The Gregory’s of Sunnyview Farm

The Sunnyview store as it looked in 2013, it was torn down a year later.

In days gone by, before the new and improved highways replaced those winding, curvy roads, country folks could supplement their farm income by operating a small grocery store.

About a half mile south of Tilton on Highway 11, there was once an establishment known as the Sunnyview Store.

Local resident’s probably recall when the little store was operated by the late Red Collins and some may even remember when the Gregory’s were the owner’s.

According to Nathan Gregory, a Fleming County native who currently resides in California, there is a bit of interesting history attached to the property his ancestors once owned.

The following was written by Nathan and gives us an historical account of how Sunnyview came to be.

My grandfather Joseph Hampton Gregory was born 1861. He was the son of Nathaniel Gregory and Sarah Tribby. In 1873, his father died in the Cholera epidemic.

Young Joseph went to live with Thomas Leonard Porter and was effectively raised by him.

In 1888 he married Lina Summers Ham and they had three children, Irene, Eva Lee and Nathan Thomas.

By 1903, Joseph finally accumulated enough wealth to buy a farm of his own with a little help from the Porter family, and they moved to the farm when baby Nathan Thomas was two months old.

Joseph built a nice house there and ran a successful farm until his death in 1924. Lina died a little over a year later.

Joseph ultimately bought three farms side-by-side south of Tilton, and gave one to each of his daughters, and finally leaving the family farm to my dad.

My dad, Nathan, married Julia Lee Gross, who was the daughter of Milner Smith's sister and her husband, and who lived next door.

They married in 1927. Before their marriage, he built the store and service station, as a present to his new wife, for her to run as her own business.

She ran it from 1926 until their divorce in the early 1940s. I don't know exactly when that was. I've thus far failed at finding the record.

Julia had uterine cancer in the late 1930s and although she survived it, she was never able to have children.

In 1939, she and Nathan moved to Lexington for a year while she was undergoing treatment at the Lexington Hospital and they lived on Rose Street. I found them in the 1939 city directory, Nathan was running a small lunch counter to support them.

In 1940, they moved back to the farm, and Julia resumed running the store.

She hired a 15-year-old girl named Minnie to work part-time in the store.

Young Minnie left the store, catching a ride to Maysville with the Carnation Milk Truck driver, leaving her husband (yes, she married him at age 14!) to get a job in the "City."

Then one day while my father was gone on a trip, Julia left town with her boyfriend.

Some months later, my dad went to Maysville to find Minnie working in "Johnny's Sweet Shop" in downtown Maysville.

After a few month's courtship, he helped her finalize her divorce and then married her Sept 13, 1948.