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The Filson Historical Society Digital Projects

Browse Items (89 total)

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  • E. M'Carthy; John S. Reed
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  • Coles
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  • Coles; J. Slinglandt
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  • 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."

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Stow began to see the school in a more positive light as graduation approached. She wanted to be a teacher but expected her mother and older brother to oppose her aspirations. She taught in her hometown for several school terms in the early 1860s but quit teaching after her marriage in 1862.

    Several of Stow's schoolfriends also embarked on teaching careers. Stow's cousin, Julia Stow, briefly taught in Marble Hill, Indiana, while Maggie Brown moved farther away to teach music in Loda, Illinois. Melissa Jackson was a teacher in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, before pursuing better pay near the Ohio River in Boone County, Kentucky, which she describes in the letter.

  • Drawing of the second floor of the Louisville Hotel, on 6th and Main Streets.
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  • Mourning brooch containing the hair of the Miller-Bohannan-Bullitt families. Belonged to Emily Miller Bohannan after 1836; from Thomas Bohannan. Might be for one of the seven children she lost.

  • Worn by Sarah Elizabeth "Sallie" Hord Ingram (1832-1893), grandmother of Selena Pope Ingram McKinley who inherited the brooch.

  • Stick pin or shawl pin. Worn by Sarah Elizabeth "Sallie" Hord Ingram (1832-1893), grandmother of Selena Pope Ingram McKinley who inherited the brooch.

  • Miniature portrait of Caleb Bates. On the reverse is a photograph of his granddaughter, Florence Montgomery Durrett (1863-1869), who died at the age of 6.

  • Hannah Deweese was married to Cornelius DeWeese and lived on a 900 acre farm, Hunter’s Bottom, in Carroll County, Kentucky. She was in her 30s when this portrait was painted of her, with what appears to be hair and/or mourning jewelry, including a brooch similar in style to pieces in the Filson's collection (see 1962.3.1 & 1962.3.3), a bracelet, and a ring. When Hannah died in 1884, eight of her thirteen children preceded her in death.

  • Silk ribbon memorializing the death of Zachary Taylor (1784-1850). "The nation mourns a patriot gone. Published at 302 Race St Bel., 9th."

  • 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!"

  • Mourning necklace belonging to Ann Booth Gwathmey (1782-1862), married to John Gwathmey (1774-1824) on 22 July 1800.
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