Pictur of Jack Atkinson From his Son Luther’s book

As we continue our stroll through Key Town, the next stop after leaving John Mitchell Key’s house is Jack Atkinson’s. He was widely known as Uncle Jack and is remembered as one of the finest men to ever draw breath.

Louis Jackson Atkinson was born in 1883, his parents died when he was very young and his mother’s sister mainly raised him after that. In 1905, he married Armintie Druzilla Key and settled in Key Town. On the 1910 census, Jack and Mintie have 2 children and they are living with quite the extended family – Mintie’s parents and grandfather (William and Mahala Key and Grandpa Stephen Key) as well as Jack’s sister Lou Cinda.

Mintie was the youngest of William Key’s 5 children so I can’t help but wonder if she and Jack were actually living in her father’s house. However, Jack is shown as the head of that household, so I’m not sure – and there is another homeplace in Key Town that may have been William and Mahala’s. We’ll talk about that later on.

Mintie (the “t” is silent in our vernacular, by the way) undoubtedly spent the vast majority of her whole life in Key Town. Her father’s family came there when he was just 10 years old. I don’t really know how she and Jack became acquainted, or exactly why they chose to make their home so close to her family but I know they were a blessing to the Keys.

Stephen Key would pass away in the same year he was counted living with Jack and Mintie. Whatever circumstances had William and Mahala in their daughter’s home, by 1920 they were counted in their own home, albeit right next door. By 1925 William has passed away and Mahala again lives with her youngest daughter.

There are many, many stories from this home in Key Town because their son Luther dedicated a great deal of his life to cataloging pictures of area families. Furthermore, their hospitality allowed neighbors in their home so even more stories survived.

Jack was a kind man and yearned to cultivate kindness in his children. One daughter remembered that every night they were asked to say something good about a neighbor. Sadly, the family experienced much suffering. Grandma Mahala fell and broke her hip leaving her bedfast for the last years of her life. They cared for her despite the hard work required of a mountain farm family. The whole family would go to hoe corn, leaving one young girl to look after her grandmother. Several of the children taught school and daughter Frona contracted Tuberculosis – many people believed the infection came from the school. Mintie cared for her daughter while her ailing mother still lived in her home, until the disease claimed Frona’s life at just 24 years of age. The highly contagious – and at that time, little-understood disease – had invaded Mintie’s lungs; she would live with it six years and survive her mother by less than 2 years before she succumbed.

All four of the Atkinson sons served in World War II, and while none were taken by Japanese bullets, the youngest would die from TB in a Kentucky Veteran’s hospital just 3 years after Japan surrendered.

Yet the resilient family continued on. Jack would eventually leave Key Town, after the children were gone to their own homes and families and the county road moved far enough East to make the community inconveniently remote. That home-place was visited and re-visited right up till new owners, chainsaws and bulldozers have made it nearly unrecognizable and still we call it the Uncle Jack Atkinson place.