Browse Items (55 total)
-
Kirkpatrick
Aged 5 yrs. Property of E. S. Washington and A. D. Offutt Fayette Co., Ky. A prize cattle specimen c. 1850s. -
-
-
-
-
-
Heigold house façade, ca. 1950
Heigold house facade after house was demolished and facade rebuilt on River Road. House built in 1857. Originally 264 Marion. Owner Charles Heigold. -
Three-year-old Patty Thum, 1856
Patty Thum was known for her paintings of flowers, especially roses but she was also a talented landscape and portrait artist. She is one of the city's earliest professional woman artists. She also was an author, inventor, and major advocate for the arts in the City of Louisville. She dedicated her life to art from the age of 16 right up until her death at the age of 73.
Born in Louisville in 1853, Patty was the eldest child of Louisa Miller and Mandeville Thum, a doctor with a practice on Jefferson Street. Patty attended the Louisville Girl's School (the city's first public school). Patty was 9 years old when her father died in 1862, serving as a surgeon for the Confederate 7th Arkansas Infantry. Louisa never remarried and ensured her sons and daughters all attended college.
In 1869, at the age of 16, Thum left home and traveled north to study art at Vassar College, established in 1861 to "accomplish for young women what our colleges are accomplishing for young men." -
Annual Catalogue of Pupils
In 1852, 250 girls attended Science Hill Female Academy. Students were primarily from Kentucky as well as Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Iowa, Texas, and California.
Tevis advocated for equal education in science for women. Despite advice to "let Chemistry alone" as a subject better suited for men, Tevis built a chemistry lab a Science Hill in the early 1850s.
"Chemistry is especially requisite for the successful progress of our inquiries and researches into the nature of those things whence we derive the means of our comfort, our happiness, our luxuries, our health, and even our existence...In an an experimental science, where truth lies within our reach, we should make use of our sense and judge for ourselves."
-Julia Ann Hieronymus Tevis -
Second Annual Catalogue of the Elizabethtown Female Seminary, 1857
At age 15, Stow began a three-year course of study at Elizabethtown Female Seminary in Ohio, a boarding school 16 miles from Cincinnati. The school's mission was to cultivate "earnest and independent thought," to teach habits of "order, economy, punctuality, and industry," and to qualify women to "enter any Sphere that Providence may assign."
Stow's friends were all from rural farming communities in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. She and the other girls from Switzerland County travelled upriver by steamboat to reach the school, where they lived during the school term. -
School Schedule for Elizabethtown Female Seminary
Elizabethtown Seminary's curriculum was designed to be challenging. Science and math were given priority, and subjects included natural history, botany, physiology, atronomy, geology, mineralogy, chemistry, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Viola was often nervous before examinations and dedicated many hours to study.
She and the other students were assigned daily domestic tasks such as preparing meals and doing dishes. Some students also made pies or cakes. It could take up to 2 hours to wash dishes after a single meal. -
Letter from Viola Stow to brother Loring Stow, 1858
The young women found the seminary's rules severe. They were afraid to be caught talking during the strictly enforced quiet study time. In their correspondence, several students refer to their school as a "nunnery." They sometimes found it a lonely place, lacking the company of young men and society. Stow's older brother's occasional visits to the seminary were always highly anticipated.
Stow expressed some envy of her brothers and the difference in their school experiences. She expected that her older brother was "enjoying himself finely" at school in Cincinnati. She told her younger brother that she was glad he was next in line for "edification," assuring him that boys are given more privileges than girls, so he wouldn't have a hard time at school. -
Louisville Hotel Architectural Drawing, c. 1855
Drawing of the second floor of the Louisville Hotel, on 6th and Main Streets.Tags architecture -
View of Cairo, Junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, 1856
Engraving from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion of a scene from Cairo, Illinois. This scene encompasses almost every facet of working on the river. Shantyboats, steamboats, fishing boat, flatboats, and wharf boats all go about their business. But an upcoming mode of transportation and transport included in the image portends the decline of the steamboat – the railroad. -
Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) Mourning Ribbon
Silk ribbon memorializing the death of Zachary Taylor (1784-1850). "The nation mourns a patriot gone. Published at 302 Race St Bel., 9th." -
Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) Mourning Ribbon
Silk ribbon memorializing the death of Zachary Taylor (1784-1850). Gold eagle holding an American Flag with profile of Taylor in gold. "The last coherent words of the venerable patriot, President Zachary Tailor [sic]: 'I die--I am expecting the summons--I am ready to meet death-- I have endeavored faithfully to discharge my duty --I am sorry to leave my friends!" -
American Republican Manifesto Broadside, circa 1850
This broadside linked the American Revolution's result, "INDEPENDENCE OF FOREIGN NATIONS", to the 1850s "danger of foreign influence" they believed was posed by immigration of Germans and Irish. This threat was magnified by the "most gross and outrageous frauds...committed under our present Naturalization system." Once naturalized, adult white male immigrants could vote. -
Oriental Rosebud Tobacco Label
Label reads: Manufactured by N.B. Dickinson Richmond, Va. -
Carte-de-visite of possibly Catherine Manser Stow, ca. 1862
According to the family, Belle Dufour Stepleton, Catharine's granddaughter, identified this photo, but we're not absolutely certain that she is correct. If it is Catharine, she is not wearing her spectacles, and would appear to be in her late 60s or early 70s. Catharine attained the age of 70 in 1881. Both the clothing and the stye of the image appear to date from an earlier era, so we have to consider that Judith Hyde Manser (d. 1871), Livia Hayward Stow (d. 1858), or someone else could be the subject, and that this carte-de-visite may have been copied from an earlier cased image (daguerreotype, tintype, or ambrotype). There is a good chance it isn't Livia Stow as she died before the invention of carte-de-visites."
-
Letter from Henry Clay to The Honorable A. H. H. Stuart. Ashland, 22 October 1850
Recommending Col. William Henry Russell of California for an Indian agency in that State.