Frankfort Heritage Lecture Series

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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).

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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. 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.

Douglas A. Boyd, Ph.D., Director

Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries

Craw was a small neighborhood in north Frankfort, Kentucky, on fifty acres of swampy, low-lying land along the Kentucky River. To many neighborhood outsiders, Craw was considered the “bad” part of town, carrying a long list of deeply imbedded historical associations. However, neighborhood residents saw Craw from a different perspective. By 1950, every building within the fifty acres once known as “Craw,” “the Bottom,” or “Crawfish Bottom” was destroyed at the hand of urban renewal. Author Doug Boyd will reflect on his 2011 book Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community as well as the role of oral history in documenting and preserving community history and memory.

Dr. Doug Boyd directs the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. Boyd envisioned, designed, and implemented the open-source and free Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), which synchronizes text with audio and video online. Boyd is the co-editor of the book Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement and he is the author of the book Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community. Boyd served as president of the Oral History Association in the United States in 2016-2017 and conducted research in Australia as a Fulbright Scholar in 2019. 

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.

David Pollack, Ph.D., Director

Kentucky Archaeological Survey

This presentation focuses on an early to mid-nineteenth century cemetery located in downtown Frankfort. It was used by the city’s enslaved and working class people of African, European, and mixed heritage prior to the Civil War. Upon the establishment of the Frankfort Cemetery on the bluffs overlooking the city in 1844, this earlier cemetery fell into disrepair. In time, buildings and parking lots covered it; and for all intents and purposes, it was lost to history. When construction of a new state office building began, the cemetery was rediscovered. This presentation will provide an overview of the work carried out by archaeologists to locate the graves and remove the human remains prior to building construction. It also will discuss what was learned from the study of the human remains, the associated material culture items – like coffin hardware and objects buried with the deceased - and the spatial distribution of the graves within the cemetery. The publication Frankfort’s Forgotten Cemetery (2009) will be available for purchase.

Dr. David Pollack received his B.A. in Anthropology from Beloit College in 1977, his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1998. He worked for the Kentucky Heritage Council from 1982 until 2008 as a Staff Archaeologist and the Site Protection Program Manager. Since 1996, he has been the Director of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, a program of Western Kentucky University's Department of Society, Culture, Crime & Justice Studies. He has over forty years of experience in Kentucky archaeology and has conducted archaeological research at sites throughout the Commonwealth. He has published extensively on Kentucky archaeology, with an emphasis on indigenous village farmers.

Gilbert du Motier, better known worldwide as the Marquis de Lafayette, was a military hero of the American Revolution and a visionary architect of democracy, freedom, and human rights. A major general of the Continental Army at just 19 years old and a close friend of George Washington, Lafayette secured France’s alliance and transformed the tide of the American Revolution, proving that freedom could – and should – be won. Today, Lafayette’s legacy rests in the democratic republicanism values of the United States and France, in the ideals and bonds of democracies worldwide, in the global commitment to protect fundamental freedoms, and in the framework of transformational documents such as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

In 1824, Lafayette returned to the United States as “The Nation’s Guest” and embarked on a Farewell Tour of the Union. On May 14, 1825, he arrived in Frankfort to thunderous applause and fanfare. As he entered Frankfort from the road that now bears his name, the citizens of Frankfort and Kentucky government gave him a hero’s welcome and hosted a parade, a dinner, and a ball in his honor. To commemorate the bicentennial of his visit, two lectures and three speakers will explore Lafayette’s legacy, the Farewell Tour, his connection to the family of Kentucky’s first U.S. senator, and his 1825 visit to Frankfort. 

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.

Presentation No. 2- "Ties That Bind: The Unexpected Connection between Lafayette & Liberty Hall"

Jessica Dawkins, Executive Director

John Walker, Curator of Collections

Liberty Hall Historic Site

While many know the Marquis de Lafayette visited Liberty Hall in 1825, most assumed it was due to the network of Kentucky’s Founding Father John Brown. However, new research has uncovered an unexpected connection between the Brown family and the Marquis, one that links him to the family of Margaretta Brown during the Revolutionary War. Join Jessica Dawkins and John Walker as they share research, stories, and family ties that culminated in a historic visit to Frankfort’s most distinguished home.

Jessica Stavros has been a museum professional and local historian for nearly 20 years. She received a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Louisville and a Master’s degree in Business Communication from Spalding University, both of which were fully funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Washington DC. She is also a graduate of the History Leadership Institute, class of 2016.

Her passion lies in 19th century Ohio Valley history, and this focus brought her to work within historic house & community museums in the Louisville area. As the Southeast Regional Director for the Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites, she directed 3 historic sites located in Southern Indiana – Culbertson Mansion in New Albany, Corydon Capitol in Corydon, and Lanier Mansion in Madison. Most recently, she served as Deputy Director of the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, KY.

By taking an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to museum management, Jessica demonstrates a tangible, authentic commitment to audiences and communities served. She believes historical organizations are visitor-serving and mission-based, but they are also local businesses, economic drivers, and cultural generators. Through inspirational storytelling, creative programming, and intentional collaboration, Jessica is a passionate advocate for history as a crucial tool in the life of the everyday citizen.

She also serves on non-profit boards & committees, including Louisville Public Media’s Community Advisory Board and Happy Birthday Park. She was Board Chair for Farmington Historic Plantation and Friends of Culbertson Mansion, and recognitions include Business First’s 20 People to Know in Tourism & Hospitality and the New Albany Hometown Hero Award.

John Walker is Curator of Collections at Liberty Hall Historic Site. After growing up in Kentucky he spent many years traveling the United States and living abroad. He has worked as a journalist, sailor, website designer and office administrator. While at the University of Wisconsin – Madison he studied material history preservation and Native American archives. Walker returned to Kentucky in 2024 to work at Liberty Hall. When not working he like taking long country drives, doing family genealogy, and going to classical concerts. 

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.