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!