Sadieville History

A town named for a married lady

Sadie, Sadie, married lady. In 1877, the former railroad town known as Big Eagle, owing to its location on Eagle Creek, was renamed to honor Mrs. Sarah “Sadie” Emison Pack for her efforts in helping the railroading construction crews that set up their base of operations in this crossroads community.

According to A History of Scott County As Told By Selected Buildings, “engineers often stopped at the Emison home where the hostess, Sadie Emison Pack, entertained with legendary elegance.” So esteemed was the mistress of the household that when she died in 1895, “the business houses of the town closed for her funeral.”

Even before the town was incorporated in 1880, Sadieville was thriving with “a blacksmith and carpenter shop, one dry-goods store, two groceries, one hotel, and seven dwellinghouses.” The depot grounds were in development for the Cincinnati Southern Railroad—which would become one of the greatest and most lucrative railways in the South—and a new multiuse building, Kaly’s Hotel, was bringing “music, dancing and dining in addition to boarding space” to town.

With its streetlamps, brick pavements and stone crossings, Sadieville in 1886 was hailed as a “bright village, putting on city airs.” Several churches were organized, and a school built. And then there was Sadieville’s role as a shipping point—and a seriously lucrative one at that. Records from 1904 note that 216 cars filled with stock, logs and tobacco, which amounted to thousands of dollars, shipped from Sadieville. That same year, over $13,000 worth of rabbits, hides, produce and other goods were shipped by Sadieville merchants.

Sadieville was the largest market in the country for shipping yearling mules and colts. The firm, Burgess and Gano, purchased the majority of these animals in Sadieville and shipped them to various points in Georgia. The young mules and colts were corralled in the countryside and once three or four hundred had been delivered by the stock raisers, drivers would round them up and drive them to Sadieville stockyards alongside the railroad tracks. An advance team of men would alert residents that the “mules were coming” so they could prepare for the thick cloud of dust—at times as dense as a heavy fog—the animals would raise stampeding into town.

Recalling Sadieville’s past as a railway town is the Sadieville Train Car, a historic 1955 caboose located a few feet from an active Norfolk Southern Rail Line. The restored car has original equipment and fixtures as well as some original documents. Sadieville’s colorful, welcoming mural, featuring Sadie standing beneath her parasol, presents something of an optical illusion, positioned so that the caboose appears to be the last
car of a train chugging along the railroad tracks.

Sadieville is also home to a restored Rosenwald School, one of the many state-of-the art schools built across the South in the early 20th century for African American children. Constructed between 1917 and 1920, the school remained segregated until 1954. Today it is a geocaching site on the Scott County GeoTrot geocaching site trail.

Besides geocachers and railroading buffs, outdoor enthusiasts love Sadieville’s rural landscape with its miles of biking routes and hiking trails and nearby horseback and mountain bike trails. It is a paradise for bird watchers and, with nearby Veteran’s Memorial Wildlife Management Area just two miles south, a place that attracts hunters and fishers as well.

One hundred forty-five years after its founding, Sadieville is a quiet community on beautiful Eagle Creek with rural backdrops, tree-lined country roads and historic homes, including a significant collection showing off late Victorian-era and early twentieth-century residential architecture. Its downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

A source for the research for this history was Scott County Kentucky – A History, published in 1993 by The Scott County Historical Society, Georgetown, KY. Lindsey Apple, Frederick A. Johnston and Ann Bolton Bevins, editors.