Book Notes
The Synagogues of Kentucky: History and Architecture. By Lee Shai
Weissbach. (Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1995. xiv + 184p.;
illustrations, tables, appendices,
notes, index.) In this second volume in the
Perspective's on Kentucky's Past series,
professor Weissbach provides a compre-
hensive survey on Kentucky's Jewish
communities and synagogues, and one of
the first works that studies small
Jewish communities outside the major American
urban centers. Presenting information
about an ethnic group not typically
thought of in connection with Kentucky,
this hardbound text provides a detailed
inventory of synagogue buildings built
over the last 150 years. Although never
large numerically, Kentucky's Jewish
population was centered in 12 cities across
the Commonwealth, organized into many
branches and different congregations.
The longer-established central European
Jews, first settling in Louisville in the
1840s, functioned differently than the
more Orthodox, newer Eastern European
congregations that dominated Kentucky
Judaism from 1881-1931. Differences in
synagogue design and interior plan,
including Moorish, neoclassical and domed
Byzantine architectural influences, are
chronologically profiled. A central theme
of the book is the impact post-World War
II suburbanization had on the Jewish
community and synagogue design.
Weissbach explains how the Diaspora away
from the center cities, along with
social changes in the Jewish community, re-
sulted in a contemporary style synagogue
with minimal external iconography. Of
26 pre-World War II synagogues, only 11
are standing, and only 2 are used as syn-
agogues. Generously illustrated with
maps and archival photos, Synagogues of
Kentucky also includes a twenty-page bibliographical essay and a
series of tables
listing the locations, dates, architects
and status of all known Kentucky syna-
gogues.
Ohio Historical Society Steve Gordon
Lincoln's Unknown Private Life: An
Oral History By His Black Housekeeper
Mariah Vance 1850-1860. Edited by Lloyd Ostendorf and Walter Oleksy.
(Mamaroneck, New York: Hastings House
Book Publishing, 1995. 563p.; illus-
trations.) This is a singular account. The
story goes like this: in 1850 thirty-
one-year-old Mariah Vance went to work
as a laundress and domestic for Abraham
and Mary Lincoln in their Springfield,
Illinois, home; she worked for the Lincolns
for a decade, until the new presidential
family moved to the White House; during
her employment, Vance closely observed
the family and witnessed events-in-
cluding Lincoln's secret baptism-that no
one else saw, or at least recorded.
Skip ahead forty years to 1900. In that
year a seventeen-year-old office worker,
Adah Lilas Sutton, met the
eighty-one-year-old Mrs. Vance and became entranced
by her stories of working for the
Lincolns. Over the next four years, Sutton
recorded, in "shorthand
notes," many of Vance's reminiscences. The project ended
when Mrs. Vance died four years later.
Skip ahead half a century. In 1955
artist and Lincolniana collector extraordi-
naire Lloyd Ostendorf placed an
advertisement in Hobbies magazine offering to
purchase Lincoln-related and Civil War
items. Mrs. Vance contacted him, and