Rule, Lucien V. (1871-1948) Additional Papers, 1938-1945
Collection held by the Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky
Creator: Rule, Lucien V., 1871-1948
Title: Additional Papers, 1938-1945
Rights: For more information regarding literary and copyright interest for this collection, contact the Collections Department at gro.l1777440533aciro1777440533tsihn1777440533oslif1777440533@hcra1777440533eser1777440533.
Size of Collection: 0.46 cubic feet
Location Number: Mss. A R935b
Finding aid created by: Lynn Pohl
Date finding aid created: 21 April 2026
Date finding aid last updated: 21 April 2026
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists of papers of Lucien V. Rule, a white Presbyterian minister and author from Goshen, Kentucky. Included in the collection are Rule’s correspondence, essays and poems, disassembled scrapbooks, and studio photographs of mostly unidentified Black women. These materials document Rule’s ideas about race and his relationships with Black individuals from Kentucky.
Folders 1-2 consist of Lucien Rule’s correspondence. Correspondents include his brother Arthur Rule and Black writers and leaders from Kentucky, such as Joseph S. Cotter Sr., J. A. Moran, and Claybron W. Merriweather. Topics include the following: Helen Lander George, who worked for and lived with Lucien and Ida Rule; Rule’s manuscript “The Dark Madonna,” based on his idealized memories of a “nurse girl” who worked for his family when Lucien was a child; Langston Hughes speaking in Louisville at Quinn Chapel and Central High School; and Merriweather’s wife Rosa Fletcher Morgan Merriweather.
Folders 3-5 consist of Lucien Rule’s handwritten notes, poems, and typed manuscripts, including a copy of “The Dark Madonna.”
Folders 6-7 hold the pages of two disassembled scrapbooks, consisting of Lucien Rule’s poems, correspondence with C. W. Merriweather, Joseph Cotter, J. A. Moran, Geneva Cooper, and Arthur Rule, and newspaper clippings about Marian Anderson, Merriweather, and Tella Marie Cole.
Folders 8-9 hold studio photographs of a small number of Black women, one of which is identified as Ella Dorsey. Included are notes written by Lucien Rule, which give information about Ella Dorsey and mention her first and second husbands Jacob Bryant and Will Kellar. Rule also mentions Alice Beach and Helen Lander George.
Content warning: Lucien Rule’s notes and writings—specifically about Black girls and women who worked for his family when he was a child and adult—include racially sentimentalized caricatures.
Related collections
Lucien V. Rule papers, 1921-1947 [Mss. A R935]
Lucien V. Rule added papers, 1898-1963 (bulk: 1919-1945) [Mss. A R935a]
Lucien V. Rule miscellaneous papers, 1930-1945 [Mss. C R]
Lucien Rule scrapbooks [Mss. SB R935, vols. 1-2]
Photograph of first editorial staff of the Centre College Cento [COL-48]
Lucien V. Rule, The Shrine of Love, and Other Poems, 1898 [811.4 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, When John Bull comes a-courtin’, and other poems, 1903 [Pamphlet 811.5 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, The House of Love, 1910 [811.5 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, An Old Country Church: Its Traditions and Ideals, 1913 [Pamphlet 285 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, The City of Dead Souls, and How It Was Made Alive Again, 1920 [365 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, Pioneering in Masonry: The Life and Times of Rob Morris, Masonic Poet Laureate, Together with the Story of Clara Barton and the Eastern Star, 1922 [366.1 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, The Light Bearers, Home Mission, Heroes of Presbyterian History: Centennial Story of an Old Country Church and Neighborhood in the Presbytery of Louisville, 1926 [922.5 R935]
Lucien V. Rule, Forerunners of Lincoln in the Ohio Valley, 1927 [973.715 R935]
Newspaper columns from The Oldham Era, Dec. 1, 1937-July 26, 1940 [976.983 R935n]
Oldham County History [976.983 R935 and 976.983 R935t]
Historical Note
Lucien V. Rule was born in 1871 in Goshen, Kentucky, to Rev. John and Mary Woolfolk Rule. Rev. John Rule was pastor of the Goshen Presbyterian Church. Lucien Rule attended the University of Kentucky from 1887 to 1888 and graduated from Centre College in 1893. He was educated for the ministry at Louisville Presbytery and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1908. He served as pastor of Indiana rural churches from 1908 to 1914. In 1916, Lucien married Ida Lee McClure of Nelson County, Kentucky. Their daughter Mary Lily was born in 1920.
From 1914 to 1923, Lucien Rule served as chaplain of the Indiana Reformatory in Jeffersonville and as national secretary of the American Prison Chaplains Association. In 1920, he published The City of Dead Souls, which exposed the deplorable prison conditions in Kentucky and Indiana. In 1923, he became home missions pastor for the New Albany Presbytery in charge of rural churches.
Throughout his life, Lucien Rule gathered stories from local people in Oldham and Jefferson counties in Kentucky and in small towns in southern Indiana. Over a period of thirty years, he wrote numerous articles for the newspaper The Oldham Era. He authored and published several history and poetry books.
Lucien Rule died in Crothersville, Indiana, in 1948.
Sources
Ancestry.com
“Rev. Lucien V. Rule Succumbs to Heart Attack in Indiana,” Oldham Era, 20 Feb. 1948
Folder/Item/Box List
Box 1
Folder 1: Correspondence of Lucien Rule, 1939-1945
Folder 2: Correspondence between Lucien Rule and C. W. Merriweather, 1940-1941
Folder 3: Copy of “The Story of African Slavery and Race Intermingling in an Old Kentucky Community near Louisville before and after the Civil War,” 1938
Folder 4: Copy of “The Dark Madonna” with note by Lucien Rule, 1940
Folder 5: Miscellaneous notes, poems, and writings, 1940 and undated
Folder 6: Pages of disassembled scrapbook 1, 1939-1940
Folder 7: Pages of disassembled scrapbook 2, 1940
Folder 8: Photographs of and notes about Ella Dorsey and other Black women, 1940 and undated
Folder 9: Photographs of and notes about unidentified Black women, ca. 1940 and undated
Subject Headings
For details on how the below subjects appear in this collection, search the subject in the manuscript database at https://filsonhistorical.org/collections/manuscript-database/.
African Americans – Kentucky.
Cotter, Joseph S. (Joseph Seamon), 1861-1949.
Dorsey, Ella, d. 1911.
Merriweather, Claybron W., 1869-1952.
Merriweather, Rosa Morgan, 1874-1935.
Race relations.
Racism.
Rich, Geneva Cooper, 1911-1989.
Rule, Arthur R., 1876-1950.