History

In 1829 Willis Green, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a practicing attorney originally from Madison County, Kentucky, purchased the two hundred acres that would become the cornerstone of Falls of Rough. Green moved there soon after purchasing the property and built a house, part of which remains in the present Green mansion. In addition to the existing gristmill and sawmill, he expanded the enterprises to include a wool carding mill and a general store. Over the next 140 years, three generations of the Green family transformed a profitable water-powered industry at a falls of the Rough River into a business dynasty that spawned a family-owned town, Falls of Rough, Kentucky.

As Willis Green’s economic enterprises at Falls of Rough developed, so did his involvement in Kentucky politics. He won election to the Kentucky Senate in 1827, and in 1839 he began the first of three terms as a Whig in the United States House of Representatives, where he served the counties of Hardin, Green, Meade, Breckinridge, and Grayson. During this time he became a close friend of Kentucky’s renowned senator, Henry Clay.

As the aging Green’s health deteriorated in the late 1850s, he turned over more of the operations at “the Falls” to his nephew Lafayette, who began living with his uncle at age ten. In addition to operating the businesses at Falls of Rough, Lafayette, an attorney, exhibited an interest in politics. Elected in 1859 to the Kentucky House of Representatives, he became possibly the youngest member ever of that body. Then in 1860 he was a member of Kentucky’s delegation to the Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1881 Lafayette won election to the Kentucky Senate, where he served one term. He further enhanced his status in 1866 when he married Rebecca Eleanor Scott, the daughter of prominent Kentuckian Robert Wilmot Scott of Franklin County.

By the 1890s the saw and grist mills and other Green ventures, under the direction of Lafayette and his eldest son Willis, continued to prosper. In fact, in 1891 the Louisville, Hardinsburg, and Western Railroad, of which Lafayette was president, built a special spur line to Falls of Rough for the exclusive use of the Greens. The community now numbered approximately 250 people and included a Methodist church, a parsonage and, later, a hotel and bank, all built by the Greens. They were shipping large amounts of lumber, tobacco, and livestock, including Shetland ponies, to all parts of the Midwest. This commerce, coupled with the growing flour milling business, made the Greens one of the more prominent families in Kentucky.

When Eleanor Green died in 1896 and Lafayette in 1907, their four children—Willis, Preston, Jennie, and Robert—inherited the entire estate. Willis, a graduate of Centre College and astute businessman, assumed responsibility for the businesses, with his brothers eventually joining as partners. For unknown reasons, in 1911 Jennie, the only daughter, gave up her one-fourth interest in the businesses; shortly thereafter she embarked on an extended trip to Europe.

When the Great Depression began in the late 1920s, the many Green enterprises began to decline. By then most of the timber had been cut and the gristmill was competing with much larger companies. The 1942 dismantling of the railroad, then in the possession of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, further hastened the decline. After the three sons of Lafayette – Robert, Willis, and Preston – died without heirs in the successive years of 1943, 1944, and 1945 respectively, the estate passed to Jennie, also unmarried. The gristmill, general store, and farm continued to operate on a limited basis for approximately three years after the death of Jennie in 1965, when it became the property of Mary McGee O’Neill, a distant cousin. O’Neill lived on the property for the next thirty-five years, when it was purchased by a real estate developer and later by 3-D Resort Communities of Spring Branch, Texas.

Hugh Ridenour
Green Family Biographer

The book, The Greens of Falls of Rough: A Kentucky Family Biography 1795-1965, offers a complete history of the Green family.