Athertonville, & the Early History of Catholic Education in Central Kentucky

By Gary Dean Gardner, Independent Scholar

The school near Athertonville that was attended by Abraham Lincoln

Master, Father, Brother, or Deacon Riney?  Frankly, I’m not quite reconciled as to what to correctly call the man.  Despite some lingering oral histories, no record exists of an ordination as priest, nor do we have reference to monastic vows.  Today we might consider him more a church Deason but in truth his title in faith is irrelevant.  Out of respect for his residency in the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani, however, I feel we should today at least refer to him as Brother Zachariah.  For he was clearly so much more than just a boarder of the Monks.  He lived with, and amongst, and AS one of the brothers of the Order in those last years, and in the end, he was buried as one of them, as he lies, in peace, today.

Born in St. Mary's County, Maryland about 1763 to Thomas Edward and Eleanor Maraman (or Merriman) Riney, Brother Zachariah Riney symbolized a crucial early link between Church officials in the East and a quickly growing community of Catholics in the most rural parts of central Kentucky during those first years of the 19th century.   For here it was where so many waves of migrating Maryland Catholics had settled during the prior two decades.  With thanks mostly to emigration out of Charles County, MD, what would later become known as the Catholic "Holy Land" of Nelson, Marion, and Washington Counties was settled by a mass migration of faithful "pilgrims" to the western lands in central Kentucky between 1785 and 1792.  Those first concentrations of settlements, radiating outward from Bardstown, soon began to spread further into more sparsely settled sections of these and their surrounding counties.  As Catholicism spread further, it became apparent that many families required the services of additional, itinerant priests, teachers, and parish leaders to serve them spiritually and to educate their children.

Riney, one of many such Catholic educators dispersed to the wilderness, was one of the first sent to minister and teach in the developing parish in the southern section of Hardin County (now LaRue) which had once been part of Nelson County. Though his family had initially settled in the southern portion of Nelson County at Pottinger’s Creek (New Haven) Brother Zachariah moved one county over, to Washington County, per the tax list there of 2^nd April 1796.  According to the oral tradition of his family, Riney and his family arrived first in Hodgenville about 1811 or perhaps just prior, after leaving a young but larger parish & school of St. Thomas (St. Rose Priory) in Washington County, the same school a very young Jefferson Davis would attend a few short years later.  Early records substantiate this.  He is found listed there in Washington County for the 1810 Census, apparently the year before he removed to the remote regions of the Bardstown parish in Hodgenville (Hodgen's Mill). By 1811 Riney had purchased land once belonging to Joseph Hanks along the Rolling Fork River, just across the county line in what today would be the outskirts of New Haven.  Riney was returning to an overlapping region of Hardin & Nelson Counties that would become Athertonville at about the same time the Lincolns relocated from Hodgen’s Mill to Knob Creek.

Historic Marker at Athertonville

The school in the Knob Creek community was not one freshly started at the time of the Lincolns’ arrival but was in fact one of the first in Hardin County whose Court Order Book “A” (p. 231) for the year 1800 references “the old road near a schoolhouse on Knob Creek.”  This would show the rural one room log school to be nearly as old as the Hardin County Academy established by the Kentucky General Assembly on December 22, 1798.

By all oral accounts, Hodgen's Mill is where Riney initially established his school in 1814, which remained open for less than a year.   Its closure is unexplained, but Riney relocated closer to the Nelson County line at present day Athertonville, opening his school in the new location that fall of 1815. There he served the community and local families such as the Lincolns, Gollahers, Thompsons, Hutchins, and other.  It is thought that Thomas Lincoln had initially sent Abraham and Sarah Lincoln to Riney's school at "Hodgen's Mill" that first year it was opened, then sent the children to the much closer location along Knob Creek for a couple of sessions before the family left Kentucky in December 1816. 

Riney, however, remained in Nelson County near to Athertonville until perhaps 1820.  His removal may have been precipitated by a land dispute in June of 1819.   By the time of the 1820 Census, family had moved to near Bloomfield for a short period of time, then back to Washington County shortly thereafter where took a second wife.  Brother Zachariah married Sarah Bickett Bowles (Boles, also recorded as Bolds) on 12th February 1824. The Rineys remained in Washington County for some years, being enumerated there for the 1830 Census.  Here he joined the county Militia.  Likely sometime in the 1830s Riney moved yet again, this time back to Hardin County.  Settling northwest of Elizabethtown, a community grew up near his log house that would be called Rineyville in the family’s honor.

Riney would remain in Hardin County well into the 1850s.  In 1856 he made plans for a final move.  Selling the remainder of his Nelson County lands to the Abbey of Gethsemani on the 5^th of August 1856, the deed served as a contract between him and the Abbey, which accepted the land in exchange for room, board, and care of the aged Riney until his death.  There Brother Zachariah moved, with his Trappist grandson Brother Benedict Riney.  Here he lived as a monk, though there are no extant records of him formally joining the order.  Regardless, he was apparently treated by the monks as one of their own. 

Quoting the Hardin County Historical Society’s 1946 publication Who Was Who in Hardin County,

“When Zachariah Riney was ninety-four years of age he went to

Gethsemane [sic] to this monastery with his grandson, William B. Riney,

who was also a member of the Trappist order. This was in 1856. He

lived there a little over two years, dying in 1859. The grandson, William

B. Riney, was known as Brother Benedict, and about thirty years ago

wrote out a number of facts concerning the life and work of his grand-

                    father for the use of historians. Zachariah Riney was buried in the graveyard of the

 Trappist brother-hood within the enclosure of the monastery.”

 

As his grandson Brother Benedict would note (or was that comment added by Abbot Obrecht?) Riney was buried amongst his brethren monks upon his death on the 15^th of February 1859, his body later moved to the official, newer monastic burial grounds in 1893.  There a mass grave marks holds the remains of the deceased brothers and priests of Gethsemani from the early graveyard, Brother Zachariah included.  While his remains today lie in the cloistered section of the cemetery to which visitation is not normally allowed, a tablet was erected outside the walls that reference him.  Despite exhaustive questions and speculation on Riney’s burial place during the 1920s and 1930s, the issue is today settled, and all historians agree that Riney lies in the mass burial pit of relocated graves from the old Abbey.  Near by the granite marker lies Amanda Davis, sister of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

 

Marriage Bond from Hardin County signed by both Caleb Hazel and Thomas Lincoln

  While we know a Caleb Hazel was as well a teacher of Lincoln, we don’t know if Riney had closed his school, or if Hazel simply assisted him.  It would seem that Riney resigned from teaching at Athertonville and was replaced by Thomas Lincoln’s immediate neighbor along Knob Creek, Caleb Hazel, who had established a tavern along the Louisville & Nashville Turnpike back in 1797.  The two men were without doubt close friends, Lincoln being surety on Hazel’s 1816 bond when he married the second time, to Mary Stevens in Hardin County, following the death of Elizabeth Hall Hazel (widow of James Hall) (Marriage Book A p. 54).  The two families were also amongst the founders of Little Mount Church.  While much of Hazel’s family followed the lead of the Lincolns and moved to Indiana, Caleb supposedly went to Hart or Green County, Kentucky where he died.

From the Collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, a small slate claimed to have been used by Calen Hazel when teaching.  Interesting story, but likely belonged to a later generation of the family, certainly not a pre-1820 school room artifact.

 

Bibliography, in no certain order.

Warren, Dr. Louis A., Abraham Lincoln’s First School Teacher, LINCOLN LORE, No. 52, 7^th April 1930.

Hackensmith, C. W., Lincoln’s Family and His Teachers, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 67, No. 4, pp. 317-334.

Futrell, Roger H., Zachariah Riney: Lincoln’s First Schoolmaster, KENTUCKY ANCESTORS, Vol.44, No.3, Spring 2009, pp. 106-113.

Riney Files from the collection of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Clollection.

McMurtry, R. Gerald., A Series of Monographs Concerning the Lincolns & Hardin County, Kentucky, 1938.

 Neil Gale, Phd. Abraham Lincoln's First & Second School Teachers., Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal 18th Nov. 2020.