Bonnie Strassell - Owen County Historical Society

“Without him tyrants and humbugs in all countries would have their own way. Of all inventions, of all discoveries in science and art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free men.” (Charles Dickens, circa 1850)

Tom Strassell of Poplar Grove has spent a lifetime amid the magic of historic printing, and at the historical society meeting last week he took the audience on an enlightening journey into Kentucky’s past.

Only a few Owen countians remain who remember those days, and sadly, those who are gone took with them many poignant, and at times hair-raising stories of the Kentucky steamboat era.

By the 1820s, steamboat fever had struck Kentucky, and for the next 100 years it captured the economy and imagination of Kentuckians.

In the 1850s, sidewheelers and sternwheelers on the Kentucky were transporting goods valued at more than $10,000,000 annually, giving a substantial boost to the state’s ecomony.

Its smooth, rounded face embraced over 140 years of history. Purchased in Liverpool, England, it became war plunder when it was removed from the body of a young Kentucky soldier at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Through the determined efforts of former Owen countian Jerry Cecil, the pocket watch of 2nd Lt. John J. Crittenden III, who died at Custer’s Last Stand, is on display at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort.

Author and storyteller Phyllis Theroux once wrote, “To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.”

Letters presented opportunities to share with others significant pieces of a person’s life.

After the Revolutionary War, Americans became part of the great westward expansion into Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and beyond.

As families and friends were left behind, letters sent back home provided a bridge between the old life and the new.