Matthew Jouett, Noted Kentucky Portrait Artist

Matthew Harris Jouett, regarded by many as Kentucky’s most noted portrait artist, was born on April 22, 1788 in a log home on a Mercer County farm known as “Old Indian Fields.”

Jouett grew up in Woodford County, living there with his family from about age 5 until he began attending Transylvania University in Lexington when he was in his teens.

After he graduated from Transylvania about 1807, Jouett went to Frankfort to study law with the eminent jurist, George Bibb.

Afterward, he moved to Lexington, started a legal practice, married his college sweetheart, Margaret “Peggy” Allen, and settled down to a normal life.

But when the War of 1812 broke out, Jouett joined the Army and went off to fight the British.

When he returned home after the war, he decided he would do what he loved to do – paint portraits.

He opened a studio in Lexington and never returned to the legal profession.

Although his portraits were in high demand, Jouett felt the need for professional art training, so in 1816 he set out to find a teacher and mentor.

He studied for four months with America’s foremost artist at that time, Gilbert Stuart.

Although Jouett had a natural talent, his art improved greatly because of Stuart’s instruction.

Stuart’s influence on Jouett’s art was profound, and his paintings from 1816 to his death in 1827 reflect what Stuart taught him about light, color, and realism.

During those 11 years, he produced an abundant number of paintings, most of which bear the stylistic influence of his teacher.

Matthew Harris Jouett – like many artists, it seems – died too soon.

He became ill with a fever in late July of 1827 after an extended painting session in Louisville, where he maintained a second studio.

He died 11 days later, on August 10, 1827. He was 39 years old.

Although Jouett attained success during his lifetime, like many artists his talent became appreciated even more after his death.

A newspaper account from 1964 stated that a painting was sold at a Danville auction for $22.

The painting was appraised at $1,500 to $2,000 when it was discovered to be an original Matthew Jouett painting.

A list of 90 of Jouett’s original paintings that are on display at 23 sites in Kentucky and one site in Cincinnati has been compiled by Steven Ray Menefee, a descendant of Jouett.

The list is available at the Woodford County Historical Society (www.woodfordkyhistory.org) and the Jack Jouett House (www.jouetthouse.org).

Several reproductions of Jouett’s paintings adorn the walls of the Jack Jouett House, and the Woodford County Historical Society has a reproduction of Jouett’s self-portrait on display in its museum.

Caleb Baker Wallace, Early Kentucky Jurist

Caleb Baker Wallace began life in 1742 at Cub Creek in what is now Charlotte County, Virginia.

Wallace attended the College of New Jersey (known today as Princeton University), where he took courses in Presbyterian theology.

He studied under the college’s president, Dr. John Witherspoon, who would later become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

In October 1774, Wallace was ordained by the Hanover, Virginia, Presbytery.

That same year Wallace married Sarah McDowell, the daughter of Samuel McDowell who later became a judge in Danville, Kentucky.

Sarah died less than two years after the couple was married.

On May 11, 1779, Wallace married Rosanna Christian.

That union produced nine children and lasted more than 25 years.

Wallace moved his family to Kentucky in 1782 when Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison appointed him as a justice of the newly formed Superior Court of the District of Kentucky.

After Rosanna died on December 4, 1804, Wallace married a third time, to Mary Brown, a widow from Frankfort, Kentucky.

In 1783, Wallace represented Lincoln County in the Virginia General Assembly.

During that session of the legislature, Wallace was instrumental in securing a charter for Transylvania Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky.

From 1785 to 1792, Wallace was involved in the efforts to break away from Virginia and make Kentucky a state.

In 1792, Wallace was a member of Kentucky’s Constitutional Convention.

He repeated that role again in 1799 when the state’s constitution was revised.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals was established shortly after Kentucky was admitted to the Union as an independent state in June, 1792.

At that time, the Court of Appeals was the highest court in the state, and was equivalent to the state supreme court in its authority. In September 1792, Wallace, Harry Innes and Benjamin Sebastian were appointed as the first justices of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Wallace served in that position until he retired in 1813.

In all, Wallace served continuously on the bench in Kentucky courts for 30 years.

Wallace helped establish the Kentucky Academy at Pisgah in rural Woodford County, Kentucky, and served as one of the school’s first trustees.

He was also instrumental in merging the Kentucky Academy with Transylvania Seminary at Lexington to create Transylvania University in 1798.

Caleb Baker Wallace died in 1814 and was buried in the family graveyard on his property, alongside his second wife, Rosanna, and his sister, Elizabeth Pauling.

In May 1920, the three bodies were moved to the Versailles Cemetery by descendants, since the property was no longer owned by the Wallace family.

Carry Nation Born In Kentucky

Carrie Amelia Moore, known better as Carry Nation, was born on Nov. 25, 1846 in Garrard County, Kentucky.

Carry lived in Kentucky until she was nine years old, when her father moved the family to Missouri.

On Nov. 21, 1867, Carry married Dr. Charles Gloyd.

It was only after the marriage that Carry became aware of her husband’s fondness for rum.

Soon after she gave birth to a daughter, Carry left her husband and took the girl with her.

Her husband died within six months, and Carry was forced to sell his medical instruments and textbooks to try and support herself and her young daughter.

Carry married David Nation and they settled in Kansas.

He was a minister and lawyer who was 19 years older than Carry.

Their marriage ended in divorce.

Carry joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1899 to help in the fight against alcohol.

By 1900 she was known as a prohibitionist who would use rocks, hammers or hatchets to destroy saloons and their liquor.

She was arrested 30 times between 1900 and 1910.

Carry A. Nation died in 1911, but her efforts were in part responsible for the passage in 1919 of the 18th Amendment, which banned “intoxicating liquors” in the United States.

Prohibition lasted until 1933, when the 21st Amendment repealed the ban.

A Tale of Two Sisters

I found an interesting account of two sisters, Willie Agnes Offutt and Mary Sanford Offutt, that I wanted to share with my blog readers.

Willie Agnes Offutt was born at Versailles, Kentucky, in 1873, the daughter of John S. Offutt and Mary Thompson Young Offutt, who lived near Clifton in Woodford County, Kentucky.

Willie was admitted to the Cleveland Orphan Home in Versailles on October 9, 1878 by her mother.

Willie was joined at the Orphan Home in January 1880 by her sister, Mary Sanford Offutt, who was three years old at the time.

I was unable to find any information about why the girls were placed in the orphan home by their mother.

Presumably she did so because she could not care for them and thought it was in the best interest of the girls to place them in the orphanage.

But a rough start in life did not deter the girls from becoming successful women.

Though neither sister ever married, they both had interesting and fulfilling careers.

Willie was the first registered nurse in Kentucky to devote herself to industrial nursing.

She was a nurse at the American Standard Corporation in Louisville for more than 40 years. She retired in 1955, three years before her death.

She was a 1906 graduate of the City Hospital in Louisville, later General Hospital, and did private duty nursing before going to work at American Standard in 1913.

Willie organized the hospital at the plant and in later years had an average of more then 50 patients each week.

Her younger sister, Mary, had a long career at Dolfinger China Company of Louisville.

Mary introduced the practice of brides selecting their China, and appeared in magazine ads promoting the company’s products.

Mary was also a member of Eastern Star.

Willie Offutt died in 1958, and her sister Mary died 1970. The sisters were buried at Frankfort near their mother, Mary Thompson Young Offutt, and her mother, Sarah Johnson Young.

I want to thank Diane Grieger of La Crosse, Indiana, for providing some of the information for this blog post.

The Lure of Kentucky

Have you ever wondered what brought people to Kentucky in the late 1700s?

What made them willing to face the perils and hardships of the journey through the wilderness, traveling on foot through hundreds of miles of uncharted territory?

What was the lure of Kentucky that led people to trek across the mountains to a place they knew little about?

In a word—land.

People living in the East heard from explorers and long-hunters that Kentucky was a paradise with plentiful game and rich soil.

John Filson’s 1784 History of Kentucky painted such a glowing portrait of Kentucky that tens of thousands of pioneers flooded into Kentucky over a very short period of time.

In 1775, only 150 people of European descent lived in Kentucky; in 1778, a British spy estimated that 62,000 people lived here; by 1790 the number had grown to more than 73,000; and by 1800 the population had exploded to 220,000.

But by 1790 all the good land was gone—bound up in claims by the earlier settlers.

The lengthy process of filing a land claim often resulted in lawsuits over land claimed by more than one person.

“He who buys land in Kentucky buys a lawsuit,” was a common saying, and lawyers flocked to Kentucky to handle legal disputes over land in hopes of making their reputations.

Land values in Lexington soon became equal to some of the large East Coast cities, such as Boston and New York, so people began to leave Kentucky and move on to other states—Missouri, Kansas, and on westward—still seeking land.

Today, it is still the land that draws people to Kentucky—and back to Kentucky after they leave.

To many of us who have lived here, whether or not we are natives, Kentucky is bound up in our blood and bones, our hearts and minds.

Or so it has been for me. I’ve left Kentucky to travel around the country, to live in other states, to explore that great big world beyond the place where I was born and raised.

But I always come back. The lure of Kentucky is too great for me to resist.

Jesse Stuart said, “if America had a heart, it would be Kentucky.”

Amen, Jesse. Amen.

Aunt Delphy

While looking through old issues of the Woodford Sun newspaper in Versailles a couple of years ago, a friend of mine came across a death notice for a woman identified only as “Aunt Delphy.”

She was an elderly African American woman who was caught out in a blizzard near Versailles in 1886. She froze to death in a field, where “the feathery snow flakes wove her a shroud and she is at rest beneath the white drifts of beautiful snow.”

We became curious to know more about “Aunt Delphy,” so we started researching to see what else we could learn about her.

We found a few other articles about her death, but we didn’t find much concrete information about her life. We did find enough to make some intelligent conjectures, however.

Aunt Delphy’s real name was probably Delphia Brown, who was identified on the 1880 Woodford County census as the mother of Nancy Brown Berry, who married Howard Berry in June 1876.

Howard and Nancy had five children on the 1880 census, ranging in age from one year to 12 years old. Delphia was living in the same household.

Aunt Delphy was a ragpicker. In case you don’t know what a ragpicker is, it is an unskilled person who collects rags from trash cans and public dumps as a means of livelihood. This might be equivalent today to someone who picks up aluminum cans for money, because the rags were sold and recycled.

She probably didn’t need to work. According to the Woodford Sun, “her children were both able and willing to support her.” And if we did identify her correctly, she was living in the home of her daughter and son-in-law.

But some people are just not ready for retirement as long as they’re vigorous and full of energy, as Aunt Delphy was reported to be.

It was also possible that Aunt Delphy liked to make her rounds so she could meet and greet people. She was apparently well known among the citizens of both Versailles and Midway.

The editor of The Woodford Sun wrote that she “has been such a familiar character in our streets for many years.” The Blue Grass Clipper editor wrote that “Aunt Delphia” was “one of our best known citizens.”

We never found out why Aunt Delphy was out in the inclement weather that January day in 1886, but she never made it to town.

They discovered her body 10 days after the blizzard in an open field on the farm of Preston Williams, only about one mile from Versailles.

When Aunt Delphy was buried, “the extraordinarily large attendance at her funeral was indicative of the esteem in which she was held by her numerous friends.”

Rest in peace, Aunt Delphy.

The Star Spangled Banner

It seems fitting that I should begin my blog with a little history on our nation’s flag, since it is two days after Independence Day as I write this post.

I know you’re probably wondering what the American flag has to do with Kentucky, so I’m going to tell you.

On June 1, 1792, Kentucky became the 15th state admitted to the Union. At that time in our young country’s history, Congress was still trying to lay the groundwork for what would work and what wouldn’t work for the infant nation.

Each new state received not only a star on the American flag, it also received a stripe.

Thus the American flag made after Kentucky became a state had 15 stars and 15 stripes. It was this very flag that was flying over Ft. McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814 when the British attacked the fort.

As the attack on Ft. McHenry ended with the British retreat, Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and amateur poet, saw that the American flag “was still there” and was inspired to write a poem, which he titled “In Defense of Ft. McHenry.”

The poem was later set to the music of an English pub song and was sung during the 1917 World Series to honor Americans fighting in World War I.

In 1931, Congress adopted the song, “The Star Spangled Banner,” as the national anthem.

The original “Star Spangled Banner” flag, which measures 30 feet by 42 feet, is now in the Smithsonian Institution at the National Museum of American History.

It’s interesting to note that states admitted after Kentucky did not receive a stripe on the American flag—only a star. And the number of stripes was reduced to thirteen, to represent the number of original colonies in the United States.

So now you know Kentucky’s historic link to our country’s national anthem and the flag which inspired it.

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog. My name is Danna Estridge, and I am a writer, photographer, and historian. I especially enjoy Kentucky history, both statewide and local history.

I welcome ideas on historical subjects to write about, so if you have a question about Kentucky history, please leave it in the comments section and I’ll see what I can do about finding the answer for you. Please keep questions relative to state and local Kentucky history. Thanks!