... George Catlett Lockhart, who practiced law nearly thirty years, achieved all the most substantial honors
of a professional career, and not less the attributes of the strong minded and earnest citizen, and a Christian gentleman. He was born at Lexington, Kentucky, April 28, 1845, and was still in the prime of his powers when death came to him March 8, 1898. His father, Henry H. Lockhart, was born in County Armagh, Ireland, in
1800, of pure Scotch parentage, and was brought to this country in 1807. He was reared in New York, but as a young man went to South Carolina and from there came to Lexington, Kentucky, where for many years he was a farmer and trader. He married Sarah Richardson, a member of an old and prominent Kentucky family of Colonial ancestry. The Richardsons came to Virginia in 1650 from England and toward the close of the eighteenth century a branch of the family established their home in Kentucky.
George C. Lockhart was educated at Lexington, in Bacon College at Harrodsburg, and for several years after the period of the Civil war was engaged in teaching, when General Morgan organized his command in Lexington he was too young to enlist, but he nevertheless joined the troop and served with Morgan in the quartermaster department and was known as Little Quartermaster. He was sent north to meet a spy who was coming South, and, after meeting him, took him through Kentucky. On his next trip to Kentucky he was arrested as a spy in Montgomery County by troops sent from Lexington who had followed his mother, who had gone to see him. He was taken to Lexington and tried, but was acquitted.
In 1865-66 Mr, Lockhart was editor of the Mount Sterling Sentinel. He gave all the time he could to the study of law, was admitted to the bar in 1867, but for several years thereafter continued teaching in a collegiate institute in Western Missouri. In 1870 he began practice at Paris, Kentucky, and thereafter was singularly devoted to his profestion, and only once was turned aside to occupy political office, when he was elected to the Legislature m 1875. He was appointed local attorney for the Kentucky Central Railroad in 1879. He became district attorney when this road became a division of the Huntington system, and when it was absorbed by the Louisville and Nashville Railway he became attorney for that system and continued as one of the district attorneys of this great railway until his death. At the same time he carried on a great volume of private practice, and for a quarter of a century it is said that his services were identified with practically every important case in the circuit including Bourbon County. He possessed a profound knowledge of the law, had all the resources of an active intelligence that enabled him to meet on equal plane some of the greatest legal lights distinguished in the annals of the Kentucky bar. He was deeply devoted to the welfare of his home city and its institutions. From 1883 until his death he was a member of the board of education, and was always sought out to give his support to matters of community concern.
On January 31, 1882, he married Miss Florence Leslie Church, South. Mrs. Lockhart was liberally educated and at the time of her marriage was professor of English literature in the Millersburg Female College. After the death of Mr. Lockhart she became the wife of the late Col. R F. Clay, and still occupies the fine Clay homestead near Paris. As Mrs. Lockhart she was the mother of three daughters:
- Mary Heame, who died in 1915, the wife of Aylette Buckner, still living in Bourbon County, and also survived by one son, Catlett Lockhart Buckner;
- Sarah Catlett Lockhart, who married Catesby Woodford Spears, of Bourbon County; and
- Florence Kelly Lockhart, who is the wife of John F. Davis, of Paris, and has two children, John Lockhart and Sally Ferrin Davis.
