Museum Newsletter - 31 May 2013

Friends of the Bullitt County History Museum
E-Newsletter
May 31, 2013 (Volume 9, Number 5)

Dear Friends,

Announcements...

>>Bullitt County Genealogical Society "Day at the SAR" meeting June 15, 10:00 a.m. NOTE special arrangements. The Bullitt County Genealogical Society will NOT have its regular meeting this month. Instead, we're going on a field trip to the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) library in Louisville. The Society will meet at the SAR Library in downtown Louisville. Very limited car pooling will be available. There will be a presentation by a member of the SAR and then research the rest of the day. There will be a $5.00 research fee. Call Society President Daniel Buxton for more information or contact the museum office.

>>Membership Quarterlies going out this month. Our Bullitt County Genealogical Society quarterly booklet, "Wilderness Road," will be mailed out to Society members this month. This state award-winning quarterly is free to members. If you are not a member, you should consider joining. Information and an application form can be found on our web site at https://www.bullittcountyhistory.org/bcgensoc/join.html . The inexpensive $15 annual dues brings you four booklets a month, mailed to your address, and helps support the great work of the Society. Good stuff!

Activity & News...

>>Books donated. Bruce Thomason gave us a 1933 World Almanac. We don't usually collect these, but an occasional one can be quite interesting; Not only for the statistics, but for the articles about how the year went, and how the writers expect things to be in the coming years (which is seldom how it actually turns out to be, as we get to look at it with hindsight).

>>Books "Traded". I had a nice surprise visit from a gentleman from the Coweta County, Georgia, Genealogical Society the other day. As he was driving north to visit with relatives, he was stopping by museums and genealogy offices, seeking to trade surplus books that his society had for others. We traded a few, and have added, for now, the following books (We'll go through them and decide which ones to actually keep):

"Trammell Family History" by W. Winston Skinner; "The Long (family) Ancestry from Clayton, Fayette & Douglas Counties, Georgia"; Nine quarterlies of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society; "Georgia Counties: Their Changing Borders"; "A Family History of Wright, Lewis, Moore, and Connected Families" by John Wright Boyd; "Abstracts of Old Ninety-six and Abbeville District Wills and Bonds of South Carolina"; "Early Virginia Immigrants, 1623-1666"; "Lists of Immigrants to America 1600-1700"; "Quaker Friends of Ye Olden Time, Hanover and Campbell Counties, Virginia"; "Patients and Staff of CSA Hospitals, Newnan, Georgia 1863-1864 (Civil War)."

>>Oral History work continues. Kate Sowata, Project Archivist with the Kentucky Historical Society, met with me this month as we continue to work on a state project to upgrade and better catalog our local oral histories. Though the main purpose of this project is to simply provide a good listing of available oral histories around the state, we are trying to use it as an incentive for our museum to digitize and better preserve our old audio tapes before they go bad. The Bullitt County Public Library folks have graciously agreed to help us with that, using new equipment they are setting up.

The KHS web site about this can be found at https://passtheword.ky.gov/.

>>Bob Cline's Family Treemaker database of Bullitt County lines has reached 56,000+ individual names. The database is available at the museum research room.

>>More writing going on. Charles Hartley has begun writing a monthly "It Happened in Bullitt County" column for the local Pioneer News newspaper. This column is a review of older stories from the paper. Check the web version in the links below.

>> Web Site Additions. Here are links to this month's additions to our web site.

• It Happened in Bullitt County [Updated May 30]
• Woodrow Masden [Added May 29]
• Memorial Day [Added May 22]
• Froman's Ferry at Pitt's Point [Added May 15]
• Survey Markers [Added May 8]
• St John's Catholic Chapel Cemetery [Added May 5]
• Alma Wallace Lesch, A Remarkable Artist [Added May 1]
• April 30 Newsletter

>>Tom Pack. Tom Pack was a much-loved local historian whose dream was to have a Bullitt County history museum. So sadly, he passed away shortly before the museum was opened. In remembrance of his many contributions of writing and photos and oh so much more to the documentation and teaching of our history, a photo of Tom has been placed in museum Display Room A, along with a short explanation.

During his years in Bullitt County, Tom collected thousands of photographs, and wrote countless pages preserving out local history. A large part of the museum's collection is from him. We are pleased to do at least this small thing to recognize his dedication to the cause.

Tom, we all miss you, friend.

>>Henry Mattingly Memorial Highway. Watch the newspapers, and I expect to have more on this next month. Museum Volunteer José Rosario has been working for over three years to get a road named in honor of Henry Mattingly, who is a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient buried in the Lebanon Junction cemetery.

Well, it looks like José has been more than successful. It has been approved to add signs along Highway 61 designating it as the Henry Mattingly Memorial Highway. This of course will not change addresses or the actual name of the road, but it will bring attention to local history.

Watch for an official announcement and ceremony.

Trivia Question From Last Month

With last month's trivia question, I sent you on a quest. I wrote about survey markers, and I asked anyone in the Bullitt County area to find the survey marker that is in Mt. Washington "in the alley beside McFarland-Troutman-Proffitt Funeral Home."

As I thought it would be, this was trickier than it sounded. The marker, shown in the photos here, is on the side of a building, and painted over. It is not actually IN the alley, but just as you walk into it.

It is right there looking at you, but can be hard to spot.

I received several e-mails stating that it wasn't there. Some said that they had found a bolt where they thought it had been, but was no more. But it is there, my friends; it is there. Longtime local historian, Charlie Long, knew it was there all along, as did Dale Salmon. But a few of even our local history buffs did not spot it. The photos here show the proof. If you had looked and didn't see it, go by and take another look. Why is it on this building? It was once the local post office. Rumor has it that the old building is now at risk.

This Month's Trivia Question

OK, Friends. This one should be easy, perhaps with a little research.

What is the difference between a coffin and a casket?

And for bonus points, tell me what "anthropoid" has to do with the first question.

E-mail answers to David at the museum.

Meanwhile, here's a trivia fact: In 1860, almost 20% of Kentucky's population were slaves.

For Your Information...

>> U.S. Constitution TV show. Here's a link to a really interesting TV series about the U.S. Constitution. Check out https://www.pbs.org/tpt/constitution-usa-peter-sagal/home/.

>> Looking for new and better web sites to use for your research? Check out https://www.cyndislist.com/ for thousands of links to good sites, such as Native American genealogy.

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