The Filson Historical Society Digital Projects

Browse Items (59 total)

  • MssBD_B661_Vol1_lowres.pdf

    An indexed membership register for the Louisville, Kentucky, B’nai B’rith Mendelssohn Lodge, a Jewish fraternal organization. The register documents members from 1860 to at least 1921. Recorded member information includes their name, place of residence, occupation, marital status, number of children, and date they were inducted.

    The Har-Moriah Lodge No. 14 (“Mt. Moriah”) opened in Louisville in October 1852 and a second B’nai B’rith lodge, the Mendelssohn Lodge No. 40, opened in Louisville in May 1860. Many of the early lodge members were recent Jewish immigrants from parts of now modern Germany who had strong bonds through neighborhood proximity, marriage, and business ventures. The Har Moriah and Mendelssohn lodges officially merged in February 1904 and became Louisville Lodge No. 14.

    Note: The PDF is 523 pages long, so please be patient while it loads.

    For the full collection finding aid, see https://filsonhistorical.org/research-doc/bnai-brith-louisville-lodge-no-14-louisville-ky-records-1860-1921/
  • 022PC21.jpg

    Photograph of Elmer Hammonds, Sr., posing outside with his dog. Elmer Johnson Hammonds, Sr. (1903-1987) grew up in Bardstown, Kentucky, and moved to Louisville in the early 1930s. In 1931, he married Ophelia Doyle Guinn (1899-1964). The couple raised three children on West Chestnut Street. Elmer worked as a Pullman Porter for over 39 years, from 1929 to 1968. During the heyday of railroad travel, the Pullman Porters attended to the needs of train passengers. In the beginning, the Pullman Company hired only Black men for the job of porter.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/022pc30_26.jpg

    Polaroid of Lucy C. Mickens (1895-1970) holding her pet dachshund on her lap. Lucy was born in Eastwood, Jefferson County, Kentucky, and resided in the same neighborhood her entire life. She was married to Robert Thomas, Sr., and the couple had three children, Miles, Robert, and Estella. Lucy and Robert, Sr., separated in the 1920s, and Lucy remarried twice: first to Filmore Colemand and later to John Clark. In 1927, she bought property on Gilliland Road and worked as a laundress.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/parsons-shorty-funeral.jpg

    A scrapbook page on Shorty, the Irish terrier mascot of No. 1 Hook and Ladder Company and No. 2 Engine Company in Louisville, Kentucky. A photograph on the top left corner of the page captures Shorty standing on a brick road. A large photograph on the right hand side of the page shows Shorty seated in the passenger seat of a firetruck with firefighters and a woman posing around him. A veteran of 1,000 fires, Shorty died from falling from his accustomed place on the driver’s seat of the fire engine pumper. The remaining two photographs are on the bottom left of the page and labeled "Shorty Nov 26 1931." They depict Shorty's burial in the lawn plot between the No. 1 Hook and Ladder Company and the water tower at Sixth Street and Jefferson Street.
  • Going to the Dogs.jpg

    Poster for the Kentucky Art & Craft Foundation featuring a poodle in sunglasses. Photography by Albert Leggett and Design by Julius Friedman. Julius Friedman (1943-2017) was an artist and graphic designer. He was considered Louisville’s beloved and renowned image maker and cultural advocate. Throughout his 50-year career, Friedman embraced a vast range of media and methods to delight viewers with his visual artistry. Friedman also had a rescue dog named Mr. Brown. Albert Leggett is a Louisville native who began his career under the commercial photographer Lyn Caufield before opening his own company in 1984. He worked with Friedman on various projects.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/014pc38.jpg

    Color photograph of Helen Fay Lew (1926-2017) relaxing with her four children and their family dog Holly, a border collie. Helen and her husband Calvin (1925-2008) were married in 1949 in Seattle, Washington. The couple moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1958, when Calvin joined the faculty of the University of Louisville’s School of Medicine, where he founded the Biomedical Aging Research Program. Once their four children were grown, Helen founded the Crane House in 1987 to celebrate and share Chinese culture throughout Kentucky and Southern Indiana.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/022pc20.jpg

    Real photograph postcard of two women posed on a chair by photographer John Pichler (1877-1961). The woman on the left, Fronie Juanita Shawler, is holding her dog. Shawler was born in 1914 in Cloverport, Breckinridge County, Kentucky, and eventually moved to Louisville. She joined the Stoner Memorial Church, where she was a member for 83 years and served as the first female trustee. Juanita worked as a healthcare provider at the Baxter Community Center Clinic in Beecher Terrace and retired as a nurse assistant for the Louisville-Jefferson County Health Department. She was married to her husband Clark for 56 years and the couple had no children. In addition to being active in church, Juanita was an avid bowler in a church league and the Senior Citizens Bowling League. She continued bowling—and driving her car—until she was 103 years old. Juanita died in May 2022 at the age of 108.

    John Pichler was an Austrian immigrant who came to America in 1898. He took this photograph from his home studio in the rear of 1753 St. Louis Avenue in the Park Hill Neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. His son John O. Pichler learned from his father and was an engraver for The Louisville-Courier Journal and Standard Gravure for over 50 years.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/019pc58.jpg

    Two photographs of Dr. Jeffrey Fowler, a Blind cardiologist at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, walking with his service dog Dottie and reading scans while Dottie sits beside him. Dr. Fowler had average vision as a child, but his eyes gradually deteriorated from a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. He stopped driving around 1964, during his second year of medical school. At the suggestion of a nurse who bred Akitas, Fowler acquired Dottie in 1991. Dottie went through obedience and behavior training in California and Ohio and was put into service in mid-1992. In 1994, Dottie won an annual service-dog award from the Delta Society (now called Pet Partners).
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/022pc1.jpg

    Portrait of Elen (Fran) Levey posing with her Siamese cat for the Jewish Community of Louisville.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/iwc_0703_t.jpg

    Reproduction of a negative by Ivey Watksins Cousins (1898-1973). It captures the joy of young Black boys playing with a pet dog in a northwestern view of East Broadway and South Jackson Street in Louisville, Kentucky. A native of Danville, Virginia, Ivey Watkins Cousins moved to Louisville in 1944. He held numerous jobs over the years, working as a tobacco dealer, photographer, machine-shop instructor, manager of the USO Shop, and Curator of the Louisville Library Museum. In 1959, he began photographing houses and structures being demolished to make way for I-65. After viewing the images, the Filson Club Board of Directors gave Cousins $25 to buy film for his project. This is one of the few images in which Cousins photographs people.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/004pc2_176.jpg

    Photograph of Mary Churchill Bacon (1904-1941) in the garden posing with her cat. Mary was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Ernest J. Bacon, attorney and son of prominent 19th-century attorney Byron Bacon, and Lucy Henry. In 1924, Mary was enrolled at Gulf Park College in Gulfport, Mississippi. By the spring of 1932, she was married to Gerald C. Hayes of Los Angeles. The couple later moved to Los Angeles, California, followed by Mary’s family, who relocated in the mid-1930s. By 1940, Mary was divorced and living in Oklahoma City. The next year, Mary died in Midland, Texas, while visiting friends.
  • MssAR_H225_3107_1.jpg

    Residential drawings for Good Housekeeping Magazine by Louisville, Kentucky architect Stratton O. Hammon.
  • MssAR_H225_F008_3504.jpg

    Front elevation drawing for Paul M. Kendall Co. residence on Transylvania Avenue.
  • MssAR_H225_3309_1.jpg

    Front elevation and plot plan for Mr. and Mrs. Dillman Rash's residence on Cherokee Gardens lots 66 and 67 in Louisville, Kentucky.
  • 015PC55.03.jpg

    Photograph of real estate developer James Taylor in front of his Tudor Revival home at 6600 Shirley Avenue in the James T. Taylor Subdivision of Louisville, Kentucky.
  • MssBA_P738_vol11.pdf

    Members of a Sunday school operated by the German St. Peter's Evangelical Church formed the West Louisville Evangelical Church in 1915. The congregation built a church in the Shawnee neighborhood at 245 South 41st Street in 1916. A new sanctuary was constructed circa 1926-1927. In 1957, the church changed its name to the West Louisville United Church of Christ. In 1986, the West Louisville United Church of Christ closed due to declining membership, in part because of white flight from West Louisville, and problems maintaining the property. The remaining congregation became members of the historically Black Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ.

    This register contains entries for marriages, baptisms, confirmations, attendance at communion services, and deaths from 1916-1945. Members' attendance at communion services is also recorded for 1964-1966. Loose inserts in the ledger include a 1935 license to solemnize marriages for Rev. C. T. Rausch, a 1968 request for a baptism record, undated genealogy notes, and a 1992 Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ bulletin.
  • MssSBJ13_JacksonJulia_reduced.pdf

    This scrapbook was created by Julia M. Jackson Woods (1911-2000), an African American woman from Louisville, Kentucky, who enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in November 1942. The scrapbook contains greeting cards, newspaper clippings, and ephemera from Woods' service, as well as more than 20 insignia and patches collected from various units, including her own sergeant stripes. The scrapbook documents the social side of military base life - cards from USO groups and friends, marriages, dances, and other interracial interactions between otherwise segregated regiments stationed at the same bases. A few items at the end of the volume relate to Woods' postwar life in Louisville.

    Woods served in the all-Black 32nd Post Headquarters Company of the WAAC. She did much of her training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, near the Mexican border; she also served stints in Des Moines, Iowa and Midland, Texas. A clipping on one of the initial pages of the scrapbook notes that Jackson was one of Louisville's first volunteers to join the WAAC. She was discharged on August 14, 1943. After the United States Congress authorized the creation of the Women's Army Corps (WAC), she enlisted in the WAC on May 1, 1944. She ultimately reached the rank of sergeant and served in the military police force. The Army discharged her on December 24, 1945. After her service, she married Thomas Harry Woods (1914-1961) and was hired as the head of the all-Black Western Kentucky Vocational Training School Department of Cosmetology in Paducah, Kentucky, by 1946.

    Want to help transcribe this scrapbook? Check out our volunteer transcription webpage: https://fromthepage.com/filson/african-american-history/jacksonjulia
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/mssa_c187_f18_military-survey_001-copy.jpg

    Plot of original military survey around Louisville.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/mssa_c187_f18_falls-of-oh-survey_001-copy.jpg

    Original survey around the Falls of the Ohio, now Louisville, Kentucky.
  • https://filsonhistoricalimages.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/rsm_976_9911_c593_1779_blueprint-copy.jpg

    This original plan of the city of Louisville was found in George Rogers Clark's surveyors book in 1881 and traced by R.C. Ballard Thruston in 1910.
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