A Visit to Bill Monroe’s Hometown of Rosine, Kentucky
Photos Courtesy of Ohio County Tourism
A visit to the hometown of one of your music heroes may not always sound like it would be worth the time, effort, or expense. These days most small towns in the United States all look about the same. You might find a quaint, but somewhat run-down, downtown area, but other than that you’ll usually find that the other areas of town—the ones with the Wal-Mart, CVS, fast food joints, grocery chains, strip malls, etc.—make most towns in America look fairly similar. Unless there is some specific attraction related to your music hero, a visit to their hometown might not be too inviting. Luckily, when it comes to Bill Monroe’s hometown of Rosine, Kentucky you will find special attractions related to Monroe and bluegrass music in spades.
In Rosine, you have the opportunity to visit the Bill Monroe Museum, Uncle Pen’s cabin, the restored Bill Monroe Homeplace, the graveyard where Uncle Pen, Bill Monroe, Charlie Monroe, Birch Monroe, his sisters Maude and Bertha and Bill’s parents are all buried and you can enjoy live music every Friday night at the Rosine Barn. Additionally, the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum is only about 30 minutes up the road in Owensboro. Thus, having the opportunity to see all of these attractions and see live music at both the Rosine Barn Jamboree and the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum, makes this area of Western Kentucky a wonderful destination-weekend pilgrimage for any bluegrass music fan. Additionally, the Bill Monroe homeplace hosts the Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Festival in Rosine every September and The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum hosts the ROMP festival every June.
Let’s take a closer look at the places of interest that the bluegrass music fan will find in Rosine, Kentucky.
The Bill Monroe Museum
The Bill Monroe Museum was opened in 2018. Dedicated to Bill’s life and music, this museum holds many of Bill’s personal items, clothes, instruments, memorabilia, photos, and awards. The items were purchased in 2000 from an estate sale and Bill’s son, James, has also donated select items that he and his mother had collected. Exhibits include Bill Monroe’s Cadillac and a recreation of his living room in his Nashville home featuring his actual furniture. All of the displays include detailed written explanations about the items and thus you can learn a lot about Bill Monroe and his music by viewing and reading about all of these interesting items.
At the museum, there is also a Bluegrass Boys Room that features items from James Monroe and other Bluegrass Boys. There is also a small stage that features a life-size cardboard cutout of Bill Monroe playing his mandolin so that you can get your picture taken on stage with the father of bluegrass. The museum is open from Monday through Friday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Saturdays, June-September from 10:00 am-2:00 pm.
The Bill Monroe Homeplace
After visiting the Bill Monroe Museum, you will want to take a short ride up to Jerusalem Ridge and visit Bill Monroe’s restored homeplace. The resorted home was opened in 2001. Jody Flener, the Ohio County Tourism Director, said, “They were able to use about 75% of all of the original wood, so it is very true to form how the house looked when Bill lived there. When they come to see it, they see the home as it was when Bill lived in it. The house is unique. It has ten doors and seventeen windows. There are a couple of exits from every room. The house has three bedrooms and a kitchen. The original house plan had a breezeway separating the bedrooms from the kitchen. But since Bill was only eight when they moved in, his mother turned the breezeway into Bill’s bedroom.” Bill Monroe was born in a log cabin on the property because the original house had burnt down by the time Bill was born in 1911. When Bill was eight years old, his father, James B. Monroe (1857-1928), rebuilt the house around the original double-sided fireplace for his wife Malissa A. Monroe (1870-1921) for their 25th wedding anniversary. Bill lived with his parents in that home until his father’s passing and he then went to live with his maternal uncle Pendleton Vandiver (“Uncle Pen,” 1869-1932).
If you have ever watched the movie High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass, you can see footage of Bill Monroe walking around the dilapidated homeplace before it was restored. Seeing that footage and then visiting the restored homeplace, you get a feeling for how much work was put into restoring this home.
The original Monroe family property was 1000 acres. In addition to farming, the Monroe family operated a coal mine on the property and logged timber. Some of the White Ash trees that were logged from the property were sent to Louisville to make Louisville Slugger baseball bats. After Bill’s parents passed and Bill moved out of the house, the property stayed in the family and various family members moved in periodically. Jody Flener explained, “Anyone of the Monroe relatives that needed a place to stay could stay there. Bill wrote ‘I’m On My Way Back to the Old Home’ when he was coming back to visit, thinking that some of his relatives were staying there. But, upon arrival, he found that no one was there. He was very sad because there was ‘no light in the window’ as he said in the song.” I’m on my way back to the old home, The road that winds on up the hill, But there’s no light in the window, That shined long ago where I lived.
Traveling to the old homeplace, you will learn exactly what Bill was talking about when he wrote The road that winds on up the hill. When visiting the homeplace, and other places in Rosine, you can see many of Monroe’s lyrics come to life before your eyes.
At some point in time, Bill’s brother Charlie Monroe built a home on the front part of the property, but then later the land was sold to a private citizen in Beaver Dam, Kentucky. Later, the county bought five acres where the homeplace sits and they rent the property to the Bill Monroe Foundation. The Foundation was formed when the decision was made to restore the home. Part of the decision to restore the home was due to the suggestion of Eleanor Bratcher, who ran the local grocery store in Rosine. Jody Flener explained, “Eleanor used to get people coming into the store from all over the world asking if they could see the Bill Monroe homeplace. She had a friend, Mr. James Austin, who would hitch up his mules or tractor and take people up to see the homeplace, which was beginning to ruin. Eleanor was very instrumental in telling our government, our governor, and some of our senators that Ohio County had something that was worth treasuring. She got everyone together to write a grant to preserve the homeplace.”
On October 11, 2025, The Foundation will host the annual Run the Ridge Trail Run. This is a 5K, 10K, & 25K rough run. The trail leaves the Homeplace and runs the famous Jerusalem Ridge backcountry. Runners hear live bluegrass music throughout the run and may see the wildlife of the ridge as well. Jody Flener said, “Don’t worry, there are no bears in Bill’s woods.” You can find information at www.runtheridgetrailrun.com
Every second Saturday from June through September a “Picking on the Porch” jam session is held at the homeplace. Admission is free however, you can enjoy a five-dollar dinner offered at 5:30, you can jam with other bluegrass pickers, set out a lawn chair and enjoy the jam and also enjoy homemade ice cream and dessert. The “Picking on the Porch” event is used as a fundraiser for the Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Festival.
The Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Music Festival
Shortly after Bill Monroe’s homeplace was restored in 2001, a festival titled the Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Celebration was created and held on the property. Campbell Mercer, who was the chairman of the board overseeing the homeplace restoration project, was a member of the band The Cumberland Highlanders and they video-taped the festival and ran footage on the RFD-TV show Cumberland Highlanders.
The original festival ran up through 2011 when they celebrated Bill Monroe’s 100th birthday, but then shut down for several years. In 2018 the festival was brought back to the homeplace and titled The Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Music Festival. This year’s event will be held on September 11-14. The main stage is located just behind Bill Monroe’s childhood home. This year’s lineup includes Wyatt Ellis, Kentucky Just Us, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, The Junior Sisk Band, The Kody Norris Show, Larry Sparks, and the Lonesome Ramblers, Lorraine Jordan and Carolina Road, Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers and many others (jerusalemridgefestival.com).
Uncle Pen’s Cabin
As mentioned above, after Bill Monroe’s mother and father passed away, Bill went to live with his Uncle Pen in Pen’s cabin. Jody Flener said that it was during this time in Bill’s life when he played music with his Uncle Pen and Arnold Schultz at churches, barn dances, and weddings. Thus, James Monroe, Bill’s son, has often said, “Bluegrass was born in Uncle Pen’s cabin!”
Although the original cabin where Monroe lived burnt down, James Monroe had a replica built in 2012 and it opened to visitors in 2013. James placed many of the Monroe family’s personal items in the cabin. James had purchased the two and a half acre property in 1973 and presented it to his father as a birthday gift that year.
The person who ran the tours of Pen’s cabin, Merlene Austin, recently passed away and so currently (as of June 2025) the cabin is closed. You can go and see the cabin, but you cannot go inside at this point. The cabin is located a mile and a half from the Bill Monroe Museum.
The Gravesite
When I visited Rosine in February of 2025, one of the favorite places that I visited was the gravesite where Bill Monroe, his brothers Charlie and Birch, his parents James and Malissa, his Uncle Pen, and other family members, were laid to rest. One of the coolest things to me was to look on Monroe’s mother and father’s gravestones and see the exact words that Monroe wrote in the song “Memories of Mother and Dad.”
There’s a little lonesome grave yard, On these tombstones it did say, On mother’s “gone but not forgotten,” On dad’s “we’ll meet again someday.” I remember that years ago I was talking with Charles Sawtelle and he told me that he had gone to Rosine to visit the graveyard and said, “Those words from Monroe’s song are exactly the words on the gravestones.” It was very exciting for me to see those gravestones myself.
Charlie Monroe shares a tombstone with his wife, Elizabeth. On Birch’s tombstone, it states “A wonderful brother, a wonderful uncle.” Carved into Birch’s tombstone are etchings of a fiddle, a Stetson hat, and a pair of glasses. Uncle Pen’s gravestone also includes a carving of a fiddle. Some of the lyrics to Monroe’s tune “Uncle Pen” are also carved into Pen’s stone.
Bill Monroe’s gravestone is the largest in the group and includes a bronze plaque with a bust of Bill with his dog Stormy, although Stormy is not buried there with Monroe. Jody Flener said, “Bill had a love for Rosine and wanted to be buried in Rosine. His funeral was held at the Methodist church that he attended and his casket was hand carried the five blocks from the church to the graveyard.” Bill Monroe erected the gravestone for his Uncle Pen. James Monroe erected the gravestone for his father.
Rosine Barn and Jamboree
Earlier in this article I mentioned Eleanor Bratcher, who ran a grocery store in Rosine with her husband Hoyt. Hoyt was a mandolin player and enjoyed jamming with friends on Friday nights at the store. Over time the jam outgrew the store and so Hoyt and “Hacker” Patterson asked the owner of a barn that stood next to the store, Mrs. Edith Woosley, if the Bratchers could rent the space to hold his jam session. Hoyt started his jam at the barn in about 1992 and continued to hold the jam sessions at the barn starting a 5:00 pm every Friday. The jam would typically last until about 2:00 am.
In 1995 the Rosine Association was established and they began running the barn. They implemented the schedule that is in place today. In, 2023, The Barn LLC purchased the barn and the store next to it. The Rosine Association now rents and operates the Rosine Barn Jamboree on Fridays continuing its legacy. The barn opens at 5:30 every Friday from April through December and the festivities kick off with an open mic where anyone can get up and perform. Bill Monroe’s footprints are painted on the stage so if you perform you can get a photo of yourself “standing in the footprints of Bill Monroe.” First-timers can even receive a certificate declaring that they did indeed stand on that stage in Rosine and perform.
After the open mic time, a local band—Floyd Stewart and Friends —performed. Next, two scheduled bluegrass bands perform. Many of the top performers in bluegrass have performed at the barn, including Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and Mac Wiseman. All events at the barn are free and the musicians perform for free. Jody Flener said that many of the professional bands perform there for free just because it is in Bill Monroe’s hometown.
Jody Flener suggested that anyone who wants to visit Rosine should start their tour at the homeplace, then go to Uncle Pen’s cabin, visit the graveyard next, and then travel over to spend some time at the museum before ending up on Friday night at the Rosine Music Barn to jam and watch a show. After a full day in Rosine, a visitor can then travel up the road to Owensboro and spend all day Saturday at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum and catch a show there on Saturday night. It sounds like the perfect bluegrass music weekend to me!
