Kentucky by Heart: From the real McCoy to Floyd Collins, forgotten Kentuckians’ interesting stories

By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

When perusing the 15th state’s illustrious history, even Kentucky outsiders recognize such names as Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, Henry Clay, and, of course, Secretariat.

All have had a positive national impact and add to its treasured heritage. There are a whole passel of other Kentuckians, however, that are less known today yet certainly made impacts around the country long ago—and some for less than admirable reasons.

That fact was reinforced when I was paging through James Claypool’s fascinating little book of historical tidbits, Our Fellow Kentuckians: Rascals, Heroes, and Just Plain Uncommon Folk.

How many of us have heard of Henry Stanberry, who lived in Ft. Thomas back in the 1800s? We certainly might have then, but he’s pretty much an asterisk in history now and perhaps little known to those not watching national politics after the Civil War.

John Scopes

Stanberry, incidentally, was also a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport. In 1881, Stanberry died in New York City of acute bronchitis and was buried in Cincinnati.

What happened in a 1925 court case in Dayton, Tennessee, is still talked about a whole lot today. Remember John Scopes of the “Scopes Monkey Trial”? He was born in Paducah and received a law degree from the University of Kentucky.

But at a high school in Dayton, he gained employment as a football coach and substitute general science teacher. He received a request from a group of men in town to be the subject of a trial case to test statutorily the law against teaching evolution in Tennessee’s schools. Reluctantly, he agreed and it set up the famous courtroom dual of lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Decades later, in 1960, a movie called “Inherit the Wind” dramatized the story.

We’ve all heard the term “the real McCoy,” a colloquial that confirms the authenticity of just about anything or any person. Following is how the expression likely developed.

Elijah McCoy was the son of runaway slaves from central Kentucky who in 1837 managed to land and then live in Canada via support from the “Underground Railroad,” an organized network of Americans who were anti-slavery.

Floyd Collins

Elijah showed amazing mechanical aptitude on their farm and admirably, his parents saved enough money to send him to school in Edinburgh, Scotland, to study mechanical engineering. He took a special interest in the “new” subject of thermodynamics of mechanical engines. After he finished his formal schooling, he took a job with Michigan Central Railroad that he was overqualified to do—being turned down to become an engineer for the company because of the color of his skin.

Nevertheless, while performing his duties he noticed that the machinery on the train needed a better lubricating system and he designed one.

“Within ten years,” noted author James Claypool, “steam engines and trains in mines and factories throughout the industrial nations of the world were utilizing McCoy Lubricants, marketed by his company’s salesmen as ‘the real McCoy.’”

Likely, most all of us have used the term in some realm. Along with the company he founded, McCoy invented over 50 items generally used for improving steam engines. It’s sad to note, however, that he died penniless in 1929 after depleting his resources in attempting to improve his inventions.

With the overwhelming social media, cable and mainline news reporting today, when outlets go head to head for “scoops” and “the story” often becomes bigger than life, what happened way back in 1925 in the Mammoth Cave system of western Kentucky seems now to have been a primitive forerunner of such contemporary craziness.

Floyd Collins was a respected cave explorer who became trapped in a crawlway some 55 feet below the surface near Crystal Cave, which he was credited with discovering earlier.