Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections : About

Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Ky. Project. This project provides a glimpse of African American life in Kentucky's capital. The community's families, neighborhoods, and occupations, as well as religious and educational traditions are revealed in this collection of photographed and oral history interviews shared by local residents in 1995.

C. Frank Dunn Photographs Collection, 1900-1954. Dunn, a Lexington historian, collected these photographs primarily during the four years (1928 - 1932) he served as executive secretary of the Kentucky Progress Commission and founding editor of the Kentucky Progress Magazine, forerunner of In Kentucky. The scope of the collection also reflects other interests and positions he held, including his work for the Lexington and Frankfort Chambers of Commerce, the Daniel Boone Bicentennial Commission, AAA automobile club, and on the editorial staff of the Lexington Herald, using the pen name "Horsefeathers." The collection contains many photos of Lexington and Frankfort residences and businesses, Kentucky highways, horses, industries, sports, and river and mountain scenes. Many were published in Kentucky Progress Magazine and in the Lexington press.

Arthur J. Goupille Photographs. Goupille took these photographs, many in the Laurel County area, ca. 1913. This collection is part of Photographs, Small Collections.

James A. Hibben Photos (Kentucky River). Photographer Hibben documented the Falls City steamboat packet on the Kentucky River ca. 1905. This collection is part of Photographs, Small Collections.

Hifner Photo Collection of Woodford County Schools. This photo album was created in 1892 for the Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Woodford County Schools Superintendent M. B. Hifner ordered a photograph of each public and private school building in the county for the educational exhibit at the exposition.

Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), 1934. Twenty-eight Kentucky historic sites were photographed in March 1934, including the Old State Capitol National Historic Landmark.

Roy W. Hoewischer Collection. Hoewischer was born in Galconda, Illinois on November 21, 1891. He was sworn into the U.S. Army in 1917 in Fort Thomas, Kentucky and spent most of his service in France where he worked as a mechanic for the 19th Co., 3rd Motor Mechanics, United States Air Service. Returning to Kentucky in 1919, Hoewischer continued to live in Paducah until his death in 1970. This collection contains a scrapbook of photographs of biplanes, monoplanes, dirigibles, airplane hangars, balloons, and salvage yards. Also part of the collection are a letter of promotion, a listing of job duties for Hoewischer, and newspaper clippings related to World War I and the development of airplanes.

Jillson Kentucky Geological Survey Photographs. Willard Rouse Jillson was the Kentucky State Geologist during the years 1919-1932. This collection includes photographs documenting natural resources in fifty-eight of Kentucky's counties for the Kentucky Geological Survey in 1920-1921. There is also a Kentucky Bureau of Immigration album, created in 1885. During the 1880s the Kentucky State Geologist also served as Commissioner of the Kentucky Bureau of Immigration. This bureau was designed to encourage Europeans to settle in the Commonwealth. The album, also known as the "Swiss Colony" album, shows some of the immigrant colonies, including Bernstadt, Strassburg, and Langnau in Laurel County; and New Austria in Boyle County.

Kentucky Constitutional Convention Delegates Photo Album, 1890-91. In its two hundred-year history, the Commonwealth of Kentucky has been governed by four constitutions. They were adopted in 1792, 1799, 1850, and 1891. This album depicts the framers of Kentucky's current constitution, drafted in 1891. Only a typescript copy of the constitution is known. In the absence of the original copy handwritten by William Randall Ramsey, the delegate from Laurel and Rockcastle counties, the typescript has been recognized as the official copy of the commonwealth's current constitution. The 102-page document, preserved at the Kentucky Historical Society, contains the text as originally adopted in 1891.

Kentucky Military Institute Class Album, 1859

Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) Class Album, 1859. The Kentucky Military Institute was located on the outskirts of Frankfort, Ky. This is the class album of C. E. Merrill from Carrollton, Mississippi. His album tracks the fates of his classmates, including service and death in the Civil War. The album also contains the earliest-known photograph of Kentucky's Old State Capitol.

KHS General Picture File. These photographs, collected from a variety of sources, document Kentucky places, people, and topics of general interest. Most of the images date from the twentieth century, though some date from the late nineteenth century. Geographic coverage reaches across the Commonwealth, documenting everyday life as well as watershed events.

Kraemer Art Company Postcard Proofs. The Kraemer Art Company collected these photographs of traditions and sites across Kentucky from ca. 1905-1930 to publish as postcards.

Nicola Marschall Collection. The collection of artist Nicola Marschall includes four photo albums, a scrapbook, and a Marschall family ambrotype, spanning ca. 1850s-1910s. There are family photos, as well as images of 19th-century political figures, royalty, artists, composers, writers, and performers. The Kentucky Historical Society museum collection also includes several portraits by Marschall.

Ohio River Portrait Project. This collection documents, through the copies of privately owned photographs and oral interviews, the history and traditions of Kentuckians living along the Ohio River. Almost 4000 photographs offered by 244 participants were copied at eleven Kentucky communities along the Ohio River during the spring and summer of 1990. In addition, nearly 200 oral history interviews provide personal recollections that complement the images.

Philadelphia Commercial Museum Collection. These photos document Kentucky agriculture and industry ca. 1900-1930, including hemp processing, lumber mills, and asphalt quarrying.

Pine Mountain Settlement School Photograph Collection. Ethel Marion Wright, a teacher at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County from 1919-1921, took and collected photographs for an album about her experiences at the school. The subjects of the photographs include students and teachers working, individual and group shots of students and teachers, teachers having a picnic, the area surrounding the school, and local people who lived near the school.

Milton H. Smith Photo Albums, 1892-1894. Smith, president of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, collected these two albums. 1) "Log Mountain, Bear Creek, Bell Co., Ky." depicts lumber, coal (Log Mountain Cannel Coal & Timber Co.) and railroad (Cumberland River & Tennessee RR) industries near Pineville, Ky. ca. 1894. 2) "Farm Scenes on the lands of the St. Bernard Coal Co. 'How we live in Hopkins Co., Ky., by the Farmer'"depicts agriculture, coal mining, cattle, and recreation in the Hopkins County area.

Townsend Photo Collection. These photos, collected by John Wilson Townsend, show scenes from the Frankfort, Ky. area ca. 1883-1890. This collection is part of Photographs, Small Collections.

Vintage Photo Processes. This is a compilation of 19th-century daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and prints dating from the 1840s-1890s. The collection also includes Civil War cartes-de-visite and photo albums.

Wolff, Gretter, Cusick Studio Negatives. This Frankfort photography studio, operated successively by E. Carl Wolff, Harry A. Gretter, and Forrest Cusick with his wife Anna and her brothers, documented families, businesses, neighborhoods, industry, and state government in the capital. Studio portraits comprise a large portion of this collection of approximately 100,000 glass plate and flexible negatives.