when arriving at the age of 21. He was able in some way to secure his time out at age of 20 when he crossed the Ohio River into Greenup County, Kentucky, where he went to work for my grandfather Pratt who was operating what was at that time reputed to be the largest tannery in Kentucky. He afterward married my mother, America Pratt. Soon thereafter he and Jonathan Howard Pratt, my mother's oldest brother, founded a partnership, moved to Gallia (TEXT ENDS HERE ON MY [COMPILER'S] ORIGINAL COPY, BUT PICKS UP ON ANOTHER COPY OF THE FINAL PUBLICATION AT CLARK COUNTY HS WITH:) "My mother's name was America Pratt, the daughter of John Pratt and Eliza Billeau. John Pratt was born 1800 and his wife born 1804 -- John Pratt and his brother Lot Pratt came from one of the New England States by flat boat down the Ohio River to Kentucky in 1816. Your great-grandmother Billeau was no doubt descended from the exiled French Hugeunots who settled along the Southern Atlantic Coast. She came from North Carolina." "My grandfather Pratt was a man of high character, also of good business ability as he not only established the largest business in the state but he, together with two of the sons, had a mercantile business in St. Louis, also one in Muscatine, Iowa, where they had a large business to supply the wants of the settlers who at that time were rapidly settling the state. He also built a Christian Church in the village of Liberty, which he largely owned to house the help necessary to conduct the tannery. You can probably arrive at some idea of his patriotism from the fact that he named my mother America and the village Liberty. My uncle Cash Pratt, whom I visited at Fayetteville, Arkansas a few months ago, said that various names were suggested but that his father would not consent to any other name than Liberty. While able to own slaves, he would not own them was he was opposed to human slavery as your grandfather was one who with two friends in violation of the Constitution and Law of the land kept the first station at Kygerville on the Ohio side to help send them on to Canada and freedom -- your uncle Jap (my brother) a short time before he died mentioned as I had heard several times before, that when they were eating breakfast a Negro woman and two children came out of another room into where they were eating breakfast. They kept them until night until Negroes from a free negro settlement 36 miles north came and got them." "After I grew older, some time during the Civil War, this Negro woman came to see my mother. I also heard my mother relate how her father and two friends stayed up all night guarding Negroes in a vacant house across from ours -- the school grounds between -- they were expecting slave owners from the Virginia side to attempt to recover them. Your grandfather Ravenscraft was a partner in the various business enterprises of your great-grandfather Pratt, except the Liberty tannery." Sincerely, Randal W. Cooper