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Former home of US Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd. Built in 1812 and purchased from the builder, believed to be either Hayden Edwards or William Walker, in 1818. The original house did not have the Victorian look visible today. It was a Federal style bldg without gables, gingerbread, or the covered front porch. These were added later. In 1945 the Good Shepherd Church bought the house at auction and it became a convent for the Sisters of Charity. 40 years later Don and Toni Wood bought the property and donated it to the First United Methodist Church. It now houses church offices, a minister's study, a library, classrooms and dining room.

The bricks used in 1812 were hand made and placed on the ground to dry in the sun. On some bricks you can see prints of goats and chickens that walked across them while drying. The ash floors on the first level are original, as is the plaster which contains hog hair bristles and horsehair commonly used in the 1800s to bond plaster together. The two two-story wings were added over 100 years ago. The front door, fanlight, and the door lock are original, as is the stairway with cherry banister in the entry hall.

The chimney system is unique in that the parlor fireplace shares a flue with fireplaces in the dining room and the second floor. At each end of the house, flues from the first floor fireplaces run vertically, then make right angle turns toward each other and join the flue of the fireplace upstairs.

Justice Todd was born in 1765 in King and Queen County, Virginia. He fought in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, then he studied law and surveying. When KY held its conventions seeking separation from Virginia, Todd was selected as the secretary. Kentucky attained statehood in 1792 and Todd was appointed Clerk of the Court of Appeals, the first to hold that office. In 1806 he became Chief Justice and was later appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Thomas Jefferson. After his wife Elizabeth Harris died, in 1811 he married Mrs. Lucy Payne Washington, the sister of celebrated Dolly Madison, wife of President James Madison. Their marriage took place in the East Room of the White House, the first celebrated in the Presidential Mansion. Lafayette met with Mrs. Todd here on his famous tour of the US in 1825. Thomas Todd died February 7, 1826 and was buried in a family graveyard of his mentor and friend Henry Innis. Todd and his wife were re interred later in the Frankfort Cemetery.

Kentucky's first native born governor, James T. Morehead, and his wife, lived here with Mrs. Todd after her husband's death. Morehead was born in 1797, just 5 years after KY became a state.

My love of chocolate has always been a source of amusement to my friends and family. In the mid-1980s I spent a year as law clerk/bailiff for a state district court judge in Utah -- the heart of Mormondom -- and while thus employed, part of my daily ritual was to buy a pint of Hershey's chocolate milk at the snack bar in the courthouse. One day a couple of colleagues teased me about it, and I responded by affirming that Hershey's was the one true brand of chocolate milk; that all other brands were apostate versions; and that Hershey's had been miraculously restored to the earth in these latter days.

More recently, and up to and including the present, Commissioner Myra Harris of the Maricopa County Superior Court always maintains a stash of chocolate of one kind or another for the benefit of her co-workers. I show up almost daily for what I call "chocolate raids." One of her clerks tells me that she knows by the way I walk if I am there on official business, or for the chocolate. According to her, I stroll into the Commissioner's chambers with brisk purposefulness if the visit is related to court business, but at a much more leisurely pace if I am conducting a chocolate raid.

The same clerk who made that comment took this picture at my request. The Commissioner wasn't in on the day I made this particular raid, but she wouldn't have raised any objection if she had been there. I like to tell people that as long as I have my chocolate, I am the sweetest fellow they will ever meet in this life; but that contrariwise, without my chocolate I become a savage beast, something worthy of Dante's Inferno. Nobody seems to take this claim very seriously, however.

Here I am admiring a handful of Hershey's chocolate kisses, which I very much enjoy, although much as I love chocolate, I prefer the other kind of kisses. Which, in turn, is why I shave extra close every morning; I figure it makes my face more kissable.