November At Locust Grove Features Favorite Authors And More

Afternoon Lecture Series
Frank Kelderman | Afloat at Locust Grove: Traversing Indian Diplomacy on the Ohio River
Wednesday, November 6, 1:15 pm

In 1842, the Choctaw diplomat Peter Pitchlynn had a chance encounter with the author Charles Dickens on a steamboat on the Ohio River, between Cincinnati and Louisville. Pitchlynn was returning from diplomatic business in Washington; Dickens was traveling the country to write his “American Notes” (1842). In this talk, Frank Kelderman takes Dickens’s account of their meeting as a starting point for exploring the Ohio River as a thoroughfare for Indian diplomacy, connecting the eastern United States to Indian country. Drawing on literature, visual art, and archival materials, this talk will give an account of indigenous presence in a region where that presence has long been unrecognized.

Frank Kelderman is an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisville, where he specializes in 19th-century Native American literature. He is the author of “Authorized Agents: Publication and Diplomacy in the Era of Indian Removal” (SUNY Press, 2019), which examines Native American writing and oratory from the Upper Missouri River to the Great Lakes. His research has also been published in the journals “American Literature,” “American Studies,” “J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists,” and “Great Plains Quarterly.”

This program is part of the city-wide program Afloat: An Ohio River Way of Life.

The Locust Grove Afternoon Lecture Series is held the first Wednesday of each month. Dessert and coffee are served at 1:00 pm with the lecture immediately following at 1:15 pm. Admission is $6, $4 for Friends of Historic Locust Grove. Reservations are not required.

Richard Bell | Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
Thursday, November 7, 6:30 pm

Richard Bell, associate professor of Early American History at the University of Maryland, returns to Locust Grove with his new book, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home. Stolen recounts the gripping and true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice, reminiscent of Twelve Years A Slave and Never Caught. Dr. Bell will speak about how their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. http://bit.ly/richardbell

Admission is $15/$12 for members. Reservations required; visit http://bit.ly/richardbell for tickets. Cash bar available; doors open at 6:00 pm.

Emilie Strong Smith Chamber Music Concert Series
Armonia e Passione: “Concerto alla Rustica”
Sunday, November 17, 5:30 pm

Enjoy a feast of Italian music for Baroque string band, with the music of Vivaldi, Marini, Bertali, and more from Armonia e Passione, a 17th-century Italian string band based in St Louis featuring Celina Casado, Stephanie Hunt, and Jeff Noonan, and led by William Bauer.

Locust Grove’s Emilie Strong Smith Chamber Music Series offers concertgoers a unique opportunity. Patrons delight in music that the Clarks and Croghans would have heard in the room where they most likely would have enjoyed it — the second-floor Great Parlor of the historic house.

Refreshments at 5:00 p.m.; concert in Locust Grove’s Great Parlor begins at 5:30 p.m. Individual concerts are $20 each. Pre-paid reservations are required–please call (502) 897-9845.

Season subscriptions may be purchased by calling Locust Grove at (502) 897-9845. Categories are Patron, $200; Supporter, $100; and Subscriber, $70.