Posted in History Mystery on 09/11/2009 12:39 pm by Sarah-Jane M. Poindexter
This entry marks the beginning of a new series of posts on the Filson blog: the Mystery Item. From time to time, a Filson staff member will choose an item from the society’s collections and challenge the blog readers to identify the item. The first person to give the correct answer will win an item from the Filson’s bookstore. Today, Sarah-Jane Poindexter, Assistant Curator of Special Collections, presents a portrait of a famous Kentuckian.
Who is this mysterious individual?
Clue #1: He was a U.S. soldier and statesman that once held the title of Senior Officer of the United State Army.
Clue#2: After his death in 1825, it was discovered that this mystery person was a paid secret agent for Spain and had sworn alliegence to the country’s King.
Please submit your guess in the comments field below. If the mystery item is not correctly identified, the answer will be posted one week from today.
Posted in Browsing the Collections on 09/08/2009 12:26 pm by Jacob Lee
A large part of our work in Special Collections is helping researchers access manuscript materials. Over the years, an archivist notices patterns in research topics, and it is interesting to observe which collections are frequently used and which are not. Some collections are used by a variety of researchers working on any number of topics from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Sometimes, though, collections are overlooked. Either based on the way they were cataloged or some other twist of fate, they are never used by researchers when they would prove to be a wealth of information.
Daniel Boone's 1787 entry in the Kentucky Fee Book.
Recently, I was in the stacks retrieving materials for a researcher when I spotted an interesting volume on one of our shelves. It was labeled “Kentucky Fee Book, 1787-1788.” Usually, any frontier era collections are heavily used, but I had no recollection of ever pulling this volume. Curious, I glanced through the record book and almost immediately began spotting the biggest names in Kentucky’s frontier history: Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, James Wilkinson, and Simon Kenton, among many others. The book contains over two hundred pages recording legal fees paid for a variety of actions ranging from filing suits to registering land claims.
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