Editor’s Page

Abstract

Editor’s Page Daniel J. Burge Historians have long been intrigued by biography. While many historians have written books analyzing wars, revolutions, and the fall of empires, others have sought to understand the past by examining how individuals altered the course of history. Classical historians such as Arrian, Suetonius, and Plutarch helped to establish biography as a reputable genre of historical inquiry and its popularity has only increased with time. In the twenty-first century, bookshelves bend under the weight of the biographies on Jefferson, Lincoln, Douglass, and the Roosevelts. However, as this issue of the Register reminds us, biographers do not have to exclusively deal with the stories of those who became president or who led armies. Oftentimes, we can learn more from the past by examining the lives of less well-known personages. Angelo I. George and Gary A. O’Dell illustrate the possibilities of biography by helping to recover the story of Stephen Bishop. In their article “Stephen Bishop: The Celebrated Guide of Mammoth Cave,” George and O’Dell explore how Bishop, an enslaved man in Kentucky, became one of the most famous Black men in antebellum America. Unlike Frederick Douglass or Henry Box Brown, who became noted leaders of the abolition movement after escaping north, Bishop garnered national exclaim by his subterranean exploits. Enslaved from birth, possibly by his biological father, Bishop was brought to Mammoth Cave after he was purchased by Franklin Gorin, an attorney from Glasgow, Kentucky. It was at Mammoth Cave that Bishop would rise to national fame, as he conducted underground tours, explored new regions, and entertained guests with his oratory and knowledge of cave lore. Yet, for all the tourists that he drew to [End Page 95] Mammoth Cave, Bishop hardly reaped financial rewards. His last enslaver, Dr. John Croghan, died in 1849, stipulating that Bishop and his family would only be freed after seven years. Bishop and his family were emancipated in 1856, but Bishop died a mere year later. Moving ahead several decades, Lynn E. Niedermeyer focuses her attention on the barriers that white women faced during the Gilded Age. In “‘The Board is Blue’: Kentucky Registers a Woman Pharmacist,” Niedermeier recounts the story of Elizabeth “Bessie” Woods White. Born into a prominent family in Clay County, Kentucky, White received a quality education and enrolled at the Michigan School of Pharmacy. Excelling at her studies, White graduated in 1883 with the degree of pharmaceutical chemist. Returning to Kentucky, White attempted to register with the state board of pharmacy but experienced a setback when the board responded that she lacked the requisite three years of professional experience. Recognizing that the board did not want to register a female applicant, White brought a legal case against them, which she won in 1884, when a judge ruled that the board had overstepped its authority. Although White decided to marry and step away from a career as a pharmacist, her actions opened the door for women in Kentucky to enter a profession that had been closed to them. Our third article pivots from an individual biography to a story about a family. In her article, “Medical Mysteries: Identifying Recipes in the Carpenter Family Papers,” KHS digital archivist Alyssa Ollier takes a fresh look at several recipes within the Carpenter family papers, which are housed at the Kentucky Historical Society. Ollier examines a recipe on curing sweeney, a disease that impacted horses. Ollier also analyzes a recipe on opodeldoc, a plant-based medicine used to treat a variety of ailments. Ollier uses these recipes to shed light on traditional southern folk medicine, as practiced by nineteenth-century Kentuckians. All three authors illustrate how the stories of individuals and families can be used to understand a specific era. Examining Stephen [End Page 96] Bishop’s story, for example, provides us with a different perspective of antebellum Kentucky than we could glean by looking at Henry Clay or Abraham Lincoln, who were Bishop’s contemporaries. In a similar manner, Bessie White reminds us of the extraordinary challenges that women faced as they attempted to enter occupations reserved for men, a viewpoint that is often missing from histories of the Gilded Age. By recovering the stories of...