CLICK "LECTURE SERIES" ON THE BANNER FOR THE 2024 SEASON LINEUP!
The Frankfort Heritage Lecture Series is intended to explore themes in Frankfort and Franklin County cultural history - the big, small, and tangential - including the people, places, and events that shaped our community and environment, as well as include topics in art, culture, and historic preservation such as architecture, industry, music, painters, poetry, archaeology, public policy, and more.
It is also intended to align with the efforts and purpose of the America250 and America250KY commissions by telling our community's story in the larger context of American and Kentucky history.
We are proud to collaborate with the Paul Sawyier Public Library and Frankfort Plant Board!
All events are free and will be followed by a brief Q&A with the speaker. If the presentation is part of a book tour, a book signing will follow the Q&A.
Unless otherwise specified, all events take place:
SECOND SATURDAYS OF THE MONTH
1:00 pm
PAUL SAWYIER PUBLIC LIBRARY
RIVER ROOM
319 WAPPING STREET
FRANKFORT, KY 40601
To watch past FHLS lectures, click here: https://www.frankfortheritageweek.com/past-lectures
Mack Cox, researcher and collector of early Kentucky-made furniture
“The Kentucky Collection of Sharon and Mack Cox”
The first of two short lectures will explore early Frankfort furniture dating from about 1795 to 1820. The second documents decorative inlay in early Kentucky furniture from the same period. The first will be developed for this presentation and the latter was developed for a conference organized by Winterthur Museum in Delaware and the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art titled “The Wonder of Wood: Decorative Inlay and Marquetry in Europe and America, 1600-1900” that occurred in April of 2022. Both will be fast-paced, graphics-rich introductions to Kentucky furniture made before the steamboat era when the Commonwealth was commercially isolated from the east coast by a vast wilderness and was part of the early American West.
Mack Cox is a researcher and collector of early Kentucky-made furniture. A Kentucky native, Mack received BS and MS degrees in geology from Eastern Kentucky University and pursued an oil and gas career from which he retired in 2017. He and his wife Sharon began collecting early Kentucky material about 2005, and their collection was covered in the July/August 2011 issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES (“The Kentucky Collection of Sharon and Mack Cox” by Daniel Kurt Ackermann). In 2013, their collection covered 34 pages, and was described as “one of the finest assemblages of antebellum Kentucky material” in the book Collecting Kentucky 1790-1860 by Lacer & Howard.
Mack currently serves on the executive committee and board of the Henry Clay Memorial Foundation. He also serves on advisory boards for the Colonial Williamsburg Art Museums in Virginia, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in North Carolina, and The Magazine ANTIQUES in New York City. He, along with his wife, Sharon are regional representatives for MESDA’s Object Database and have submitted over 100 surveys of Kentucky material. He has lectured at numerous Kentucky locations and for the Decorative Arts Trust in Philadelphia, the Washington, D.C. Decorative Arts Forum, Winterthur Museum (Delaware) and the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Colonial Williamsburg, and Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts.
Kentucky furniture is not well documented and the connections to Kentucky are being lost at an alarming rate. Mack’s primary mission in retirement is to discover and document Kentucky furniture groups to guide future studies and he is considered a leading authority on Kentucky furniture.
Christopher T. Hall, archaeologist and researcher
Audiences are in for a treat, as they sit back and listen to a candid discussion about the discipline of archaeology and what it tells us about our own history. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience conducting archaeological research, Chris explains the goals of archaeology and then interactively walks the audience through the process by which archaeological sites are created, taking time to point out the discipline’s weaknesses and difficulties archaeologists have interpreting what they find. He then turns the spotlight on archaeology’s strengths and discusses what those strengths have allowed us to learn about human’s seven-million-year history that no other discipline can begin to explain.
Christopher T. Hall is a Kentucky native whose fascination with prehistory took him out West at an early age. He began by volunteering on any archaeological project that would take him, but his increasing interest in prehistoric peoples whose survival depended on their ability to hunt animals and gather plants eventually led him to focus on the High Plains and Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, where Native peoples continued their hunting-gathering lifestyle well after European contact.
Chris is primarily interested in understanding the factors that drive technological change among these societies, and his case study for this endeavor is the first appearance of bow-and-arrow technology on the High Plains around 100 A.D.
Chris holds a B.A. and M.A. in anthropology from the University of Louisville and University of Wyoming, respectively. He has also completed the coursework for a Ph.D., A.B.D. and taught lower- and upper-levels of anthropology courses at Washington State University. Having previously worked as a staff archaeologist for Cultural Resources Analysts, Inc., Chris now works as a non-partisan analyst for Kentucky government, but is still actively involved in archaeology and will be participating in the excavation of a 13,000-year-old Mammoth kill site in Wyoming this summer.
William “Drew” M. Andrews, Ph.D., P.G., Acting Director and State Geologist
Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky
The rocks under our landscape play a critical role in defining the shape and the characteristics of the land we live on. Landforms, streams, resources, and natural hazards are all related to the geology of an area. This presentation will explore the ancient geologic environments and processes responsible for the rocks and landforms around Frankfort, and discuss how rocks are important to our history, transportation, recreation, and economy.
Dr. Drew Andrews is the Acting Director of the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS), where he has worked since 1996. Most recently, he was the Head of the Geologic Mapping Section of KGS. With expertise in geographic information systems (GIS), geomorphology, and geologic mapping, Drew is also an adjunct assistant professor of geology at the University of Kentucky's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
A life-long Kentuckian born in Frankfort, Drew received his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Kentucky, is a member of the Geological Society of America and the Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists, and is licensed as a professional geologist in Kentucky.
Tressa Brown, Historic Preservation Coordinator
Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission, Kentucky Heritage Council
American Indian communities have been in Kentucky for more than 11,000 years. When Euro-Americans settled here, Shawnee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw, among others, already lived here. Myths and misconceptions about American Indian people permeate many sources of information. We all dispel some of the myths about native people that persist, discuss Kentucky's native heritage, and briefly review its long history.
Tressa Brown received her B.A. in Biology and Anthropology at Transylvania University and her M.A. in Anthropology and Museum Studies from Arizona State University. She is currently the coordinator for the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission, the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission. She has worked for the past 25 years providing Native American educational programming for schools and the public.
Her primary focus has been to identify the stereotypes and myths about Native Americans in general and Kentucky's Native people in particular. Her position at KHC is to provide accurate information to educators and the public about Kentucky's American Indian history, the diversity of Native cultures, as well as the issues affecting Native people in contemporary society.