In all the fanfare over our new event pavilion, you may have overlooked our other wonderful new facility, the library. The library is located in the 1800s log building at the southeast corner of the Visitors’ Center, accessible through the exhibit gallery. It’s not yet open for use for research while we continue to sort and place our book collection on the shelves.
Locust Grove has also amassed quantities of paper files of articles, copies of original documents, photos, journals, and other materials that will benefit researchers, which will be housed in the new library.
We’ll have a computer terminal for access to databases such as Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and JSTOR (academic journals).
The original archival materials that we own such as deeds and Croghan family letters, as well as other fragile documents and books, will remain in our secure collections storage area.
Our library materials are focused on the people and times of Locust Grove. We have collected works on George Rogers Clark ranging from children’s books, to the colorful Lowell Thomas saga of The Hero of Vincennes, to the recent scholarly work by Gwynne Potts, George Rogers Clark and William Croghan.
Our shelves include an extensive section on Audubon and Kentucky wildlife, on period gardens, on the Revolutionary War and its era, and works and documents on the history of enslavement and the lives of enslaved communities in the region. Decorative arts, clothing, artisanry, and many more topics are well represented.
Once the space is set up, researchers and members of the general public can request an appointment. Our staff and volunteers will be able to use the space for study, meetings, and work sessions. We’ll make an announcement when the space is generally accessible.
All this is thanks to the thoughtful renovation by our architects, de Leon & Primmer, which was funded by our generous donors, the Ratterman family. Work on cataloguing and arranging the library has largely been done by Board member and volunteer Del Marie Vaccaro.
And, to make the space even more special, we are awaiting a custom table being constructed for us by Ed James, master carpenter and Board member.