Chautauqua Characters

Nineteen great historical dramas for 2008-09

The Kentucky Humanities Council is proud to present Kentucky Chautauqua, this year featuring historically accurate impersonations of eighteen intriguing characters from Kentucky’s colorful past. One is new: Mary Owens of Green County, an early romantic interest of Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Bicentennial is February 12, 2009—you’ll find many Lincoln-related programs to help you celebrate Kentucky’s greatest son. And there is one returnee: after an absence of two years, Daniel Boone is back! Kentucky Chautauqua performances can be booked using the application forms on the inside back cover. Please read the instructions below very carefully!

Thanks to our underwriters and supporters, KHC will again offer reduced-cost Chautauqua performances in 2008-09.
Through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, reduced-cost Chautauqua performances will be available to Kentucky schools. Please see below for details.
A nonprofit sponsor is limited to one reduced-cost Kentucky Chautauqua program during the year. No exceptions. The reduced cost is $175.00.
Chautauqua is intended for audiences of forty or more. Please do not schedule for smaller groups.
A sponsor who desires additional Chautauqua performances can purchase them at full cost—$450 per program. You may charge admission to performances your group has purchased.
All Kentucky Chautauqua performances must be scheduled through the application process using the forms in this catalog.
Please remember, you must contact the performer and confirm arrangements for reduced-cost or paid programs before submitting an application. If you don’t, your program will not take place as you planned.
For questions or problems about Kentucky Chautauqua programs, please contact Cathy Ferguson, Speakers Bureau/Chautauqua Coordinator, at 859/257-5932 or catherine.ferguson@uky.edu

For information on How to Book Kentucky Chautauqua Performances, click here.

For information on How to Become a Kentucky Chautauqua Performer, click here.

For information on School Programs, click here.

Below you will see brief bios of some of our Chautauqua characters.

Chautauqua Characters

Robert K. Rambo 50 Sterling Drive #206 Cullowhee, NC 28723 Work Phone: 276/608-6152 Email: robertkrambo@yahoo.com	Atta kul kulla Cherokee Peace Chief c. 1715—1780 Atta kul kulla was the Peace Chief of the powerful Cherokee Nation from 1758 until his death around 1780. Called the “most important Indian of his day,” Atta kul kulla learned English ways (and met King George II) during a visit to London while still a teenager. He developed into a skilled and sophisticated diplomat whose ability to build alliances and treaties caused the English to dub him The Little Carpenter. Many of his policies and actions are still controversial, but he did manage to unite his people, a difficult political feat that laid the foundation for the long-term survival of the Cherokee Nation on a continent that was rapidly filling up with European immigrants. Atta kul kulla played a key role in the famous land transaction known as the Transylvania Purchase. He negotiated an agreement with Judge Richard Henderson of North Carolina and the Transylvania Land Company, which Henderson used to claim purchase of nearly all of what is now Kentucky and north-central Tennessee. Although the governments of Great Britain, Virginia, North Carolina, and the Continental Congress all annulled the document, Virginia still used it to claim state ownership. Kentucky was lost by the Cherokee forever and sold to a flood of settlers from the east.
Scott New P. O. Box 207 Cumberland Gap, TN 37724 Home Phone: 423/869-5529 Email: scottandberni@bellsouth.net	Daniel Boone Pathfinder 1784-1820 Daniel Boone was a legend even before his death, but much of what Americans think they know about him is off the mark. Neither a backwoods bumpkin nor an epic slayer of Indians, Boone was an intrepid explorer and natural leader whose actual exploits amply justify his larger-than-life reputation. He played a crucial role in the exploration and settlement of Kentucky and the American west. Scott New has prepared two Boone programs. Please tell him which you prefer when booking. Coming into Kentucky: Boone first seriously explored Kentucky in 1769 as a market hunter. In 1775, he led the expedition that founded Boonesborough in Madison County. This is the exciting story of those early days of Kentucky settlement. The Court Martial of Daniel Boone: In 1778, Boone and almost 30 of his men were captured by the Shawnees while making salt at the Blue Licks. He escaped and led the defense of Fort Boonesborough against a Shawnee and British siege, but afterward was accused of collaborating with the enemy. Boone’s testimony tells the dramatic story of a key episode of the American Revolution in Kentucky.
Mel Hankla 106 Bunny Trail Jamestown, KY 42629 Work Phone: 270/343-3081 Email: melhankla@kentuckylongrifles.com Website: http://americanhistoricservices.com	George Rogers Clark Revolutionary War Hero 1752-1818 George Rogers Clark, a tall, talented Virginian, came to Kentucky as a surveyor, but it was as a military leader during the Revolutionary War that he made his mark. In 1777 Clark won approval from Virginia governor Patrick Henry (Kentucky was then a Virginia county) for a secret mission to attack British posts north of the Ohio River. Clark’s party—175 soldiers and a small band of settlers—set up camp on Corn Island near the falls of the Ohio River in May 1778. The next month Clark launched a brilliant campaign into present-day Illinois and Indiana, defeating the British and their Indian allies and securing the Northwest Territory for the young United States. Meanwhile, the settlers Clark had brought along moved from Corn Island to the Kentucky shore, founding the city of Louisville in late 1778. His war exploits marked the peak of Clark’s career. Plagued by debts, drinking and poor health, he spent his later years living in Louisville. Overshadowed by his brother William, of Lewis and Clark fame, he never got the credit he thought he had earned. For a short preview of Hankla's presentations visit his website at www.kentuckylongrifles.com.
Haley S. Bowling P. O. Box 30 McKee, KY 40447 Work Phone: 606/627-1047 Email: haleybowling@yahoo.com	Anna Mac Clarke Military Pioneer 1919—1944 Anna Mac Clarke didn't put up with second-class treatment from anybody, including the U.S. Army. A native of Lawrenceburg, Clarke graduated from Kentucky State College in 1941. Rejecting domestic work—the only job a black college graduate could get in Lawrenceburg in those days—she left Kentucky to work at a Girl Scout Camp in New York state. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Clarke volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (renamed Women's Army Corps in 1943). During officer's training in Iowa, she led the successful opposition to a proposal to segregate black soldiers into their own regiment. At Douglas Army Airfield in Arizona, Lieutenant Clarke made history when she became the first black WAC officer to command a white unit. And she made national news after her protest against segregated seating in the base theater convinced the commanding officer to ban segregation on the base. Just a few weeks later, Clarke died of complications from a ruptured appendix. She was 24.
George McGee Georgetown College Box 198 Georgetown, KY 40324 Work Phone: 502-863-8162 Email: george_mcgee@georgetowncollege.edu Website: http://georgetowncollege.edu	Henry Clay Kentucky's Great Statesman 1777—1852 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, as Speaker of the House, and as 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.
Erma J. Bush Scheduling contact: Juanita White 10203 Cambrie Court Louisville, KY 40241 Work Phone: 502/327-7885	Margaret Garner Death before Slavery c. 1833—1858 Margaret Garner was a Kentucky slave who ran away and got caught—a common story. We remember Garner because she was the runaway who killed one of her own children rather than see the child returned to slavery. The story began in January 1856 when seventeen northern Kentucky slaves made a mass escape across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, where they took refuge in the house of Elijah Kite, a former slave who had once been their neighbor. Before Garner and her family—husband Robert and four children—could leave to head farther north, the slave owners and several deputies surrounded the Kite house. After a gun battle, the slaves were subdued, but not before Margaret had cut her daughter Mary’s throat and tried to kill her other children. She later said she wanted to end their suffering rather than have them “taken back to slavery and be murdered by piece meal.” The case drew national attention. Instead of being tried in Ohio, Garner was sent to a Covington jail and later sold down the river. She died in Mississippi.
Betsy B. Smith 209 South Miller Street Cynthiana, KY 41031 Work Phone: 859/235-0225 Home Phone: 859/588-4019 Email: kesda@georgetowncollege.edu	Emilie Todd Helm Rebel in the White House 1836—1930 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.
Ethan S. Smith 209 S. Miller Street Cynthiana, KY 41031 Work Phone: 859/235-0225 Email: edward_smith@georgetowncollege.edu	Price Hollowell Black Patch War Hero 1895—1975 When the Night Riders attacked the Hollowell farm in Caldwell County on the night of May 2, 1907, one of them boasted, "We Night Riders fear no judge or jury!" Young Price Hollowell, who saw everything they did, made them eat those words in one of the most remarkable episodes of the Black Patch War, a western Kentucky conflict that featured mayhem and murder not seen in those parts since the Civil War. Low tobacco prices caused the Black Patch War, named after the dark leaf grown in west Kentucky and Tennessee. The American Tobacco Company was paying less for dark tobacco than it cost farmers to grow it. The farmers fought back by form-ing the Planters' Protective Association, whose members withheld their tobacco from the market. When this strategy did not produce higher prices, some members—the Night Riders—resorted to violence against farmers, like the Hollowells, who refused to honor the boycott. The Night Riders ran the Hollowells out of the state, but they returned, filed a federal lawsuit, and, thanks in large part to Price's testimony, won damages of $35,000.
David Hurt 125 Cherry Road Berea, KY 40403 Work Phone: 859/986-5304 Email: elkhorndave@hotmail.com	Grandpa Jones Country Musician and Comic 1913—1998 Louis Marshall Jones, better known as Grandpa, was the son of Henderson County sharecroppers. Hard times drove the family north to Akron, Ohio in the late 1920s. Jones, who had a repertoire of songs learned from his parents and the radio, won a talent contest that led to regular work on an Akron radio station. That launched a career that lasted more than sixty years. It was during tours with country music star (and fellow Kentuckian) Bradley Kincaid in the 1930s that Jones developed the Grandpa persona he used the rest of his life. Jones wrote many of his most popular songs. Like many old-time musicians, he struggled during the rock-and-roll craze of the '50s—he toured Canada and tried his hand at early television. Beginning in 1969, television brought Jones fame as a member of the original cast of Hee Haw, which showcased his skills as a vaudeville comic. Grandpa Jones was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978. He never retired, suffering a fatal stroke after a performance at the Grand Ole Opry in 1998.
Mel Hankla 106 Bunny Trail Jamestown, KY 42629 Work Phone: 270/343-3081 Email: melhankla@kentuckylongrifles.com Website: http://americanhistoricservices.com	Simon Kenton Frontiersman 1755—1836 Thinking he had killed another boy in a fight over a girl, Simon Kenton fled west from Virginia at age 16. He was wrong—he had only knocked his rival unconscious—but the incident launched him on a life of high adventure. By the time he was 20, Kenton had fetched up on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio River in what is now Mason County. From there, he proceeded to carve out a remarkable career as an explorer and frontiersman. A compatriot of Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, Kenton was a legendary Indian fighter, and became Kentucky’s self-appointed welcomer-in-chief. From his post in Mason County, he personally greeted early settlers as they arrived in what was then the far west. Kenton was married twice and had ten children. He became a wealthy man, but lost his hand. Unable to read or write, he spent his final years in poverty in Ohio. For a short preview of Hankla's presentations visit his website at www.kentuckylongrifles.com.
Sandy Harmon 843 Watson Lane Henderson, KY 42420 Work Phone: 270/827-2983	Lily May Ledford Coon Creek Girl 1917—1985 When Lily May Ledford was a young girl growing up in a musical family in eastern Kentucky's Red River Gorge, she wanted a fiddle so badly that she traded her most precious possession—a box of crayons—for a broken-down instrument that didn't have strings, tuning pegs or a bow. She eventually became better known for banjo picking than fiddling, but that old fiddle helped launch a career that brought Lilly May and her Kentucky mountain music to a national audience. In 1936, Ledford went to Chicago to perform on WLS Radio's National Barn Dance. The next year her manager, John Lair, assembled a string band featuring Ledford's distinctive banjo style. Called the Coon Creek Girls, it was the first all-female string band. In 1939, the group began an eighteen-year run on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance radio show. That same year they played at the White House for President and Mrs. Roosevelt and their guests, the King and Queen of England. The king tapped his toe in spite of himself. The Coon Creek Girls disbanded in 1957.
Jim Sayre 1495 Alton Station Road Lawrenceburg, KY 40342 Work Phone: 502/839-7191 Email: lincolna@dcr.net	Abraham Lincoln "I, too, am a Kentuckian." 1809—1865 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.
David Hurt 125 Cherry Road Berea, KY 40403 Work Phone: 859/986-5304 Email: elkhorndave@hotmail.com	John C. C. Mayo Coal Baron 1864—1914 Controversy still swirls around the life and legacy of John Caldwell Calhoun Mayo, but there’s no debate about one thing: for better or worse, his work in the coal fields transformed eastern Kentucky, with consequences that are still felt today. John C. C. Mayo was born on a mountain farm in Pike County, but it was not until he was in college in the 1880s that he learned just how vast eastern Kentucky's mineral resources are. He started teaching, but soon turned to buying mineral rights from landowners, ultimately purchasing options on the coal that lay under hundreds of thousands of acres. Mayp amassed a vast fortune by selling these mineral rights to large out-of-state corporations. His influence in business and politics reached far beyond Kentucky's borders. When he died at age 49, he was the richest man in Kentucky. At his funeral, Mayo was eulogized as a visionary, but almost ninety years later his legacy is shadowed by long-standing controversy over the broad form deed and other practices of the coal industry he helped create.
L. Henry McDowell 329 Biloxi Drive Nicholasville, KY 40356 Work Phone: 859/553-2059 Email: lhenryd@yahoo.com	Dr. Ephraim McDowell 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.
Barbara Flair 112 Clover Lick Road Greensburg, KY 42743 Home Phone: 270/405-1066 Email: barbara.flair@green.kyschools.us	Mary Owens Lincoln's First Mary 1808-1877 Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd of Lexington, but before meeting her he was seriously interested in another Mary: Mary Owens of Green County, Kentucky. Owens was the well educated daughter of an estate owner who also ran an academy. In 1833, restless in rural Kentucky, Mary visited her sister in New Salem, Illinois. She soon met the town’s new postmaster, a tall fellow named Abraham Lincoln. Sparks flew during Mary’s month-long visit. Lincoln told her sister he would ask for Mary’s hand when she returned to Illinois. But when she reappeared three years later, much had changed. Lincoln, now a state legislator, was obsessed with politics, and Mary found his lack of social polish increasingly hard to tolerate. The romance withered. Although Lincoln did propose, it was clear when Mary left for Kentucky that the relationship was over. Afterward, they told different stories. Lincoln said Mary had become “corpulent and toothless.” Mary said Lincoln was not suitable for a lady of her refinement. Owens married Jessie Vineyard. They had five children and a very successful hemp plantation in Missouri.
Dick Usher 194 Capp Springs Road Benton, KY 42025 Work Phone: 270/354-8058 Email: ushmd01@yahoo.com	Pee Wee Reese Hall of Famer 1918—1991 Harold Henry Reese got his famous nickname Pee Wee from a marble he used when he was a boy. The name fit because he did turn out to be a man of modest stature, but by every measure you could apply to an athlete—teamwork, leadership, determination, winning, grace under pressure—Pee Wee Reese was a giant. Born in Meade County, Kentucky, Reese grew up in Louisville. At 19, he quit his job at the telephone company to play professional baseball for the Louisville Colonels. By 1940, he had reached the big leagues, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers at storied Ebbets Field. As captain, shortstop and lead-off man, he led the Dodgers to seven pennants and, in 1955, a World Series win over the New York Yankees. Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY in 1984, his plaque there also records the powerful example he set when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947 as the major leagues’ first black player. Reese’s acceptance and support of Robinson were instrumental in breaking down baseball’s color barrier.
Edward B. Smith 209 South Miller Street Cynthiana, KY 41031 Work Phone: 859/235-0225 Home Phone: 502/863-8042 Email: edward_smith@georgetowncollege.edu	Adolph Rupp The Coach 1901—1977 During the 42 years he coached the University of Kentucky basketball team, Adolph Rupp raised the game to near-religious status in the Commonwealth. Basketball took its place next to horses, coal, and bourbon as Kentucky cultural icons. Rupp's teams won 880 games, four national championships, and one Olympic gold medal. There was a flip side to all this success—the team was suspended for the 1952-53 season after a point-shaving scandal, and Rupp was heavily criticized for taking too long to integrate the Kentucky basketball program. Adolph Rupp grew up in Kansas, the son of immigrant farmers. He played three years of varsity basketball at the University of Kansas, but never scored a point. He began his coaching career in Kansas, but soon moved on to high schools in Iowa and Illinois. The University of Kentucky hired him in 1930. Rupp's genius for public relations and his team's winning ways combined to make Kentucky basketball a statewide phenomenon, a point of pride around which Kentuckians of all stripes still rally.
Erma J. Bush Scheduling contact: Juanita White 10203 Cambrie Court Louisville, KY 40241 Work Phone: 502/327-7885	Miss Dinnie Thompson No Ordinary Woman 1857—1939 In a way, Miss Dinnie Thompson was ordinary, a workaday person who was never rich or famous. But, as a representative of all those black Kentucky women who worked to make a living in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries despite prejudice and hardship, she is anything but ordinary. Dinnie was born a slave in the household of a member of Louisville's renowned Speed family. Her mother was a freedom-loving woman who hid Dinnie away on several attempts to escape across the Ohio River. They were caught every time. After emancipation in 1865, Miss Dinnie worked for almost thirty years as a laundress. Then, for twenty-six years, she was a maid at Louisville's Neighborhood House, which helped European immigrants adapt to American life. There she became friends with a young social worker named Elizabeth Wilson. Through their friendship, Miss Dinnie Thompson's extraordinary story has been preserved as a testimony to the memory of thousands of "ordinary" women like her.
Danny W. Hinton P.O. Box 171 Livingston, KY 40445 Work Phone: 606/453-4045 Email: cdhinton@windstream.net	Dr. Thomas Walker Pioneer Physician 1715—1794 Dr. Thomas Walker didn’t come to Kentucky for his health. A politically well-connected physician, Walker was also a land speculator, and that’s why he led the first organized English foray into Kentucky in April, 1750. He and his five companions hoped to discover farmland ripe for settlement. They returned home to Virginia three months later, much disappointed. Never quite making it out of eastern Kentucky into the gentle terrain of central Kentucky, they had found only forested mountains teeming with game, not farmland. Walker considered his Kentucky exploration a failure, but it paved the way for Daniel Boone nineteen years later, and countless others after that. Walker himself returned to Kentucky several times, most notably in 1779–80 as head of the surveying party that extended the Virginia-North Carolina line—the southern border of our future Commonwealth—to the Tennessee River. By that time settlers were streaming into Kentucky, and the unspoiled wilderness Walker first saw in 1750 would soon be lost forever.