Dear Members of the Greenup County, Kentucky Mailing List, A shoemaking "factory" operated for several years in Liberty, Greenup County, Kentucky. John PRATT, who was born in Vermont but came to Greenup County from Massachusetts, was the manager of the shoemaking enterprise, which was launched about 1845 and ended abruptly in 1849. The community of Liberty quickly became a bustling manufacturing village and had its name changed to "Lynn" after the foremost shoemaking city in the United States, namely, Lynn, Massachusetts. My research has led me to surmise that a number of New Englanders who were shoemakers migrated to the Liberty operation to follow their craft to a new location. It appears that one such shoemaker was William DAVIS, a native of Vermont, who came to Greenup County and married Sarah Ann BARNEY [sister of Martha Ann BARNEY, my third-great grandmother] in October 1845. Yet by 1850, William DAVIS had taken his family to New England, to Grafton, Massachusetts, where he was enumerated as a shoemaker. John PRATT [1800-1849] met an untimely death when a disgruntled tanyard worker threw a chunk of pig iron at him, mortally wounding him in the head. After the death of John PRATT, the shoemaking business folded, and the factory workers either moved away or settled in as farmers. The renowned author Jesse Stuart was quoted in Biggs's book as saying that he had not run across any evidence that the shoemaking business at Liberty [Lynn] had been founded by New Englanders. I agree with him in the sense that no document has been found that states exactly who the founders of the business were, or whether it was New Englanders who renamed Liberty to "Lynn". But there were certainly New Englanders involved with the enterprise, both as workers and in management. Researcher Mary Busby, a member of this Mailing List, is tracing the movements of a shoemaker of Greenup County, John BOYLE, who hailed from Pennsylvania. She hopes to track John BOYLE [not to be confused with Captain John BOYLE of Lewis County, Kentucky and Ironton, Ohio] to his origins in Pennsylvania, by means of his occupation. Please note that the shoemaking factory at Liberty did not begin operations until about 1845, whereas the shoemaker John BOYLE was already in Greenup County by 1835, the year he married Sitha/Cynthia CAIN. Therefore, it does not seem likely that John BOYLE's arrival in Greenup County bore any relationship to the Liberty Shoe Works. BUT...one never knows. The above information on Liberty and its shoemaking came from three sources: Biggs's History of Greenup County, a visit with Richard Dupuy of Lynn and from my own research of census records. Randal W. Cooper <rwcooper@kellnet.com> Lorain, Ohio