Museum Newsletter - 30 August 2012

Friends of the Bullitt County History Museum
E-Newsletter
August 30, 2012 (Volume 8, Number 8)

Dear Friends,

Announcements...

>>Bullitt County Genealogical Society meeting September 15. (NOTE THIS DATE. Some information has said the 22nd, but it is the 15th.) The Bullitt County Genealogical Society (the parent organization of our museum) will have its next monthly meeting on Saturday September 15. Regular meeting time and place: 10:00 a.m. at the Ridgway Memorial Public Library Meeting Room, 127 North Walnut Street, in Shepherdsville.

Jerry Thornton and Donna B. Greenup will give a presentation on Native American, Indian history of the area and they will have a display of artifacts. This should be an interesting presentation!

>>Attention Alumni and Everyone that ever Attended LJ High or St. Benedict Schools. The reunion held every two years will be on Saturday, September the 15th, 2012 at the Paroquet Springs Conference Center in Shepherdsville, Kentucky from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The cost to those planning to pay at the door this year will be $30 dollars per person. The reunion group has a Facebook page at: "LJ and St. B 2012 Reunion" where you can write your comments. For more information, contact Larry Coleman at Larrygcoleman49@hughes.net

>>Museum Booth and Bowman Valley Booth at Showcase Bullitt County September 24, 1:00 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Paroquet Springs Conference Centre in Shepherdsville. Our museum will host an informational booth at this event. If you're in the area, stop by and visit! We'll even has a few door prizes! There will also be a Bowman Valley School restoration project booth. More about that later in this newsletter.

>>Wilderness Road mailing label error. All Bullitt County Genealogical Society members receive a quarterly mailing of The Wilderness Road magazine. We just mailed out the most recent edition, but I made a mistake on the labels, giving incorrect renewal dates. If you received one of these, please ignore the renewal date. My "bad"! [smile]

>>The Spencer County Historical and Genealogical Society will have its regular meeting on Monday, September 24, at 7 p.m. at Spencer County Library in Taylorsville. Program to be announced.

>>Mt. Washington Historical Society Tea event September 29. The Mt. Washington Historical Society will be hosting a tea for ladies of all ages on Saturday, September 29th at 2:00 p.m. The tea will take place at the Lloyd House Museum in Mt. Washington and will feature a talk about the history of tea and a lesson on tea etiquette. Simple tea foods will be served and a selection of teas will be available. Prices are $10 for adults, $5 for children under 12. A tour of the Lloyd House Museum will be available afterwards for tea participants. Space is limited, so please reserve your space early! You can call Melissa Thompson to make reservations.

Activity...

Visitation at the museum has been a little slow this month, but our Volunteers continue to handle numerous requests for information, and continue doing research on such things as the Civil War and the War of 1812 as they relate to Bullitt County. Volunteers are doing amazing work documenting our history and transcribing our older documents to computer. There's LOTS of work to do!

One of our mainstay Volunteers, Jose Rosario, has been called to work and so has not been able to work the many hours a week at the museum that I had become accustomed to (spoiled to, really). But Wilma Lemons has been able to step up and is covering a lot of that time for us. And new Volunteer Lilly Lamont has been working on updating our family files as they compare to files in our public library.

A few items of activity:

>>I was recently guest speaker at the Mt. Washington Lions Club and at the Mt. Washington Historical Society. I remain available to speak on various topics wherever invited.

>>Web Site Additions. Lots of interesting additions to our web site this month, as always. Charles Hartley and I continue writing a weekly column for the Courier-Journal newspaper called "Bullitt County Memories." Some of the recent columns are part of this list. Click on the line to go to the page.

Donations...

>>Among several generous donations of books, photographs, and stories, Billye Jackson's donation stands out this month. She gave us four large, file-drawer-size boxes of genealogy research and history. Some of our researchers are particularly excited about the portion of papers about the Shepherd family. Surprisingly, we have never had a lot of information on that family line. Volunteers Bob Cline and Lynn Eddington are working to organize these papers. When they have the papers in order, we'll make them available to the general public.

We have also received several other great donations of photos and papers. Volunteer Barbara Bailey, Daniel Buxton, and others have been going through those for us.

>>Civil War gun artifact donated. Becky Walker Wise recently came by and loaned the museum a very interesting artifact that had been found in a newly plowed field near Perryville, Kentucky. We think it is a Colt Military Model 1860 revolver, but I am not yet sure. It has been in the family of Edgar Walker for a good number of years and she rightly thought we might like it. Badly rusted from being in the ground for so many years (we assume for now that it was lost during the Civil War battle of Perryville in 1862), what caught my eye was that it still had a bullet in a chamber, and that the brass portion was so unaffected. In fact the serial number "835" can be clearly seen on the brass handle frame.

I expect there is some way to trace that serial number. If anyone knows how, I'd sure appreciate some info about that.

For Your Information...

>>A new Smart-Phone "App" for Kentucky History Tourism. For those readers who use smart phones such as iPhone, here is a developing new app called "Explore Kentucky History." This app, based on Kentucky's popular historical markers program, tells a broader story about each marker included on the app. The first tour is about the Civil War and the next tour, to be released this fall, will focus on the War of 1812. Additional markers and more thematic tours to the app will be added as often as possible.

This app provides interactive maps, photos, and additional information about the site.

The only thing now is that we need more of our Bullitt County sites on it!

For more information, check this site.

To download the free app, search for "Explore Kentucky History" on your smart phone app store.

>>Weather App. This has little or nothing to do with Bullitt history, but I like the app so much I wanted to tell you about it. "iMap Weather Radio" is part weather alert radio, but a whole lot more. First, it can alert you to any weather alerts to your specific location, or any other location you want to give it. For example, if you are on a trip, it can warn you about storms in your area, and also let you know about any warnings back home. It is site-specific to your address, so you won't get a lot a unneeded warnings that don't really effect you.

We had a couple of pretty bad storms in our area recently and it worked flawlessly, even giving me accurate warnings before I received them from any other sources. Good app! Look it up and check it out.

Finally... The Bowman Valley Schoolhouse Project

Since at least 2006, (in the February 2006 edition of this newsletter) I and others have been pushing the idea of saving the old Bowman Valley Schoolhouse, a special one/two room African-American school just south of Shepherdsville that has long been in danger of destruction.

I am very happy to report a lot of activity this year on saving the old school, restoring it, and hopefully moving to a better location on school property.

Tammy Ott has taken the lead on this effort, changing this from a dream to possible reality. Through the energetic work of her and others, this project is now moving forward. (the photo here shows the school is packed up and ready to move) With Tammy as chairperson, a committee called the Bowman Valley School Project has been formed, with The Bullitt County Genealogical Society serving as the 501(c)3 non-profit parent organization.

The goal is to move the Bowman Valley School next to the Woodsdale School (a one-room school that was saved in the 1980's) that sits next to the Board of Education on Highway 44.

The reason for this effort is to restore and preserve the school from future development, which might soon require the destruction of the school if it remains at its current location.

Work has already been done to stabilize and secure the building, but much more is needed.

By far, the biggest expense, and what is holding up the project at this point, is the $15,000 cost of the move. The society along with committee has opened up a special, separate checking account at PBI Bank in Shepherdsville for this project and is seeking donations. Tammy is working on getting a $5000 grant but the project is still going to need quite a bit more money to make this a success. If you would like to donate, you can make a check out to "Bullitt County Genealogical Society" for "the Bowman Valley School Project" and you can take it to the PBI Bank in Shepherdsville or the Bullitt County History Museum. Or you can mail your donation to:

Bowman Valley Project PO box 1714 Shepherdsville, KY 40165

Committee members include Tammy Ott, Genealogical Society President Daniel Buxton, Retired teacher Gwinn Hahn, Society Treasurer Lynn Eddington, Banker and community leader Keith Griffee, and others, including myself as adviser.

This is a great project folks, preserving an important part of our history and saving an architecturally significant structure.

Spread the word, consider donating and asking others to donate to this very worthwhile effort.

Information about the history of the Bowman Valley Schoolhouse can be found at on another page.

Thank you for being a Friend of the Bullitt County History Museum.

David Strange
Bullitt County History Museum
Executive Director
Museum Phone: 502-921-0161
E-Mail address: David.Strange@BullittCountyHistory.org