Travel

• A Splendid Adventure: Mary Yoder Brown Scott’s 1908 Trip to Italy

  By Sara Elliott, Director

  

  May 6^th is National Tourist Appreciation Day. Liberty Hall Historic Site (LHHS) is a favorite stop for folks who visit Frankfort and we are grateful for every one of them. In these days of non-travel, I thought I would share a story of Brown family members being tourists. Although travel is quite a bit different now than in the early 20^th century, the experiences of tourists are universal.

• Collections Spotlight: French Fashion

  By Kate Hesseldenz, Curator

  House of Worth gown, ca. 1906; Weeks gown, 1910-1915; Cheruit gown and suit, 1910-1920, Liberty Hall Historic Site Collections

  Among the fifty pieces of historic women’s clothing in the LHHS collection there are four early 20^th century Parisian garments, three gowns and a suit.  Who in the family owned these clothes and did they travel to Europe to acquire them?  It seems that someone in the Brown family knew that Paris, France, was (and still is) the fashion capital of the world. American women who wished to be in style in the early 1900s bought French clothes.[i] 

• Scenes from a Western Journey: Excerpts from John Mason Brown’s 1861 diary

  By Sara Elliott, Director

  Map showing the route taken by John Mason Brown on his trip to the Northwest in 1861, The Filson Club History Quarterly, 1950.

  John Mason Brown, the son of Mason and Mary Yoder Brown, was born at Liberty Hall in April 1837. A graduate of Yale, Brown taught school in Frankfort, worked for the Kentucky Geological Survey, studied law and shortly after being admitted to the Kentucky bar, followed his half-brother, Benjamin Gratz Brown, to St. Louis in 1860.

  Brown was interested in history, geology, geography, and languages. Therefore, it is not surprising that the lure of the west—the west that Lewis and Clark had seen a little over 50 years before—would lead him on a six-month adventure that, fortunately for us, he chronicled in his diary.