Bonnie Strassell - Owen County Historical Society

Hans Christinan Anderson once asserted, “Where words fail, music speaks.”
As settlers climbed across the Appalachian Mountians to create homes in Kentucky, they brought with them the culture, traditions, and music of their forefathers.
  Songs they brought from distant lands marked the history of their people. Their music chronicled their fight for freedom, their moments of sadness and joy and brought solace into lives which at times were impacted by danger and despair.

For thousands of years the Kentucky river has sung its ancient song in whispers, gurgles, and at time in furious tirades. It makes a wide sweeping bend at Gratz; and according to the “Owen County 1883 Atlas,” the river collected the waters from two creeks on either side of the town. The names assigned these tributaries were “Clay Lick Creek” and “Lowdenback or Hogs Thief Branch.”

Although technology contributed much to the advancements of the 1940s-1960s, it also changed the fabric of rural America.
In the wake of progress, small Owen County communities were forever transformed.
Gratz is nestled amidst the hills of Owen County and is poised along a stretch of the Kentucky River.

The floor was dirt, packed tightly with the clay-laced soil of Owen County.
The one room cabin erected above the floor was constructed of logs, notched and joined together with wooden pegs. Long wooden benches filled the large room and guaranteed to be so uncomfortable that even the drowsiest parishoner would find it difficult to doze off during the sermon.
The Beech Grove Baptist Chruch, built in 1852, sat in the midst of a cemetery and it served the community not only as a church but also as a schoolhouse.