History Burgoo

Fayette and Jefferson Counties are done!

Aaaaaand their off!  We have added two more milestones to the first (Franklin) of 120 counties of our microfilm collection.  We started this project in July and have continued to review film, create catalog records and rehouse boxes throughout the summer.   We are not sure we are going to make our STRETCH goal of 15,000 rolls of microfilm in 12 months but we will definitely be on our way!  

You might well ask, why so excited?  Well, we are librarians and we do get excited about putting records into the catalog where people all over the world can see them.  Of course, what really excites us is when people from all over the world come into the library to use those collections they found in our online catalog.

So what do our researchers gain by this project, other than 15,000 catalog records?  Well, let me tell you!  Access to our collections like you have never had it before!  We are cataloging the entire contents of each roll so that a researcher can search the catalog for a county record type (like Jefferson county marriage records) or for a particular manuscript collection that has local or regional importance (the Hummel’s store ledger from 1851-1860 from Jeffersontown, Ky.). 

Jefferson County, in particular, contributed some real gems for local historians and genealogists.  Our collection includes many early church records for the Louisville area from a variety of denominations, from Catholic to Episcopal to Evangelical.  Researchers find the early church records helpful as many predate the existence of governmental court records and therefore provide invaluable information to family historians trying to find information on early Kentucky settlers. 

This project is an integral part of our KHS strategic plan to make the resources at KHS available through the online catalog, thus making the catalog an important tool for people planning a visit to KHS.

We’ve got to get back to work, Madison county is next!  Stay tuned for periodic updates!

Your Reference Team

New Books in the Martin Schmidt Library

                 
Our library just received a generous donation of books on Tennessee history and genealogy. Among them include:

• Anderson, Truman D.  Guidebook to Historic Places in Roane County, Tennessee. 1997.

• Carr, John.  Early Times in Middle Tennessee. 1984, c1958.
  

• Fink, Paul M.  Jonesborough: the first century of Tennessee’s first town.  1972.

• Kelley, James C.  Portrait Painting in Tennessee. 1987.

• Kelley, Paul.  Fort Loudoun, the After Years, 1760-1960.  1961.

• McMinn County, Tennessee Records: W.P.A. transcript. 1991. 

• Shell, Malcolm.  From Frontier Fort to Town Hall: a brief history of Farragut, Tennessee,1787-2005. n.d.

• Smoky Mountain Historical Society. Gentle Winds of Change: a history of Sevier County Tennessee, 1900-1930.  1989.

• Sykes, E. T. Walthall’s Brigade: a cursory sketch, with personal experiences of Walthall’s Brigade, Army of Tennessee, C.S.A., 1862-1865. n.d.

• White, Gene.  Briceville Through the Years. 1994.

•  Bertsch, Friedrich. A German Hurrah! Civil War letters of Friedrich Bertsch and Wilhelm Stangel, 9th Ohio Infantry. 2010.

• Bowers, William.  The Line: combat in Korea, January-February, 1951. 2008.

• Brandt, Dennnis.  Pathway to Hell: a tragedy of the American Civil War. 2010.

• Leonard, Elizabeth.  Men of Color to Arms! Black soldiers, Indian wars, and the quest for equality. 2010.

• Merchant, Carolyn.  American Environmental History. 2007.

• Mersman, Joseph J.  The Whiskey Merchants Diary: an urban life in the emerging Midwest.  2007.

• Rhodes, Allan.  Profiles of Paducah People.  2008.

  - Shirley Ackerman

Fall Film Series at KHS Begins October 28!

This October KHS will be screening three very unique movies as part of it's film series.  The first film, scheduled to screen October 28, is titled the The Narcotic Farm and is a story about the large federal addiction hospital that sits on Leestown Road in Fayette County just outside of Masterson Station Park.  While the building now serves at a Federal Medical Center, essentially treating those inmates with serious or chronic medical problems, it was first created in the 1930's as a drug treatment center for both federal inmates and volunteers alike.

In November KHS will screen the documentary The Very Worst Thing, written and directed by Michael Crisp, a film about the fatal school bus crash in Prestonsburg, KY in 1958.  The Prestonsburg crash is tied with the Carrollton bus crash of 1988 for the highest number of fatalities (28) resulting from a bus accident.  Director Crisp will be on hand after the screening to answer questions from the public.

December's film, Big Lever: Party Politics in Leslie County, comes right on the heals of the November elections.  This film details President Richard Nixon's first public appearance after he resigned from office.

All fees include admission to the KHS campus, film entry, popcorn and soda.  Admission for The Narcotic Farm and Big Lever is $4 for members and $8 for non-members.  Admission for The Very Worst Thing is $10 for both members and non-members.

The Narcotic Farm

Thursday, Oct. 28, 6:30 p.m.

Narrated and scored by former inmate Wayne Kramer, the film tells the story of this long forgotten American institution through the voices of the former addicts who spent years of their lives locked within its walls.  Many of the photographs and film footage are from the KHS collections.

The Very Worst Thing

Thursday, Nov. 18, 6:30 p.m.

A documentary about the worst school bus crash in United States history, which occurred in Floyd County (Ky.) on the morning of February 28, 1958.  Carrying 48 elementary and high school students, the bus collided with a tow truck on US Highway 23 just 3 miles south of Prestonsburg, then plunged over a steep embankment into the swollen waters of the Big Sandy River.  The director will be available for questions after the film.

Big Lever: Party Politics in Leslie County, Kentucky

Thursday, Dec. 9, 6:30 p.m.

In 1978 Richard Nixon chose this small mountain jurisdiction for his first public appearance since

resigning the Presidency. Priceless footage of his visit introduces this incisive and sometimes hilarious look at the engines that drive American politics. The film explores the machinations of party politics in this rural and staunchly Republican county: Hollow to hollow vote-hunting; family squabbles over candidates; patronage promises; speech-making on the courthouse steps; and the up-and- down career of the incumbent County Judge-Executive who sought re-election while under indictment for vote fraud conspiracy.

For more information about the KHS film series feel free to contact me at mike.deetsch@ky.gov.

--Mike Deetsch

Historians Unite!

KHS Collection: 1990ph2.2JEFA8. Meeting of Campfire Girls at Cabbage Patch Settlement House. ca 1910.

The lingering question, I know, is “what is the oral history dept. up to these days?” Besides answering KOHC grant application questions and working peripherally on an NHPRC grant application to catalog our folklife collection, we are beginning the discussion which will hopefully steer oral history documentation in the state for the next 5-10 years! Can you tell I am excited? You could if you saw me.

This Saturday from 11am – 2pm, KHS is hosting a contingent of historians and archivists/librarians to begin to discuss the future of 20th and 21st century collecting for the state. We are looking at a few different things:

1) What have institutions been collecting successfully on the topic? (And what do we have an abundance of)? 

2) What Kentucky history topics in this time period have historians been successfully publishing – print, online, video?

Once we discuss these topics we will move in to...

3) What do we need to be very deliberate in documenting? What topics are historians looking at as important in this range of history? Do we have the documentation to support that research in our repositories?

Did you ever think that historical perspectives, publications, and textbooks are based on research that is gathered, collected and made accessible by people in collecting institutions? Institutions rely on the general public (you) to participate in the conversation about what papers, artifacts, narratives are out there that can proportionately and accurately illustrate and tell the history of ourselves. But outside the conversation that the public brings to our doors, we are also actively discussing what items we NEED to intentionally seek out and collect to tell specific stories. 

Oral Histories are a great way to actively document recent history and why the KOHC is leading the discussion this weekend about what our focus might be. If oral history documentation can be intentional on a topic, and repositories are working in tandem on the topic, they may be deliberate about collecting letters, diaries, images, artifacts that help support the topic. If we begin to purposely document a facet of our history (like we have with the civil rights movement) the fuller version of this historical event, place or period is fuller and more complete for those historians to research, publish and create textbooks. 

What are your ideas for collecting 20th and 21st century history?  Let us know, I can tell you what we have on the topic and take the innovative ideas to the meeting this Saturday.

 Images: above right: KHS Collection. 1987PH05.15074.1.A8 Senator Jack Stout and Happy Chandler. 1940

middle: A History of Kentucky by Thomas Clark. 1992. J. Stuart Foundation

bottom: Civil Rights Database, KHS

-- sarah milligan

Playing it up at the History Center!

Last night, KHS visitors and staff experienced a real treat at our Bill Monroe Centennial Kick-Off Concert!  It was an absolutely splendid performance by former Blue Grass Boys Jim Smoak and Danny Jones, and master bluegrass musicians Hoot Hester, Steve Cooley and Larry Raley!  The way that they played together, you would have thought they’ve been in a band together for years.

 Now, as awesome as last night’s performance was, I would be seriously remiss to go on and on about it and not to talk about our Voices of Kentucky Concert that happened August 26th.  So now that I’ve teased you with the bluegrass concert, I let you know how the Voices of Kentucky Concert went.  You’ll just have to wait until next week to hear the samples from last night’s concert.

We had the spectacular female trio of the Johnson Sisters, along with Don Rigsby and the fabulous Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers.  We’ve worked with them before at our Made to Be Played concerts, and thought that it would be wonderful to get them all together on stage again.  Here they are performing at Made to Be Played:

Each group sang individually until the very end, when they all performed together in what was a very harmonious rendition of “Swing Low.”  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not all that familiar with gospel harmony, but I do know a bit about a cappella performances, and they really blew me away.  So, to share the experience, clip the player below to hear Don Rigsby and co, The Johnson Sisters and the Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers perform “Swing Low:”

VoicesofKentucky_web_clip

The concert was a great success, and as last night’s were as well, we hope to have many more to come.  Keep tabs on the Kentucky Historical Society’s frequent special events and Thursday night programming for more exciting opportunities to listen, learn and experience Kentucky’s incredible culture and history.

-Alisha Martin

“Mining the Museum for Relevance”

As an actor, I struggle to keep performances fresh and exciting.  I have performed some plays hundreds of times, but it may be the first time the audience has seen it.  I must deliver lines, discover thoughts and experience feelings as if they are just happening.  If my performance is believable, I can connect with the audience on a deep and personal level.  If they see themselves in the story, it becomes relevant to them.

 

Sometimes it isn’t easy.  Life gets in the way, and while one side of my brain speaks the lines of an injured Italian coal miner, the other side makes a grocery list.  The mind is an amazing thing, but if my pot roast becomes more important than the show, I will forget myself and as actors say “go up” on my lines.  It is a horrible feeling to be lost and alone on stage.  Wondering, “Where am I?”  “What did I just say?”  “What is the next line?”  Perhaps that’s what a trapped miner feels like.  Alone and scared.  Helpless.

 

Face of the "A" coal on Riley Fork of Long's Creek, Breathitt County.

URL: http://205.204.134.47:2005/u?/Jillson,104

 

For several weeks now, thirty three miners have been buried deep underground, in a copper mine in Chile.  It will take several more weeks to dig the tunnel that will allow them to escape.  They must feel helpless.  Luckily they are not alone.   They have each other down below and they have family and friends above ground scrambling to rescue them; sending food and supplies down a long line of pipes.  A line that reaches out to the miners deep underground.

 

A good script should be that kind of connection for an actor:  a long line (or a series of lines in this case), that reach out and connect the actor to the audience.  The script must be clear, and speak to a number of different people on a number of different levels.  It must have relevance.

 

 

 

I’ve been performing “In the Veins:  Conversations from a Coal Town” for almost ten years now.  It is fun for an actor.  In only twenty minutes I must become a young boy who has just moved into town, an injured Italian coal miner, and a union supporter.  The characters are composites of real stories from the collections of the Kentucky Historical Society.  Dozens of oral histories and primary sources were researched to create the characters in the play.  Stories of people like Frances Turner.

 

When the play is over I stop pretending and talk to the audience as myself.  Sometimes I answer questions, but I always listen.  I listen to the audience share stories of their youth in a coal mining town and we connect through the lines of the script.  It isn’t just a play to them, it is their life.  I don’t want to forget their stories so I keep a journal beside my computer.  After one performance many years ago, I wrote:

 

“A woman told me, ‘You brought tears to my eyes.’  She removed her necklace and showed me the “scrip” she wore around her neck to remind her from where she came.” – July 20^th, 2002

 

I can’t help but recognize the significance here.  Scrip is a type of money paid to miners, that could only be spent in the company store.  Her "scrip" necklace connected her to the place that she was from, while my "script" connected our collections to her. 

 

Did you grow up in a coal town, or do you remember stories of a relative who did?  Share your story by posting a comment below.  You never know who you might connect with.

 

Visit the Kentucky Historical Society on Thursdays in September to experience “In the Veins:  Conversations from a Coal Town”.  Connect to the new and improved Museum Theatre webpage to download playbills, view the online calendar for more performance dates and times, and plan a tour.

 

- Gregory Hardison, Director of Museum Theatre

 

P.S.  Please, keep the chilean coal miners in your thoughts, until they return home to their families.

Horsin' Around with Catriona Paul

They say the mark of real genius is the ability to distill complex ideas and make them easily understandable. I would add that real ingenuity comes from making those ideas understandable and interesting.

This past spring, Darrell Meadows, KHS director of research and interpretation, conducted an email interview with Catriona Paul, a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, Scotland.  Catriona, a recipient of a KHS Scholarly Research Fellowhip, is becoming a leading historian of the early horse industry of Kentucky. 

What follows is only part of the interview Darrell conducted with Catriona. The interview in its entirety will be printed in the Fall 2010 KHS Chronicle, available in early October.

DM: Could you tell us briefly, what is the focus of your study and how will it further our understanding of early Kentucky?

CP: Around 1800, horses were everywhere you might care to turn – used on the farms and roads, relied upon by the militia, filling the towns on court days, and, as most people will know, providing the entertainment  at numerous race courses. Yet perhaps because horses were ubiquitous, their presence has been taken for granted by historians. I’m suggesting that by focusing on horses and what they meant to society, we can learn a lot about the development of Kentucky.

DM:  Before we get too far along, I just have to ask: How does someone born in Scotland become interested in Kentucky horses?!

CP: Well, I finally managed to put together two things that always fascinated me growing up – horses and America! Up until I started this project, I’d always kept the two things separate – I studied history at university and had horse jobs during the holidays. But then I became part of a research team headed by  Matthew Ward, Ph.D., at the University of Dundee in Scotland which had the trans-Appalachian West as its focus. Kentucky attracted me because of its two best known exports - the Derby and bourbon! Realizing I knew a lot more about horses than I’m ever likely to know about whiskey (despite being from Scotland) I decided to investigate why Kentucky, of all the states, acquired a reputation for raising horses.

DM: Your research and writing suggest that, from the very beginning, the development of the horse industry shaped Kentucky society in important ways. Could you say more about that?

CP: In the first instance, horses were vital to Kentucky becoming established as a viable economic entity. Until the U.S. acquired rights to navigate the Mississippi, Kentucky relied on horses and mules to get its goods to market in the east. Indeed, horses themselves constituted a valuable “crop” and one that could walk itself to market. From the beginning of the 19th century, Kentucky was acquiring a reputation for producing good quality riding horses, with U.S. army agents, among others, seeking Kentucky mounts. It was good publicity for all those involved with the horse industry when Kentucky race horses performed well out-of-state. Buyers began to associate the state with good horses, at every consumer level. I think this is one of the reasons why Kentuckians from across the social spectrum took an interest in racing even though the majority couldn’t afford to run a horse personally. Horses helped create wealth for the state and they were a fun way of showing that wealth off. From these positive associations grew a sense of pride in Kentucky-bred horses and a sense of identity which Kentucky still revels in today.

Blogger’s Note: Thank you to Darrell and Catriona for sharing this interview!  Catriona has graciously offered to communicate more about her research, or collect relevant material anyone has to share. Contact her at c.m.paul@dundee.ac.uk.

To stay up-to-date on historical scholarship like Catriona’s work, become a member of KHS!  Members receive their choice of two KHS publications.

--Laura Coleman

Image: Catriona Paul on horseback.