Filson Historical Society
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The Filson is a privately supported, not-for-profit historical society founded in 1884 to collect, preserve, publish, and disseminate historical material that tells the significant stories of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley region. Its wide-ranging collections offer a variety of ways to explore the history of the upper South and the early West.
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[edit] Address and Contact Info
Address: 1310 S. Third St., Louisville, KY 40208-2306
Phone: (502) 635-5083
Fax: (502) 635-5086
E-mail: filson@filsonhistorical.org
Web page: http://www.filsonhistorical.org
Online finding aid: http://filson.ipac.dynixasp.com/
[edit] Collection Summary
The library collection includes 50,000 books, pamphlets, maps, newspapers, microfilm, sheet music, periodicals, family files, funeral home and cemetery records, theatre programs, and other ephemera. Many rare items are contained in the book and pamphlet collection, which consists of local and regional histories, biographies, works of Kentucky authors, Civil War history, city directories, travel accounts, and family histories. There is an extensive collection of early maps of Kentucky and the southeastern United States along with late 19th-century county atlases. The library has one of the largest collections of 19th-century Kentucky newspapers in original issue. The microfilm collection contains all U.S. census records for Kentucky and some for Virginia and other states, tax lists for all Kentucky counties through 1850, all of the available 19th-century Kentucky vital records, the Draper manuscript collection, the Shane papers, and some newspapers. Some turn-of-the-century funeral home and cemetery records for Jefferson County, Kentucky, are available, and the family files, with over 3,000 surnames, provide a unique resource for family historians. Over 4,000 pieces of 19th-century sheet music are available, particularly from the antebellum and Civil War eras.
The manuscript collection contains approximately 1.5 million items. It consists of papers generated by individuals and families and of archival records created by businesses, institutions, and organizations. The papers consist primarily of letters, diaries, legal documents, and ephemera as well as the archives of business, religious, educational, governmental, civic, and fraternal organizations and other records. The collection dates from the 17th century to the present, and it is the strongest in the state for Kentucky’s pioneer, antebellum, and Civil War periods. The collection focuses on Kentucky and the Ohio Valley but is also national and international in scope, including materials relating to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The photograph and print collection contains approximately 40,000 images and several hundred lithographs, engravings, and other prints. The R. C. Ballard Thruston Photograph Collection comprises 10,500 negatives and prints picturing life, people, and scenes in Kentucky, other states, and foreign countries from the 1880s through the 1930s. Other photographs document architecture, river history, agriculture, commerce, industry, and many aspects of social history.
The Filson’s museum collections are available to students of material culture. The museum’s more important study collections are portraits (nearly 400 portraits from the early 19th to the mid-20th century are included in the collection), late 19th- and early 20th-century clothing, coin silver, quilts, and coverlets.
The collection can be searched through an integrated online catalog available at http://filson.ipac.dynixasp.com/ or through a link on the Filson’s web site. A portion of the material is available in digital format in the online collection of The First American West, hosted by the Library of Congress at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/fawhome.html.
[edit] Usage Discussion
Suggestions for approaching the material:
Housing and getting by for less in the area:
