Lexington, KY - The news last month that the Kentucky Department of Agriculture has accepted the state's equine product into the "Kentucky Proud" branding program is the latest indicator the state is moving slowly to recognize its signature industry - some 135 years after it was established.
Often passed off as a hobby for the rich, or cesspool for the sleazy, Kentucky's horse industry is not all Thoroughbreds and Kentucky Derby. As a matter of fact, it's the sport horse that is the heart of the state's equine population, dwarfing that of the more visible racing exposure. Every one of the commonwealth's 120 counties has a horse population of one sort or the other, from the mountains to the Mississippi.
But make no mistake - it's the image of horses on the track, ridden or driven, that is the basis for Kentucky's image worldwide.
But it wasn't always so. Early on, Kentucky's image was of the frontier and coonskin caps, real or imagined. In that framework, it took people, men and women, of real imagination and dogged determination to create an equine industry literally out of nothing.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Elizabeth R. Stoll's engaging book, Lafayette Slept Here: History of the Keene Family in Lexington. Arguably the last literary product of Keeneland's 75th anniversary year, Lafayette Slept Here is more than a history of one woman's family. It is a story of the establishment and vitality of the horse breeding and racing industry in central Kentucky as illustrated by one, albeit exceptional, family.
More to the point, it's the story of one of central Kentucky's most famous families, the Keenes (or Keens), from the late 1600s in Somerset, England, to 1970, when the last Keene heir sold Keeneland Stud to John Gaines. Along the way, Stoll chronicles the birth of the Republic, the settlement of the Bluegrass, and the development of Lexington and Fayette County as "The Horse Capital of the World."
When Francis Keen (no "e") purchased land in Fayette County in 1786, he did not necessarily have a vision for founding the area's signature industry or creating an iconic race course that bears the family name. As Stoll puts it, "Francis and Mary settled down to build a homestead, breed horses and raise their children." In other words, the Keen family goal, as with the rest of us, was to make their way in the world. But, oh, a way it was!
Truth be told, the title of the book concerns just two days in the 125 years of the Keene saga in Kentucky, and nine pages of the 328-page book (including an extensive index), when the Marquis de Lafayette traveled from Louisville to Lexington and stayed the night of May 14, 1825, at the Keen home on Versailles Road. But no other home in central Kentucky can make the claim that "Lafayette slept here."
That house, now faithfully restored by the Keeneland Association and in commercial use, is itself a focus of the book as to how it was built, added to and altered over the years. In several of the rooms of the restored house are paintings depicting how it has changed over the years. And the "Lafayette bed" still stands in the guest room where the general laid his head.
Beyond that event, the book devotes its attention to the Keene/Keen family generations, the town that grew into a city nearby, and the near-preordained growth of the horse industry centered in Fayette County. Sadly, too, the book details the growth of suburban sprawl and the decline of famous horse farms, the names of which are only remembered as subdivisions.
Along the way of telling the story of her family and its associated offsprings, including the Stolls, Markeys, and Gurnees, Stoll sprinkles the book with photos and side stories that include the likes of Czar Nicholas (for whom Jack Keene served as trainer), Charles Lindbergh, Belle Brezing and Pansy Yount.
Stoll saves her best, however, for a detailed description of the history of the tracks in Lexington, both Thoroughbred and Standardbred, the demise of the Kentucky Association track on East Fifth and Race streets, and the rise of the Keeneland Association track opposite the airport. That familiar "two-over-one" stone originated with the design of Jack Keene's house ("Keene's Castle"), which would become part of the new track's clubhouse.
The book is not without its faults, although mostly minor. The caption of the third Fayette County Courthouse states it's the second; the gates purporting to be those at the Lexington Cemetery are, in fact, the ones in Paris, Ky., and two photos were transposed in layout, but the reader will have no trouble determining which is the image of the "Old Keen Place."
Liz Stoll's Lafayette Slept Here: History of the Keene Family in Lexington is a worthy addition to the local history bookshelf, particularly if that shelf already holds John D. Wright, Jr.'s Lexington: Heart of the Bluegrass and Randolph Hollingsworth's Lexington: Queen of the Bluegrass.