My granddaddy worked on this dam until he was injured. No workman's comp in those days, so he started selling bootleg booze to the workers out of the trunk of his car to feed his family until he found Jesus. Times were sure hard. He ended his career as chief of all water police in the state of Kentucky. He regularly took the governor fishing.
The history of KY/TN lake is a sad one. Many families were forced off their land by government agents, via force, based on corrupt actions taken at the federal level. The men who took the soil samples in much of the Dover-New Concord area took them all from a place called Sulfur Wells, a sulfur spring that was well known by the people in the area at the time. Those soil samples were used to create the argument that the land the people lived on in the area was worth vastly less per acre, which is why so many refused to leave their homes due to pennies on the dollar payment per acre. It was a shitshow. No matter the economic development of land since can make up for the tragic loss of life, liberty, property for the poor families that had lived on that land since the end of the Revolutionary war, and some before, via land grants for soldiers who fought during the war.
I am actually from Dover and have traced my family back to the New Concord area, in fact some of my family is buried at the McCuiston cemetery. It’s wild what happened out there. My mother’s side of the family comes from Model, TN, which is now part of Land Between the Lakes and partially underwater.
I would love to speak to you some day.. my mother's maiden is Hinson.. I have lots of family around perry county today that's last name Is Hinson.. I now live in New Johnsonville with my father's family that's last name is Cole.. I love any history about we're I'm from.. I have seen Jack Hinsons gun with the pits notched in the barrel
