Chautauqua Characters

Audubon's Leading Lady
1787—1874
They say well-behaved women rarely make history. Lucy Bakewell Audubon is an exception to that rule. Her proper behavior and strength helped secure the legacy of her husband, John James Audubon (famed naturalist, artist, and author of the larger than-life The Birds of America). Theirs is a story about art, ambition, devotion, deception, resentment, redemption, and above all, love. It’s a fascinating story because it’s so implausible: Highly educated and born to wealth and privilege, Lucy not only endured her husband’s eccentricity, but successfully adapted to life on the frontier. Follow the Audubons from their immigration to America in the early 1800s, to their adventures in evolving Louisville, their pioneer days in the wilderness of Henderson, economic depression during the Panic of 1819, and their times of separation when John James explored and sought his fame, while Lucy stayed behind and kept the home fires burning. It wasn’t easy to be married to a dashingly handsome and creative (and often unreliable) genius as Audubon, but Lucy was able to rise above it all. Without her support, The Birds of America may never have been published. This is the story of their marriage though Lucy’s eyes. It is one of the greatest, yet relatively unknown Kentucky love stories. In the words of John James, “With her, was I not always rich?”

January 1, 1863 was an historic day in United States history. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect, freeing most slaves in the United States. But for enslaved men living in Kentucky and other border states, it was a bittersweet occasion. Lincoln desperately wanted to keep Kentucky loyal to the Union. It was not until 1864, when Kentucky became the last state allowing their enlistment that slaves could join the Union Army. Like many Kentucky-owned slaves, Newton Bush risked his life to escape from his owner and travel to Camp Nelson and enlist in Company E of the 5th Regiment United States Colored Cavalry.

Fighting for their freedom and a better life for the people they loved, Bush was one of 24,000 men of color from Kentucky who joined the Colored Cavalry. It didn’t take long for them to discover that joining the Army didn’t result in being treated with respect and dignity or that more value was placed on a horse than a colored solder. But their loyalty to the Union and bravery in battle eventually earned the respect of the white soldiers.

For Bush and the troops in the Colored Cavalry, the fighting didn’t end when the Civil War was over. They had endured slavery and risked their lives to preserve the Union, yet they spent the rest of their days in fear of being harassed and killed while fighting for freedom and equal citizenship.

Above all, Henry Clay wanted to be president of the United States. Despite never quite making it—he ran and lost three times between 1824 and 1844—Clay played a large role in the history of his country, which he served as a Senator, Speaker of the House, and Secretary of State.

Born and educated in Virginia, Clay moved to Kentucky and set up a law practice in Lexington in 1797. Elected to the state legislature in 1803, he took a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1810. For more than forty years he was a major player on the national political scene, renowned for his oratory and devotion to the Union. Slavery posed a great political and personal quandary for Clay. A slaveholder himself, he advocated gradual emancipation and colonization in Africa. He opposed extension of slavery into the new western states, but argued Congress had no right to interfere with slavery where it already existed. Attacking abolitionists in 1839, he said he would "rather be right than president." The speech cost him the 1840 Whig presidential nomination.

Sentimental Journey
1928—2002
What makes Rosemary Clooney's life so fascinating, so charmed and charged with intrigue and great challenge? First and foremost, it is the sheer power of her talent, her girl-next-door appeal, her love of music, art and drama, and her love for her home state of Kentucky. But behind this small-town-girl-rises-to-fame story is also one of extraordinary perseverance and dedication, one that teaches that it is possible to overcome the worst to become the best.

Rosemary was born in Maysville in 1928 and became an internationally known singer of pop, big band and jazz music. She recorded with big-name labels and some of the greatest musicians of her time—Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, Nelson Riddle, and Frank Sinatra. However, through her rise to fame she encountered many obstacles—having a constantly traveling mother and alcoholic father, raising five children through the turmoil of a failed marriage, witnessing the assassination of friend and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, and eventually suffering from drug-induced psychosis. Yet, she always rebounded with resilience, just as her mother told her she would. "You're the oldest, Rosie. You'll manage," her mother would say. Before her death in 2002, Clooney resurrected her career, married the love of her life and continued to keep her family and her love of Kentucky as her top priorities.

Abolition...Amen!
1816—1901

As the son of a slave-holding father, John Gregg Fee witnessed firsthand the benefits of having slaves and the profits that could be made from their labor. When he graduated from college and enrolled in Lane Theological Seminary, Fee began to understand the inherent wrong and destructiveness of slavery. He was determined to become an Abolitionist and work for the immediate end to slavery. Feeling betrayed, his father took him out of school and forced John to return home. Rather than staying in the relative safety of the North and writing anti-slavery pamphlets, Fee committed his life and work to ending slavery and discrimination at home in Kentucky.

Fee’s anti-slavery efforts garnered the attention of Cassius Clay, a prominent politician and outspoken emancipationist from Kentucky. Although the two agreed that slavery in the Commonwealth should end, their relationship became hostile when they couldn’t agree on how to go about ending slavery.

Fee’s dedication and passion for the abolishment of slavery gave him the strength to persevere through the wrath and disappointment of his father, financial hardship, and threats to his safety. His work led to the founding of Union Church of Christ, an anti-slavery, non-denominational church, which planted the seeds for what would become Berea College.

Proud Kentucky Militiaman
1794—1876

When Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby was tasked with raising troops for a war with the British and the Indians, Kentuckians responded with fervor. William Greathouse was one of more than 3,500 Kentuckians who answered Shelby’s call to arms in 1813. Just a teenager, Greathouse joined the troops because he strongly opposed the British occupation and the Indian Confederacy led by Chief Tecumseh. Greathouse mustered in on August 24, 1813 in Nelson County, joining Colonel Renick’s 5th Kentucky Regiment.

Greathouse took part in the Thames Campaign, marching into Canada to drive out the British forces who were assisted by Chief Tecumseh. He took part in the Battle of the Thames, considered the turning point of the war. In a battle that lasted less than an hour, the American troops, the majority of whom were from Kentucky, destroyed the Indian Confederacy and drove the British occupants out of Canada.

With great humor and pride in his home state of Kentucky, Private Greathouse’s story not only tells of his personal contributions to American history, but also explains Kentucky’s vital role in America’s “Second War for Independence.”

Johnny Green was 19 when the Civil War broke out, and was one of the only soldiers in the Orphan Brigade alive when it ended. Orphan Brigade soldiers were unable to return to their home state of Kentucky until the war was over—lest they be tried for treason—because they chose to fight for the Confederacy. Though he had learned to love the Union, as his mother was from Boston, Green felt passionately that states should have the right to govern themselves. And when President Abraham Lincoln called for men and arms, Green left his job in Florence, Ala., to travel to Bowling Green, Ky., to join the Confederacy on the day before his 20th birthday. Green's story, as detailed in a journal he wrote for his daughters years later, provides extraordinary accounts of courage and bravery, and brings the story of the Orphan Brigade to life.

During his 33-year tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented in some of the court's most important civil rights cases, earning him the title of "The Great Dissenter."

In one of the most famous dissents in U.S. Supreme Court history, Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the constitutionality of segregation, Harlan wrote: "Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows or tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."

His words were an inspiration during the Civil Rights Movement to Thurgood Marshall, NAACP chief counsel who would later be appointed to the Supreme Court. Marshall cited the dissent as he argued to end segregation in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education.

Though Harlan was born in Boyle County to a prominenty slaveholding family, and was once a slaveholder himself, he fought for the Union during the Civil War after graduating from Centre College and earning his law degree at Transylvania. As he became involved in Kentucky politics—being elected as county judge of Franklin County and Kentucky attorney general, and running two unsuccessful campaigns for governor in the early 19702—his political leanings shifted, and he became a major force in the Republican Party.

He was often chastised for contradicting himself politically, being once a slaveholder and later one of slavery's biggest opponents. But Harlan always maintained that the law afforded him the right to change his mind—and his support for equal rights after the Civil War never waned.

As the sister of Mary Todd Lincoln and the wife of Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm, Emilie Todd Helm had a front row view of history during and after the Civil War. She and her husband knew the Lincolns very well. Benjamin Helm turned down a personal offer from Lincoln to become paymaster of the Union Army with the rank of major, choosing instead to join the Confederacy and become the president’s “rebel brother-in-law.” After Helm was killed at Chickamauga, President and Mrs. Lincoln invited Emilie to come to the White House. As a southern loyalist and widow of the commander of the famous Orphan Brigade, her presence in the While House aroused protests. Lincoln defended his right to have anyone he chose as his guest, but Helm soon departed for Kentucky, where she lived out her long life.

She weathered the ordeals of the war and reconstruction and landed in Elizabethtown, where three consecutive presidents appointed her postmistress. Helm attended many Confederate reunions, where she was hailed as the Mother of the Orphan Brigade.

Friends and law partners for 18 years, Billy Herndon felt he knew Abraham Lincoln better than Abraham Lincoln knew himself. That's why he was confident his biography of Lincoln would tell a story that was honest and true to Lincoln's character. In 1861, as he was leaving to be inaugurated president, Lincoln told Herndon to keep his name on the shingle outside their office because he intended to return someday. But he would not.

After Lincoln's assassination, Herndon dedicated his life to collecting materials for a definitive biography of the 16th president. When it was published 24 years later, Herndon's critics labeled him as an angry, contemptuous alcoholic who painted a negative portrait of Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd. In Herndon's eyes, however, he presented Lincoln unvarnished, a great man in all his humanitie, neither saint nor villain. Is Herndon's story the true story of Abraham Lincoln? You be the judge.

Born on a farm in what is now Larue County, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln spent his early years in the Commonwealth. His family moved to Indiana when he was seven, partly because of his father’s opposition to slavery, and never returned. But as his native brilliance and burning political ambition carried him to the presidency and greatness—a panel of historians recently chose him as the most influential American who ever lived—Lincoln always had connections with his native state.

In his law office in Springfield, Illinois, he had a law partner from Green County, Kentucky—William Herndon, who later wrote a biography of Lincoln. His best friend in Springfield was Joshua Speed, a son of Louisville’s prominent Speed family, and in Springfield he found a wife from Kentucky—Mary Todd, the daughter of a well-known Lexington family. Lincoln visited Kentucky to see the Speeds and his in-laws, and took the great Kentucky statesman Henry Clay as his political hero. During the Civil War Lincoln was very unpopular in Kentucky, but when he said, “I too am a Kentuckian,” no one could dispute it.

Frontier Surgeon
1771—1830
On Christmas Day 1809, a thousand miles away from the nearest hospital and thirty-five years before the discovery of anesthesia, Dr. Ephraim McDowell removed a 22-pound ovarian tumor from the abdomen of a 46-year-old woman. It was the world’s first ovariotomy, and it eventually brought McDowell worldwide acclaim as the Father of Abdominal Surgery. The patient, Jane Todd Crawford, had ridden three days on horseback to reach McDowell’s home in Danville, Kentucky, to have the operation. The medical authorities of the day were convinced that opening the abdomen meant certain death, so McDowell was far from sure that the surgery would succeed. He told Crawford he would proceed only if she “thought herself prepared to die.” She said she was ready, but they needn’t have worried. She came through with flying colors and in less than a month was on the way home to Green County.

She lived another 32 years. Dr. McDowell’s boldness had saved Crawford’s life, and paved the way for surgeries that have since saved untold numbers of lives.

More than Fried Chicken
1890-1980
Although he is most well-known for the eleven herbs and spices that made Kentucky Fried Chicken famous world-wide, Harland “Colonel” Sanders’ life was about much more than fried chicken. The man whose face became synonymous with “finger-lickin’ good” chicken used hard work and perseverance — not to mention a little luck along the way — to become recognized as Kentucky’s most famous citizen. Armed with only a sixth-grade education, Sanders worked a number of jobs over the years — an army mule tender, railroad worker, tire salesman, and farmhand.

In 1930, he moved to Corbin and opened a lunchroom behind a service station that had room for six people sitting at one table. His restaurant grew rapidly, and in a short time, he was operating Sanders’ Cafe, which seated 142 patrons. His customers made fried chicken the most popular item on the menu. He might have worked in that cafe for the rest of his life if it weren’t for the building of Interstate 75, forcing him to sell his place at auction.

Sanders was now in his mid-sixties, an age when most people take the opportunity to retire. He decided to go out on the road, traveling the country showing restaurants how to make Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken. By 1963, there were more than 600 outlets selling his chicken.

The Last Shaker at Pleasant Hill
1836-1923

Frank and Mary Settles were planning to move from Louisville to Missouri, where they would purchase a farm and have a large family to help work the land. Following the birth of their second child, the midwife told Mary she would die if she became pregnant again. With their plans derailed, Frank took Mary and the children to Pleasant Hill, leaving them with the Shakers, and headed to Missouri alone. With no rights to their money or land, Mary had no place to go and no means to care for her children.

The Shakers believed in the equality of the sexes, celibacy, simple living, perfecting themselves, and seeking salvation: They lived communally, and shared all of their profits. They welcomed Mary and the children with open arms.

As the Civil War raged around them, the Shakers remained true to their pacifist beliefs. Soldiers from both sides overran their village. The Shakers lived in constant fear, doing what they could to help. The sisters made thousands of meals for the soldiers and carried baskets of food and medical supplies into battle to tend the injured.

In time, the armies moved on, but life at Pleasant Hill was never the same. Mary began teaching again, and for twenty-seven years gave the best of her heart and mind to the young women of Pleasant Hill. Sister Mary Settles was the last member of The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing to live at Pleasant Hill.