Friends of the Bullitt County History Museum
E-Newsletter
July 31, 2010 (Volume 6, Number 7)
Dear Friends,
Announcements.....
>>Genealogical Society meeting August 21.
This will be a special event. The society will be hosting a Family Fair. Everyone is invited to bring some items and info to share about their family tree. The event is free. Attendees will be provided a table for their display.
Contact Society President Barbara Bailey for more information at kenbarb@insightbb.com or call the museum at 502-921-0161.
Meeting place is same as usual: at the Ridgway Public Library in Shepherdsville, next to the county courthouse, at 10:00 a.m.
>>New Publisher for Gen. Quarterly.
The Bullitt County Genealogical Society has chosen Publishers Printing Company to print its quarterly newsletter, "The Wilderness Road". Publishers Printing quoted a great price, is a local company, and has been a generous supporter of local history for many years. If you need a publisher of books or quarterlies, you might want to contact Bill Bisig at Publishers Printing Company at wbisi@pubpress.com or call 502-955-6526 Ext. 2457.
By the way, if you are not a member of the Bullitt County Genealogical Society, you are missing out on a great newsletter. The award-winning quarterly newsletter is more of a booklet, chock full of great information, edited by Betty Darnell. Info on joining is at the end of on another page.
>>Mt. Washington History Yard Sale July 31.
This announcement will be too late for many readers of this newsletter, but if you can make it, go by the Mt. Washington Historical Society yard sale Saturday, July 31, starting at 8:00 a.m. They will have lots of stuff to sell , and money goes to help restore the Lloyd House museum in Mt. Washington.
Activity...
>> Donations.
Several great old photos have been donated recently to the museum. Joyce Trammell gave several of them, including one of Horine School (more about this later) and of Masonic Lodge officers in Cupio in western Bullitt County. Joyce also gave us a "Local Registrar's Copy" of birth certificates from 1911-1922. Some of the info from these can be found on our web site, and photo-copies of the originals are available for viewing at the museum.
Ruth Rummage donated a WWII-vintage Bill Mauldin book of his military cartoons.
Staff Volunteer Bob Cline has a very helpful habit of occasionally going by an office supply store and buying a few items and donating them to the museum. He recently bought and donated an aluminum, collapsible dolly for hauling our display items to festivals, as well as a page magnifier, phone message notepaper, pens, folders, and even a sack of candy. Many thanks Bob!
>> History and Genealogy files reorganization.
Volunteer Wilma Lemons does a lot of great work for us. Most recently, she is reorganizing history and family name folders. The several file cabinet drawers of information was getting pretty ragged and information out of place. She is replacing worn folders, getting files back in place, and generally spiffing up the whole works. The only problem now is that I couldn't find that particular church history file I "knew" was the third folder from the front of "miscellaneous". Now it's actually in a "Church History" section! [grin]
By the way, this work is on top of Wilma's work with Daniel Buxton typing cemetery info and and taking photos of tombstones of the Brookland Cemetery.
>> School House Research.
Daniel Buxton is starting work on documenting, and collecting photos of all the old school houses of Bullitt County. Some of his first work can be found on our web site at Bullitt County Schools - Past and Present This will be nearly as big a project as the cemetery documentation that he, Barbara Bailey, and others have been working on for the past three years. Thank you Daniel, for taking yet another project on!
>> Many visitors/researchers at the museum.
Summertime is always especially active at the museum. Many parents bring their children to visit, as a family activity. And many people travel during the summer on "genealogy research vacations". We at the museum consider it a personal challenge to help those researchers find something worth their visit, and, with our growing collection of unique local documents, we rarely fail. One recent example was Darlane Jewell of Shelby County, who was researching the Snawder family name. We had a 4 inch binder of information directly related to her research. She was ecstatic, and so were we. Though our little staff of devoted volunteers are most always swamped with our own research to do, it is our greatest pleasure to see a visitor find what they are looking for.
>> County Clerk's Office Scanning Documents.
Bullitt County Clerk Kevin Mooney's office has been doing excellent work scanning its old documents onto computer. They haven't gotten to the really old ones yet because of the huge size of the old books. But they have scanned all the mortgage books back to Book 60 (year 1979); Deeds back to book 450; Encumbrance books back to book 5 or 6; and also a variety of Index books. The project started in 2009 with a grant obtained by Mr. Mooney, with a goal of doing the past thirty years. That is done with work continuing on more. To date, thanks to the great work of several good staff members dedicated to this project, 12-1300 books have been scanned, and indexed, from 1985 to 1979. Mr. Mooney hopes to continue this work and get all, or nearly all, the room-full of old documents better preserved, in digital format.
>>Web Site Additions.
Here are additions to our web site since last month.
Follow this link to the page of Latest Additions.
For Your Information...
>> Unclaimed Property and Name Confusion. There's two lessons in this information. Kentucky has an "Unclaimed Property" web site, https://www.kytreasury.com/Unclaimed+Property+Search.htm that is very good. It lists everything from unclaimed personal effects to undeliverable checks, in the hope that the person they belong to can be found. Check it out. But, of course, you have to be the correct person to claim the item.
And that is where there can be some confusion. For example, I sometimes get calls from friends who have looked at the web site and call me that my name is listed there several times. Unfortunately for me, they are all other David Stranges. In fact, there is even another David Strange from Bullitt County listed there. (By the way, the state does require proper identification to claim the item.)
So take a look. But don't get too excited if you find "your" name. And the other David Strange, wherever you are, look up this web site real soon. The state only holds the items for so long before ownership reverts to the state.
>> The American Educational Research Association has a useful web site for educators, including video lectures on such things as classrooms in Syria in 1800 BC. Check https://www.aera.net/publications/ .
>> Ever wonder what day a certain date on a certain year was? I was, recently, when looking at a list of inmates in The Old Stone Jail in 1930. Six inmates, all "oil job laborers". I was guessing they were in jail for partying a bit too much the night before. I still don't know for sure why they were there, but I went to www.timeanddate.com/calendar/ , looked up the date of the census, April 12, 1930, and, sure enough, the census was taken on a Saturday. I bet that Friday night had been a wild one.
By the way, that is a factoid I had not known. When the census was taken, it was also taken of jail inmates. So the census can be a source of information about jail inmates, their age, and their employment.
>>Oil in Bullitt County? That 1930 census of jail inmates who were oil workers was also timely to me, because I had recently been asked about a pipe valve, about six inches in diameter, found sticking out of the ground in an overgrown field. Turned out that in the 1930's at least one company was going around Bullitt County, drilling wells, exploring for oil. Apparently, mostly all they found was sulfur water. I am told that when the valve was opened many years ago, that a stinky substance belched out of it. Makes me wonder how many of those old well heads are around the county, rusting, and waiting for some bush hog or other tractor to run into it.
Finally...
Horine or Bethel?
And a New Libary at LJ
Two items in this "Finally..." edition:
As mentioned earlier in this newsletter, the museum was given an old (1888) photo marked Old Horine School. It was great timing, because just a short time before, we had come across the identical photo from another source, but did not know the name of the school. A mystery remains, though. Although the one copy of the photo has handwritten, in old ink, that it is the "Old Horine School" in western Bullitt County, and several of the people are named and known to have been in western Bullitt County, the almost unreadable nameplate in the photo seems to read "Bethel". So we are wondering if there was a name change or something. We know that "Bethel" is normally known to be in eastern Bullitt County. Does anyone know of an explanation for the name of the western county school in 1888?
Second, some great news. The Bullitt County Library system has opened a fine new library branch in Lebanon Junction in southern Bullitt County. The library is modern, energy efficient, and beautiful, designed on a railroad theme to match the community heritage. And it now has its own history research room storing unique information, photos, and items of local history. Below are photos of me sitting in the lobby with a "friend" yet to be named (I like "Fred"), and of the research room.
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
The Bullitt County History Museum, a service of the Bullitt County Genealogical Society, is located in the county courthouse at 300 South Buckman Street (Highway 61) in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. The museum, along with its research room, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Saturday appointments are available by calling 502-921-0161 during our regular weekday hours. Admission is free. The museum, as part of the Bullitt County Genealogical Society, is a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization and is classified as a 509(a)2 public charity. Contributions and bequests are deductible under section 2055, 2106, or 2522 of the Internal Revenue Code. Page last modified: 13 Sep 2024 . Page URL: bullittcountyhistory.org/newsletters/newsletter31jul10.html
