“We just wanted to do something for her,” said Daniel Buxton, vice president of the Bullitt County Genealogical Society. “Hopefully this fence will last for another 180 years.”

The Legend

The original Paroquet Springs, a resort where guests believed they could be rejuvenated by the salt springs, stood where the northbound Interstate 65 exit for Ky. 44 is now, Strange said.

The 200-acre resort could accommodate up to 800 guests, according to one advertisement, and included cabins and residences, Buxton said.

“Folks would spend the entire summer here,” Strange said.

While there was no name on the original grave, the most accepted theory is that Alice Buford, a debutante from Mississippi, is buried there, Buxton said.

The first mention of her by name was found in a 1912 Bullitt County Fair program book, which was written anonymously and signed “a true story by one who knows.”

“She was dark-eyed and pretty, and her graceful form and angelic manners as she glided along the balconies of the hotel were magnets that drew all eyes toward her,” the story said.

During the summer of 1846, Charles “Chester” Scott - a Virginian who was “handsome, of fine athletic form and a social lion” as a 1909 Courier-Journal story read - also stayed at the resort. The article did not include the couple’s names.

“The couple seemed to have been fashioned by fate for each other. They were young, wealthy and of aristocratic lineage,” according to The Courier-Journal story, which was told to the writer by Judge William R. Thompson. “In the ballroom, on the river, at the musicales or strolling beneath the boughs of the great trees, they were together unmindful of all else.”

“As the sweet summer zephyrs were about to give way to the chilling blast from the frigid north,” the couple decided to marry the following spring, spending their honeymoon at Paroquet Springs, the fair program said. “But the god of fate in his cruel wisdom interfered with their plans and decreed that their happy anticipation should culminate in despair.”

Scott died in the Battle of Vera Cruz, in Mexico, in March 1847.

“In a few short months the glow of her cheeks was gone, her complexion had become swarthy and her bright eyes had become pale,” the fair program reads. “Fully realizing that her days on earth were few, she called her parents to her bedside and with a faint voice earnestly requested that after her death her remains be conveyed to Paroquet Grove and buried without ceremony, in the lovely spot by the old beech tree, where, but few months before, she and her lover had sat together in their swing.”

The couple’s names were engraved on the nearby tree, according to the fair program.

According to other versions of the story, the woman was the daughter of the owner of Paroquet Springs, and the man was from Kentucky or New York or Massachusetts.

Another version says the woman was Mary Lucy Pocahontas Bibb, of Frankfort, who met and fell in love with a man at the resort. They parted after a quarrel, and both married others. Still, she made her sister promise to bury her at Paroquet Springs, “where she had spent the happiest time in her life,” according to a report put together by Buxton.

The old Paroquet Springs resort was destroyed by a fire in 1879.

The Site Today

The rooftop of today’s Paroquet Springs Conference Centre can be seen across the interstate from the gravesite.

Regardless of who is buried there, the volunteers have worked for a year and a half to see it restored, hoping that the love story won’t be forgotten.

“Back in the ‘40s, they would bring school groups back here,” said Barbara Bailey, president of the genealogical society.

Fortwengler made the 4-foot-by-6-foot fence by hand, incorporating a few pieces of the old fence, such as some acorns that topped the posts and a handful of decorative discs.

Fortwengler, who normally does religious metal sculptures, said making a replica was a first for him.

“That was probably the most exciting part about it - trying to duplicate something that was made so long ago,” said Fortwengler, who also works in the maintenance department at University Hospital in Louisville.

The land’s owners, Ables and Hall Builders, paid roughly $1,500 for the new fence, co-owner Ronnie Ables said.

Ables said he will tell the new owner about the grave when it is sold.

“Everybody knows about it in Bullitt County,” he said. “I want it to stay there.”

Image: Dave Strange, executive director of the Bullitt County History Museum, at the gravesite