Earlier in 2020, KYGMC acquired gifts of several very significant and rare historical books and artifacts for its collections.
The most significant and rarest acquisition is the Parisian 1785 French edition of John Filson’s Histoire de Kentucke, complete with its own French language version of Filson’s extremely rare map of Kentucky, published in Wilmington in 1784. This book also contains Filson’s highly imaginative version of Daniel Boone’s life in Kentucky. Filson lived an extremely eventful life before traveling to Kentucky from Pennsylvania in the early 1780s. A soldier in the American Revolution, British prisoner, schoolteacher and surveyor, he somehow acquired, according to a biography, “over 13,000 acres of western lands and moved to Kentucky” toward the end of 1782 or early 1783. Settling in Lexington, he taught school, surveyed land claims, and traveled the region, leading to his writing The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, published in Wilmington, DE, and the creation of the first noted map of Kentucky, eight years before it joined the Union in 1792. The map was published separately but sold with the book for $1.50. The French edition followed almost immediately; a German edition was published in 1790, and an English edition in 1793, of which KYGMC also owns a copy. Filson is reported to have written several other books when he was not involved in a failed effort to start a seminary, and numerous lawsuits. Also of interest to our area is that Filson had bought an interest in a tract of land that was the future site of Cincinnati, founded by a group of Maysvillians. However, nearly a year after the group floated downriver to found the town, first named Losantiville, whose survey and plan of the town served the founders, Filson, while on a survey east of the town, was captured and killed by Shawnee Indians.
We have a 1793 London 2nd Edition, Gilbert Imlay Topographical Sketches of the Western Territory of North America, complete with three maps and a Table of Distances. Imlay, of New Jersey, served in the American army in the Revolution according to Wikipedia, was an American businessman, described as being “known in his day as a shrewd but unscrupulous businessman involved in land speculation in Kentucky,” author, and diplomat, who served in the U. S. embassy to France during the French Revolution. Of his two books, this “influential” book also contains the complete Filson History of Kentucke, including its fanciful version of Boone’s life, published in London and New York in 1793. After becoming a Kentucky landowner in 1783, in 1784 Imlay came to Kentucky where his life, in many ways, was similar to Filson’s. They could well have been acquaintances.
We also acquired the 1847 Collins’ Historical Sketches of Kentucky, complete with map.” Authored by Lewis Collins, who is commemorated in a State Highway Historical Marker near the southeast corner of Sutton and Third Streets, Maysville, and Richard Collins, his son. The volume contains “a county-by-county overview of the settling and early history of Kentucky.” It contains 84 portraits, a map of Kentucky, and over 70 engravings, including one of the old courthouse on Third Street, first built as Maysville’s City Hall. The book contains a great deal of natural history, incidents of pioneer life, and nearly 500 biographical sketches. G. Glenn Clift’s 1936 History of Maysville and Mason County relies heavily upon Collins.
These items are currently on display in the Wormald Gallery along with 1794 “Map of the State of Kentucky with Adjoining Territory” and “Map of the United States of America as settled by the Peace of 1783” featuring an unusual Maine-Canada border. Forts and Indian tribes are labeled west of the Appalachian Mountains.
Other recently donated items not included are a copy of a wood engraving of Maysville on the river bank, with the legend of “Scene of the Great Union Barbecue”; and a copy of the 1991 U S Topographic Survey Map of Maysville showing both sides of the river with towns and villages and a family archive.
Williams History of Washington County, Ohio, 1788-1881, reprinted 1976.
Purchased first at the suggestion of an official at the Marietta, OH Campus Martius – Marietta Museums, as a resource for early history of Ohio River-built sailing vessels in the late 1790s and early 1800s, as part of the research into the building here in Maysville of the ship, “Maysville,” 1803. As an early record of the founding of Marietta, it’s a valuable resource of the area and its settlements along the Ohio and the Muskingum Rivers after the Revolution.
Acquisitions are very important to our museum. Artifacts in our current “Tea Cups and Tools” and “Portraits from our Past” exhibit, which are also in the Wormald Gallery at KYGMC, are all “in-house” items from our museum. We currently need items from the 40’s-60’s. (Including Saddle oxfords, men’s wingtip shoes, penny loafers, white Go-Go boots- anything iconic of the era.) A special request of local ghosts and hauntings, lore and legends are also needed.
Readers may email [email protected] @ Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, KY
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