Upton Family Reunion
From the News-Enterprise Sept. 20, 1998
HOMETOWN RICH IN TRADITION
Upton Holds its Annual Festival on Saturday
By Risa Brim
In the early 1800s, the Upton family graciously donated a chunk of the family's land for a one-room school house in a settlement they founded south of Elizabethtown.
Little did they know, the students who would attend the school nearly two centuries later would unite their great-great-great-grandchildren.
On Saturday, the rural town, now bearing the family name of Upton, held its annual festival. And the descendants of the founding fathers led the festivities as the grand marshals of the parade.
"Somewhere up there, the Uptons are peeking down through the clouds and smiling at us," said Joan Stith, librarian at Upton Elementary School who helped coordinate the reunion. "I'll bet they're just tickled to death."
Students at the current Upton Elementary School, constructed in the 1940s and believed to have been built on or near the land donated in the early 1800s, recently researched the city's history.
The project, which the school began last spring and completed this summer, was part of an Arts and Humanities requirement under state education reforms. The descendants of the early townspeople went into attics, basements and storage areas and dug up diaries and scrapbooks to assist the students.
The final report, the result of months of work by first and second grade students, was posted on the school's Internet site.
And just four weeks ago, Carol Upton, the wife of Joseph Upton's great-great-great-grandson, and a genealogist in Huntsville, Ala., stumbled upon the web site during an attempt to trace her husband's history.
"Last year, when I went into the computer to look up the history of Upton, there was nothing there," Carol Upton said. "But this year, there was. It's so interesting that we're bound by history, but united by the latest technology."
About 20 Uptons from Alabama and Georgia joined Uptons from Upton, Sonora, Bonnieville and other surrounding towns for a ceremony Friday at Upton Baptist Church, across the street from the school. Some of the Uptons like Carol, who had visited the city before, didn't know they were related to the Kentucky Uptons.
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Upton school students wrote and composed a song titled "Coming Home" for the family and presented copies of the history report.
Tylor Upton, whose parents, Don and Lesia Upton, own a dairy farm in Upton, is the only Upton family member still attending the school.
He joined the Upton entourage in the front yard of the old Upton house, built in the 1800s and sitting on a hill near the center of town just about two blocks from the school. The current owners, Jim and Cynthia Hagewood, led the family on a tour of the home.
Kim Ash, Upton city councilwoman, said she's pleased the school, still the center of the community, brought the family together. A member of the school PTA, Ash helped circulate a petition--signed by nearly 600 of the 750 residents of the town--to keep the school after a consultant recommended closing its doors.
"Our school is the heart of this community, she said. "It's what draws people together. If it hadn't been for the school, the Uptons may not have found one another."
Gertrude Copelin, 81, a former student and teacher at the school, watched the Upton Day parade with her family from the front porch of her downtown home. She said the school, less than a mile from her home, is one of the town's most precious possessions.
She said she's not surprised the school drew the Upton family together.
"There's children going to that school whose great-grandparents attended there in the same building," she said. "Now and then, I'll see the grandchildren of some of my students walking by on their way home from school. There's a lot of history in that school."