Museum Newsletter - 30 Nov 2010

Friends of the Bullitt County History Museum
E-Newsletter
November 30, 2010 (Volume 6, Number 12)

Dear Friends,

Announcements...

>>The Bullitt County Courthouse, and therefore the Museum, will be closed December 23 and 24 for Christmas holiday and December 30 and 31 for New Years. Happy Holidays everyone!

>>Bullitt Genealogical Society will not have its regular meeting in December. Social instead.

The Bullitt County Genealogical Society will host its annual "Christmas Social" Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. Location will be at the Old Harbor Apartments Meeting Room in Shepherdsville. The Society will provide a meat tray and we are asking everybody to bring a dish or a two liter drink. We are looking forward to a good time of fellowship and fun, so come on if you can. There are games planned.

The Old Harbor Apartments are just a few blocks north of the museum, off West Blue Lick Road. Please let us know if you plan to attend, but come if you can!

>>Latest addition of "Wilderness Road" sent, with a great story on Gardner McKay.

Our Bullitt County Genealogical Society quarterly, "The Wilderness Road", produced by Betty Darnell, was mailed out to members last week. A feature story in this edition is one by Volunteer Judy Richardson on Gardner McKay. McKay starred in the popular 1950/60s TV show "Adventures in Paradise," among other shows and movies. Judy discovered that McKay is buried right hear in Bullitt County. Her story reports results of her research and tells about Gardner McKay. He was quite an individual.

Copies of the quarterly were mailed to members of the society and are available for $3 at the museum or $5 mailed. Or join the Bullitt County Genealogical Society for just $15 and get four free quarterlies mailed to your house each year. Such a deal! To join, come by the museum, or follow this link for a mailable membership form.

Activity...

>> José Rosario receives state award.

It was announced in the last newsletter that José Rosario and the museum won state recognition for José's work on remembering Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Henry Mattingly. Well, José and I went up to the Kentucky Historical Society ceremony in Frankfort, where he was given a framed certificate recognizing his work, and received high praise from many officials attending. That makes our eighth award from the Kentucky Historical Society in six years!

Check out this web page for photo and details of the award and of the Henry Mattingly recognition project.

>> Two new workers at our museum.

We had two new people start working with us at the museum in November.

Carol Houchens comes to us through the "Experience Works" program, which helps create work opportunities for some of our senior citizens. Carol has worked in security, among other things, over the years, and is looking forward to doing genealogy research. We are glad to have her. Carol will be working with us 20 hours a week, at no cost to the museum.

Brenda Ritterman stopped by the museum a few days before Thanksgiving, looking for volunteer opportunities, after retiring from her career working in Jefferson County Bankruptcy Court. She started working with us today, November 30. Brenda is already knowledgeable in Ancestry.com, among other skills. Right now, Brenda is thinking she will be working with us on Thursdays.

I welcome these two new bright additions to our museum staff, and I look forward to seeing what great new talents they will bring to our already award-winning group.

Welcome Carol and Brenda!

>> Several New Books Donated.

Some great books have been donated to our research room collection. They are:

• "Hardin County Kentucky Militia Book, 1863-1875", compiled by Carolyn Wimp; donated by Lynn Eddington.
• "Descendants of George Dooley and Amelia Callaway", compiled by Donna K. Miller
• "The Land of Salt River to Pitts Point and Associated Families", compiled and donated by Janet Hickey Upton.
• "The Germana Record. The Genealogy of the Holtzclaw Family 1540-1935", by B.C. Holtzclaw; donated by Larry Rogers.
• "Ancestry & Descendants of the Nassau-Sieger Immigrants to Virginia 1714-1750", by B.C. Holtzclaw; donated by Larry Rogers.
• "Tennessee, Territory to Statehood", signed by author Dave Foster; donated by Don Deering. Don also gave us "The New Harmony (Indiana) Story", by Don Blair, and a series of Filson Club quarterlies (some of which we needed, some we will give to others).
• "The History of the Orphan Brigade", by Ed Porter Thompson, a 2004 copy of the massive original 1898 edition; donated by David Strange.

Thanks everyone, for your generosity!

>> Over 2500 new photos added to our collection.

Tom Pack is famous in Bullitt County for his extensive work to preserve our local history. Sadly, Tom passed away just a short time before the establishment of our museum. But, thanks to him and his wife Penny Pack, his work lives on.

Much of the resources at our museum are from his collections, donated to us after Tom's death. Penny recently brought us another of Tom's collections; two metal boxes of what appears to be over 2500 35mm slides, representing a myriad of old county photos and maps.

We have only begun to look at them and are excited to see what we will find.

We are trying to determine how to get so many slides digitized to computer, so they can be better studied.

>>Web Site Additions. Follow this link to the page of Latest Additions.

For Your Information...

>> Bullitt County Genealogical Society FaceBook Site.

For those of you that use FaceBook, here's another site. Society President Daniel Buxton has started a site for our group. It's just starting up but look us up. Just be aware there is also a Bullitt County Facebook site that is based in Illinois. Be sure to hunt up our new Bullitt County Kentucky site.

Daniel and I also have our own FaceBook sites, so look us up sometime as well!

>> Kentucky Historical Society FaceBook too.

The Kentucky Historical Society now has a FaceBook site as well, and it's a darn good one. You might want to check it out sometime.

>> Kentucky Maps Online.

I am continually impressed with Kentucky state government's useful presence on the web. The Kentucky Secretary of State office has a very useful web site of maps, old and new, from waterway maps to old militia district maps. Check out this page.

Finally...

Good News or Not, a Historic Election in Bullitt County

Some are celebrating and some are mourning in Bullitt County, but either way you look at it, this year's November election was a historic one.

My very best wishes to everyone who won, and to those who did not win as well, but it should be noted on these pages that probably for the first time in Bullitt County history, starting in January 2011, our entire Fiscal Court (which makes up the governing leadership of the county) will be Republican. Four Magistrates, the Judge/Executive, the County Attorney, and the County Sheriff will all be Republican. To the best of my knowledge, that is the first time ever in our county. The Judge/Executive was already Republican this time, but never before all the magistrates as well. Before that, Republican John Harper had been Judge/Exec from 1994 to 1998, and no Republican Judge/Executive before that for one hundred years, during the post Civil War reconstruction period, when William T. Morrow held office from 1895 to 1897.

Before this election, Bullitt County had pretty much always been a Democrat county in a Democrat state, but that had been shifting for the past several years, and this year marked a truly sweeping change.

A change for good or bad? That, as they say, will be for history to decide.

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