Boone County, KY - Bios:  Gaines Family

Monday, July 2, 2001

 

Submitted by:  Buddy & Linda Harbin Grubbs Boone County, Kentucky lharbing@worldnet.att.net

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Supplement To The Boone County Recorder, Illustrated Historical Edition, R. E. Berkshire, 

Publisher, Burlington, Kentucky, Thursday, September 4, 1930



Gaines Family





From early historical Virginia ancestry, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, came 

our Boone County Gaineses. First Sir. George (followed later by two brothers---Capt. William M. 

and Churchill) to Burlington; and a first cousin, Abner, to Walton, which place was named by 

him for a faithful carpenter, Walton, who built his first log dwelling.



We can imagine for these and other early settlers their laborious yet thrilling trip in covered 

wagons, across the rough, uncultivated country, braving the Indians and many dangers, to pave 

the way for developments to follow; focusing, at last, the "Old Kentucky Home," where queens 

and real housewives, our mothers, reigned supreme and were the unknown "powers behind the throne".



Our mothers should occupy next to

our Lord,

A throne, perhaps at his feet,

And we, thoughtless children, by

act and by word

Should revere and press toward

that Seat.



Abner (Gaines) and Elizabeth Mathews (Gaines) were the parents of eight children: Mrs. Elizabeth 

Hubbell; Arch and James M. of Walton, Richwood and Covington; Senator John P., United States war 

veteran and prisoner in the war with Mexico, elected to Congress in 1849 from Boone County, and 

governor of Oregon; Major A. W. Gaines of Arkansas and New Orleans, husband of Nancy Ann Daniel 

of Danville, Kentucky, officer in the United States war with Mexico, father of Mrs. Sue Burke, 

who in 1881 was the founder of the New Orleans Times Democrat and the inspirer of some of its 

best deeds. She was also the mother of Lindsay Burke, the young man who, with three other 

American boys, so heroically stood at his post in the service of Belgium, in the Congo Free 

State, and was killed; Mrs. Mildred Davis and Benjamin P. Gaines of Chicot County, Arkansas; 

and Mr. William Gaines of Hot Springs, Arkansas, who died at ninety-seven years of age, an 

active business man most of life and known in his old age for his extreme gentleness and kindness. 



The son James M. was the father of George T. Gaines, a farmer and stockraiser of Boone County, 

who married Susan Randolph Harrison, daughter of Rev. J. C. Harrison. To them were given 

William T., Joseph C. of Chattanooga, George T. of Arizona, James M. of Jacksonville, Florida; 

Mrs. B. F. Bedinger and Mrs. Geston Garner of Rome, Georgia.