CLICK "LECTURE SERIES" ON THE BANNER FOR THE 2024 SEASON LINEUP!
The Frankfort Heritage Lecture Series is intended to explore themes in Frankfort and Franklin County cultural history - the big, small, and tangential - including the people, places, and events that shaped our community and environment, as well as include topics in art, culture, and historic preservation such as architecture, industry, music, painters, poetry, archaeology, public policy, and more.
It is also intended to align with the efforts and purpose of the America250 and America250KY commissions by telling our community's story in the larger context of American and Kentucky history.
We are proud to collaborate with the Paul Sawyier Public Library and Frankfort Plant Board!
All events are free and will be followed by a brief Q&A with the speaker. If the presentation is part of a book tour, a book signing will follow the Q&A.
Unless otherwise specified, all events take place:
SECOND SATURDAYS OF THE MONTH
1:00 pm
PAUL SAWYIER PUBLIC LIBRARY
RIVER ROOM
319 WAPPING STREET
FRANKFORT, KY 40601
To register for these lectures, visit: www.pspl.org/fhls
To watch past FHLS lectures, click here: https://www.frankfortheritageweek.com/past-lectures
Freddie Johnson, Distillery VIP Visitor Lead
Buffalo Trace Distillery
Freddie Johnson shares the life history of a young boy growing up in an environment surrounded by legends in the world of bourbon. Join us as he creates a narrative allowing you to enjoy this journey while Leaving Footprints In Bourbon History!
Freddie Johnson is a third generation employee at Buffalo Trace Distillery and serves as its Distillery VIP Visitor Lead. Born in Paris, KY (Bourbon County), he spent some of his early childhood summers in the mountains of Breathitt County with his maternal grandfather who was a coal miner and friend to the moonshiners. The family moved to Frankfort, KY when he was five. Freddie enjoyed hunting, fishing and hanging out with his paternal grandfather, Jimmy Johnson Sr., and father, Jimmy Johnson Jr., at what is now known as Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Freddie was in the middle of a successful career as a network/operations engineer in Atlanta, GA when he put all of it aside to fulfill a promise made to his father, Jimmy, more than 20 years earlier. He had promised his father that he would work at the Distillery during his lifetime so they could say they had three generations of the Johnson family that worked at Buffalo Trace. Freddie took early retirement and moved back to care for his father and brother. Jimmy got him a job as a tour guide at the Distillery in 2002 but Freddie has been in and around the Distillery since he was five years old.
Freddie weaves together his childhood memories with the Distillery’s rich history as his entertains thousands each year in various tours around Buffalo Trace. One of the Distillery’s most popular and highly sought after tour guides, Freddie is the recipient of the 2015 ROSE (Recognition of Service Excellence) Award, the 2017 Lexington (Ky) Hospitality Award and was inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2018.
James M. Prichard, author and retired archivist
Embattled Capital: Frankfort During the Civil War (2014)
Frankfort occupies a unique place in the annals of the Civil War. In 1862 it became the only loyal state capital to be occupied by Confederate forces during the war. In 1864 the capital was attacked by elements of Morgan's raiders in a sharp action in which Governor Thomas E. Bramlette and other state officials took an active part. This talk will cover the major events and colorful episodes that occurred in Frankfort during the great conflict.
James M. Prichard is a historian and public speaker who resides in Louisville. He received his B.A. and M.A. in History at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Following his tenure as Research Room Supervisor at the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives (1985-2008) he worked in the Special Collections Department at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville from 2013 to 2022. In addition to writing the Frankfort Heritage Press book Embattled Capital: Frankfort During the Civil War (2014), he has contributed essays to the following scholarly works: Virginia at War: 1863, Confederate Generals in the Western Theater volumes 2 and 4, Kentuckians in Gray, Kentucky Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Louisville, Biographical Dictionary of the Union, Heidler’s Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, The World Encyclopedia of Slaver, and Confederate Generals in the Western Theater, as well as Civil War Times, North and South, and True West magazines.
Sylvia Sousa Coffey, president
Kentucky Women's History Alliance
One of the most dramatic but little-known episodes in our state history – a seventy-year battle fought nationwide and in every state, finally won with nary a shot fired. Come and enjoy learning about the strong, determined Kentucky women who did their part to attain the vote for one-half the population.
Sylvia Coffey is the co-founder of the Kentucky Women’s History Alliance – the nation’s first state chapter affiliate of the National Women’s History Alliance, the founder of the Woman Suffrage Centennial Celebration and co-founder of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Chorus with Nancy Atcher. A folk/dance teacher originally, Sylvia also worked for Kentucky State Government for nearly twenty years, played stand-up bass with a band that played Celtic and Anglo-American tunes regionally, and has participated in the development of two week-long dance schools, the Capital City Historical Dancers and Musicians, The Pridefull Ball (Without Prejudice), and the local dance troupe – The Glitterbugs.
William "Drew" Andrews, Ph.D., P.G, Section Head, Geologic Mapping Section
Kentucky Geological Survey
The rivers and streams around Frankfort have not always flowed in their present courses. This presentation will use new digital resources to examine the landscape evidence for the ancient shifts and changes in the local stream valleys that have sculpted the Frankfort landscape.
Dr. William Andrews is the Section Head of the Geologic Mapping Section of the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS), where he has worked since 1996. Most recently, he was the Acting Director and State Geologist of KGS. With expertise in geographic information systems (GIS), geomorphology, and geologic mapping, William is also an adjunct assistant professor of geology at the University of Kentucky's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
A life-long Kentuckian born in Frankfort, William received his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Kentucky, is a member of the Geological Society of America, serves on the US National Committee for the International Union of Geological Sciences, and is licensed as a professional geologist in Kentucky.
Daniel Gifford, Ph.D., historian and author
Benefactors of Posterity: The Founding Era of the Filson Historical Society, 1884-1899 (Fall 2024)
Dr. Daniel Gifford shares many surprises and new discoveries in his latest book: Benefactors of Posterity: The Founding Era of the Filson Historical Society, 1884-1899. Founded in 1884, the Filson Club quickly grew into a preeminent arbiter of Kentucky history, eventually becoming today’s Filson Historical Society. Benefactors of Posterity reexamines this crucial founding era, pulling back the layers of accomplishment and disappointment; illumination and obfuscation. Drawing from a wide range of sources, Gifford places us in Gilded Age Kentucky at a time of heady opportunity for some and growing subjugation for others. In the middle of it all was the Filson Club, whose multifaceted origin story provides a window into Louisville, Frankfort, and the evolution of historical study at the dawn of a new century.
Dr. Gifford is a public historian who focuses on American popular and visual culture, as well as museums in American culture. He received his PhD from George Mason University in 2011. Daniel Gifford's career spans both academia and public history, including several years with the Smithsonian Institution. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Patrick Lewis, Ph.D., President/CEO
The Filson Historical Society
In his 2024 book Benefactors of Posterity, Daniel Gifford explored the motivations and activities of early history advocates and institution-builders who established the Filson Historical Society in Louisville in 1884. But as that generation passed on after the turn of the century, who would be the leaders to pick up the mantle of archiving, museum work, research, and publication in the state? The Filson found a new generation of leadership in president Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston and director of publications Otto Rothert, who solidified and began to professionalize the history professions in Kentucky, alongside contemporaries at the Kentucky Historical Society and the growing state university system. This presentation will trace those efforts, evaluate their success, and reflect on what they mean for Kentuckians today.
Dr. Patrick Lewis will be President & CEO of the Filson Historical Society by the time of his lecture in January. He came to the Filson in 2019 as served as the Director of Collections & Research and co-editor of Ohio Valley History journal. A Trigg County native, he graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky, where he taught for two years. Before coming to the Filson, he worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society. He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the James Graham Brown Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War(University Press of Kentucky, 2015) and co-editor of Playing At War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games (Louisiana State University Press, Fall 2024).
OUT NOW! Purchase Benefactors of Posterity HERE: https://www.butlerbooks.com/benefactors-of-posterity.html
Dr. Vanessa Holden, Associate Professor of History and Director of African American and Africana Studies
Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative, University of Kentucky
Kentucky was the site of one of the most important slave markets in the Upper South. Enslaved Kentuckians played an important role in developing the Commonwealth. Dr. Holden will explore this vital role and the ins and outs of how slavery bolstered Kentucky's economy.
Dr. Vanessa M. Holden (She/Her) is an associate professor of History and serves as director of African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky (UKY). She is also the director of the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative. Dr. Holden’s book, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community (University of Illinois Press), is the winner of the 2021 James Broussard Best First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). Her writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies; Perspectives on History; Process: A Blog for American History; and The Rumpus. Dr. Dr. Holden serves as a faculty adviser on several public history and digital humanities projects including Freedom on the Move and The Digital Access Project (DAP). Her current research focuses on slavery and enslaved people in Kentucky. of publications Otto Rothert, who solidified and began to professionalize the history professions in Kentucky, alongside contemporaries at the Kentucky Historical Society and the growing state university system. This presentation will trace those efforts, evaluate their success, and reflect on what they mean for Kentuckians today.
Stuart Sanders, Director of Research and Publications
Kentucky Historical Society
When the popular musical Hamilton showcased the celebrated duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, it reminded twenty-first-century Americans that some honor-bound citizens once used negotiated, formal fights as a way to settle differences. During the Civil War, two prominent Kentuckians—one a Union colonel and the other a pro-Confederate civilian—continued this legacy by dueling. At a time when thousands of soldiers were slaughtering one another on battlefields, Colonel Leonidas Metcalfe and William T. Casto transformed the bank of the Ohio River into their own personal battleground. On May 8, 1862, these two men, both of whom were steeped in Southern honor culture, fought a formal duel with rifles at sixty yards. And, as in the fight between Hamilton and Burr, only one man walked away.
Anatomy of a Duel: Secession, Civil War, and the Evolution of Kentucky Violence examines why White male Kentuckians engaged in the "honor culture" of duels and provides fascinating narratives that trace the lives of duelists. Stuart W. Sanders explores why, during a time when Americans were killing one another in open, brutal warfare, Casto and Metcalfe engaged in the process of negotiating and fighting a duel. In deconstructing the event, Sanders details why these distinguished Kentuckians found themselves on the dueling ground during the nation's bloodiest conflict, how society and the Civil War pushed them to fight, why duels continued to be fought in Kentucky even after this violent confrontation, and how Kentuckians applied violence after the Civil War. Anatomy of a Duel is a comprehensive and compelling look at how the secession crisis sparked the Casto-Metcalfe duel—a confrontation that impacted the evolution of violence in Kentucky.
Stuart Sanders is the Director of Research and Publications at the Kentucky Historical Society, where he oversees the agency’s library, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, the historical markers program, the America250KY Commission, and the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition. Before coming to KHS, Stuart worked to preserve and interpret Kentucky’s largest Civil War battleground as the executive director of the Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association. He has served a number of roles KHS, including managing KHS’s outreach efforts, administering multiple statewide commissions, and communicating the relevance and value of Kentucky history. He is the author of five books and has been a staff member since 2005.
Nicky Hughes, museum curator
Sitting on a hillside overlooking the Kentucky River and downtown Frankfort, the Old State Arsenal has been a prominent Frankfort landmark since 1850. For well over a century, this gothic revival style brick castle actively supported the Kentucky Militia, the Kentucky State Guard, the Kentucky National Guard, the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs, and other state agencies. Long a storehouse for weapons, uniforms, and other supplies, the Arsenal once actually came under hostile gunfire. For the last half century, it has housed the Kentucky Military History Museum, a joint project of the Department of Military Affairs and the Kentucky Historical Society. The venerable structure has played an important role in Kentucky's military history, and it preserves many important reminders of that rich military heritage.
Nicky Hughes went to work for the Kentucky Historical Society in 1973. He was very active in the establishment of the Kentucky Military History Museum, which opened in 1974. He served as curator of that museum until 1986 and remained with KHS until 1997, acting as Museums Division Manager and then as curator of the Old State Capitol. He finished his time with Kentucky state government in the Finance and Administration Cabinet’s Office of Historic Properties.
In 2000, Hughes joined the City of Frankfort’s Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Sites. He was responsible for the establishment of Leslie Morris Park on Fort Hill as a functional historic site and the formation of the Capital City Museum. Retiring from full-time work for the City of Frankfort in 2012, he later served as Director of the Shelby County Historical Society and is now Innkeeper at the Sandford Duncan Inn, a historic site in Simpson County. A co-founder of Frankfort Heritage Press, Hughes co-authored three major pictoral histories of Frankfort and a history of the Frankfort Cemetery.
Presentation No. 1 - "The Lafayette Trail in Kentucky: A Bluegrass Story of American Republicanism Narrated by a French Marquis"
Julien Ischer, Founder and President
The Lafayette Trail, Inc.
In 1824, French-born Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette returned to the United States for the fourth and final time at the invitation of Congress. As the last surviving major general of the Continental Army, Lafayette invoked a powerful revolutionary war imagery at a time of great political division. His French aristocratic credentials made his confirmation of the U.S. political experiment particularly meaningful to Americans. During his “Farewell Tour”, Lafayette visited Kentucky. Find out how Lafayette used his physical journey across the Bluegrass State in May 1825 to narrate a story of superior U.S. republicanism. As the nation celebrates the bicentennial of Lafayette's Farewell Tour (2024-2025) and approaches the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (2026), now is the time to look back at Lafayette's legacy of national unity and come together around a celebration of the United States as a revolutionary form of self-government.
Julien Icher is a French historian and geographer. He is the founder and president of The Lafayette Trail, Inc., a nonprofit organization promoting a greater understanding of Lafayette's legacy both in the U.S. and France. Julien also serves as host and director of Follow The Frenchmen, a YouTube-based documentary series produced by The Lafayette Trail, Inc. exploring the legacy of General Lafayette. It seeks to democratize access to educational materials about the inspirational life story of General Lafayette and promote a greater understanding of the Frenchman's lifelong evangelism of unalienable natural rights, constitutional liberties, and American-style republicanism.
Julien holds a bachelors degree with a double major in history and geography from the University of Toulouse in France as well as two masters degrees from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, one in human geography, and the other one in digital geographies with a focus on the integration of spatial data into web environments.
Richard Taylor, Ph.D., author
Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape (2018)
The subject of what is often regarded as Robert Penn Warren's best novel as well as unfinished play by Edgar Alan Poe, the murder of Solomon P. Sharp by Jeroboam Beauchamp in vindication of an alleged affront to virtue in 1825 is a classic tale of misdirected honor involving seduction, revenge, and a suicide pact, a killing that attracted national attention and was followed by a 137-page confession by the perpetrator. It is an instance where the actual facts eclipse almost any array of facts a novelist might imagine.
Dr. Richard Taylor is the author of numerous collections of poetry, to historical novels, and several books relating to Kentucky history, including Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he has received two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as an Al Smith Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. Dr. Taylor received a bachelors and Ph.D. in English from the University of Kentucky and a masters in English and a Juris Doctorate from University of Louisville. Practicing law for a few months, he gave up legal practice, a leave-taking he regards as his gift to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
During graduate school, he taught in high schools across Kentucky with the Poetry-in-the-Schools Program through the Kentucky Arts Council, editing an anthology of student writing called Cloud Bumping. Embarking on a career in education, he taught at Kentucky State University in Frankfort until retiring in 2008. During that time he taught in the Governor’s School for the Arts as well as serving as director of the Governor’s Scholars Program on two campuses. He also spent a year in Denmark as scholar-teacher in the Fulbright Program, also teaching a graduate course at Kangwon University in South Korea as well as short periods teaching abroad in England and Ireland in a studies-abroad program.
Dr. Taylor has received publication awards from the Kentucky Historical Society and the Thomas D. Clark Medallion for his Elkhorn book as well as receiving a Distinguished Professor Award at KSU. Recently retired after fourteen years from Transylvania University as Keenan Visiting Writer, he is co-owner of Poor Richard’s Books and lives on a small farm outside Frankfort, Kentucky. He was inducted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2023.