A Forged Painting and A Forged Story to Go With It

Interesting bit of art forgery here, courtesy of the New York Times:













"For 32 years, a portrait of a serene Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill., signed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived at the White House for six months in 1864.

"The story behind the picture was compelling: Mrs. Lincoln had Mr. Carpenter secretly paint her portrait as a surprise for the president, but he was assassinated before she had a chance to present it to him.

"Now it turns out that both the portrait and the touching tale accompanying it are false."

Here's the link.

Let's Bring History Back to the History Channel!

My friend Jade Maner has created a blog dedicated to persuading The History Channel to bring back legitimate historical programming. As anyone who has spent any time watching it lately knows, The History Channel, and its affiliate H2, History Channel 2, seem to have been taken over by programming relating to ancient aliens, pawn shop wars, Bigfoot, Yeti, and the speculation as to whether we will all be killed in December of this year by the Mayans, a giant asteroid, or by a particularly nasty solar flare.

Check out Jade's blog!

My eBook "Chasing the Triple Crown"

Here's a link to my article length eBook, Chasing the Triple Crown, which is available on Amazon.com!

I hate to engage in shameless commerce, but check it out!

My Editor and Publisher, Judy Clabes, says:


Bob Treadway is a storyteller -- and an engaging, entertaining one. He'll draw you in and keep you there right to the end. Whether you love horses, as I do, or you just plain love a good story well told, Bob delivers. His love of history, Kentucky, horses and turn of phrase . . .well, it's just part of the package. Enjoy!

-- Judith Clabes, Editor and Publisher, KyForward.com,
and member, Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame

Daniel Carter Beard Autographed Photograph

This photograph of Daniel Carter Beard, subject of my latest column on KyForward.com.

The photograph is autographed "Your Uncle Dan Beard."

Beard was one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, and was known as "Uncle Dan" by generations of Scouts and Scouters. In the column, I discuss the concept of muscular Christianity, as practiced in late 19th Century America, which saw not only the rise of Scouting organizations, such as Beard's Sons of Daniel Boone, but of Eastern prep schools such as Groton, which emphasized athletics to a degree earlier schools had not done.

Kentucky's Statehood at 150

In 1942, the Post Office issued a stamp honoring the "sesquicentennial," the one hundred fiftieth anniversary, of the formation of Kentucky in 1792. The stamp shows an engraving showing Daniel Boone on a hill eerily reminiscent of that of his grave site in Frankfort Cemetery, looking over toward the site of today's Kentucky State Capitol.

Daniel Carter Beard House

This is the Daniel Carter Beard House, in Covington, Kentucky.

Who was Daniel Carter Beard, and what modern organization did he influence?

John Cabell Breckinridge

This statue of Kentucky's Vice President and Presidential candidate John Cabell Breckinridge, who was a supporter of slavery,  stands at Main Street and Cheapside, not far from the location of Lexington's slave market.  In my column today on KyForward.com, I dicuss the history and legacy of Breckinridge, one of Kentucky's three Vice Presidents.

Alben W. Barkley: Forever The Veep!

As we prepare for this year's Vice Presidential debates at Kentucky's Centre College, my column this week in KyForward.com is a vignette of Kentucky's last and most beloved Vice President, Alben W. Barkley, famously known as The Veep.

The Battle of Bryan's Station, 1782

Here's an excerpt from my latest column on Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, born in Kentucky in 1780, about his surviving of the Siege of Bryan's Station by Simon Girty and his Native American mercenaries in 1782:


Richard Mentor Johnson, for whom counties would be named in five states, was born in 1780 (or ’81 by other accounts) on the frontier of what was then Kentucky County, Va., at a settlement called Beargrass, near modern day Louisville. Johnson’s family soon moved to Fayette County, where they were caught up in Simon Girty’s Raid on Bryan’s Station, a fort that gives its name to modern day Bryan Station Pike.

Girty was a Scots-Irish mercenary, leading a band of Native Americans fighting for the British during the Revolutionary War. In August of 1782, they surrounded Bryan’s Station. The settlers had no water, and Jemimah Johnson, Richard’s mother, decided that the women of the fort should pretend that they didn’t know the Indians were there, go to the nearby spring, fill their buckets, and bring them back to the fort.

The plan assumed that Girty’s forces would not attack the women, and open themselves to fire from the fort. The plan worked beautifully, and the water was brought in to the fort. Girty’s forces tried to set the fort on fire with burning arrows. One of those arrows landed in the straw-filled crib containing the infant Richard Mentor Johnson. However, with the water fetched by Mrs. Johnson and the other women, the settlers were able to put out not only that arrow, but the fires set by all the rest, and hold off the attackers until help arrived. Johnson and his family escaped the battle unscathed. A historic marker commemorates the event on Bryan Station Pike today.

Richard Mentor Johnson, Kentucky's First Vice President, Larger than Life

In my column on KyForward.com this week, I begin a three part series on Kentucky's three Vice Presidents, Richard Mentor Johnson, John Cabell Breckenridge, and Alben W. Barkley.

This week's column is about Kentucky's first Vice President, Richard Mentor Johnson, a man who survived an Indian attack as an infant, killed the famous Indian chief Tecumseh in battle, and was elected Vice President by the United States Senate, after the Electoral College could not produce a victor.

Johnson was a larger than life figure even in an age full of them.

Enjoy!

Dead Heat in the Travers Stakes! No, the one in 1874 . . .

My column on KyForward.com this week tells the story of the dead heat in the Travers Stakes. No, not this year's dead heat, the one in 1874!

Unlike the dead heat of 2012, this one was immediately resolved by the parties with a do-over! How would that go over today???

Here's a vintage 1930 Travers Stakes program:

The Last Colonel

Here's a link to today's column on KyForward.com, in which I give the curious story of Col. Phil T. Chinn, the last of the Kentucky colonels of racing!

Enjoy!

Was 1892 the Kentucky Derby's Lowest Point?

What was the lowest point of the Kentucky Derby? The year 1892 gets my vote: It had only three entries, two of which were owned by the same owner and the winning jockey was only fifteen years old!

Here's a view of what Churchill Downs looked like a few years later, in 1901:

Here's a link to my column on it in KyForward.com!

Abby Marlatt's Peace Leaflet: Kentucky History Photo of the Week

This is the pamphlet that Abby Marlatt handed out in Lexington fifty years ago this week. It cost Dr. Marlatt her career. It looks almost innocent, compared to political polemics today.

Abby Marlatt: Still a Hero Fifty Years Later

Fifty years ago this week, Abby Marlatt, a white professor of home economics at the University of Kentucky, who had descended from Kansas abolitionists, handed out leaflets urging peace and nuclear disarmament. In my February 24 column about her, I described the incident as follows:

"On August 5, 1962, the day before the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Dr. Marlatt, along with a fellow faculty member, passed out leaflets which pointed out the fact tha

t the Cold War was then in full swing, and that the nuclear weapons in existence in 1962 were far more powerful than those used on Japan. The leaflet, prepared by a peace group in Cincinnati, encouraged students to withhold payment of income taxes as a protest, to refuse to work in war plants, or to register for the draft, or as the pamphlet put it, to return their draft cards if they had registered for the draft already. I suppose in those innocent days, no one thought of burning a draft card."

Because Dr. Marlatt had urged students to resist the draft, and to withhold taxes, she was attacked by some in the University of Kentucky's administration, who sought to have her removed from her position. Ultimately she was removed from her position as head of the home economics department at UK, but through the intervention of Bert Combs, Kentucky's progressive governor, she retained her position, and taught at UK through her retirement.

In this column, I share why she is one of my personal heroes of the civil rights movement. I don't imagine you'll read about this anniversary anywhere else. I will see if I can post a picture of the leaflet she handed out: It is almost innocent by today's standards, but it was enough in 1962 to ruin a career.

http://www.kyforward.com/2012/02/robert-treadway-abby-marlatt-protester-ignited-a-firestorm-that-changed-a-university/

How Lexington Put Lexington On the Map

I wanted to share a link to my latest  column on KyForward.com!

We talk about the origins of the Thoroughbred breeding industry in Kentucky in the 19th Century, and about the great stallion Lexington, who put Lexington (the town) on the map.

Enjoy!

Man O'War: Was he the Greatest Thoroughbred of All?

Most of my Kentucky history columns on KyForward.com concern the Thoroughbred horse industry. This one is about Man O'War, arguably the greatest runner ever.

Enjoy!

Man O'War: The Greatest Thoroughbred Ever?

Historic Kentucky Photo of the Week

This week's Kentucky historic photo of the week is this portrait of Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge E. C. O'Rear, one of the most important Kentucky jurists of the turn of the last century.

Judge O'Rear, while in private practice, is said to have developed the concept of the broad form deed, which allowed for the sale of the mineral interest in real estate aside from the surface rights, a form of conveyance that has been severely limited in modern times.

Judge O'Rear was one of the best known lawyers and political figures of his day.

The Theft of Asteroid and Other Civil War Oddities

As we celebrate, if that's what we're doing, the sesquicentennial of the fighting of the United States Civil War, I have examined the war's impact on my own great great great grandfather, Capt. E. B. Treadway. I also wrote an article that discusses the Civil War's impact on Thoroughbred racing.

Enjoy!

The Civil War's Impact on Kentucky's Thoroughbred Industry

Honest Dick Tate: A Victorian Crime

Here's a link to my column on one of the great crimes of Kentucky history, when Kentucky state treasurer "Honest Dick" Tate got on a train with most of the state's money, and neither he nor the money was heard from again . . .

Honest Dick Tate: He Took the Money and Ran

A Little Family History

One of the things I'll do in this blog is share links to my columns on Kentucky history which appear on KyForward.com. My first link to a column is to one I wrote for this past Fourth of July, about my own great great grandfather.

Enjoy!

Capt. E. B. Treadway, Who Fought for the Constitution

Welcome to Bob's Kentucky History Blog

Welcome to Bob's Kentucky History Blog! I'm Bob, and I'll be your guide to a variety of topics in Kentucky history, including the history of the Thoroughbred horse business. I write a column on Kentucky history for KyForward.com, and I will be sharing links to my columns there, and to other Kentucky historical resources.

I have been writing and tweeting about Kentucky history for almost a year now, and I thought that I should have a blog presence as well!

This blog is very much a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions for things you'd like to see here!