History of Providence, KY
Part 10
by Frances Bassett Price

Modern City Today

Providence today has the appearance of a bustling and progressive town. The Louisville and Nashville and the Illinois Central railroads enter the city. Driving, it lies about a mile from U. S. 41. Year by year roads as good as the best anywhere take the place of the dusty trails where the grandparents of today once raised clouds of dust with their stick horses.

The highway leading from U. S. 41 is the beginning of the Tradewater Trail or Kentucky State Highway 85 leading to Shawneetown, Ill. Two bus lines give the town service over this highway. A modern two-story city hall and fire station was constructed in 1924.

In 1929 the city installed a water filtering plant and standpipe at the cost of approximately $100,000 provided by a bond issue.

A modern sewer system and disposal plant have also been constructed.

Rising behind the town is the cemetery hill where sleep many of those of whom I have written. Standing on the loftiest height the eye may wander across the historic Tradewater, across the rolling or the hillside land where still are patches of dense woodland.

What a mecca these hillsides and rolling meadows were to them as they neared the end of their long trek from the east!

Have we kept the faith with them? Have we held the town as they dreamed of it and as they planned and builded?

There are many traditions but no real knowledge as to why it was finally called Providence. Maybe from the Latin providentia, meaning foresight or from providence, the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures. For those pioneers truly had and kept the faith --"the substance of things hoped for - the evidence of things not seen." How else could they have faced so fearlessly the foe and the forest, the war whoop and the wild beast's scream? Do not we today in this darkest hour of all time need this providence, this watchcare of God, even more?

"Stouthearted and staunch as their sires of old
Who embattled at Runnymede stood,
They left as they toiled over the Wilderness Road
A trail of tears and blood.

"The tulip poplars waved in the breeze
And the rhododendrons glowed,
But they could not see through blinding tears
O'er new made graves by the side of the road.

"Wild birds paeans in lofty trees
From Heaven seemed to Float
But what were they to ears attuned
To the war whoop's deadly note?

"They suffered much but they builded sure
With their faces turned from the clod.
The only foe they feared to face
Was the wrath of their father's God.

"May we ever keep unsullied and pure
the faith they carried so high,
And never till Time and Eternity end
Let the pioneer spirit die.

"Then from hillside and valley,
From river and plain
They shall rest, a happy band,
Knowing our children will keep the faith
In our beauteous, blood-bought land".

Frances Bassett Price

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