On a beautiful Thursday morning, my mom, daughter, and I jumped in the car and headed down the highway toward Lexington, Kentucky. Our first stop for the day was to be Waveland, AKA the Joseph Bryan Home. We timed our travels to arrive for an early tour, with time to explore the grounds before it became too hot. We arrived in time to purchase our tickets and stroll around the 1848 Greek Revival mansion before taking our tour and learning about the Bryan-Boone family.
I chose to visit Waveland because I had visited the home with my sister-in-law and daughter about 13 years earlier, way before I began my blog. I wanted to revisit, knowing I would feature the home here. What I didn’t know (or remember) was the Boone family connection. In order to tell this correctly, we have to start earlier than Joseph Bryan and the Waveland mansion. We have to step back to Colonel William Bryan and his wife, Mary Boone Bryan.
Bryans and Boones in Virginia
William Bryan was born c. 1733 in the area of Winchester, Colonial Virginia. In the Spring of 1749, the Bryan family moved to the Yadkin Valley in Colonial North Carolina in search of cheaper and more abundant land. Upon arrival, William’s father, Morgan, and his older brothers began buying up parcels of land from Lord Granville. By 1753, the area around the Forks of the Yadkin River was known as the Bryan Settlements.
About that same time, members of the Moravian church began arriving from Pennsylvania, purchasing land to the east of the Bryan Settlements. More families followed from both Pennsylvania and Virginia, including Squire and Sarah Boone and their twelve children.
From this on the history of the Boones and Bryans are so closely interwoven that the history of one cannot be correctly given without the other.
The Boone – Bryan History
In 1755, William Bryan married nineteen-year-old Mary Boone, the sister of Daniel Boone. The story goes that Daniel first met his future wife, Rebecca Bryan, at his sister’s wedding. Rebecca was William Bryan’s niece. She was the daughter of William’s older brother, Joseph.
In 1756, Daniel and Rebecca were married at the Bryan Settlements. The ceremony is said to have been performed by Squire, Daniel’s father, a Rowan County Justice of the Peace at the time.
The two families became even more intertwined years later when two more of William Bryan’s nieces married younger brothers of Mary Boone, becoming William’s sister-in-laws; Martha Bryan married Edward Boone, and Ann Linville (daughter of Elenor Bryan Linville) married George Boone.
Into Kentucky at Bryan’s Station
As you can guess, with Daniel Boone as your brother-in-law, William was destined to end up in Kentucky!
In September 1773, William and his nephew John Bryan Jr. traveled with Boone’s surveying party as they headed for Kentucky (then Fincastle County, Colonial Virginia). The group only made it to the Cumberland Gap when they decided to turn back after Boone’s sixteen-year-old son was killed by Indians.
In 1774, William and his party headed back toward Kentucky, this time making it to Boonesborough, where they made a base camp as they explored the Elkhorn River area.
In the spring of 1776, William again led a party toward the Elkhorn River, where he had explored two years before. This time, the group would build a station to be named Bryan’s Station. Unfortunately, William became ill along the way and turned back to return home. The others continued their mission to the spot sixteen miles north of Boonesborough, near current-day Lexington. Upon arrival, the party cleared and planted sixty acres of land and built a few cabins.
William did not arrive at his station until several years later, in 1779. It was then that William and his brothers Joseph, Morgan Jr., and James, along with several of their sons, arrived to build more cabins and construct a stockade. Several families arrived that spring to either stay at Bryan’s Station or at Boonesborough. William and his brothers then returned to the Yadkin Valley, where they gathered up their families and prepared for the move to Kentucky.
In the fall, Bryan led a caravan of several hundred people along Boone’s Wilderness Road into Kentucky. A participant later described the scene as “like an army camping out,” with wagons strung out over half a mile along the narrow trace. They were unable to draw together at night for protection and unable to build fires for fear of attracting Indians. It was the largest single migration into Kentucky at that time.
NCPEDIA
In the Spring of 1780, settlers found themselves to be the focus of Shawnee Indian raids. The Shawnee wanted revenge, as their villages had been raided in the Fall of 1779. With those raids came many pioneer deaths, including sixteen-year-old William Bryan Jr., and just a few weeks later, his father, William Bryan Sr., who died on May 7, 1780.
Mary Boone Bryan later moved to her brother Daniel’s farm in Fayette County, where she died in 1819.
Daniel Boone Bryan (1758 – 1845)
Daniel Boone Bryan (son of William and Mary and nephew of Daniel Boone), who had helped establish Bryan’s Station, also served in the North Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. He received a pension and a 2,000 land grant for his service. It is said that Uncle Daniel Boone surveyed the land for his nephew.
On this land, Daniel (and his wife, Elizabeth Turner Bryan, whom he married in 1785) built a small stone house and a big farm. Daniel was an incredible businessman, running a gun shop, producing gunpowder, and establishing a paper mill. He was an agricultural leader growing hemp and tobacco on his farm. His plantation grew to include a blacksmith shop, a distillery, and a grist mill. Daniel Bryan was also a civic leader in his nearby community of Lexington, KY, establishing a school for females in town and a Baptist church on his land. He named his property Waveland because when the wind blew, the fields of hemp and grain would wave across his lands.
Daniel did not build all of this on his own, of course. While he was a great businessman, his farm grew to 3,500 acres because of the free labor provided by the enslaved people he owned.
Daniel died on February 28, 1845, and was buried in the Lexington Cemetery.
Joseph Bryan Sr. (1797 – 1887)
Upon Daniel’s death, his son Joseph took over the farm. Just two years later, in 1846, Joseph tore down the stone house his father had lived in and began construction on a Greek Revival mansion fitting of a plantation. The lumber came from the property, the bricks and wrought iron were made on site, and the stones were quarried from the Kentucky River. Joseph’s wife, Margaret, made sure to include all the lavishes they could afford, making the home the showplace of central Kentucky when it was finished in 1848.
The home included 4,400 square feet of living space with fourteen rooms, tall ceilings, a wide entrance hall, side porches, and four 24+ foot tall Ionic columns on the portico! It is truly a sight to see.
Joseph and Margaret did continue to own slaves, a total of thirteen at one time, and many more than that over the years. During the Civil War, Joseph supported the Confederacy. He supported the effort by donating supplies, including horses and food produced on his property. When the Union authorities discovered this, they were set on arresting Joseph. To avoid being imprisoned, Joseph fled to Canada and did not return until several years after the war ended. While he was in Canada, Margaret sold the farm down to 350 acres from 3,500 in order to stay afloat. After the war, most of those enslaved by the Bryans chose to stay and work for Joseph. He paid them for their work and charged them rent.
Margaret died September 29, 1874, and Joseph passed on August 6, 1887. Both are buried in the Lexington Cemetery.
Joseph Henry Bryan Jr. (1836 – 1931)
Joseph and Margaret’s son, Joseph Henry, inherited the property in 1887 upon his father’s death and shifted the business from farming to racing. Thoroughbred horse racing had become popular, and Joseph jumped right into the industry, building a public race track across from the mansion where hemp had previously been planted.
Joseph H. Bryan established Waveland as one of the premier thoroughbred and trotter farms in Kentucky. Bryan produced a number of world-famous trotters including, “Waveland Chief,” one of the most celebrated sires in the horse breeding industry. “Eric,” one of the fastest trotters in the region and “Olaf,” an amazingly swift huge black gelding, complemented the Waveland stables. “Ben-Hur” and “Wild Rake” gained national prominence for their speed on the racetrack. “Wild Rake” never lost a heat and was sold to William Rockefeller in the 1880s for $7,800.
WTVQ.COM
Changing Hands
In 1894, Joseph Bryan Jr. sold the property, and it exchanged hands a few times over the years, but the property continued to be privately owned until 1956. It was then purchased by the University of Kentucky for experimental farming purposes. In 1971, the University of Kentucky transferred the property to the Kentucky Department of Parks, and it continues today as a state historic site. Of all the buildings on the property over the years, all that remain are the historic mansion, one set of slave quarters, an ice house, and a smoke house.
Our Visit
As I stated at the beginning, this was our first stop of the day. We thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the home, which included the slave quarters, smokehouse, and icehouse. Upon completion of the tour, we were able to wander the rest of the property. We enjoyed the gardens that were in bloom, and located the resting places of Joseph and Margaret Bryan Sr. Near the parking lot, there is a memorial to the Bryan Family and those enslaved by the Bryans.
We finished exploring just as the heat began to kick in, so we loaded back up in the car and headed on down the road. We ended our time in Lexington at the Old Fayette County Courthouse and the Loudon House (now home to the Lexington Art League). Photos of those locations can be found on my Facebook page. (Sometimes, the places we explore lack enough history to create a full blog post, so I post those places on FB.) I hope you’ll take a moment to follow us there as well.
Reflection
I recommend a visit to this home if you have the opportunity to do so. This home is beautiful, and the grounds are very well cared for and maintained. You really don’t want to miss the stories of the Boone-Bryans, two families that played a major role in the development of Kentucky.
Until next time… Happy Travels!
I believe my maternal grandmother is in this lineage. I enjoyed finding this.
Thank you so much!