History Commons^™

Luke Pryor Blackburn: The Good Samaritan, Nancy Baird

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Luke Pryor Blackburn, Kentucky’s only physician governor, is one of the forgotten public health figures of the 19^th century. As health officer of Natchez in the 1850s he instituted the first effective quarantine used in the Mississippi Valley and became a strong advocate of its use as a preventive measure in the control of yellow fever. During his lifetime Blackburn also became well known for his unselfish aid to communities stricken with the disease.

In March 1878 announced his candidacy for governor of his native state. Local politicians scoffed at his chances for election, but his actions during the …

The Beeson Farmstead: A Study Of The Functional Aspects Of A Black Farm In The Richland Community, Annelen Archbold

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study documents the lifestyle on a small, prosperous black farmstead in the Richland community of Butler County, Kentucky. It is based on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted with Percy Beeson, owner of the farm for aver fifty years. The result of the fieldwork and interviews was the documentation of how this farmstead, maintained without mechanical farm equipment, worked as a functional unit on a year-round basis.

As a functional unit, the Beeson farmstead is described in terms of the Beeson family and their ownership of the farm and the breakdown of the property into two dependent units. In the …

The Rhetoric Of Laura Clay: A Southern Argument For Woman Suffrage, Margaret Wesolowski

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study focused on the persuasive efforts of Laura Clay (1848-1941) as they represented a particularly southern argument for woman suffrage as opposed to the northern, or National American Woman Suffrage Association, suffrage argument. As a Kentuckian, she believed she understood southern attitudes on the three major issues she encountered during her thirty-two years as a suffragist.

The three issues were those of woman's traditional role, the race question, and state versus federal legislation. The arguments of Miss Clay concerning these issues were premised on justice and expediency, which formed the rationale of suffragist rhetoric.

Her arguments, tailored to southerners, …

The Growth Of Anti-British Attitudes In Kentucky Prior To War Of 1812, Edward Pippin Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study is to examine the causes of belligerency in Kentucky in this period of diplomatic crisis, thus examining the second level of causation for the war as suggested by Brown's study. The test case used is Kentucky which was known as one of the states most anxious for war against Britain, both in Congress and in the state itself. However, this study will not attempt to interpret the role of the state's representatives in the Congress of the United States, since, if Brown is correct in his interpretation, the causes of public belligerency had little to …

Parallelisms In Attitude Of Vietnam Veterans & Veterans Of The Indian Wars As Reflected In Memoirs & Oral Traditions, Charles Martin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Oral narratives of Vietnam War veterans, collected at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, were paralleled to the written narratives of the Indian War soldiers abstracted from existing diaries, journals and autobiographies. A statistical analysis was applied to the Vietnam War texts to discern the attitudes of the informants as a group. Informants' attitudes towards the enemy and the enemy's guerrilla fighting style were shown to be similar to the attitudes of the Indian War soldiers in both areas. Both sets of similar attitudes resulted in high levels of frustration which produced occasional atrocities. By the application of folklore and folklore fieldwork, in …

Jane Austens' Attitude Toward The Position Of Women, Carol Burford

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Jane Austen's attitude toward the position of middle-class women at the end of the eighteenth century is examined in the context of her life and thought and the women characters in her six novels. Comparisons are made with the position of women today regarding marriage, work, and the goals of the women's liberation movement. Jane Austen shared with feminists a recognition of the need for self-fulfillment. Because she was a realist, she provided fulfillment for her heroines through the only vehicle that was available to most women of her time--marriage. The solution she worked out for satisfying this need in …

The Influence Of Turner's Frontier Thesis Upon American Religious Historiography, William Riley Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Frederick Jackson Turner exercised considerable influence among American religious historians during the first four decades of the twentieth century, especially at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, William Warren Sweet, the father of American church history, became the major religious popularizer and adherent of Turner's frontier thesis. Sweet's professional secular training and adaptation of the frontier thesis in historiography allowed him to make church history a respectable academic study among American secular historians. After the Second World War American historiography underwent a shaking of its progressive foundations, and a similar parallel was found in religious historiography. The New Church History …