Few realize an interesting tie one early family of our county once had to both the creation of an immortal work of fiction that helped split our nation and propel it into war, and to Kentucky's fabled "Brown Water." The Marshall Key House in the tiny hamlet of Washington, in Mason County, Kentucky, played host in 1833 to the demure Western Female Institute teacher Harriet Beecher. She was the guest of Colonel Marshall Key, then Mason County's Clerk. While staying with the Key family, Harriet witnessed for the first time in her life a slave auction which, along with other experiences in Kentucky that introduced her to individual slaves and former slaves residing in the community, inspired the later writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin. But did you know there was a Marshall Key house in LaRue County, too?
The ca. 1807 Col. Marshall Key house in Washington, Mason County, KY as it appeared about 1933
Colonel Key's nephew, and namesake, was as well a resident of Mason County at the time his uncle hosted the future author Ms. Beecher-Stowe. Key's wife, Rebecca Carter, died, and he afterwards married on 9th February 1847 Mrs. Elizabeth Mayfield Atherton of LaRue County, the widow of local distiller Peter Atherton, and the mother of both famed whiskey man John McDougal Atherton and his brother, Confederate officer Peter Mayfield Atherton who died in service at Huntsville, Alabama in 1862. The younger Marshall Key, known locally as "Captain Key," moved from Mason County after his marriage to manage Elizabeth's plantation and other business affairs, residing here the rest of his life. Marshall ultimately entered into partnership about 1866 with his step-son John Atherton to establish one of 19th century Kentucky's "alpha" whiskey distilleries there in Athertonville, LaRue County, Kentucky.
Arial view, ca. 1978, of the Atherton-Key plantation site along Highway 31-E. Marshall Key constructed new slave quarters in a Gothic Cottage style, partly visible upper left, ca. 1860, which accommodated two families each in a layout comparable to modern day duplexes.
Both of the two Marshall Key's were far from being impartial observers of the institution of slavery as portrayed in Uncle Tom's Cabin. While staying with the Colonel Key family, Stowe would have interacted with some 30 slaves serving the Key family there in Washington near Maysville, Kentucky. After removing to LaRue County in the central part of the state, between the Knobs and Barrens regions, his nephew Captain Key assumed ownership & management of Elizabeth Atherton's 16 slaves, ranging in age from 1 year to 70 years. With freedom acquired from the passage of the 13th Amendment, the former enslaved Atherton men would become part of the initial distillery workforce in 1867, carrying on a tradition of black skilled labor by the slaves of John Boon who had owned & operated the site during the antebellum period.
John McDougal Atherton (1841-1932), step-son of Marshall Key, and his partner in distilling
Our Marshall Key died in 1877 after selling his 1/2 ownership in the LaRue County sweet-mash distillery plant "J M Atherton & Co." to wholesale liquor dealers Cochran & Fulton of Louisville, who eventually bought partial interest as well in the other family enterprise, A. Mayfield Distillery, who was making a sour-mash product. Under the management of his astute step-son, the whiskey firm started by Captain Marshall Key, quintessential Southern host whose family inadvertently inspired American's best known antebellum literary work, eventually became the largest distillery in Kentucky in those last year before Prohibition. By the end of the 19th century the Atherton plants could produce 350 barrels of spirits a day, and house some 200,000 barrels at any given time.
The Atherton Distillery established by John Atherton & Marshall Key about 1866
Key's grave is found today with that of his wife, Elizabeth Atherton Key, and her first husband, Peter Atherton, in the Riverview Cemetery in New Haven, just across the Rolling Fork River from the Atherton plantation and distilleries.
Key's uncle (Col. Key) the original host of Harriet Beecher-Stowe, as well remarried and moved down river. He settled near to his nephew, in Louisville, where he died in 1860 and was buried in the Bullitt family cemetery.
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