The Filson Newsmagazine
Volume 5, Number 2
From The Filson's Collection: The Kentucky Derby
On the occasion of the inaugural running of the Kentucky Derby on May 17, 1875, a Courier-Journal article
announced that “To-day will be historic in Kentucky annals, as the first ‘Derby Day,’ of what promises to
be a long series of annual turf festivities, which we confidently expect our grandchildren, a hundred years
hence, to celebrate in glorious centennial rejoicings.”
read more
Tom Wallace, 1874-1961
Writing to his friend Tom Wallace in 1957,
Louis Brownlow, a professor, journalist and presidential
advisor noted, “no human being ever worked so hard, did so
much, and slept so little as did you in the more than a
half-century I have known you.” The recently cataloged Tom
Wallace Papers now housed at The Filson Historical Society
affirm Brownlow’s conviction.
read more
The 1890 Louisville Cyclone
Several years ago while examining some old
mortality schedules for the city of Louisville in the
collections at The Filson Library, I was puzzled by a series
of deaths recorded as injuries from falling houses and
buildings. At the time I was unaware of the event that
caused these tragic and untimely deaths, but after some
further research I found that they were caused by one of the
most devastating storms to ever hit Louisville, one of the
city’s greatest disasters.
read more
The Filson Civil War Field Institute: Led by Kent Masterson Brown
Situated
on the borderland dividing North and South, slave and free
territory, the Ohio Valley region became as bitterly divided
as any in the nation during the Civil War. Characterized by
divided loyalties and lingering postwar bitterness, politics
and society in the region continued to be influenced by the
war for the remainder of the century. The bicentennials of
the births of Jefferson Davis (1808) and Abraham Lincoln
(1809), and the 150th anniversary
commemoration of the Civil War (2011 to 2016) present an
excellent opportunity to revisit this critical period in our
national experience from an Ohio Valley perspective.
read more
The Little Ones: Portraits of Children from The Filson Historical Society
The Filson’s large collection of portraits
of children by noted artists
who worked in the Ohio Valley region
is interesting for two very different
reasons. As works of art they offer a
wide variety of style, ranging from the
romantic to the naturalistic and from
the sophisticated to the naïve. As images
of children they open a window
into 19th-century notions of innocence
and experience and also occupy a cultural
terrain whose geography would
seem to exist as a separate country.
read more
Filson Fellowship: Linda Goin
Master’s Thesis Fellow Linda Goin’s
study on the Huguenot families of Virginia led her to The
Filson Historical Society’s collections earlier this year.
Goin, a graduate student at DePaul University, is currently
researching the Virginia Huguenot’s influence on the
development of the Southern Bible Belt.
read more
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The Filson Historical Society
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Phone: (502) 635-5083 Fax: (502) 635-5086
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