Mary Todd Lincoln's House Museum in Lexington, Kentucky

Last month I shared about our visit to Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace, so this month I want to share about our visit to Mary Todd Lincoln’s house in Lexington, Kentucky.

I first want to say that this house sits in downtown Lexington, with several modern amenities all around it. The fact that this has been preserved is amazing. And I found the history presented helping to tell a larger story about the Lincoln family, including the differences between Abraham and Mary’s backgrounds. As a Lincoln fan, this was a bucket list item, and I'm so grateful we had time on our trip to visit the museum.

The Outside 

There is a tiny parking lot in the back where you can enter a courtyard before walking around to the front of the house. The courtyard includes signs that share a historic overview. I'm putting these images in larger, so you can read them.

One of the most interesting things I learned in just the garden, was that Mary came from an affluent family, was well educated for a woman during that time period, and had a keen interest in politics. When she met Lincoln, this common interest is what brought them together.

The other interesting thing was that she had a brother who served in the confederate army during the civil war. Talk about a topic that divided a family! I can only imagine the stress this added to both these families lives. Besides having opposing views about slavery (Mary’s father owned slaves while at the same time opposed slavery - I know - a bit confusing), when her brother was killed, and her sister came to the White House to mourn with Mary, Mary was called out by some to be a south sympathizer for allowing her sister in the White House

In some ways Mary was in a no-win situation. But she was a strong woman, standing by her husband no matter what. It was documented she was a firm supporter of her husbands politics and never wavered on that point.

Once you walk through the gardens you enter onto the street to come in through the front door.

The Inside Highlights

Inside there is both a self-guided tour option and a tour guide option. Due to timing, we did the self-guided tour. The signs, the map, and the details presented made it enjoyable and educational.

I don’t have space to share all the pictures I took, but we were able to tour the parlor, the dining room, the kitchen area, the sitting rooms, and the bedrooms upstairs. The main bedroom included a small childs room extended within it, for the babies and toddlers to be taken care of.

Each room had a card pointing out highlights and the history on the room.

In one of the rooms was a Binder that had pictures of Mary in several of her White House Dresses. I enjoyed seeing new photos of her and the different styles she wore. The order shared a perspective of the scrutiny she was under.

 

 

In the sitting rooms, replica china from the white house were displayed.

 

In Summary

I have always been a fan of Lincoln and have enjoyed being able to visit his birthplace, the Lincoln theater in DC (along with the building across the street where he passed), reading books on him, and now learning more about his wife and her background. She had a huge influence on Lincoln becoming President. In almost every way, they were a team. I can't even imagine what his death must've been for her.

She didn't have family she could go back to or who would offer her support (her mother had passed when she was young and her step-mother wanted to get them out of the house as quickly as possible). And the media were not kind to her. Hard to escape the labels given on such a grand scale.

When I was reading through all the museums displays, I tried to see Mary and her choices later in life through her point of view. She faced a lot of challenges. And lost a lot.

If you'd like to learn more about Mary, this article from The Epoch Times on Mary (titled Maligned, Mistreated, and Mad: The Tragedy of Mary Lincoln) provides a lot more detail.

If you are ever in the Lexington area, I highly recommend a visit. There's also a small gift shop on the premises. You would need anywhere from 1-3 hours depending on how much you like to read and study what's provided.

 

 

Book 4 in Denise M. Colby's Best-laid Plans Series

California, 1870. Pastor William Baker built his life on steady faith and safe choices, but the arrival of Lydia Spencer upends everything. Independent and outspoken Lydia is unlike any woman he’s ever known. Lydia is a Pinkerton detective, undercover as a schoolteacher while tracking a dangerous crime boss. She’s determined to protect her friends in Washton even if it means keeping her distance from the kind, steadfast pastor who sees too much. But when Will and Lydia are thrown together in a search for truth they find themselves fighting not only for justice, but for a future neither had planned.

Denise M. Colby writes historical romance sweetened with faith, hope, and love. She finds history fascinating and contemplates often how it was to live in the 1800's. Her debut novel, When Plans Go Awry, is a 2025 Carol Award finalist. Sign up for her newsletter at www.denisemcolby.com or follow Denise on Facebook, Instagram, Bookbub, Pinterest, or GoodReads.

When the Theater Came to Town: Bisbee's Comedians in Rural Kentucky

 Have you ever been to a tent show? Not a circus, but a real, live theatrical performance, complete with orchestra, magic, and vaudeville acts—all under a giant tent?

If you lived in rural America in the first half of the 20th century, chances are you would have attended more than once.

Tent shows traveled from town to town with their huge tents and a full cast of characters and crew. They’d arrive in a town, recruit local men to help erect the tent, and stay for three days to a week, with new shows each night. Tent sizes varied, but many were 60 feet wide by 145 feet long and seated up to 1,500, with one reported to hold 4,000 people.

Interior of a Bisbee's Comedians' tent

The typical tent show started at 8 p.m. with a concert by the orchestra, followed by a three- or four-act play, with vaudeville, magic, and musical numbers entertaining the audience between acts. Sometimes there would be an “after-show” for an additional cost.

For a dime or a quarter, families could enjoy an entire evening of live entertainment. Then a few days later, the whole thing disappeared down the road.

One popular tent show troupe was Bisbee’s Comedians, which played throughout Kentucky and Tennessee from 1928 to 1966. The troupe performed year after year in Cadiz, Kentucky.

Imagine the excitement when those trucks rolled into a small town where entertainment options were few. Before long, local men were helping raise an enormous canvas tent, musicians and actors were unloading equipment, and children gathered to watch the activity. For a few nights, the town had its own theater.

I wanted to capture some of that excitement when my heroine, Naomi, visits Cadiz in my novel Moonshine River:

Even from this distance, the canvas structure looked bigger than any building she’d ever seen. Men and boys crawled like ants around the outsides, tugging on ropes and pounding stakes into the ground. As she watched, the top of the tent stretched still higher until a man called, “Hold!” Four burly men scrambled to tie off the ropes. As others were able to let go of the ropes they’d been pulling, they stood back and stared up at the monstrosity.

Nearby sat six cargo trucks, each one painted with the name “Bisbee’s Comedians” in red and black letters. People crisscrossed from the trucks and cars to the tent, carrying chairs and other items needed for the show.

Naomi watched a chubby man with red hair and freckles wander among the onlookers. He shook hands with a man and woman, tickled the little boy with them, and said something that made them laugh. Then he hitched his pants above his waist, grinned, and moved on to another family.

Meet Toby

The freckled-faced man was a character known as “Toby,” a fixture with traveling tent shows. Sometimes the shows were even referred to as “Toby Shows” because of his popularity. A country bumpkin with red hair, freckles, blacked-out front tooth, ragged clothing and homespun humor, he was instantly recognizable. Hitching up his britches, he would employ slapstick, winks, facial contortions and theatrical gymnastics that delighted the audience.

Lawrence "Boob" Brasfield played
Toby with Bisbee's Comedians.

Typically, no matter the play being performed, Toby had a major part in it. He was usually portrayed as mischievous, naïve, and something of a rube. Often the plot revolved around a city-slicker coming to a small town and attempting to fool the gullible Toby with some unscrupulous scheme. In the third act, Toby always triumphed over the villain.

One actor who played Toby, and was sometimes called the “King of Tobys,” was Lawrence “Boob” Brasfield, who toured with the Bisbee company. One magazine article said, “Boob can just roll his eyes or look out over the crowds with his expression that has ‘vacancy’ written all over it, and he brings down the house.” He was a master at spontaneous aside-to-the-crowd remarks and ad libs.

A Night Under the Big Tent

Jess Bisbee founded his traveling show in 1928. He was the son of a circus and vaudeville magician, and had performed in several vaudeville shows as a magician and with Ringling Brothers Circus as a musician. The troupe was advertised as Zarlington and Bisbee Comedians, then Bisbee and Zarlington, then Bisbee-Nero’s Comedians, and finally as Bisbee’s Comedians for most of its existence.

The company toured from April until late November, primarily in Kentucky and Tennessee. Winter quarters were in White Station, Tennessee, now part of Memphis.

The shows promised family-friendly entertainment. Jess Bisbee said, “The people we show to like a play that has a story with laughs. They don’t go much for pure slapstick, but they do want good, clean laughs. And they even like an occasional tear with their laughs. That’s what we try to give them.”

A sensational ad in the Fulton, Ky.,

newspaper captured attention.

Ticket prices in the early years were 10 cents—promoted as “Depression Prices,” with reserved seats available for an additional 10 cents “If U Want ‘em!” In later years, the price increased to 25 cents. Commonly, a lady would be admitted free on Monday night with one paid adult ticket.

Newspaper advertisements and articles touted the show. In 1934, a news article claimed Bisbee’s was “one of the best shows of its kind on the road at the present time.”

Plays presented by Bisbee’s over the years included such titles as “Chickens,” billed as “a riotous three-act comedy,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “My Blue Heaven.”
 
Besides Brasfield, featured artists included Mahala, the Master Magician, and Roenro, “one of the most outstanding jugglers of the present day stage.”

Jess Bisbee as Mahala, the Master Magician, used a large

circular saw in his act to "cut" a woman in half.

Bisbee’s typically returned to the same towns every year and were eagerly awaited. Some years, inclement weather took its toll—although the ads typically proclaimed the show would be in a “waterproof tent.”

When the Tents Came Down

At their peak in the early 1900s, there were an estimated 700 to 800 traveling troupes. An article in the New York Times in 1927 stated, “the canvas playhouses of the country now constitute a more extensive business than Broadway and all the rest of the legitimate theatre industry put together.” Even as late as 1949, the Times reported the tent shows would bring “drama and variety to 15,000 communities,” playing to a total audience of over 75 million.

But the entertainment industry was changing. With the advent of television, popularity of the tent shows declined. In Kentucky, where once there were as many as 15 traveling companies, the Courier-Journal reported in 1948 that Bisbee’s was “the only three-act comedy-and-drammer [sic] tent show left in the South.”

However, upon its return to Cadiz that year, more than a thousand customers crowded into the tent. Joe Creason said it was “a crowd almost equal to the population of the Trigg County seat. People were wedged shoulder to shoulder in the ‘roost,’ that unreserved-seat section in the back of the tent.”

Jess Bisbee died in 1955, and Billy Choate, who had been traveling with Bisbee’s since 1942, acquired the company. By 1964, Bisbee’s Comedians was one of only two remaining tent shows. The last season was in 1966, when Choate attempted to keep going by setting up at a Kentucky resort for the whole summer.

In Parsons, Tennessee, however, a volunteer organization strives to preserve and continue the Toby Show experience. The Parsons Arts Council is the caretaker of what is believed to be the last remaining repertory tent company, donated to them in 2006. The collection includes a 45-by-90-foot tent, three 1942 stake trucks, hundreds of original scripts, costumes, century-old painted drops, blue folding chairs, and other “necessities of the road.” An associated group, the Rivertime Players, gave several performances in 2026 of “A Tribute to the Tent Show Troupers.”

It’s hard today to imagine a traveling theatrical company attracting an audience nearly as large as the population of the town itself. But for generations of rural Americans, the arrival of the big tent meant several nights of music, laughter, drama, magic—and, of course, Toby.

Have you ever attended a tent show? Or did your parents or grandparents ever tell you about one coming to town?

Sources:

The Billboard, July 31, 1948

The Billboard, June 18, 1955

Rivertime Players

Rod Brasfield Historical Marker 

A History of Tennessee Arts, “The Traveling Toby Tent Show”, University of Tennessee Press, September 30, 2004

Bisbee's Comedians, A Bisbee Family History

Newspapers.com, various newspapers and dates

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. Moonshine River, the first book in her Between the Rivers Legacy series, releases Sept. 22, 2026. Learn more at www.MarieWellsCoutu.com.

She'll break the law to save her mother. He'll uphold it to save her soul.

After her father’s sudden death, Naomi Ross is left with an impossible choice: let her ailing mother go without desperately needed treatment—or take over the illegal whiskey business she never wanted.

Then Cullen Downs comes home.

Naomi has loved the preacher’s son since childhood, but Cullen is no longer the young man who left Golden Pond. Disgraced by his own mistakes, he’s returned determined to reclaim his faith and fight the liquor trade that nearly ruined his life.

That puts him squarely against the woman he can’t seem to stop loving.

With Prohibition crumbling and danger closing in from moonshiners, a corrupt lawman, and Chicago gangsters, Naomi’s desperate choices threaten more than her freedom. They could cost her Cullen—and the future she never dared believe could be hers.

In the rugged hills of Depression-era Kentucky, two people on opposite sides of the law must discover whether love can survive betrayal, whether good intentions can justify wrong choices, and whether God’s grace is big enough to redeem them both.

A Night at the Operetta

By Kathy Kovach

American live theater has certainly had its growing pains. From misunderstanding its intent to total rejection of the British influence that brought it here. Still, nothing can stifle the creative spirit.

Once theater put down its footlight, it declared it was here to stay.

Manhattan, New York had embraced the stage by the 19th century. American playwrights, as well as the now accepted British writers, moved into a relatively new genre. The operetta.

By definition, operetta is a shorter, lighter version of opera, originating in mid-18th century Italy and taking hold in France. It came to America a hundred years later. The style incorporated dialogue with singing and dancing.

The Black Crook

Widely accepted as the first operetta performed in America was The Black Crook on September 12, 1866. Theater goers sat through a mind-boggling five-and-a-half hours. And we complain when a movie runs over two hours!

Audiences loved it, though. With the book written by Charles M. Barras, and music selected and arranged by Thomas Baker, it took over Niblo’s Garden on Broadway for a record-breaking 474 performances.

Niblo's Garden

The play was actually an accident, thanks to the burning down of New York’s Academy of Music opera house. A troupe of French ballet dancers were set to perform there, but after the fire, they had nowhere to go. They reached out to the manager of Niblo’s Garden, William Wheatley, who had the play by Barras that he deemed dull. The two worked together, and music/choreography was stitched in. Thus, was created a spectacular display that also utilized moving sets, colored lights, and plenty of razzle-dazzle.

It is also considered by some as the first musical comedy. Others argue that it was merely an extravaganza that incorporated already known genres such as vaudeville, burlesque, and pantomime.

At any rate, now that the stage door was open wide to this exciting new genre, others hit Broadway with dancing shoes on and vocal cords trilling.

Many followed, including Gilbert and Sullivan who gave us such timeless hits as Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, and The Mikado.

To many, Broadway is synonymous with musical theater. And we have the light-hearted operetta to thank for it.

Titanic: Legacy of Betrayal

A TIME-SLIP NOVEL

A secret. A key. Much was buried on the Titanic, but now it's time for resurrection.

Follow two intertwining stories a century apart. 1912 - Matriarch Olive Stanford protects a secret after boarding the Titanic that must go to her grave. 2012 - Portland real estate agent Ember Keaton-Jones receives the key that will unlock the mystery of her past... and her distrusting heart.

To buy: Amazon

Kathleen E. Kovach is a Christian romance author published traditionally through Barbour Publishing, Inc. as well as indie. Kathleen and her husband, Jim, raised two sons while living the nomadic lifestyle for over twenty years in the Air Force. Now planted in northeast Colorado, she's a grandmother and a great-grandmother—though much too young for either. Kathleen has been a longstanding member of American Christian Fiction Writers. An award-winning author, she presents spiritual truths with a giggle, proving herself as one of God's peculiar people.

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The Cost of a Working Woman's Morality by Cheryl Rae Johnson

 

What do you do when an influx of single working women arrive in your city without the protection of family?

This was the moral dilemma facing the good people of New York City in 1860. The Ladies Christian Union was especially troubled by this crisis of a new working class of females whom the LCU deemed at risk of losing their moral integrity. The Ladies took it upon themselves to provide Moral Homes for these working women in order to preserve their “purity, dignity, and femininity” and prepare these young women for marriage and motherhood.

The wealthy women who comprised the Ladies Christian Union set the standard by obtaining middle-class homes with a kitchen, parlor, dining room, and a large number of bedrooms to accommodate as many ladies as possible to board. The housemother would refer to the ladies as her “daughters” to give the living space that feeling of home. Servants were also employed so that the ladies did not do their own cooking, laundry, or cleaning, other than their bedroom.

Modern Day View of the first Ladies Christian Union Morality Home
(Wikimedia Commons)

On the surface this sounds wonderful, but whether these morality homes embodied a true sense of home might be up for debate. Strict standards had to be met in order for a lady to be approved for residence. Aside from gainful employment, the lady must provide references to vouch for her moral character. Women had to attend church on Sundays and participate in morning and evening devotions.

But it was the cost that was most daunting. In exchange for rent, which ranged from $3.50-$6.00 per week, they received two meals a day. And laundry services, which were not optional, cost anywhere from fifty cents to a dollar more, depending on the type of garment being washed. 

The women who stayed at these homes worked in factories, the fashionable shops on Ladies’ Mile, or in shops employed as seamstresses. The cost of rent and laundry would have consumed their entire wages. That leaves us wondering why they would pay such a price if it left little money in their reticules. 

Unlike today’s modern woman, gaining some modicum of independence from her family was often enough. Most of these ladies' families could not support feeding its offspring into adulthood. Leaving home meant doing her family a good turn, allowing them to put more money in their pocket. Ladies did not look at these homes as a permanent residence but as the next stop before marriage.

Fifty years after the opening of the first home, women worked in more professional careers with jobs as typists, teachers, artists, and writers. The five morality homes still operated by the Ladies Christian Union could not house the now estimated over fifty thousand working women.

  

YWCA Parlor
(Byron Company Collection, Museum of the City of NY)

YWCA Single Bedroom
(Byron Company Collection, Musuem of the City of NY)

The solution to this problem was the YWCA, which was built with the support of donors such as Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt. For this reason, this home was also known as the Margaret Louisa.

Others caught on to this need as well and built hotels for working women, but, unlike the YWCA, these hotels loosened the rein on morality, giving women the same freedom as men. The Hotel Martha Washington housed five hundred business women. The hotel itself was run by women, and much of the stock was even owned by women, a novel idea in the early 1900s. Two more hotels followed, the Trowmart Inn and the Barbizon Hotel for Women, each of which could house hundreds. 

Trowmart Inn Lobby
(Byron Company Collection, Musuem of the City of NY)

I first learned of these morality homes when I was researching one of my historical romance novels, Dear Miss Keefe. My heroine, Mary Elizabeth Keefe, was a seamstress who found herself alone in New York City after the death of her grandmother. Allowing her to live in a morality home provided wonderful details for my novel, with the endless drama of so many girls staying under the same roof. Although I did not use the term Ladies Christian Union, I included one woman who would have belonged to such an organization. This lady encourages Mary Elizabeth to take up a letter-writing campaign with her very eligible cousin in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thus, an epistolary romance begins and becomes the backdrop for the book.

After a discussion of the rich history and resilience of New York City on September 11, it would be remiss not to remember those who lost their lives in the Twin Towers twenty-five years ago today and to thank all the brave men and women who serve everywhere, whether it be through the police forces, as a firefighter, or in one of the armed services.

Source:  Harkrader, Nina E. “All the Single Ladies: Women Only Buildings in the Early 20^th C. NYC.” The Gotham Center for New York City History. May 9, 2019.   https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/all-the-single-ladies-women-only-buildings-in-early-20th-c-nyc

Cheryl Rae Johnson writes historical romance novels set in the American South. She has made her home in all corners of the US but is now settled on the eastern edge of Texas, where she teaches writing and literature at her local university as well as ministers alongside her husband of over forty years in her local church. She can often be found drinking coffee and hanging out with her ever-growing brood of grandchildren. She loves to connect with her readers. You can join her here:

Cheryl Rae Johnson Website

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