Offutt-Cole Tavern
Woodford County, Woodford County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Offutt-Cole Tavern. Site first owned by Hancock Taylor, early surveyor. Features of log section date it to 1780s-1790s. Major John Lee lived here, then leased to Horatio Offutt, who built brick section, 1802, for use as tavern. He rented building to John Kennedy and William Dailey, who opened famous stagecoach inn, 1804. Tavern operated by Richard Cole, Jr., 1812-1839. See over. (Reverse) Offutt-Cole Tavern - Richard Cole, Jr.'s son, James, was father of Zerelda (Cole) James, mother of notorious Jesse and Frank James. Tavern later known as "Black Horse Tavern." It was operated as a tollgate house, 1848-80. Owned by Lexington, Versailles and Midway Road Co.; acquired by McCabe family in 1916 which deeded property to Woodford Co. Historical Society, 1979, for restoration. Over.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Standing on land first owned by early surveyor Hancock Taylor, this tavern grew from a log section dating to the 1780s-90s to a brick addition built by Horatio Offutt in 1802, which became a famous stagecoach inn under John Kennedy and William Dailey in 1804. Richard Cole, Jr. ran it from 1812 to 1839, and his line carried a notorious footnote: his granddaughter Zerelda Cole James was the mother of outlaws Jesse and Frank James. Later known as the "Black Horse Tavern," it served as a tollgate house before being restored by the Woodford County Historical Society.
Why it matters
A frontier stagecoach inn on an early Kentucky road, the tavern illustrates how taverns and tollgates knit the young republic together — and it carries a surprising thread to one of America's most infamous outlaw families.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the last decades of the 1700s, Kentucky was the raw western edge of the new United States — a land of surveyors' chains, buffalo traces, and settlers pushing in from Virginia. Woodford County sat in the fertile Bluegrass country, and the first order of business on any frontier was figuring out who owned what. Surveyors walked the land before farmers settled it, and the earliest structures were built of hewn logs, close to the roads that would carry the next wave of arrivals.
By the early 1800s that rough frontier was organizing itself. Dirt roads hardened into recognized routes between the young towns of central Kentucky, and where roads went, travelers followed. A brick addition to a log building in 1802 was itself a statement: the settlement had put down roots and expected to stay.
This was the age of the stagecoach, when a journey of a few counties took days and a traveler's day ended wherever the next inn stood. Taverns weren't just places to drink — they were the hotels, restaurants, post offices, and news exchanges of their time, the fixed points that made overland travel possible at all.
People & events
The land here first belonged to Hancock Taylor, one of the early surveyors whose work turned wilderness into deeded property. The oldest part of the building, a log section, dates to the 1780s or 1790s, and Major John Lee lived here before the property found its more famous use.
The turn came with Horatio Offutt, who leased the place and in 1802 built the brick section for use as a tavern. Two years later he rented it to John Kennedy and William Dailey, who opened what became a well-known stagecoach inn in 1804 — the kind of stop that gave a whole stretch of road its reputation. From 1812 to 1839, Richard Cole, Jr. ran the tavern through its long heyday.
And here the building brushes against one of the strangest threads in American folklore. Richard Cole, Jr.'s son James was the father of Zerelda Cole, who grew up to become the mother of Jesse and Frank James — the outlaw brothers whose names would echo through the post–Civil War West. Long after the stagecoaches stopped, the place carried on: it was known as the "Black Horse Tavern," served as a tollgate house from 1848 to 1880 under a private turnpike company, and was eventually deeded to the Woodford County Historical Society in 1979 for restoration.
Its place in the American story
The story of the young United States is often told through its capitals and battlefields, but a nation is also held together by its roads and the humble buildings that lined them. A tavern like this one is a small monument to that connective tissue — the network of inns and, later, tollgates that let people, mail, and news move across an expanding republic.
The building's century of changing uses is itself an American arc: log cabin to brick tavern, stagecoach inn to tollgate house, working roadside stop to preserved landmark. Each shift mirrors a stage in how the country traveled and paid its way.
And its accidental link to the James family is a reminder that American history is more tightly woven than it looks. A respectable frontier tavernkeeper's line ran, a couple of generations on, straight into one of the most notorious sagas of the outlaw West — proof that the famous and the ordinary share the same family trees.
If you visit
Come here to read a building like the pages of a book. Look first at where the old log section meets the later brick addition — that seam is the whole story in miniature, the moment a frontier cabin became a place expecting company.
Stand back and imagine the road as it once was: not a modern highway but a rougher route where a stagecoach might rattle up at dusk and disgorge tired, dusty travelers glad of a fire and a bed. This was their welcome, and for decades it was also the tollgate where every passing wagon paid its way.
It makes a fine stop on a Bluegrass history loop, where taverns, early roads, and horse country all overlap. Give yourself a moment to sit with the quieter marvel of the place — that an ordinary Kentucky family who kept an inn here would, within a couple of generations, be tied to names that half the country would come to know.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Hancock Taylor
- · Horatio Offutt
- · Richard Cole, Jr.
- · Zerelda Cole James
- · Jesse James
- · Frank James
Themes & tags
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