Young Kentucky 1790-1860

The years from 1790 until the coming of the Civil War were booming, bustling years at the Falls of the Ohio and in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. In this “First West”, settlers from the east and new immigrants to America came looking for a place where they could own their own land and raise families.

Introduction

Before Americans from east of the Appalachian mountains came to settle, the fertile and well-watered lands of central Kentucky were a no-man’s land for the native Americans of the area. They called it “the dark and bloody ground,” perhaps because a earlier epidemic had wiped out the people who had lived there. The Iroquois to the North and the Cherokee to the south traveled through “Ken-tah-keh” (as the Cherokee called it) but did not build permanent settlements.

The wildlife of the area – fish, birds, bears, deer, and even buffalos - flourished.

John James Audubon, 1843: “When I… call back to my mind the grandeur and beauty of those almost uninhabited shores… I picture to myself the dense and lofty summits of the forests… the vast herds of elk, deer and buffalos which once pastured on these hills and in these valleys…”

French explorers and trappers moved through the Ohio Valley in the late 1700s, and fought a war with the English for the rights to settle the territory. England won the war, known as the French and Indian War, but lost they the next war, the American Revolution, and their former colonies became independent. By the time explorers and pioneer settlers moved through the mountain gaps from Virginia and North Carolina, and down the Ohio from Pennsylvania, the whole territory was part of the new United States of America.

Place & Regions

Kentucky has several different regions, each with its own character and history:

The Eastern Mountains – with steep mountains and coal fields
The Bluegrass- including Lexington, Frankfort & the Kentucky River, a rich agricultural region
The Ohio Valley & the Knobs – glacial hills from the last Ice Age
The Pennyroyal – southside Kentucky
The Western coalfields
The Jackson Purchase – western lands annexed in 1818

Here, we focus on the Bluegrass and the Ohio Valley area of central Kentucky.

Pioneer Settlers

Chester Harding, (American, 1792-1866) Portrait of Daniel Boone, 1820 Oil on canvas Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur H. Almstedt 1957.7

According to Kentucky’s first historian, John Filson, “The first white man we have certain accounts of, who discovered this province, was one James M'Bride, who, in company with some others, in the year 1754, passing down the Ohio in Canoes, landed at the mouth of Kentucke river, and there marked a tree, with the first letters of his name, and the date, which remain to this day. These men reconnoitered the country, and returned home with the pleasing news of their discovery of the best tract of land in North-America, and probably in the world.”

Everyone knows the name of Daniel Boone, an early explorer from North Carolina who came to Kentucky first as a hunter, looking for furs to trade. He returned many times to blaze trails and to survey the land, so that settlers could follow and claim lands to farm. He encountered the natives, who were not friendly towards strangers coming to hunt and settle on the land they also used. Some of the encounters were violent. Yet despite this, the Bluegrass region was attractive to settlers from the east who saw the fertile farmlands, rich with wildlife.

In 1773 Virginia’s Captain Thomas Bullitt came down the Ohio to settle, and James Harrod surveyed the Frankfort area and established Harrodsburg. Simon Kenton founded another early settlement. They set up forts, or “stations” where the newcomers could be safe from attack from the natives or from wild animals. As time went on, farms and plantations were set up outside the safe enclosure of the forts.

Kentucky was originally part of the state of Virginia. In 1776, the year of independence for America when Virginia became a state, it made Kentucky a separate county, with Harrodsburg as its capital. Many new settlers came during the Revolutionary War, looking for a fresh start west of the mountains. Settlers came by the Ohio River, down the Wilderness Road and the Midland Trail, following old buffalo traces and Indian trails. About one in five of the early settlers was African-American, slaves brought with their masters from the east.

The earliest explorers had surveyed – measured and mapped the land – so that settlers could buy lands. But in their rush to establish land claims, they had not done a careful job, and the earliest settlers were caught in a net of conflicting land surveys, where the same tract of ground was promised and sold to more than one person. It took years for the new courts to sort out who had a right to live on the lands, and many of the small farmers who hoped to make a new and better life lost out. Soon Kentucky, like Virginia, was a land of large landowners and planters, and small tenant farmers who rented, but did not own, their farms.

The small farmers lived in log houses with only one room for the first years, while they cleared their lands for farming. These crude dwellings had simple furnishings, and the small windows were covered with animal skins and with wooden shutters, since glass was expensive and had to be brought from the east. When they could, they build more substantial houses of wood or stone. The larger planters lived in brick, wood, and stone houses built as much as possible like the grand houses of the east.

The River

The Ohio River is the lifeblood of the central Kentucky region. It was the broad highway from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, from the eastern settlements of the coast to the Mississippi Valley. First French fur traders and trappers followed the path to the interior, then the flatboat and keelboats of the first settlers, and finally great steamboats went up and down the river.

The Falls of the Ohio, a series of rocky rapids, were an obstacle to boats trying to go up or down the river. Boats going downriver had to unload at Louisville, carry their cargo and passengers overland, and reload at Shippingport or Portland for the rest of the journey west. It was expensive and inconvenient for travelers, but provided work for many people in the Falls towns.

Flatboats, which were simple flat-bottomed rafts with shacks built on top, were a cheap way to carry families of settlers floating down the river. The boats could not be moved upriver against the currents. Keelboats had vertical boards on the bottoms that made it possible, though difficult, to steer them and move them upriver.

A company was formed to build a canal to bypass the Falls in 1805, and after many false starts, in 1830 the Portland-Louisville Canal opened. Digging the canal through limestone rock was a hard business, and many people were hired to help. Some of them were new immigrants from Ireland. After it was finished, for a while the economy of Louisville struggled, because the city was no longer needed for the shipment of goods by land past the Falls, but the coming of the railroad, the Louisville & Nashville, helped to make the city a center for transport in the region. Shipping Kentucky’s farm products was much cheaper.

Navigating all of America’s waterways became much faster and easier with the invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton in 1811. The New Orleans, Fulton’s first boat, stopped in Louisville on its way to Pittsburgh on October 28, and amazed everyone. Unlike the flatboats and keelboats, steamboats could go Upstream. By 1850, big side-wheeler steamboats made it possible for people and goods to get to New Orleans, where the Mississippi River met the sea, in only seven days.

William Bullock, 1827: “On the road up from Shippingport, at the foot of the Falls, we had the opportunity to examine the fine canal and locks. This canal will make it possible for vessels of any size to navigate the river at all seasons.”

Frederick Julius Gostov, 1830: “The sides of the canal are reinforced by levees made of the surplus rock. Before the canal returns to the river, we must pass through several locks. Some of these locks are thirty feet high. The locks are the enclosed part of the canal with gates at each end. The gates, operated by hand, let water in or out to raise or lower ships.”

The Ohio was prone to flooding, and in a major deluge in 1832 the town of Shippingport was virtually wiped out.

Political events

Kentucky was not satisfied being just a county of Virginia. The Virginia capital, Richmond, was hundreds of miles away, over high mountains. A series of conventions were called to discuss becoming a state. In 1792 Kentucky’s citizens asked to be free of Virginia. A Constitution was written, and the United States Congress made Kentucky the 15th state. The Kentucky state Constitution allowed all free white men over 21 to vote (unlike other states, voters were not required to own property or to be members of a certain religion). As in other states, women and African-Americans could not vote. The citizens of Kentucky were divided about whether slavery should be permitted or not. Many people owned slaves, but others thought that slavery was wrong. They decided to allow slavery.

Isaac Shelby was elected as the first governor of Kentucky.

Many people in Kentucky thought that the 1792 Constitution did not represent them, and they asked for a new Convention to change it. In 1799 a new Constitution was written, but it did fix the problem, and in fact was less democratic and led to corruption. The government was in the control of the elites, people who had money and power. Many people were still unhappy, and in 1849 they changed it again. This time it was made fairer, but the new laws still allowed slavery.

Kentucky was slow to set up schools to educate its children. It was only in 1853 that all the counties in the state had public schools. Louisville’s first common (public) school was established in 1830, called Dr. Mann Butler’s Academy, at 5th and Walnut. In this school older students taught the younger ones. The school included about 250 boys and girls. Even though it was a public school, parents still had to pay tuition of about $4-6 year. Dr. Butler’s school was only for white children. The first schools to enroll African-American students were private schools, beginning in 1841.

Kentucky Resolves

In the early years of the new country, Americans feared that there might be a war with France. In 1798 the Federalist Party backed the passage of the Alien & Sedition Acts, which limited the freedom of non-citizens and threatened imprisonment to Americans who criticized the government. Most Kentuckians were anti-Federalists, and supported the Jeffersonian Republican party. Kentucky responded with a declaration known as the Kentucky Resolves, which were written by Thomas Jefferson, that said that states did not have to support Federal laws that were not constitutional. The Acts were repealed and the Federalists lost power.

War of 1812

In 1812 the United States went to war with England, over issues including the impressments (forced service) of American sailors onto British ships. The war was fought primarily by the Navy, with great battles off the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The battle of New Orleans ended the war, which was then settled by treaty. Kentucky supported the war, by sending troops and by encouraging people to make their own homespun clothing and avoid buying imported goods from Britain.

Mexican War

Mexico, south of the United States, had won its own independence from Spain in 1821. Both Mexico and the United States claimed borderlands around Texas as their own. As Americans rushed to settle Texas, which Mexicans thought to be theirs, a war began that resulted in Texas briefly becoming a separate county – not part of the US or of Mexico. When the United States annexed (added) Texas, the question of the border again grew violent. War began in 1846, and two years later the United States had taken land in Texas and the Southwest from Mexico. Many Americans were very opposed to the War.
William Orlando Butler was a Kentucky military man who had served in the War of 1812. He served in the state legislature, and returned to the Army to fight in the Mexican War. Butler was both a general and a vice-presidential candidate.

Opening the West

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought an enormous tract of land from France. Called the Louisiana Purchase, it included all of the land north of New Orleans, west of the Missisippi, into the Rocky Mountains on the west, and north to Canada. It doubled the size of the United States. The important port of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi was now in American control. Jefferson set his friends and associates Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, brother of Louisville’s founder George Rogers Clark, to explore and map the new territory. Several men from Kentucky went on the expedition.

Kentucky grew so fast that by 1820 it was the 6th largest state in America. Settlers wanted land, and banks were set up to loan them money to start farms and businesses. But the banks were not careful in their loans, and in 1819 and again in 1837 the banks failed – went out of business – and the people who had money in them lost everything. Those were periods of great suffering, when there was very little work in the region. But people pulled out of it in time.

Elites & leaders

People who provided the state with social and economic leadership often set the standard in fashion and behavior, too. The aristocrats of the First West, they displayed their wealth and sophistication by having portraits painted and by buying furniture, art, and household decorations from abroad, or commissioning local artists and artisans to make them. These elite families entertained and intermarried with each other. Many of them came from Virginia, including the Clay family, the Clarks, and the Speeds, and they brought the Virginia passion for horseracing, gambling, and hunting with them.

Some of the notable people in early Kentucky included:

Thomas Ball, (American 1819-1911) Henry Clay, 1858 Bronze Purchase, Museum Art Fund 1965.22

Henry Clay was a hero in Kentucky. He lived from 1777 to 1852. He had come to the state in 1797, and was soon elected to serve in the House of Representatives. He was a big supporter of the War of 1812 against England, one of the “War Hawks.” He was in the Whig political party, and was famous for his ability to craft agreements that brought together different factions in the government. He was called the “Great Pacificator,” and he drafted the Compromise of 1850 that temporarily kept the nation from splitting apart into slave states and free states. He owned lands in the Bluegrass region and in Louisville.

The John Speed Smith family, of Lexington were part of this new aristocracy, and like other people of fashion and substance, they had a portrait done. Smith, a lawyer had served in the War of 1812 as an aide to General William Henry Harrison. His wife was related to the prominent Clay family (sister of Cassius and cousin of Henry). He served six terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and served as U.S. Attorney for Kentucky.

George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville, had defended the Kentucky territories from British and Indian raiders during the American Revolution. He lived in Indiana, but after being injured in an accident he moved to his sister’s home near Louisville. Lucy Clark Croghan and her husband William gave the old Indian fighter a home at Locust Grove plantation until his death in 1818. William Clark, their brother, was one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the lands of the West that America had bought in the Louisiana Purchase.

John Speed, a lawyer and a veteran of the War of 1812, and his wife Lucy Fry Speed (a cousin of Henry Clay) built their hemp plantation, Farmington, in 1810 on the road from Louisville to Bardstown. Their son, James Speed, was a lawyer and an abolitionist (who wanted to end slavery). Although his views were unpopular, he helped to keep Kentucky in the Union during the Civil War, and Lincoln chose him to be his Attorney General. Another Speed son, Joshua Fry Speed, was one of Lincoln’s closest friends. The future President sometimes stayed with the Speeds at Farmington.

Economy

Kentucky’s economy was based on farming, though centers like Louisville specialized in commerce, and other towns had some manufacturing. Important crops included hemp, a plant grown for its tough and strong fibers, which could be made into rope and bagging for cotton bales. Plantation owners used slaves to grow and process it.

Whisky became a Kentucky specialty. Distilled grains were easier and cheaper to transport in their liquid form than the heavy and bulky grains themselves. Whisky was made from corn and rye, and the local limestone spring water was important to the taste of the finished product. Kentucky distillers developed Bourbon, a form of whisky aged in barrels, and it became a famous product around the world. By 1790, before Kentucky was even a state, there were already 25 distilleries in Bourbon County. First governor Isaac Shelby was a distiller.

As in Virginia, tobacco, especially the kind known as burley tobacco, did well in Kentucky soil. It was a profitable crop that could be grown on small plots of land. Louisville manufactured some of the local tobacco into cigars, and pipe and chewing tobacco.

Breeding and raising horses was other important Bluegrass occupation. The region’s excellent grass and good water made exceptional horses, raised for work, for show, and for racing.

Slavery

Early Kentucky settlers had no objections to slavery, and institution that they brought with them from Virginia and other eastern areas. The numbers of slaves in each area depended on the business activities of the area. It is estimated that in the 1830s between 10 and 20 percent of the residents of Jefferson County were slaves, 40 to 52 percent of Shelby County, and 30 to 40 percent of Oldham County.

In Louisville, slaves mingled with free African-Americans. Many enslaved people in the city were allowed by their masters to hire out their own time, and live separately from their masters. In the city, African-Americans lived in the alleyways and rear areas of buildings owned by whites rather than in separate neighborhoods. They worked as servants to merchants, in factories and workshops, and unloading ships and wagons at the wharf.

Because Kentucky was a slave state, and the free states of Indiana and Ohio were just across the Ohio River, many runaways crossed at Louisville. Some went on the ferries across the river in disguise or using forged papers. Others borrowed boats on the Kentucky side, and rowed across, or were rowed across by friends. A few even tried to swim. Some were caught, but many others escaped to freedom in the north.

More and more white people in Kentucky questioned whether slavery was a good thing. Some people thought that it hurt the economy and reputation of the state. Henry Clay was a supporter of a movement to end slavery by sending freed slaves back to Africa. Most people who opposed slavery wanted to see gradual emancipation – slaves freed over a period of years. Cassius Clay, a famous orator, was a strong abolitionist – he wanted slavery ended soon, and said that Kentucky would always be held back in its development as long as there were slaves.

English geologist Charles Lyell, 1840s: “Kentucky suffers from the decided preference shown to the right bank of the Ohio by the best class of settlers from the northeastern states who wanted to stay away from the slave states on the left bank.”

Kentucky was losing slave population before the Civil War. The economy just didn’t need their labor. Many slaves were sold to the south after 1830, to work in the new cotton fields of Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. This was a sad thing for Kentucky slave families, who were often separated, never to meet again.

Abraham Lincoln, 1855: “You may remember, as well as I do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.”

Abraham Lincoln

Leonard Wells Volk, (American, 1828-1895) Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 1860 Bronze Gift of Mrs. Hattie Bishop Speed 1929.26

Kentucky’s most famous citizen, sixteenth President Abraham Lincoln, was poor into a pioneer family in 1809 in Hodgenville, Kentucky. His parents struggled to earn a living, and later moved to Indiana in search of a better life. Lincoln educated himself and succeeding in going to law school, and became a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. His friends and law partners had Kentucky ties, and he married a Lexington native, Mary Todd, from a very prominent family. He helped to found the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery, in the 1850s, and was their candidate for President in 1860. In a four-way race Lincoln defeated the other candidates, including Kentucky’s John Breckinridge, and won the election.

His election caused South Carolina to secede (withdraw from) the United States because they feared the Lincoln would try to end slavery. When other southern states joined them to form the Confederacy, the Civil War began.

Kentucky was a “border” state in the War. Its citizens were divided in their feelings. Most Kentuckians wanted to stay in the Union, but also wanted to keep slavery. Lincoln thought it was very important to keep Kentucky in the Union, and sent Federal troops to secure the state. Many Kentuckians volunteered for the Union Army, while others joined regiments that fought for the Confederacy. Only minor battles and skirmishes occurred in the state, but Federal troops occupied the region for most of the War.

Louisville

Alexander Helwig Wyant, (American, 1836-1892) Falls of the Ohio, Louisville, 1863 Oil on canvas Gift of Mrs. Lewis C. Humphrey in memory of her grandfather, William Burke Belknap 1948.33

Louisville was named for King Louis XVI of France, who helped America in the Revolution. It was founded by George Rogers Clark in 1778. Clark brought a party of militia men and settlers to defend the Ohio Valley, the frontier during the Revolution, from the British army and their Indian allies. They set up a fort on Corn Island in the Ohio River.

Twenty years later, Louisville was one of six small cities at the Falls of the Ohio – the others were Portland and Shippingport in Kentucky, and New Albany, Jeffersonville, and Clarksville in Indiana. But Louisville grew faster than the rest, and soon became the premier city in the region. The city grew so fast in the early years of the century that in some years the population doubled. Houses could not be built fast enough. Louisville was the gateway to the Western Waters, where thousands of people headed each year to settle the new territories. They stopped in Louisville to buy provisions – food, seeds, clothing, tools, and other supplies.

John Starkey, 1829: “Louisville is thought to have a population of between eight and ten thousand and appears to be readily increasing. About 200 good brick houses have been added to it during the present season: the bricks are made on the spot and are of excellent quality.”

The Louisville wharf sloped to river, providing a landing for cargo and passengers. Tobacco hogsheads were loaded here, and cotton bales as well as other barrels and crates were unloaded. Carts and wagons stood nearby, and were piled high by draymen and carters to take goods to warehouses and nearby stores.

Stores along Main Street and Water Street sold groceries, dry goods (clothing, shoes, cloth), to these pioneers, as well as to the farmers of the region who came into town to sell their produce – vegetables, corn, hogs - in the market, and to arrange for the sale and shipment of their tobacco, hemp, and other products to be sold to the east or south.

Caleb Atwater, 1828: “Main Street, for the distance of about one mile, presents a proud display of wealth and grandeur. Two and three story houses stand on solid stone foundations. Crowds of well-dressed citizens hurry to and fro. Stores are filled with goods from every climate… The ringing of bells, the roaring of the steamboat’s guns, the crack of the coachman’s whip, and the sound of the stage driver’s horn salute the ear.”

Louisville’s population:
1810 1, 357
1820 4,012
1830 11,341
1850 43,000

Charles Dickens, 1842: “Here as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive with pigs of all ages; lying about in every direction, fast asleep; or grunting along in search of hidden dainties.”

Many languages were spoken on the streets, wharfs, and in the shops and factories of the city. A small but prominent group of French people came to Louisville after 1815, and lived mainly in the community of Shippingport. Working people from Ireland came to work on the Portland Canal, and stayed to raise families. Another large wave of Irish settlers arrived in the 1840s, when famine struck their home country. The Ohio Valley also attracted many immigrants from Germany, both farmers and city people, with a group of especially educated citizens arriving after 1848, when a democratic revolution in Germany failed.

Madame Marie Tracbon Dubocq was born in Nantes, France, the daughter of Count Trochon de Lorrière. Marie Trochon was taken as a child to Haiti, a French colony. There she met and married French merchant, William Dubocq. The Dubocq family moved to Philadelphia during the Haitian Insurrection, but relocated to Shippingport, Kentucky, during the early 1830s. Artist James Peale painted Madame Dubocq and her children while the family lived in Philadelphia. Peale, the younger brother of the famous artist Charles Willson Peale, painted several large-scale portraits like this one, but specialized in miniatures. The Dubocq family brought the portrait with them when they moved to Kentucky. Like many affluent families who migrated to the state, the Dubocqs sought to retain some of their cultural traditions even in the settlements of Kentucky.

Gustavus Wulfing, 1837: “People living in Germany will never be able to understand how active and busy American life really is. They have unique chairs in this country which are called rocking chairs.”

Some people in the area, as well as in other parts of the United States, did not like the newcomers who spoke different languages. They wanted America to be for native-born English speakers only, and they particularly distrusted Catholics. They formed a political party called the American Party, also called the “Know-Nothings” – because members were not supposed to admit that they belonged to the party, just to say that they “knew nothing” about it. In August of 1855, the Know-Nothings in Louisville caused a riot on Election Day (James Speed, who had converted to Catholicism, was running for Mayor) and burned sections of the German neighborhood. Many German and Irish people were killed by the rioters.

Louisville’s vigorous growth made it the tenth largest city in the United States by 1850. It had become a manufacturing center, producing furniture, steam engines, cotton gin machinery, and wheels and castings for railroad cars. It was a center for meat-packing and butchering, with large stock yards, and it led the nation in hemp rope and cotton bagging production.

Horseracing

Horseracing was a popular sport in early Kentucky. Horses bred in the Bluegrass were raced against each other and horses from other regions. Fine gentlemen and ladies, as well as ordinary working people, all came for the pageantry and thrill of the races, with the horses and jockeys dressed in bright silks. Enormous bets were won and lost. Oakland House in Louisville offered a track for races and refreshments for the spectators. Built by Yelverton Oliver, an entrepreneur from New Orleans, the track opened in 1832 near 7th and Magnolia, in what was then south of the boundary of the city. The racecourse was framed by tall, graceful oak trees, and the clubhouse was a white-painted

Greek Revival style building.

Samuel Osgood, 1830s: “A Furor…the whole city in a commotion,” “the rage of betting infected even the servants and slaves… the august head of Henry Clay… towered up among the sporting magnates on the stand erected for the judges of the course.”
The horse Gray Eagle was the pride of Kentucky. In a famous race held on September 30, 1839, he raced the Tennessee champion, Wagner. Wagner won, so a rematch was held. Racing fans from all over the South came to see the race – Wagner won again, but the excitement of the day helped make Louisville a center for racing.

Religion, Culture, Ideas

Newspapers brought the events and ideas of the world to Kentucky. Louisville had a regular weekly newspaper by 1810, and in 1826 the Louisville Public Advertiser became a daily.

Lexington had a university, Transylvania University, and was known as “the Athens of the West” due to its prominence in education and arts and letters.
Shakers

In 1805, the community of Pleasant Hill, on the Kentucky River, was a center for the Shaker religious group. The Shakers were an offshoot of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and they believed in equality of all people regardless of gender or race. They lived communally, in dormitory-style buildings, men and women separately. They worked the land together, and used simple and graceful designs for their buildings, furniture, and household objects. It was never a large movement, with perhaps six thousand members at its height, and has since declined, but Shaker styles are still studied and copied today.

Artists & Artisans

At first, Kentucky pioneers had to import furnishing from over the mountains to the east, from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, or even Great Britain, or make do with the simple designs they could create themselves. There was an urgent need for craftsmen and artisans to provide the growing settlements with appropriate and well-made furniture and other household goods. As early as 1789, the Kentucky Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures 1789 worked to build local industries and crafts, so the region could be more self-sufficient in meeting its needs.

Native woods such as cherry and walnut were prized for fine furniture, and soon Kentucky cabinetmakers and carpenters were making fine sideboards, cupboards, chests-of-drawers that could compare with the best imports.

Asa Blanchard was a silversmith and goldsmith as well as a clock and watchmaker in Lexington, from 1810- to 1838. His early work was in the English style, with elaborate engraved monograms. He trained many apprentices. His customers were the elite of the region, and his candlesticks, cups, ladles, pitchers, tureens, and tea sets graced many fine tables and showed the world the skill of Kentucky artisans.

Matthew Harris Jouett was born in Kentucky and studied art at Lexington’s Transylvania University. He studied law and then served in the army during the War of 1812. After his war service he opened a portrait studio in Lexington and was known for his miniatures. Considered to be the first important artist in the western states, he traveled to study with America’s pre-eminent portraitist, Boston’s Gilbert Stuart. Jouett painted many prominent Kentuckians as well as important visitors to the region.

Sources:

Steven A. Channing. Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. W. W. Norton & Co., New York: 1977.

Website: The First American West: The Ohio River Valley 1750-1820, University of Chicago Library and Filson Historical Society, Library of Congress American Memory Collection, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/fawhome.html

George Yater. Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio. The Heritage Corporation of Louisville, Louisville: 1979.

John Kleber, ed. The Encyclopedia of Louisville. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington: 2001.

Judy Munro-Leighton, Nathalie Andrews, Bill Munro-Leighton. Changes at the Falls: Witnesses and Workers. The Portland Museum, Louisville: 1982.

Teaching Ideas for Young Kentucky, 1790-1860

Content: This website uses primary sources of Kentucky history that are in the collections of the Speed Museum. Artifacts, paintings, and sculptures take the reader through a chronological tour of Kentucky history from its frontier period up to the Civil War.

Audience: Teachers will find an overview of the state’s young history to provide teaching background for history lessons. Students as young as fourth and fifth graders may use the site, needing some help with vocabulary, but students sixth grade and above will be more likely to comprehend the text features.

Teaching and Learning Activities: Kentucky Core Content expects students to understand that history is written based on primary sources and secondary sources, and the credibility of an account of a historical event is greater when it is based on primary sources.

1. Explain the definitions.
   *Primary source – information that comes from the time being studied. Written documents such as diaries or letters, newspapers, film or photographs from the time, eyewitness accounts, artifacts, and oral histories are examples of primary sources.
   *Secondary source – an account of a historical event that was written or created by someone who was not an eyewitness to the person or the event. This website is an example of a secondary source, because the information has been written by people who were not present during the events of Kentucky history 1790-1860. The website does contain pictures of primary sources.
2. Direct the students to find examples of various primary and secondary sources on the Young Kentucky website. They should choose different types, such as an artifact, a sculpture, a painting, and include one quotation from a historical person. The students can then examine the source and share what it tells about the time period. Help them analyze the sources for information relating to geography, economics, shelter, traditions, recreation, government, arts and humanities, transportation, and communication. This expands their understanding of change over time.
3. Homework: Propose a historian in the year 2075 will write a history book for the Kentucky time period starting in the year 2000. What primary sources might the writer look at for the understanding the life of everyday people? Students choose a personal artifact from their own life to share with the class that could be a primary source for this future historian.

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