2026 Cool Kentucky Thurby, George Washington and the Cherry Tree, Love & Marriage Closes Sunday, and More
Guests enjoy last year’s Cool Kentucky–themed Thurby at Churchill Downs, May 1, 2025.
Last year’s Thurby poster. This year’s poster will be a different design, so keep an eye out for that to be revealed soon!
Listen closely and you can almost hear the sound of the thoroughbreds rounding the fourth turn at Churchill Downs and rumbling towards the finish line—the volume from the roar of the crowd growing, matching, and then exceeding the thunderous horse hooves sprinting to the finish.
It’s almost Derby season, y’all—and the Frazier is proud to once again partner with Churchill Downs and Old Forester in celebrating Cool Kentucky day at the track on Thurby Thursday.
Like last year, the experience at the track will include Musical Kentucky from our 120: Cool KY Counties playlist: Select artists featured on the playlist will roam the grounds and play music.
Iconic Kentuckians like American record holder and Olympic medalist Yared Nuguse will be honored and featured on the big board. Performers from Actors Theatre will greet guests dressed like Colonel Sanders, Muhammad Ali, Matt Winn, the disco ball, and a Slugger bat.
Once again, there is a Cool Kentucky screenprint that will be given away to hundreds of guests with a printed poster handed out to 2,000 others. Let the collection begin for those of you who secured a poster last year.
Finally, for the fashion forward, there are a couple of photo ops screaming for your Thurby day fits. Artist Andy Perez is creating an interactive Post-it note mural and our friends at Crosley Brands are bringing their cool Cruiser truck for Insta’ entertainment. Say cheese!
Don’t forget that it’s also spring break season here at the Frazier Kentucky History Museum. We welcome Greater Clark County this week, New Albany/Floyd County next, and JCPS, Catholic Schools, and most of Kentucky spring breakers the following. Come check us out!
In today’s Frazier Weekly, Tish Boyer spotlights a Louisville stage actress for Women’s History Month, Mick Sullivan explores the happiness of George Washington, and Sarah Jemerson highlights a swatch from Martha Washington’s dress on loan to the Frazier from our friends at Sons of the American Revolution.
Enjoy!
Andy Treinen
President & CEO
Frazier Kentucky History Museum
This Week in the Museum
Museum Shop: Derby is in the Air!
Kentucky Derby–related merchandise sold in the Frazier’s Museum Shop, March 20, 2026.
Spring in Kentucky means one thing: Derby season. From Pegasus pins to fascinators and Derby Bourbon, the Frazier’s Museum Shop is stocked and race-ready. Stop in and see us or shop online.
From the Collections: Stage Actress Mary Anderson Figurine, 1880s
Ad for Romeo in Juliet published in the November 27, 1875, Courier Journal.
Mary Anderson as Juliet in Romeo in Juliet, c. 1883–90. Credit: Cabinet Card Collection, Boston Public Library.
Figurine of stage actress Mary Anderson made in the 1880s. Part of the Frazier Kentucky History Museum’s collections.
This week, as we celebrate Women’s History Month, let’s look at a famous stage actress from Gilded Age Louisville!
Mary Anderson started her career at the age of sixteen. According to her own memoir, on Thursday, November 25, 1875, Mary went to see a Mr. Macauley about starring in a play. Macauley, who ran Macauley’s Theatre on Walnut Street between Third and Fourth, gave her a chance to perform that Saturday. So, on November 27, Mary Anderson made her stage debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet—having had only one rehearsal. But what the stage company didn’t know was that Mary had been studying at home for years and was more than ready for her big moment. The performance was lauded as a huge success.
Mary Anderson’s career took off from there. She quickly started touring the United States and Europe, playing characters in various romantic plays such as Hunchback, The Lady of Lyons, and Romeo and Juliet. She was also the first actress to play both Hermione and Perdita at the same time in Winter’s Tale. During these years, she was photographed in her costumes as the different characters she played. Her likeness was also used for advertisements for products such as soap, perfume, tobacco, and stockings.
But at the very height of her career, she shocked the theater world when she announced her retirement at the age of thirty in 1889. Mary Anderson left the stage to marry a solicitor, Antonio De Navarro, and moved to a village near Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
In 2019, the Frazier Kentucky History Museum featured an object from Mary Anderson in our Celebrating the Sounds of Kentucky exhibition. Then, in 2023, we obtained an incredible collection of memorabilia, cabinet cards, ads, and more objects featuring the likeness of Mary Anderson.
In memory of this incredible actress, we want to show you this rare porcelain figurine made by the Dresden Porcelain Co., c. 1880s. This figurine features Mary Anderson as the character Pauline from the play The Lady of Lyons.
Tish Boyer
Registrar & Manager of Collections Engagement
Video: On the Myth of George Washington and the Cherry Tree
For the next few weeks, the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC, will signal the changing of seasons. But when I think of Washington and cherries, I think of a painting by Grant Wood. Famous for American Gothic, Wood was fascinated by the fictitious tale of young George Washington and the cherry tree.
As part of our Pursuit of Happiness exhibition, I created this short video for our Frazier+ app about one of America’s most enduring myths—and the art it inspired.
We hope to see you soon in the museum galleries!
Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Experience
Swatch Out! Last Chance to See Piece of Martha Washington’s Dress
Illustration of Martha Washington with a swatch-shaped hole in her dress, 2026. Credit: Sarah Jemerson.
Martha Washington’s dress swatch on display in the Frazier’s Founder’s Gallery, February 23, 2026.
We hardly knew ye, little swatch!
This is your final chance to see firsthand a sample piece of the dress Martha Washington wore at her 1759 wedding to future first president George Washington. The swatch will return to the Sons of the American Revolution at the end of March.
See it in our newly updated Founder’s Gallery while you still can!
Sarah Jemerson
Education & Engagement Lead
Last Call for Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage Exhibition
We have felt the love for our Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage exhibition that officially comes to a close on Sunday, March 29. So many folks have traveled to see it in these final few weeks from nearby cities and we thank you. If you haven’t been, the exhibition explores 150 years of love, marriage, and courtship and features fifty gorgeous wedding dresses on display. This exhibition has also been personal for the Frazier, with at least one engagement and two weddings for staff members while this exhibition has been up. Our Exhibit and Design Manager Nick Cook, who recently got married, left his mark on the exhibition!—Rachel Platt, VP of Mission
It’s the final week to enjoy our Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage exhibition at the museum. This exhibition was extra special to design because it coincided with my own marriage last fall. I was in the unique position of designing both a wedding and a wedding exhibition in the same year!
The perfume bottle located at the desk sprays the fragrance of an extinct Kentucky flower, the Falls of the Ohio scurfpea.
The ornate “T” in the intro panel directly references an infamous episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
My wife, Brooks, does a very similar job to my own at the Filson Historical Society. Together we treated our wedding like an exhibition of what we love most. We created hand-drawn imagery for invitations, chose a color palette, and even created our own font! Through the process, compromises had to be made, and a lot of ideas fell to the wayside. That’s where Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage came in handy. Any idea I didn’t end up using for my own wedding, ended up on the walls of the show. Along the way I even added an easter egg or two. I thought it would be fun to point out a few before the show closes for good on Sunday.
Nick and Brooks on their wedding day, October 18, 2025, and the preliminary suit sketch. Photo Credit: Kendra Kiser.
My favorite is located in the flip books of fashion through the decades. Not only did I get to include my parents in the 1980s section, but I also hid some other familiar faces throughout. But the biggest easter egg was the 2020s where I had sketched out my own wedding suit.
A popular tradition currently is customizing attire and adding your own flare. Brooks specializes in historic garments and we both share of love of nature which was the basis for our wedding. We are always collaborating on ideas together, so when it came time to choose our wedding attire, we both had many sketches and inspirations to pull from. She, along with our officiant and friend Monica, helped to applique (or add on) felt designs I created to my suit. I tried to include a sketch of her dress in the exhibition, but she wanted it to be a surprise.
So come check out the exhibition one last time before we make room for our upcoming exhibition celebrating America250, I Too am a Kentuckian, which will open this summer!
Nick Cook
Exhibit and Design Manager
Frazier Tour Group Applauds Kentucky Paralympian Oksana Masters
Graphic highlighting Oksana Masters’s Paralympic Games stats. Credit: Team USA.
Earlier this month, my colleague Mick Sullivan led a tour of our Cool Kentucky exhibition. He stopped at the case of medals, apparel, and miscellanea on loan from Paralympian Oksana Masters. Mick mentioned that Oksana had just finished competing in the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games in Milano Cortina, where she racked up four more gold medals and one bronze.
The tour group burst into applause.
Now, this is not something that ordinarily happens on our tours! But what made that tour special, as Mick reminded me, was that we seldom get to tie our artifacts to current events so directly. And when his tour guests heard what Oksana’s road to success looked like, they naturally responded with exuberance.
Oksana was born in Ukraine and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where she attended Highland Middle School and Atherton High School. The effects of Chernobyl were suspected to play a role in birth defects that led to both of her legs being amputated.
By the time she was thirteen, she discovered newfound freedom in adaptive rowing in Louisville—and the rest is history.
With twenty-four medals, she is now the most decorated US Winter Paralympian of all time.
Oksana also starred in Toyota and Starbucks ads that ran during Super Bowl LX last month.
See Oksana’s case in person the next time you visit. And, if you feel so inclined, give her a hand!
Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist
On the Trail with Abby: Lux Row Distillery in Nelson County
On the Trail with Abby graphic.
Bourbon tourism is booming—and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® is growing faster than ever! Each week, the Frazier’s Abby Flanders takes readers on a digital stop-by-stop tour of this expanding adventure, spotlighting the distilleries, stories, and expressions behind America’s native spirit. Ready to hit the trail in real life? Start your journey at the Frazier Kentucky History Museum, home of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® Welcome Center.
Exterior of Lux Row Distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky.
This week on the trail, we hop on over to Nelson County. Lux Row in Bardstown, Kentucky, carries the torch for several whiskey brands, from Rebel Bourbon, Ezra Brooks, Blood Oath, Daviess County, and David Nicholson to its namesake, Lux Row Bourbon, currently offered in a 12-Year Double Barrel, Four Grain Double Single Barrel, and PX Sherry Cask Finish.
Lux Row offers a variety of experiences from tours and tastings to private cocktail classes at its spacious visitor center and distillery. If you’re lucky, you might even see peacocks running across their tasting room! The distillery location was a farm before it became a ninety-acre Bourbon haven. The peacocks stayed part of the package.
Snap a pic in front of their six-story barrel wall. Lux Row is another spot on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® you don’t want to miss!
Abby Flanders
Administrative Chief of Engagement
History All Around Us
New Novella Explores Fairmount in Fern Creek, 1797–Present
Headstone for Mary Wilcox in southeastern Jefferson County, May 29, 2022.
Front cover of In the Shade of the Sugar Maple by Jenny Smith, 2026.
Local author Jenny Smith has a new book that all began with a cemetery she found close to her condo. I’ll let her explain the rest. We featured Jenny here at the Frazier with her first book, Live the Impossible: How a Wheelchair Has Taken Me Places I Never Imagined. Jenny keeps going places as an author and will sign copies of her new book, In the Shade of the Sugar Maple, on March 29, starting at noon, at the Barnes and Noble on South Hurstbourne Parkway.—Rachel Platt, VP of Mission
“I found a cemetery.”
This is how I’ve started many conversations over the past several years.
At a homeowners’ association meeting in the spring of 2022, I learned there was a cemetery less than 500 feet from my condo in southeast Jefferson County. Hidden behind dense trees and foliage—and a barbed wire fence—I couldn’t see a single headstone. But I couldn’t resist a good historical mystery.
A few days later, a neighbor and I set out to investigate. I needed a partner in crime since I use a wheelchair and couldn’t navigate the brush or the fence. After penetrating the overgrowth, she spotted a headstone and snapped a photo with my phone.
The stone stood in tall, dry grass and fallen leaves, worn by nearly two centuries of weather. A horizontal crack split the face, but the name and date were still readable: Mary Wilcox, born December 25, 1836.
My original goal was simple: learn enough about the cemetery to approach the HOA about protecting it. But the facts—and my imagination—had much more in store.
Where is Fairmount?
My novella, In the Shade of the Sugar Maple, is set in nineteenth-century Fairmount, Kentucky. Today, the area lies south of the Gene Snyder in the part of Jefferson County known as Fern Creek, near the Glenmary subdivisions. In the 1800s, however, Fairmount was known for fertile farmland and thriving orchards.
Country stores doubled as post offices, taverns served travelers moving between Louisville and Bardstown, and the Louisville-Bardstown Pike carried wagons, news, and opportunity through the region.
As I researched Mary Wilcox, her family, and the surrounding community, the landscape of nineteenth-century Fairmount began to emerge from land deeds and wills. Property lines marked by walnut, sugar maple, beech, black locust, and elm trees. Records repeatedly referenced Floyds Fork and Big Run. Again and again, the same families appeared together in documents—the Grahams, Wilcoxes, Thixtons, Welshes, and Hayes—neighbors whose lives intertwined in this small community.
The Story
Beginning on the Kentucky frontier in 1797, In the Shade of the Sugar Maple follows the Graham and Wilcox families as their roots take hold along Bardstown Pike and the fertile lands of Fairmount.
Part One introduces Thomas and Susanna Graham, a pioneer couple raising three daughters. Part Two follows their granddaughter, Mary Wilcox, as she survives personal loss and the upheaval of the Civil War. In Part Three, Mary’s son Robert Hillaire Wilcox leaves Kentucky amid rumors surrounding his birth. He heads toward the cities of the American Northwest while maintaining ties to the Thixtons—his childhood guardians—through letters.
The story unfolds across real Kentucky places—Bardstown Pike, Fairmount Falls, Floyds Fork, and Big Run—and alongside historic moments such as the Whiskey Rebellion, the earthquakes of 1811–12, the rampage of the notorious Sue Mundy, the growth of Fern Creek, and the pull of westward expansion.
Learn More
In the Shade of the Sugar Maple is available to purchase starting Monday, March 23, wherever you buy books. A launch celebration and signing will take place on Sunday, March 29, at Barnes & Noble on South Hurstbourne Parkway from noon to 4 p.m.
Sometimes a great story begins with a simple discovery—like a forgotten headstone hidden in the woods.
Jenny Smith
Author, In the Shade of the Sugar Maple
Guest Contributor
