The next History on Tap presented by the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County will feature a Kentucky historian discussing his book, “Murder on the Ohio Belle.”
The virtual presentation by Stuart Sanders will be shown on Zoom at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28.
Sanders is director of research and collections for the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.
The book, about a violent episode in 1856, is “a story of double murders, secret identities, and hasty getaways — and reveals the bloody roots of antebellum honor culture, classism, and vigilante justice,” the University Press of Kentucky describes.
Sanders is also the author of “Perryville Under Fire: The Aftermath of Kentucky’s Largest Civil War Battle,” “The Battle of Mill Springs Kentucky” and “Emilie Todd Helm: Lincoln’s Confederate ‘Little Sister.'”
Reviewer Anne Marshall, author of “Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State” said of Sanders’ latest book, “In this lively, insightful read, Stuart Sanders follows the steamboat Ohio Belle as it transports tons of cargo, actresses, enslaved men and women, gamblers, dead men and their murderers, thieves, and Civil War soldiers. Like the vessel about which he writes, Sanders’s book is full of fascinating characters. With his deft interweaving of historical context, he illuminates antebellum American attitudes about class, politics, slavery, southern honor, personal identity, and war.”
Prior to the pandemic, History on Tap programs were presented live at Hopkinsville Brewing Co. The first was in February 2018.
Although the programs have temporarily shifted to online presentations, Alissa Keller, executive director of the local museums, still encourages patrons to “Grab your favorite brew from Hopkinsville Brewing Company and tune in as Sanders weaves this fascinating story drawn on eyewitness accounts of the 1856 double murder.”
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
