Just to the right of the fairway on the first hole of the nine-hole Executive Golf Course is a gorgeous chapel wall that was originally part of a church in Europe. That area now hosts weddings throughout the year and is one of the crown jewels that make Hurstbourne Country Club one of the most sought-after wedding locations in Louisville.

Whether it’s a round of golf, a formal or casual meal, a relaxing time at the pool, a fun tennis match or to simply be at a place where everybody seems to know your name, Hurstbourne Country Club strives to be a second home for its members and provide a lifetime of memories they can’t wait to experience.
 

Our History

One of the first stations of westward expansion was established by William Lynn in 1779. He settled on a tract he may have selected in 1776 when he was a leader of an expedition down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The location he chose is well known today: It is the scenic site of Hurstbourne Country Club.
 
The natural beauty of this site, however, was the best of Lynn’s criteria. He was interested in the fertility of the land and the large spring which poured its waters into Beargrass Creek. The spring still flows and the ancient stone spring house stands today beside the 10th tee of Hurstbourne’s Championship Golf Course. Two old stone dwellings east of Hurstbourne’s clubhouse probably date from the later days of the 1780s.
 
Lynn looked forward to years of increasing prosperity in this new western country, but his hopes were brought to a sudden and violent end. On March 5, 1781, he set out for Louisville, the town he had helped found, to attend the first meeting of the new Jefferson County Court. Bland Ballard, living at Lynn’s Station while recovering from a wound received during Clark’s 1780 Ohio Campaign, later recalled the tragedy:
 
“Lynn left the station a little ahead of the others of the party who were going to the court. Shortly after, reports of several guns were heard. A party from the fort immediately went to the place and found his horse killed by a shot but could find nothing of Lynn. The next day, the search was renewed and his body was found about a mile from the station and near the present place of residence of Colonel Anderson.”
 
The gravesite of William Lynn is unmarked and unknown, but his name has not entirely vanished. Area historians agree that nearby Lyndon probably derives its name from Major Lynn and his pioneer station. After Lynn’s death, his heirs discovered his title to the land was faulty. Though Lynn had received a Virginia grant, a prior grant had been given for the same land to a veteran of the French and Indian Wars.
 
The history of the land continues with two early deeds recorded in Jefferson County Deed Books I and II. The first, dated Oct. 1, 1786, and recorded June 2, 1789, was from Henry and Mary Harrison of Surrey County, Virginia, to Peyton Short of Lincoln County, Kentucky, for “1,000 acres by survey of June 7, 1774 – on Beargrass Creek about five miles from the Ohio River.” The second deed dated April 5, 1789, was from Peyton Short of Surrey County, Virginia, to Richard Clough Anderson for “five hundred acres being part of an old military survey patented and in the name of Henry Harrison, and being in Jefferson County on the head of Beargrass, commonly called Lynn’s Station.”
 
Richard Clough Anderson, named in the second deed, was one of Louisville’s earliest historical figures. He was born in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1750, was a member of the Virginia Continental Line, was wounded at Trenton and Savannah, taken prisoner at Charleston, acted as aide-de-camp to Lafayette and to General Nelson at Yorktown, and retired as Lt. Colonel. In 1783, he was appointed principal surveyor for all Virginia military boundary lines, and in 1784 moved to Kentucky. In 1787, he married Elizabeth, the sister of George Rogers Clark.
 
On the land he purchased from Peyton Short, he built a stone mansion house which he called Soldier’s Retreat, where he lived until his death in 1826. The old house has been gone for more than a hundred years, but several of the stone out-buildings and the family burying ground remain.
 
The center section of the present clubhouse of Hurstbourne Country Club was on Col. Anderson’s estate and is thought to have been built around 1818. For whom it was built is not known. Several families owned it before it was deeded on July 6, 1915 by Elizabeth A. F. Harris, widow of Joseph L. Harris, to Alvin T. Hert. The land in that deed was described as “Hurstbourne Farm in Jefferson County, Kentucky … on Shelbyville Turnpike and waters of Beargrass.” Several Louisvillians remember the house when the Harrises lived in it and describe it as very English, almost Tudor in decoration, and recollect that the living room was filled with silver trophies.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Alvin T. Hert were prominent in Louisville social and political affairs. Mrs. Hert was vice chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1924 to 1936, and Mr. Hert, head of the American Creosoting Company, was also prominent in Republican politics until his death in 1921.
 
In 1928, Mrs. Hert engaged Louisville architect E.T. Hutchings to remodel and enlarge the house for her residence. Her original plan was to give the appearance of the old 1818 brick center to wings that were to be added, but she liked the color of the new brick so well that the outside layer of the old brick was removed and the whole house covered with the new. The Gothic details added to the brick house, possibly by the Harrises, were retained and carried out on the exterior of the mansion.
 
The most beautiful room in the house was the 60’ x 30’ drawing room with its 14’ ceiling, now the main dining room of Hurstbourne Country Club. Mrs. Hert engaged Charles Duveen, head of the noted decorating and antiques firm of Charles of London in New York, to panel the room for her with oak paneling from a century old English house, and the ornamental ceiling was designed from a pattern taken from the same house.