The mission of Boyd’s Station - a Kentucky nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization - is to offer emerging artists and student journalists a rural and serene environment to create and to pursue the individual's craft while providing a safe, inclusive, supportive space with the community of Harrison County for and with people from all ages, backgrounds and cultures to discuss, share, learn about and expand on the areas of literacy, communication and journalism through the visual arts and writing.

Boyd’s Station seeks to create a “community of collaboration” among diverse artists, journalists, and the community of Harrison County fostering an environment for the creation of real, individual works benefiting emerging artists and journalists while bringing the gift of the arts and community journalism to Harrison County, Kentucky.

BOYD’S STATION HISTORY

The village of Boyd, Kentucky, a small, historic community of fewer than 50 residents today, began as an early Kentucky settlement established on December 8, 1854, on the site of a watermill built by Whitehead Coleman along the South Fork of the Licking River in 1810, Thomas Boyd established a trading post he named Boyd’s Station in honor of Andrew Boyd, Sr., an early Kentucky settler. In 1880, the outpost became simply known as Boyd.

Boyd’s early history can be traced back to the American Revolutionary War and the late 1700’s when fur traders and colonists seeking to settle in the coveted and pristine country arrived from the East led by frontiersmen including Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton.

The British Army marched from Detroit during the American Revolutionary War camping at one point along the banks of the Snake Lick Creek and the bluffs overlooking the South fork of the Licking River - land that presently makes up a portion of the Clifford Craig Heritage Farm in Boyd - during the British campaign to attack and destroy Kentucky forts and settlements. British Army Captain Henry Bird led an American Indian army of 1000 men, accompanied by 150 British Regulars in this campaign to attack the Ruddell’s Fort in June 1780 near what is modern-day Cynthiana. 

Legend has it, that one of Bird's cannons is lying on the bottom of the South Fork of the Licking River, just below Boyd’s Station at Bird's Crossing. In Colonel Bird’s rapid retreat after Ruddell’s and Martin’s forts had been taken, one artillery piece slipped off a hastily constructed bridge crossing the Licking River at a sweeping curve in the river still known today as Bird's Crossing. The cannon was mired in the river where it remained an object of interest to small boys of the neighborhood for fifty years afterward who went swimming there. From Bird's Crossing the British marched up the dry bed of Snake Lick Creek, then across the country to the forks of the Licking where Falmouth is now continuing north to Ohio where the Indians scattered to their villages taking their captives with them.

During the Civil War, Harrison County Home Guard Colonel George W. Berry, founder of the nearby town of Berry, Kentucky, and too old to enlist in the Union Army at the age of 58, led the efforts to protect the Harrison County railroad supply lines during the Civil War.

When Confederate General John Hunt Morgan's men raided Cynthiana a second time in June 1864, Colonel Berry joined the Union 168th Ohio troops who were dispatched by train to Cynthiana from Cincinnati meeting the reinforcements at the depot at Boyd’s Station.

On the morning of June 10 the soldiers, with Berry present, camped near the Cynthiana depot. As morning broke on June 11, General Morgan, with 1,200 men, attacked Berry and the Union soldiers, whose strength was only 300 men. The initial fighting was around the covered bridge, but the Federal troops, under severe fire, sought the protection of the depot. Surrounded, the men inside the depot suffered many casualties in a half-hour barrage of musket fire before finally raising a white flag.

During the intense fighting at the depot, Colonel Berry suffered a mortal head wound. Soldiers placed Berry on his back in the depot with a piece of plank under his head. After hearing someone say he had a son serving with Morgan, a Confederate soldier sent for his son, George W. (Bob) Berry, who was serving as commissary on the staff of one of Morgan's officers. After a tearful reunion with his son, friends moved Berry by train to his home in the village bearing his name. He was transported using a door as a stretcher. On June 17, 1864, Colonel Berry, sixty-one years old, died in his residence in Berry.

From the early beginnings as a modest Kentucky settlement and trading outpost along the river, Boyd grew into a tight knit farming community where families lived and worked together over generations. In recent memory, Boyd, like much of rural America, has seen a decline in population due to the loss of these family farms and the means to make a living on the land where families had done so over generations. 

The decline of agricultural jobs and the loss of future generations of farmers making a living off the land around Boyd set into motion the collapse and decay of Boyd. Barns needing repair and maintenance were left to collapse and disappear into overgrown fields while the modest but idyllic Kentucky farm houses met the same fate, disappearing from the rolling landscape as generations of families moved away or passed on. Boyd was disappearing right before people’s eyes.

A tragic arson fire late in 2008 nearly destroyed the Clifford Craig family home in Boyd which has been the home of generations of Clifford Craig family since 1926. The family has proud roots in this section of northern Harrison County dating back to the late 1880’s. The arsonist nearly burned down another house on the Clifford Craig property while completely destroying a 100-year-old tobacco barn, which was both a historic and prominent landmark anchoring the village of Boyd.

The night of the fire in Boyd, people in the community were the ones who battled the fire in frigid conditions and risked their lives entering the homes to retrieve family memories and items that could not be replaced. This only happens in communities like Boyd where people come together in good times and in tragedy to pull up their sleeves and help in any way they can.

The effort to rebuild would be massive and the simplest solution would be to walk away. But the Clifford Craig family descendants didn’t want to give up on this family heritage farm and the importance of being part of the community.

The idea of rebuilding Boyd into a place where people could come to be inspired and able to create was born out of that awful and unnecessary fire. This idea would breath life back into the town and allow Boyd a chance for another 100 years of future stories and memories.

The nonprofit Boyd’s Station organization was envisioned as a very simple idea launched by life-long Boyd resident Mary Withers and Amy and Jack Gruber, a Clifford Craig descendent. Rebuild and utilize the buildings and community spirit of Boyd beyond just agricultural pursuits to create the space for students and emerging journalists and artists to visit Harrison County to be inspired and offered creative opportunities to further careers and passions while bringing this tight-knit community together to help create and celebrate the future success of Boyd’s Station creating a path for the town of Boyd to once again thrive.

Boyd still inspires the creative spirit in those lucky enough to spend time wandering the landscape along the south fork of the Licking River quickly becoming part of the fabric of this community of people who truly are the heart of what makes Boyd so special.