Lyceum Courses

The Dixie Girls performed in Owingsville as part of a Lyceum course.

Last week’s excerpt was about the Chautauquas that came to Owingsville, and this week we follow up on that.

From the journals:

Lyceum Courses!!  What were they?  Lyceum courses were the cold weather counterparts of the Chautauquas.  They catered to the arts mostly, but their programs were similar to those of Chautauquas. 

In small towns such as those in Bath County, the Lyceums were almost always held in auditoriums.  In those days, there were few gymnasiums in Kentucky and none in Bath County.

The same procedure that was followed in acquiring the Chautauquas was also followed with the Lyceums.  Generally, a minimum number of season tickets had to be sold in advance.  Sometimes, there would be five performances spread over the winter months – sometimes more.

In an old issue of the Owingsville Outlook dated 1919, I found a notice regarding an upcoming Lyceum.   It was to be held at the City School Chapel, and on the program were Fanny May Baldridge (a soprano who presented “stories of Negro life . . . in a delightfully wholesome and natural manner” – Miss Baldridge was white, by the way) and Evelynne Murphey (who specialized in pianologues and whose voice had a “flutelike quality”).   When performing together they were billed as The Dixie Girls.  Season tickets were $1.50 for adults and $1.00 for children.   
The description of the Lyceum offering, especially that of Fanny Baldridge's act, piqued my curiosity because I'm interested in how some have attempted to romanticize the Old South.  This attempt is officially referred to as the "Lost Cause Movement" and it's fascinating. The grave markers in the Owingsville Cemetery that were funded by the Daughters of the Confederacy can be regarded as a part of this Lost Cause Movement. Margaret Mitchell's epic novel Gone With the Wind stands as a literary example of the movement.   Can we consider the Dixie Girls' act as an example of it too?  

And how would that have gone over in a place like Bath County?  After all, if your families are like ours, you can count both Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks in your family tree.  We have one handed down story of an ancestor helping a slave escape, while one of those markers from the Daughters of the Confederacy sits upon the grave of another ancestor (and thanks to my brother-in-law, Bill Kincaid, for his research on those markers and the Daughters - hopefully he can share some of what he's learned with all of us in a future post).  

The 1919 clipping I refer to. Sorry it's a bit hard to read.

If you want to learn more about the Lost Cause Movement, click here.  
To read a bit more about Fanny Baldridge, click here.

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm.   When the weather pretties up, I'll try to take some pictures of those Confederate markers and then post them on here. ~ Ginger

Another clipping about an upcoming Lyceum from  a 1910 edition of the Owingsville Outllook.