Seventeen-year-old Lida Pratt Hornsey gathered up her schoolbooks and scurried out the door of 75 North Broadway in Lexington, Kentucky on the morning of Tuesday, October 12, 1897.[1] The shouts of her younger sister, Tommie, to wait up faded as her booted feet carried her down the cobblestone street.[2] Lida tightly clasped her fur-trimmed cape under her chin to guard against the October chill, and let out a startled frozen breath as a young couple came up behind her and linked their arms in hers. Lida’s classmates, Oscar Bottom and Hattie Alexander, were in on the scheme.[3] The threesome was not headed to school this morning, but to Paris (Kentucky, that is). Lida was getting married today.
Ernest Weimer Frazier, Lida’s 18-year-old beau, worked as a tailor at F.P. Lowry and Company in Paris, Kentucky.[4] He had secured a marriage license a few days earlier and was waiting anxiously for Lida’s arrival.[5] Back in Lexington, Ernest’s sweetheart and her friends had arrived at the Fourth Street station. As the trio awaited the L&N train to Paris, word of the teens’ planned elopement had reached Lida’s father, Thomas Alden Hornsey, owner of the quaintly named Wun Hos Harde Wair Stor.[6]
Mr. Hornsey ran down Broadway after his wayward daughter, huffing and puffing past Second Street, Third, and finally Fourth. He hailed a police officer to aid in his chase, and the duo burst into the Lexington & Covington Station. Catching sight of her fuming father, Lida and her friends fled the station and hid in a nearby saloon until the coast was clear. The youths hired a buggy and rode the eighteen miles northwest, where Lida and Ernest were finally united.[7]
The couple married in the home of Reverend Dr. Rutherford in the presence of Lida’s school friends. Just minutes after the marriage was solemnized, Mr. Hornsey arrived in Paris with his attorney in tow, intending to undo whatever Lida had just done. While her father was consulting with his lawyer, the newly wed couple escaped once again, climbing a fence in the back yard and taking a buggy to spend the night at the home of a friend. Realizing he had been beat, Mr. Hornsey gave up the chase and returned to Lexington.[8]
Lida and Ernest took up residence in the Fordham Hotel in Paris, “a magnificent and commodious structure” on Main Street.[9] The couple would welcome a son, Ernest Weimer Frazier, Jr. in August 1898, and a daughter, Margaret, in June 1899.[10] I last located the adventurous couple in the Elkchester neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky in February 1910. Their 12-year-old son, Weimer, had fallen and suffered a wound outside the family home, only to be stricken with tetanus in the following days. He would die of complications of the disease on February 8th. When Lida and Ernest walked out of the Lexington Cemetery Chapel on Wednesday, February 9, 1910, with their 10-year-old daughter, Margaret, the Frazier family disappeared from the record books.[11] Perhaps they left Kentucky and their sad memories behind to start a new and daring life in the American West, or homesteaded in the northern territories? Wherever the Fraziers ended up, the story of their exciting romp in October 1897 has lived on to bring smiles to their family over 120 years later.
How Are We Related?
[1] 1900 U.S. census, Fayette County, Kentucky, population schedule, Lexington City, p. 3-B (written), dwelling 75, family 49, T.A. Hornsey; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 8 May 2018); citing NARA microfilm publication T623, roll number unlisted.; Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, online database with images (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2018), search for Mariam Hornsey in Lexington, Kentucky in 1898.; “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” The Bourbon News, 15 October 1897, print edition, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/80785676/ : accessed 11 May 2018), column 2; citing print edition, p. 5.
[2] 1900 U.S. census, Fayette County, Kentucky, pop. sch., p. 3-B (written), dwell. 75, fam. 49, T.A. Hornsey.
[3] “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.
[4] Ancestry.com, Kentucky, Death Records, 1852-1964, online database with images (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 May 2018), search for Earnest W. Frazier Jr., death date 8 February 1910.; “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.
[5] “Licenses to Marry,” Morning Herald (Lexington, Kentucky), 13 October 1897, print edition, archived (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 11 May 2018), citing print edition, p. 5.
[6] “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.; Frank L. Smith, “Past Great Sachem Thomas Alden Hornsey,” Redmanship in Kentucky for Fifty Great Suns (Transylvania Press, Lexington, KY, 1910), 169; digital images, Kentucky Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt72804xh41m_176? : accessed 9 May 2018).
[7] “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.
[8] “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.
[9] “Despite Father’s Vigilance, Little Miss Hornsey Skipped Away to Paris and Was Married,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), print edition, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/32971326/ : accessed 11 May 2018), column 4; citing print edition, p. 5.; “Lovers Elope and Get Married,” col. 2, p. 5.; “Fordham Hotel,” The Bourbon News (Paris, Kentucky), 3 October 1905, print edition, archived (http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7sxk84k70w_28 : accessed 11 June 2018), column 1; citing print edition, p. 18.
[10] 1900 U.S. census, Fayette County, Kentucky, pop. sch., p. 3-B (written), dwell. 75, fam. 49, T.A. Hornsey.
[11] “Tetanus Fatal to 12-Year-Old Weimer Frazier,” Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, 8 February 1910, print edition, archived (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 14 May 2018), column 2; citing print edition, p. 10.
Rogers & Jones 
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