Exclusive group is steeped in Kentucky history. Here’s how you get in.
Not many people know about The Shelby Society, a unique club in Kentucky and the only one of its kind in the nation.
Its application for membership bars most people from joining it. You have to be a direct descendant of a Kentucky governor.
The Shelby Society, a nonprofit, non-political group, started what it hopes to be a tradition when it held a reception to honor the incoming governor the day before Democrat Andy Beshear was inaugurated Dec. 10.
The reception was held at the historic, 119-year-old Berry Hill Mansion, located on a high, steep cliff overlooking the state Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion, where some of the society members lived as children.
“What a great time, quite a moving experience, so much history to talk about and so many interesting people were there,” said one of the organization’s members, Bob Babbage.
Babbage is the leading lobbyist of the Lexington-based Babbage Cofounder, a firm specializing in government relations and business strategies. He’s also a former state auditor and secretary of state.
Babbage is a member of the society because he is the grandson of Keen Johnson, the governor of Kentucky from 1939 to 1943 and the only journalist to have held the office.
Both the new governor and his father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, attended the reception.
So did society member Ben Chandler, a grandson of A. B. “Happy Chandler, who was governor twice —from Dec. 10, 1935, to Oct. 9, 1939, and December 1955 to December 1959. He also was commissioner of baseball from 1945 to 1951 when the game was integrated.
Ben Chandler, a former congressman and state attorney general who now is the chief executive officer of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, said the reception for the new governor was “appropriate and should become a tradition.”
The Shelby Society has 89 members who hail from 15 states, the District of Columbia and India. Several members go back to Kentucky’s first governor, Isaac Shelby, who led the state from 1792 to 1796 and 1812 to 1816 and served in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812
The society is growing. The new governor is a potential member, being the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear, who served from 2007 to 2015 and handled several major budget cuts during a significant recession.
Former Gov. Matt Bevin — who served from 2015 to 2019 and reformed the state’s adoption and foster care systems before ending his term with controversial pardons — could add to the society’s membership roll with his nine children.
Steve Collins, the son of former Gov. Martha Layne Collins, is the driving force behind the society. She was Kentucky’s only female governor and a catalyst during her term from 1983 to 1987 to bring Toyota Manufacturing Co. to Kentucky.
Steve Collins, an attorney as well as president and director of Shelbyville-based Hall-Taylor Funeral Homes, said the idea for the society’s formation originated at a 2014 reception at the Governor’s Mansion hosted by then-Gov. Steve Beshear and his wife, Jane Beshear.
The Beshears wanted to observe the 100th anniversary of the Governor’s Mansion on the same night that Gov. James B. McCreary hosted his first entertainment event at the famous residence on Jan. 21, 1914.
McCreary was governor twice —from 1875 to 1879 and from 1911 to 1915 — and served under Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan during the American Civil War.
“Everyone had a good time at the 2014 reception,” Collins said. “Many people didn’t realize all of the other people who also had connections to the former governors and the mansion, and some of us got together and later created this formal group called The Shelby Society and named it in honor of our first governor.”
The Shelby Society was formed on June 1, 2015. A governing board of magistrates was created. The board approves applications to the group, which have to be supported by documentation.
New members must be at least 18. One-time dues for each member for life are $250.
“Not only do we try to promote and preserve the history of Kentucky’s governors, we exist to make contributions to improve the quality of life in Kentucky — to educational, charitable and cultural resources,” Collins said.
It has contributed to the Governor’s Scholars program, the Governor’s School for Arts, the Kentucky Educational Television network and the Earle Clements Foundation at the University of Kentucky, which provides lectures and awards to Kentucky civics teachers and the Kentucky Humanities Council.
The society accepts private contributions but does not hold fundraisers.
Society member Babbage said all three of his adult children — Robert III, Julia and Brian — have joined the society. So have Collins’ grown children — Catherine and Taylor.
When the society’s next applications are approved, Collins said, Gov. John J. Crittenden will have the lead in descendants who are members of the society.
Crittenden was governor from 1848 to 1850. He resigned after two years to become U.S. attorney general for President Millard Fillmore.
Crit Luallen, who was one of Gov. Steve Beshear’s lieutenant governors, is a 3rd great-granddaughter of Crittenden. She was named for him.
“The Shelby Society is a wonderful way to celebrate Kentucky leaders,” she said. “Under the direction of Steve Collins, probably one of the most passionate historians in Kentucky in regards to the state Capitol and Governor’s Mansion, the society is quite worthwhile.”
Shelby County Attorney Hart T. Megibben is a member of the society. He is a 4th great-grandson of Gov. James Garrard, who was in office from 1796 to 1804, Kentucky’s second governor and a Baptist minister. Garrard was the last Kentucky governor elected to two consecutive terms until the restriction was eased by a 1992 constitutional amendment, allowing Paul Patton’s re-election in 1999.
Megibben modestly said of his famous ancestor, “The blue blood in him ran out a long time ago.”
“We still own his home in Bourbon County and keep his grave mowed.,” said Megibben. “Steve Collins pulled me in to The Shelby Society and I am grateful. He always has these interesting historical facts for us.”
The society’s oldest member is Bill Buckner of Kansas City, Mo. He is 93 and is the grandson of Kentucky Gov. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who served from 1887 to 1891 and fought in the U.S. Army in the Mexican-American War and in the Civil War as a Confederate lieutenant general.
In 1862, Buckner accepted Ulysses S. Grant’s demand for an “unconditional surrender” at the Battle of Fort Donelson near the Tennessee-Kentucky border near the Cumberland River. He was the first Confederate general to surrender an army in the war and spent five months as a prisoner of war. He was a pallbearer at Grant’s funeral.
Bill Buckner had a career as a commercial real estate broker. He enjoys history and is a volunteer at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City.
“I enjoyed the meeting of The Shelby Society I attended,” said Buckner. “I always will consider myself a Kentuckian. I met so many nice people there.”
Some of Kentucky’s governors have no direct descendants, said Collins. He mentioned Robert P. Letcher (1840 to 1844); Thomas E Bramlette (1863 to 1867); Luke P. Blackburn (1879 to 1883); J. Proctor Knott (1883 to 1887); William O’Connell Bradley (1895 to 1899); William Goebel (assassinated in his fourth day in office in Frankfort on Feb. 3, 1900); J.C.W. Beckham (1900 to 1907); and Augustus Willson (1907 to 1911).
Society leader Collins was elated with the society’s first-ever reception for a new governor.
“We had planned it four or five months before the election and were pleased that former Govs. Steve Beshear, Patton and my mom attended,” he said.
He noted it was called “an inaugural levee.”
“That’s what governors used to call their receptions at the Old Governor’s Mansion downtown,” said Collins. “Every Monday night during legislative sessions up until the 1880s, they held levees. They later changed the name to receptions.”
The name change may have occurred, in part, because of what happened in 1871.
Then- Gov. Preston Leslie, a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War who later fought the Ku Klux Klan in many parts of the state, was ridiculed by the press for his pro-temperance position. No booze would touch the lips of the staunch Baptist.
Collins referred to a newspaper article at the time that said Leslie banned all wine and liquor from the mansion and insisted only on ice water for drinks.
But he said a newspaper article suggested a better name for the receptions other than levees.
The article noted that a levee is a barricade against water but it said a search “in all the nooks and corners” of the Governor’s Mansion “has been unable to find anything else.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 1:44 PM.
