[music playing] We're having a great time here today at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.

This is Michael Hudson.

He's the chief curator here.

Michael, thanks so much for being here with us.

I'm glad to be here.

For folks who weren't familiar with Dr.

Clark, who was he?

So, he's a historian who taught for decades, decades and decades at the University of Kentucky.

So, every history major, everybody who took history at UK, for 50 years, studied under Dr.

Clark.

And he was also an amazing writer.

He was the kind of guy who could take fairly complicated historical stories and turn them into something that everybody can understand.

And he was an amazing speaker, too.

He was a great storyteller.

Amazing raconteur is what I would say.

There you go.

So, he was really the brainchild behind this facility.

Tell me about the facility and what folks can see here.

Right.

So, the Kentucky History Center is the state's home for history, right?

So, whether you are interested in storytelling, you're interested in your family's history, you're interested in, you know, delving into the research, all of those things can happen here at the History Center.

So, we have exhibits, we have a library, we have an archives, we have all kinds of preservation facilities.

I'm sure a lot of folks ask you this question and it's kind of like picking your favorite child.

But if you had one thing, if you were bringing somebody in that had never been here and you were gonna take them to see one thing, what would it be?

Well, I'm really big in agriculture.

Kentucky's agricultural history, I think, is at the heart of our story.

So, my favorite thing came from this family that lived in Pewee Valley, Tom and Bea Murphy.

And when Tom was a kid, he had had to help his father repair the masonry on their chimney.

It had fallen over.

And so, he took a tree limb and he forged some brackets and put together this thing called a hod.

That little boy, Tom Murphy, had to lift up mortar to his dad on the roof to repair their chimney.

So, nothing exciting, nothing fancy, very humble, but, you know, a thing that a Kentuckian made to do a specific job.

And there's a great backstory there as well.

Sure.

Well, I mean, we were at Tom and Bea's house and I'm pulling his overalls out of the laundry, and Bea's going, “Why do you want that?” I'm like, “Because those are the kinds of things that don't survive.” Strangely enough, the most common things, say, sky blue trousers from a Union soldier, you come back from the war and you'll wear them until they're rags.

Today, you won't find any in museum collections.

So, they just don't exist?

No.

Overalls, we didn't have a pair of overalls.

Think about it.

Wow.

Quickly, last question, when folks leave here after they've gone through everything, what do you want them to walk away with?

I think that Kentucky has a very long history.

It starts 10,000 years ago when the first Kentuckians come into the state.

It's people from all over, coming from the East Coast, from the West, converging into this magnificent Central American place and making a story that we're still fascinated with today.

And a great story it is.

Michael, thanks for being our person to show us around today.

We can't wait to check out more of the center.

Great.

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