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The Filson Historical Society Digital Projects The Filson Historical Society Digital Projects
The Filson Historical Society Digital Projects

Browse Items (55 total)

  • French stock certificate for one share in the Compagnie de Colonisation Americaine (American Colonization Company). Share is for 100 acres of land in Virginia and Kentucky for an investment of 1300 francs. Yields six percent annual interest. Dividends paid annually over thirty years using the attached coupons.
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  • Strippy quilt credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon of Jefferson County, Kentucky. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this quilt. Homespun fabric alone could not fulfill the amount of cloth needed by a single household. Fancy imported cloth was preferred for special textiles and dressier clothing. Fabric like the indigo printed calico used in this quilt was imported from Britain and sold by Kentucky merchants. The fabric was expensive as it was imported into Philadelphia, carried overland by wagon, and then floated down the Ohio River via flatboat to Louisville. Or it was transported up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers against the current, via man-powered keelboats or barges from the Port of New Orleans. Eliza supplemented this expensive fabric with a hand-woven overshot fabric that was frugally pieced together and perhaps upcycled from a previous textile, such as bed curtains, window curtains, or a dress. 
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  • Samplers were a staple in the education of girls, designed to teach needlework skills needed for household duties. Samples could be symbolic of the girl's culture, religion, social class, or personal accomplishments. Sampler making was seen as the ground work for civic, social, and familial responsibility. This was made by Abigail Prather Churchill the daughter of Abigail Pope Oldham Churchill (1789-1854), around age 11-13 at Nazareth Academy (which is near Bardstown, KY).
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  • An 'M's & O's' patterned sheet made of linen and cotton. The family narratives for this linen sheet states that it was made in 1816 by Betsy Breckinridge Meredith, sister of John Breckinridge. Family narrative also states the flax was grown, spun, and woven by enslaved people on the Winton Plantation. Enslaved women and men were skilled spinners, weavers, and seamstress on the frontier. Their skilled labor made life easier and more comfortable for their enslavers.
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  • Hand-woven linen sheet credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this sheet. It is made from two thirty-eight-inch-wide panels that were hand-sewn together. The edges are unfinished. Eliza and/or enslaved laborers cultivated and processed flax into yarn for weaving. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen.
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  • Hand-woven cotton coverlet credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this coverlet. As cotton wasn’t generally grown in Jefferson County, Kentucky, Eliza likely acquired cotton yarn or raw cotton from a local merchant. She and/or enslaved laborers would have processed raw cotton and spun it into yarn for weaving. Two 36-inch-wide woven panels were sewn together by hand to make a textile large enough for a bed. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen.
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  • Unfinished cotton counterpane credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this counterpane. As cotton wasn’t generally grown in Jefferson County, Kentucky, Eliza likely acquired already-made cotton fabric, cotton yarn, or raw unspun cotton from a local merchant. Eliza drew a floral design onto the cloth using a pencil, and she attached a very coarse, loosely woven fiber onto the back. She then hand-stitched around the penciled design. This work was never finished as the stems would have been stuffed with yarn to give them dimension, and all the flowers would have been stuffed with cotton or wool batting in a style known as trapunto. Either she or someone else cut a rectangular piece out of the unfinished work. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen.
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  • Household linen, hand-woven in a huckaback pattern, credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this household linen. Eliza and/or enslaved laborers cultivated and processed flax into yarn for weaving. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen.
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  • Household linen, hand-woven in a huckaback pattern, credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this household linen. Eliza and/or enslaved laborers cultivated and processed flax into yarn for weaving. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen.
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  • Linen towel, hand-woven in a huckaback pattern, credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this towel. Eliza and/or enslaved laborers cultivated and processed flax into yarn for weaving. Historical records suggest that an unidentified enslaved woman played a key role in managing the household and supervising other enslaved laborers after Thomas’s death. In 1833, Eliza died from cholera, leaving behind three children under the age of eighteen. 
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  • Cotton pillowcase credited to Elizabeth Tyler Sturgeon. Elizabeth married Thomas Sturgeon in 1816. After he died in 1823, she managed their farm and raised three young sons. Her father, Edward Tyler II, enslaved up to fourteen people. Elizabeth herself enslaved seven people whose labor sustained both the household and the farm. This forced labor enabled the production of textiles like this pillowcase. As cotton wasn’t generally grown in Jefferson County, Kentucky, Elizabeth likely acquired already-made cotton fabric, cotton yarn, or raw unspun cotton from a local merchant. Drawn thread work is a form of counted-thread embroidery in which threads are removed from the warp or weft to create a decorative design.
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  • Coin silver ladle made by Asa Blanchard, who was one of many skilled artisans who migrated from the eastern states to the Kentucky frontier. Blanchard worked under other silversmiths in Philadelphia and New York, which were highly competitive environments for artisans. The Ohio River Valley offered a new market and opportunity for career advancement. Within a single generation, Kentucky transitioned from a frontier community into a society that supported painters, furniture makers, silversmiths, and other artisans. As middle- and upper-class families obtained financial stability, they purchased luxury goods symbolic of their status.
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  • Mourning necklace belonging to Ann Booth Gwathmey. Women experienced death and loss regularly on the frontier. They often expressed their grief by wearing mourning jewelry. Ann Gwathmey experienced death many times throughout her life. She married Jonathan Clark Gwathmey in 1800 when she was eighteen years old, and he was twenty-six. She was nineteen years old when she gave birth to their first daughter, who died less than six weeks later. During the next twenty-five years, Ann lost both of her parents, two more pre-school aged children, and her husband. In her senior years, two of her adult children preceded her in death.
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  • Elizabeth Logan Hardin (1786-1853) was born on the Kentucky frontier at Logan's Station (also known as St. Asaph's; present Stanford). She was one of nine children of Ann Montgomery and Benjamin Logan, one of Kentucky's early military and political leaders. who fought in the Indian wars of the 1770s and 1780s in the struggle to wrest control of Kentucky from the Native Americans. Elizabeth married Martin D. Hardin on 20 January 1809. At age thirty-nine, Elizabeth became a pregnant widow with three children between the ages of five and thirteen, and a failing farm (near Frankfort) that was $50,000 in debt. Elizabeth ran the farm as a single woman for seven years before she married Porter Clay in 1816. They sold the farm and moved to Illinois, but their strained marriage ended in separation. She returned to Kentucky and died in Shelby County where she is buried.
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  • Martin D. Hardin (1780-1823) was born in Pennsylvania and migrated with his family to Kentucky in 1786. He studied law under George Nicholas, who is credited with writing Kentucky's first constitution upon becoming a state in 1792. Hardin served as a militia major in the War of 1812 and was a politician. He served as Secretary of State under Governor Isaac Shelby from 1812-1816. He represented Madison County and later Franklin County in the Kentucky Legislature in 1805-1806, 1812, 1818-1820. He also briefly served as a United States Senator, 1816-1817. He was married Elizabeth Logan, daughter of Kentucky pioneer Benjamin Logan, in 1809. They had four children before his death at age forty-three.
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  • Manual of the medical botany of the United States, containing excerpts about American Maidenhair, common hemlock, common dogwood, yellow ladies' slipper, common strawberry, american pennyroyal, common dandelion, and sweet water-lily.
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  • "Encounter with a rattlesnake on the banks of the Ohio" pages 75-83.
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  • Full version of this text available at Cincinnati in 1826.
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  • Translated from the French by an English gentleman, who resided in America at the period, with notes by the translator. Also, a biographical sketch of the author, letters from Gen. Washington to the Marquis de Chastellux, and notes and corrections by the American editor.
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  • First, the sphere of powers of the Judiciary. Second, the ways and means by which the people may extricate themselves from difficulties and raise to happiness. Includes two extracts from the Morning Post.
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