About this Book

Kentucky Women: Their Lives and Times introduces a history as dynamic and diverse as Kentucky itself. Covering the Appalachian region in the east to the Pennyroyal in the west, the essays highlight women whose aspirations, innovations, activism, and creativity illustrate Kentucky’s role in political and social reform, education, health care, the arts, and cultural development. The collection features women with well-known names as well as those whose lives and work deserve greater attention.

Shawnee chief Nonhelema Hokolesqua, western Kentucky slave Matilda Lewis Threlkeld, the sisters Emilie Todd Helm and Mary Todd Lincoln, reformers Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and Laura Clay, activists Anne McCarty Braden and Elizabeth Fouse, politicians Georgia Davis Powers and Martha Layne Collins, sculptor Enid Yandell, writer Harriette Simpson Arnow, and entrepreneur Nancy Newsom Mahaffey speak to the breadth and depth of subjects covered in Kentucky Women, representing a cross section of those who forged Kentucky’s relationship with the American South and the nation at large.

With essays on frontier life, gender inequality in marriage and divorce, medical advances, family strife, racial challenges and triumphs, widowhood, agrarian culture, urban experiences, educational theory and fieldwork, visual art, literature, and fame, the contributors have shaped a history of Kentucky that is both grounded and groundbreaking.

"The breadth of coverage, whether calculated by the women studied, methodological approaches, chronological eras, or discipline, is remarkable."
—Lorri Glover, author of Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries

?This absorbing book features the stories of fascinating women who contributed in diverse and profound ways to Kentucky and to the nation; it ought to be read far beyond the borders of the Bluegrass State."
—Stacy Cordery, author of Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts

MELISSA A. MCEUEN is professor of history at Transylvania University. She is the author of the award-winning Seeing America: Women Photographers between the Wars and Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941-1945 (Georgia). THOMAS H. APPLETON JR. formerly served as editor-in-chief of publications for the Kentucky Historical Society. Since 2000, he has been professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University. He has coedited five books, including Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood: Dealing with the Powers That Be and Searching for Their Places: Women in the South across Four Centuries.

Contributors:

Lindsey Apple
Martha Billips
James Duane Bolin
Sarah Case
Juilee Decker
Carolyn R. Dupont
Angela Esco Elder
Catherine Fosl
Craig Thompson Friend
Melanie Beals Goan
John Paul Hill
Anya Jabour
William Kuby
Karen Cotton McDaniel
Melissa A. McEuen
Mary Jane Smith
Andrea S. Watkins

Cover design: Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Cover photo:
Photo courtesy of the editors

Southern Women: Their Lives and Times

The University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org

ISBN 978-0-8203-4453-9 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-8203-4452-2 (case)