Luke Pryor Blackburn: Physician, Governor, Reformer by Nancy Disher Baird

Author:Nancy Disher Baird [Baird, Nancy Disher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, American Government, 19th Century, United States, Social Policy, Biography & Autobiography, Medical (Incl. Patients), Political Science, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), History, Political, State
ISBN: 9780813189079
Google: 8eMzEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-12-14T10:56:41+00:00

Old Governor’s Mansion.

Courtesy of Kentucky Historical Society

The Blackburns abandoned the custom of holding Monday-night levees for members of the legislature, but they nevertheless entertained frequently and lavishly, especially during the legislative sessions. Their New Year’s Day receptions, which exhibited the “easy grace that bespeaks of the influence of gentle blood,” the annual Governor’s Ball, a formal wedding reception for Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. James E. Cantrill, and many informal dances were the highlights of the Frankfort social season.5 Perhaps their most interesting affair was a December 1881 frolic during which a thousand guests dined and danced at the governor’s home from 4 P.M. to midnight. At the combination barbecue and hoe-down the ladies completed a lavender silk quilt, the young people pulled taffy, and young and old consumed a sizable quantity of smoked possum, roasted pig, and apple toddy. A group of elderly black fiddlers provided music and called the reels. The evening’s most popular dancer was ninety-eight-year-old Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, Jo Blackburn’s father-in-law. The New York Times carried a description of the unusual party and informed its readers that although the elderly Graham had not danced in nearly eighty years, “it was wonderful to watch the way he cut the pigeon wing” at the “Kentucky governor’s quilting party.”6

As the commonwealth’s official host, representative, and spokesman, Blackburn entertained numerous dignitaries who visited the state—two United States presidents, three governors, a Canadian official, and an Irish patriot—and dedicated monuments, laid cornerstones, opened county fairs, made graduation addresses, and delivered the state’s greeting to various societies and organizations that met in Louisville and Lexington. He also represented the state at President Garfield’s funeral, attended industrial expositions in Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Nashville, was a special guest at the inauguration of Arkansas’s governor Thomas Churchill (Julia’s brother), and was feted by Memphis during her 1881 celebration of the city’s recent escape from yellow fever. Expenses for all of these travels, as well as those for entertaining, domestic help, and so forth, came from the governor’s salary, a modest $5,000, which was reduced to $4,000 by the 1880 legislature.

Although he enjoyed entertaining and traveling, Blackburn’s favorite recreational activity was to attend horse races, and he was a familiar figure at Louisville’s Churchill Downs (named for Julia’s brothers who donated the land), and at the Lexington track. Blackburn’s love for horses and horse racing was appropriately emphasized by an interesting coincidence during his first year in office. The nation’s number-one racehorse in 1880 was a Tennessee stallion named Luke Blackburn. Foaled in 1874, the colt was named in honor of the man who aided Memphis during the 1873 epidemic. Blackburn was proud of his namesake and liked to joke about the pitiful hunks of horseflesh that had been named after other state politicians. A horse called Jo Blackburn, the governor pointed out as his blue eyes twinkled, was “tried and found wanting,” and a “perfect equine prodigy named Jim Beck” (United States senator from Kentucky) failed to get out of the starter’s gate. But, bragged

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