Reuben Thomas Durrett, founder of the Filson Club and editor of its
publications, was born near Eminence, Kentucky, January 22, 1824. He was
graduated from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1849. The
following year he began the practice of law at Louisville, and for the
next thirty years he was one of the leaders of the Louisville bar. He
was editor of the _Louisville Courier_ from 1857 to 1859, and
throughout his long life he has been a contributor of historical essays
to the Louisville press. Colonel Durrett was imprisoned for his Southern
sympathies during the Civil War, and for this reason he saw little
service. In 1871 he founded the Public Library of Louisville; and in
1884 he organized the now well-known Filson Club, which meets monthly in
his magnificent library--the greatest collection of Kentuckiana in the
world. While his library has never been catalogued, he must possess at
least thirty thousand books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and newspaper
files. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, Dr. Robert M. McElroy, and many other
historical investigators have made important "finds" in Colonel
Durrett's library. He has one of the six extant copies of the first
edition of John Filson's _History of Kentucke_; and he has the copy of
Dean Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_, which Neely, the pioneer, read to
Daniel Boone on Lulbegrub Creek, near Winchester, Kentucky, in 1770, as
they sat around the evening camp fire. The Filson club was founded to
increase the interest then taken in historical subjects in Kentucky, and
to issue an annual publication. That this purpose has been well carried
out may be seen by the twenty-six handsome and valuable monographs which
have appeared.[12] The Club's first book was Colonel Durrett's _The
Life and Writings of John Filson, the first historian of Kentucky_
(Louisville, 1884). This work brought Filson into world-wide notice and
revived an interest in his precious little history. _An Historical
Sketch of St. Paul's Church, Louisville_ (Louisville, 1889); _The
Centenary of Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1892); _The Centenary of Louisville_
(Louisville, 1893); _Bryant's Station_ (Louisville, 1897); and
_Traditions of the Earliest Visits of Foreigners to North America_
(Louisville, 1908), all of which are Filson Club publications, comprise
Colonel Durrett's work in book form. This distinguished gentleman and
writer resides at Louisville, where he keeps the open door for any who
would come and partake of the wisdom of himself and of his books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Memorial History of Louisville_, by J. S. Johnston
(Chicago, 1896); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1909,
v. iv).