Friday evening I went to Spring Hill Cemetery in Harrodsburg.  The day was picture perfect – a beautiful blue sky, white billowing clouds – and temperatures were in the low 80’s!  Quite different from the 90-100 degree weather we’ve had the last six weeks!  This is such a beautiful cemetery, many old and unusual gravestones, lots of shade trees.  I did have a couple of gravestones on my list, but after finding and photographing those stones, I just wandered through, taking shots of what I thought most interesting.

The photo above is a double above-ground monument.

When I got home I could make out Major Thomas Allin, that he was born in May and died in June, but that was all I could decipher.

The stone for his wife, Mary, was even harder to read.  I decided to go back to the cemetery Saturday morning, but even tracing my finger over the dates was no help.  A trip to our local library gave me much more information about this couple.

Major Thomas Allin was born May 14, 1757, in Hanover County, Virginia.  He was the son of William Allin and Frances Grant.  The next year the family moved to Granville County, North Carolina.  Shortly after the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Thomas enlisted as a private, and later served in the army of General Nathaniel Greene.

In 1781 Thomas Allin moved to what is now Stanford in Lincoln County, Kentucky.  He was chosen as deputy surveyor for the county, and the next year became deputy sheriff.  After the war he moved to Danville, Kentucky.  On February 16, 1787, he married Mary Jouett of Albemarle County, Virginia.  The couple’s children are as follows:  John J., Thomas, Charles W., Grant, Philip, Nancy, William and Ben C. Allin.

When Mercer County was created in 1786, Thomas Allin was chosen as the first county clerk and clerk of the circuit court.  He represented Mercer County in the Virginia constitutional convention in June 1788.

Thomas, in addition to being county and circuit court clerks, operated a farm, a mill and a distillery.  He resigned as circuit court clerk in 1825 and as county clerk in 1831, his sons, Ben C., and Thomas, Jr., succeeded him in these positions.

Thomas died during the 1833 cholera epidemic on June 26th – and his wife, Mary, died two days later on June 28th.  Cholera was widespread that year.  My great-great-grandfather, William Peter Montgomery, died in Washington County, Kentucky, June 19, 1833.  In Lexington it was said that people were dying at the rate of 50 per day.  Such a tragic time.