The Filson Historical Society Blog

John Mason Brown, a native of Louisville, was a prominent New York theater critic, who wrote for such newspapers as the New York Evening Post from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.  He was so respected, in fact, that he served on the Pulitzer Prize drama jury, from which he resigned in 1963 after the advisory board refused his recommendation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

The first page of the diary features these photos of a young John Mason Brown.

But in 1914, he was just a young teenager in Louisville, beginning a diary that he would keep almost daily through 1918.  The diary, which was recently cataloged and made available to researchers, reveals numerous insights into the life of youth in the city during the early part of the 20th Century.  It also sheds light on the city’s broader cultural scene, and the early tastes of a young critic, as Brown meticulously recounts each movie and performance he sees at the city’s numerous theaters.

The diary would be a rich resource for researchers interested in a number of topics, including education, childhood, and the social aspects of World War I, but would also satisfy the curiosity of anyone interested in the finer points of Louisville’s history in the early 20th Century.

Margaretha Beatty's January 30, 1854 letter to her father-in-law, Adam Beatty.

The collections at The Filson are known for their wealth of information on the history of Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley. The Filson’s holdings include a variety of materials from the residents of the Ohio Valley dating from the first settlement of Kentucky in the 1700s through the present day. However, those who settled in the Ohio Valley often had a large web of family and friends stretching across the United States, and in some cases, around the world. As a result, many collections include letters and other items describing locales far from Kentucky. One example is the Beatty-Quisenberry Family Papers. During the antebellum era, the family of Adam Beatty, a Mason County judge and farmer, had members in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, and California. Their friends and acquaintances covered much of the eastern United States. The materials generated by these people living beyond the Ohio Valley demonstrate the patterns of life in other regions and enrich our understanding of life in Kentucky and the surrounding area.

In the 1850s, one of Beatty’s sons and his family moved to Sacramento, California. Mary Beatty, Adam Beatty’s daughter-in-law, frequently wrote to her in-laws, describing life in California in the early years of statehood. In one paragraph from a January 1854 letter from Beatty to her father-in-law, she reveals a variety of insights into life in California:

Sacramento is now the Capital of the state and I suppose it will always be we have a very fine state House and water works, the water from the river is distributed all over the city they are putting up gas works to light the city also. We had a dreadful accident here on last Saturday, the steam Boat Pearl blew up and killed about 60 persons. 53 bodies have been found and buried, or to be buried this afternoon. A solemn procession went out of the city yesterday to the grave yard to bury those that were buried yesterday. It is estimated that there were 7000 in procession beside those who went as spectators. There were 13 chinese bodies carried out, and a procession of 700 Chinese with Chinese Music. The Christians and Pagans were burying their countrymen at the same time. Quite near to each other with their different rites. At every Chinese grave there was a stick of incense and red candles burning and in the midst of the graves they had provisions spread out, with a hog roasted whole.

In that one section, Beatty reveals political developments in the still young California, the dangers of nineteenth century life, the large Chinese presence in California, and the close proximity of the Chinese and white populations.

Although letters like Beatty’s are less common in The Filson’s holdings than materials dealing with Kentucky and the Ohio Valley, they are present throughout the collections. They offer a breadth to The Filson’s holdings which makes them of use to researchers whose interests extend well beyond this region.

The Filson Civil War Field Institute will be taking a trip to Georgia this fall to study “The Atlanta Campaign”.

Before our group gets to our destination, many months go into the planning and organizing. Anything from contacting our prominent keynote speaker to making sure our box lunches show up at the right battlefield. (Some will argue which is more important.) During these early stages of coordinating, I sometimes stumbled upon some interesting nuggets that I’d like to share.

Locomotive #3, "The General" at Louisville & Nashville Railroad Louisville Union Station in 1962. L & N rebuilt "The General" after many years of display at Chattanooga Union Station. The engine was converted to burn oil and ran short trips over much of the L & N commemorating 100 years after its participation in the "great locomotive chase" during the Civil War.

Here’s one.

The Background

Part of our trip will also take us along the route that was made famous by Andrew’s Raiders in the event known as “The Great Locomotive Chase”. A brief summary: the importance of control over the railroads was recognized early on in the Civil War as a resource for troop movement and supplies. On April 12, 1862 a group compiled of civilians and Union soldiers embarked on a daring feat with the primary goal of disrupting the vital link between Atlanta, GA and Chattanooga, TN. A civilian scout and part-time spy, James J. Andrews (a citizen of Flemingsburg, Kentucky led the rouge band of 20 men upon a hijacked steam locomotive, “The General” with plans to burn bridges, pull up rails and “if successful, will change the whole aspect of the war, and aid materially in bringing an early peace to our distracted country.”

Pursuit of Andrew’s Raiders and the General happened immediately on foot, by hand car and by train, but the chase literally ran out of steam after an exciting eighty-seven miles. Only eight of the twenty men (Andrews among them) were tried as spies and executed in Atlanta. The rest either escaped or were exchanged. Nevertheless, the train thieves were hailed in the North as heroes.

In the process of editing a trip brochure, I asked our Special Collections Department if we had any images that may relate to our autumn excursion. Robin Wallace, one of our Associate Curators of Special Collections, located this image of “The General” stopping in Louisville in 1962.

submitted by
Scott Scarboro
Special Events & Education Coordinator

S.I.M. Major (second from left) was extremely popular, especially with members of the fairer sex.

The S.I.M. Major papers presented an especially interesting challenge.  The collection, which consists primarily of personal correspondence from Major’s time in the U.S. Navy, revealed a multifaceted and extremely interesting life.  By surveying the collection, one comes to the conclusion that Major was a smart, brave, sophisticated, and especially talented man.  He served his country during three wars (the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, and as the naval attache to the U.S. embassy in France at the outset of World War I), and held the important position of chief of railroad operations during the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua from 1912-1913.

A postcard from one of Major's many female admirers. The note on the other side reads, "If you were in this man's position, would you be fishing for the same thing as he is?"

Because of the nature of the correspondence, however, one aspect of Major’s personality that stands out is how popular he was with his peers.  And naturally, as a tall, handsome, and successful naval officer, he was also quite popular with the opposite sex.  The collection contains an extraordinarily high number of love letters to Major from women all over the world.

The sheer volume of the correspondence of this sort made it a subject that was impossible to ignore, but a suitable Library of Congress-approved heading proved hard to decide on.  Romance seemed to be not quite right, and Promiscuity implied certain activity that could not be confirmed.  Finally, after much discussion among the staff, we decided that Sailors — Relations with women carried the perfect connotation to describe this one aspect of a collection rich with interesting material regardingthe romantic life of this Kentucky Cassanova. Major did eventually settle down. He retired from the Navy in 1924 and married Agnes Willson in 1932. They lived in Versailles, Kentucky until his death in 1952.