Henry Metcalf was the oldest son of Rev. John Metcalf, who surveyed Nicholasville. He was born in the year 1800, and died at his home in Nicholasville, January 18, 1879.

He passed his entire life in Nicholasville. He was a useful citizen and a manufacturer of ropes and bagging. He had a large factory which he operated for a long time successfully. He was a man of extraordinary sweetness of temper, and also of high character, He did the right as he knew it.

He opened the first Sunday-school in the Southern Methodist Church in Nicholasville in the spring of1843, and was for long years one of the stewards in that church and was liberal in the support of his church and earnest in its cause. He married a daughter of John Fishback, who settled in Kentucky in 1790, in Jessamine county, where he died in 1845.

Mr. John Metcalf, who still survives and lives in Nicholasville, was his eldest son. George Metcalf, another son, now resides in Lexington, and was a gallant soldier in the Fifth Kentucky Infantry, C. S. A., while Charles Metcalf, the youngest son, is one of the leading lawyers in Tennessee, and President of the Tennessee State Bar Association. John Metcalf and James Metcalf, two of his sons, are still living, while two of his daughters, Miss Sallie and Miss Alice, now reside in Nicholasville at the old home place of their grandfather, who laid out and named the town.

Extracted from:

A HISTORY OF JESSAMINE COUNTY, KENTUCKY,
FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO 1898.
By BENNETT H. YOUNG,