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Mack-Cox

Mack Cox Speaker for Monday, May 13, 2024 Meeting

An American Story: The Redd Family Paintings

A Kentucky native, Mack Cox is a collector and an independent scholar of early Kentucky material culture. He received his BS and MS degrees in geology from Eastern Kentucky University and pursued an oil and gas career from which he retired in 2017. He and his wife, Sharon, began collecting early Kentucky material about 2005 with a focus on furniture and art. In 2011, their collection was covered in The Magazine Antiques and was described in 2013 as “one of the finest assemblages of antebellum Kentucky material.”

Mack currently serves on the Henry Clay Memorial Foundation, and on advisory boards for the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in North Carolina, Colonial Williamsburg Art Museums, and The Magazine Antiques. He is a regional representative for MESDA’s Object Database and previously served on the collections committee for the National Society of Colonial Dames in Kentucky. He has lectured on Kentucky material, especially furniture, at numerous Kentucky locations as well as before the Decorative Arts Trust in Philadelphia, MESDA, Colonial Williamsburg, Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts, Winterthur in Delaware, and the Washington DC Decorative Arts forum.

The title of Mack Cox’s lecture is: An American Story: The Redd Family Paintings.

It is the story of the marriages, mentorship, and geography that entwined the lives of two of Kentucky’s most important artists, Matthew Harris Jouett (1788-1827) and Oliver Frazer (1808 to 1864), and their descendants, as well as the travels and adventures of the Redd family and their portraits as they moved from the first owners to the present, with the backdrop of war, financial crisis, and cultural revolution. Mack’s talk will be a fascinating story.

UPCOMING SPEAKERS 2023-2024

PAST SPEAKERS 1954-PRESENT

2010-Present
2018-2019
  • September 2018 – William C. “Jack” Davis – “Loreta Velasquez, the Con Artist and Confederate Impersonator”
  • November 2018 – Kent M. Brown – “George Gordon Meade and the Gettysburg Campaign”
  • January 2019 – A. Wilson Green – “A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg”
  • March 2019 – Brian Steel Wills – “Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War”
  • May 2019 – Wayne E. Motts – “Fighting The Civil War: Historical Treasures Of The Conflict In The Collection Of The National Civil War Museum”
2017-2018
  • September 2017 – Alan Pell Crawford – “Mark Twain and the Civil War”
  • November 2017 – Bud Robertson – “When Did The South Really Lose The Civil War?”
  • January 22, 2018 – Ryan Wolford Blair – “Wild Wolf – The Great Civil War Rivalry”
  • March 19, 2018 – Peter Carmichael (Gettysburg College) – “I am almost sick all the time and half crazy:” The Fate of a Confederate Deserter After Gettysburg
  • May 21, 2018 – Vince Dooley – “Col. William Deloney: The Legion’s Fighting Bulldog”
2016-2017
  • September 2016 — John Stempel — General George H. Thomas, “The Rock of Chickamauga”
  • November 2016 — James I. “Bud” Robertson – “Robert E. Lee and the Quest for Peace”
  • January 2017 — John Hoptak – “The 48 th Pennsylvania Infantry and the Digging of the Petersburg Mine”
  • March 2017 — Barton Myers – “On Irregular Fields of Battle: The American Civil War’s Guerilla Wars”
  • May 2017 — Dr. Jennifer Murray – “Alabamians at Gettysburg”
2015-2016
  • September 2015 – Sue Boardman — “The Gettysburg Cyclorama: A History and Guide”
  • November 2015 — James I. “Bud” Robertson
  • January 2016 — Terrance (Terry) Winschel — “Shut Up As In A Trap: Citizens Under Siege”
  • March 2016 — Brian McKnight — “Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia”
  • May 2016 — Garry Aldeman —  “A Civil War Photography Extravaganza”
2014-2015
  • September 2014 –John Barr — “Loathing Lincoln”
  • November 2014 — James I. “Bud” Robertson — “Water: The Unknown Factor in the Civil War
  • January 2015 — Brig. Gen. Charles F. “Casey” Brower, IV (retired) — “Sophisticated Strategists: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defeat of Japan”
  • March 2015 — Brig. Gen. Jack Mountcastle (retired) — “Desperate Days–the Battles Around Petersburg, 1864-65”
  • May 2015 — Hon. Frank Williams, retired Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court — “Judging Lincoln as a Judge”
2013-2014
  • September 2013 – Kent Masterson Brown Movie Premier – “The Southern Cross: The Story of First Confederate Battle Flag”
  • November 2013 – James “Bud” Robertson – “What America Has Forgotten: 1846 – 1861”
  • January 2014 – Luke Harlow – “Religion, Civil War Emancipation, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky”
  • March 2014 – Gary Matthews – “Thomas Hines”
  • May 2014 — Stephen M. “Sam” Hood — “The Lost Papers of General John Bell Hood”
2012-2013
  • September 2012 – David Blight
  • November 2012 – James “Bud” Robertson
  • March 2013 – Kenneth Noe – “Reluctant Rebels Who Joined the Army After 1861”
  • May 2013 – Brian Steel Wills  – “General George Henry Thomas”
2011-2012
  • September 2011 – R. Owen Williams, Ph.D. – The Constitutional Consequences of the Civil War.
  • November 2011 – James I. “Bud” Robertson – The Untold Civil War: Exploring The Human side of War.
  • January 2012 – Charles Bracelen Flood – Grant’s Final Victory.
  • March 2012 – Kent M. Brown – Secession: The Constitutional Remedy That Brought About The Civil War.
  • May 2012 – William “Jack” Davis – The Monstrous Regiment of Women.
2010-2011
  • September 2010 – Kent M. Brown – The Civil War: Kentucky’s Mercurial Political Course.
  • November 2010 – James I. “Bud” Robertson – The Centennial and the Sesquicentennial: Are They Compatible?
  • January 2011 – Allen R. Millet – Understanding Civil Wars: The American and Korean Experiences as Comparative History, 1850-1877 and 1945-1954.
  • March 2011 – Peter Cozzens – Cahaba: The Forgotten Prison.
  • May 2011 Anne E. Marshall – Censoring History: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Campaign Against Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

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