Browse Items (18 total)
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Portrait of Jemima Pearsall Castleman
Jemima Pearsall Castleman married Johannes "Lewis" Castleman in Frederick, Virginia, in 1765, when she was approximately fifteen years of age. She was the mother of eight children that were born between 1770 and 1797. She came to the frontier with her husband sometime between 1787 and 1800. They lived on a farm along Clear Creek in Woodford County that included a tannery and a distillery that made apple brandy. The Castlemans enslaved ten persons in 1810 and eighteen persons in 1819. -
Portrait of Samuel Oldham Churchill, circa 1845
Samuel Churchill moved from Virginia to Kentucky when he was eight years old. He owned 415 acres of land along Beargrass Creek. The Churchills enslaved thirty-six individuals whose labor created economic advantage and comfort for the family. He had an interest in horse breeding and was president of the Louisville Association for the Improvement of Breed of Horses. Samuel Churchill was one of seven founding trustees of the Oakland Racecourse in Louisville in early 1832, which was located on fifty-one acres of land purchased from Samuel and Abigail Churchill, as well as from other landholders. His sons, John and Henry, inherited land from Samuel, which they leased to his nephew Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., founder of a new racecourse known today as Churchill Downs. -
Portrait of Abigail Oldham Churchill, circa 1845
Abigail Oldham Churchill came from a lineage of wealthy and prominent early Louisvillian settlers. She was just two years old when her father, Colonel William Oldham, died in the Battle of Wabash. Her mother, Penelope Pope, a twenty-two-year-old widow with four children, remarried into the Churchill family. In 1802, two weeks after her fourteenth birthday, Abigail married Samuel Churchill, her step-father's twenty-four-year-old brother. She gave birth to their first child when she was fifteen and had a child almost every other year over a span of thirty years. She had her last of fifteen children when she was forty-four years of age. -
Portrait of "Fanny" Frances Latham Slaughter, circa 1820
"Fanny" Frances Latham Slaughter was a wife and a mother who had strong ties with her family as seen through letters sent to her daughter and other relatives. "Time passes away tedious and heavy" writes Frances Latham Slaughter to her daughter (who left home) on 12 October 1816. Women who were separated from family and friends often experienced loneliness on the frontier. -
Miniature portrait of Ann Booth Gwathmey, circa 1804-1805
Women experienced death and loss regularly on the frontier. Ann Booth Gwathmey (1782-1862) was no exception. The daughter of William A. and Rebecca Hite Booth, she migrated to Jefferson County, KY, with her family as a child. She married John 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. See also the mourning necklace that belonged to her. The portrait is attributed to Benjamin Trott. -
Miniature portrait of John Gwathmey, circa 1804-1805
John Gwathmey (1774-1824) migrated to Jefferson County, KY, as a child with his parents Owen and Ann Clark Gwathmey. He married Ann Booth Gwathmey in 1800. He bought five acres near 6th and Cedar streets in Louisville, where he built a two-story brick house later known as the Grayson House. He operated the Indian Queen, a hotel at 6th and Main Streets, and an important social and civic hub in the city. In 1816, he sold his home and moved his family to New Orleans where he operated the Merchants Coffee House, the oldest coffee house in the city. In the era before photography, miniature portraits were popular mementos of loved ones that could be easily carried across long physical distances. The watercolor on ivory portraits were desired for the way artists could accurately capture a subject, working in such small dimensions. The portrait is attributed to Benjamin Trott. -
Miniature portrait of Ann Rogers Clark Gwathmey, circa 1804-1805
In the era before photography, miniature portraits were popular mementos of loved ones that could be easily carried across long physical distances. The watercolor on ivory portraits were desired for the way artists could accurately capture a subject, working in such small dimensions. Ann Rogers Clark Gwathmey (1755-1822) was the sister of George Rogers Clark and William Clark. She was married to Owen Gwathmey. She and her husband moved to Louisville with at least five of their twelve children in 1797. They purchased 335 acres and built a home near Harrod's Creek, east of Louisville not very far from her sister Lucy Croghan's home at Locust Grove. The proximity to her sister and other family members ensured that Ann had a strong social network to rely on. The Gwathmeys enslaved twenty individuals on their estate, whose labor created economic advantage and comfort for the family. The portrait is attributed to Benjamin Trott and believed to have been painted when the miniatures of her son John and his wife Ann were painted. -
Elizabeth Logan Hardin
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. -
Portrait of Martin D. Hardin, circa 1818-1820
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. -
Portrait of Elizabeth Wood Bayless, circa 1815
Elizabeth Wood Bayless was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She migrated to Mason County, Kentucky, with her family sometime within the first decade of Kentucky's statehood. Her father, George Wood, was a Revolutionary War Veteran who was one of the first Baptist preachers to settle in the region. Elizabeth married Benjamin Bayless in 1798 in Mason County, Kentucky. -
Travels through the Western Interior of the United States, from the year 1808 up to the year 1816
"Travels through the western interior of the United States, from the year 1808 up to the year 1816: with a particular description of a great part of Mexico, or New-Spain. Containing a particular account of thirteen different tribes of Indians through which the author passed, describing their manners, customs, &c., with some account of a tribe whose customs are similar to those of the ancient Welsh." -
Letter from Robert Lewis to William Foote, 27 June 1814
Letter discussing a treaty of matrimony. -
"Analysis of Love"
Essay discussing women and love, and the institution of marriage. "The women are degraded to a level with the inferior animals, are expected to perform all the most tiresome, offensive and laborious services and unless when the instinct of nature prompts their savage lords to embrace them are treated with no sort of sympathy or equality." -
Letter from William Fry to Ann M. Fry, 29 January 1817
This letter discusses how their cousin Susan had consumed too much paregoric for her cough and it "disordered her system." Also updates on the wedding of Jane Rochester. -
Letter from Ann Thruston to Captain John O'Fallon, 30 January 1819
Reports to her brother of social news, the impending marriage of Ann Bullitt to a widower, Mr. Howard. Says it was generally thought that Ann would never marry because “she would have no person that would ever think of her fortune but must marry her for herself alone.” Tells of an enslaved man who was executed for burning down his master’s house with the anxiety to kill his mistress, who hid in the corn field. -
Letter from Thomas Swaine to Captain Anthony Bartlett, 27 February 1795
Notes he has sent multiple letters to Captain Bartlett, which he apparently did not receive. Discusses hostility of Native Americans, who “come in to pave a way for a permanent Treaty,” states many officers are home on furlough, sends him best wishes for his recent marriage. -
Letter from Amos Kendall to F. G. Flugel, 16 August 1815
Kendall expresses his desire to meet Flugel's sister and perhaps marry her. He lists all of the attributes he thinks are necessary in a good wife. -
Letter from Alexander Edmiston to Margaret Edmiston, 28 February 1807
Letter from Alexander Edmiston to his sister, Margaret, describes the health of the people in Yarrow Green, an outbreak of the mumps, a wedding, playing card and talking at the wedding, a dancing party, and promises to attend his sister's quilting. He also refers to the number of unmarried ladies and moving them to the frontier if they are over twenty-five.