Name of Starks family, members of which were keys to the history of Midway University, resurrected on campus

Left to right, front row: Starks descendant Sara Hicks and Midway University Board of Trustees Chair Donna Moore Campbell. Middle row: Keith Mathis, Belinda Metzger, Anita Britton, Jan Hunter, Anne Bolton. Back row: JJ Housley, Jim Starks, Mrs. Starks, Mr. Vogt, Susan Vogt, Powell Starks, Dr. John P. Marsden. (Midway University photo and identifications)

By Taylor Savage
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

A building on Midway University’s campus got a new name Thursday. And an old one.

University officials announced that the building formerly known as the Learning Resource Center is now named after the Starks family and bear the name of The Starks Center.

Midway University photo

The Learning Resource Center was built in 2010 and replaced Starks Hall, which was named by John Price Starks in honor of his father, James Madison Starks. The two served 45 years on the board of the Kentucky Female Orphan School, which became Midway College and then Midway University.

James Madison Starks settled near Midway in 1845, two years before the school was founded. He established a small school for local children on his grounds and hired teachers who graduated from the orphan school. He joined the board of the orphan school in 1851, ending in 1879 when he moved to Mercer County.

He and Susan Crutcher had six children, including John P. Starks, who was “integral to the period of the school’s most substantial and rapid expansion,” President John P. Marsden said. He reshaped the school’s program, introduced business rigor to the financial affairs of the school, and began a progressive building campaign.”

Starks also engaged famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York’s Central Park and Asheville’s Biltmore Estate, “to survey the grounds for the best location of future buildings, and to beautify the campus,” Marsden said.

Plaque will be mounted in the center.

“The fingerprints of John Starks remain on the campus until this day,” Marsden said, quoting from a history of the school by former president Robert Botkin, which he said is soon to be published.

Starks descendant Susan Vogt spoke with the Midway Messenger about her great-great-great-great- grandmother, Susan Crutcher Starks.

The Starks Building went up in 1913.

“It was always my grandmother’s wish to have Susan Crutcher and James Starks put back together,” she said. “This portrait has been in my life forever and I finally decided it was time for her to come home.”

The Starks name and family have been prominent in Midway for many years and in Lexington and Louisville. Midway has a Starks street named after the family, and John P. Starks, built the Starks Building in Louisville, which was the first high-rise building in the city.

City Council Member Sara Hicks, a great-granddaughter of Edna Starks described the Starks family and the legacy they have built in Midway.

Starks Headache Powders were produced until the 1930s.

“There were three brothers: James, John, and Frank Starks,” Hicks said in an email. “John and Frank moved to Louisville. . . . James remained in Midway, where as a pharmacist he founded Starks Headache Powders. He gave each of his children a farm which are today Lantern Hill, Three Chimneys, and Stonewall farms. His daughter ran the headache-powder business after he passed away. That was my grandmother, Edna.”

Lettering was added to the exterior of the building and a commemorative plaque of the rededication will placed near the entrance, alongside the portraits of the founding faces of the Starks family. 

The university posted this video of the ceremony: