Earth Scientists Buried at Cave Hill Cemetery

A while back I was contacted by a researcher at the Cave Hill Cemetery here in Louisville Kentucky for more information about Dr. James Knapp. While he was medical doctor, he had a passion for paleontology and collected an impressive selection of local fossils. As it turns out, the cemetery in 1868 had geology document created and Dr. Knapp and Dr. Yandell are listed in it as donating a collection of fossils that were/are found at the burial grounds. This information request spawned an idea to create a posting of past Louisville area earth scientists that were interred at Cave Hill Cemetery. Here is the list:

 

Dr Lunsford Pitts Yandell Sr. (1805-1878)

Lunsford was born in on July 4, 1805 in Hartsville, Tennessee to a father who was a medical doctor. He followed his father into the profession studying at Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky) and graduating from the University of Maryland in 1825. Afterwards he setup a medical practice in Nashville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In 1831, he returned to Transylvania University and became a professor of chemistry. He helped found the Louisville Medical Institute in 1835 in Louisville, Kentucky and he taught physiology, chemistry and materia medica there. Dr. Yandell left Louisville in 1859 to join the faculty of Memphis Medical Institute (Tennessee) and when the American Civil War broke out in 1861 he was put in charge of the Confederate hospital in Memphis. When the Union Army took over Memphis in 1864, he and his wife moved to the family home in Daceyville, Tennessee and later returned to Louisville in 1867. In 1872, was elected president of the Louisville College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was also a member of the Boston Academy of Science as well as the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

 

Dr. Yandell also was well known for his study of fossils. He published articles in 1855 in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science "Description of a new genus of Crinoidea", 1856 American Journal of Science and Arts "Notice of a new fossil genus belonging to the family Blastoidea (Eleutherocrinus)", and same journal 1851 "On the distribution of the Crinoidea in the Western States". He and Benjamin F. Schumard (1820-1869) published a book entitled Contributions to the Geology of Kentucky in 1847. A number of local fossil species where named in his honor and it appears some of the fossils specimens he found are in the Harvard Museum collection.

 

Two of his sons became doctors David Wendel Yandell (1826-1898) and Lunsford Pitts Yandell, Jr. (1837-1884) and his granddaughter Enid Yandell (1869-1934) was a noted sculptor. They are all buried at Cave Hill Cemetery with Dr. Yandell Sr. plot is located in Section O, Lot 257.

 

Dr. John Lawrence Smith (1818-1883)

J. Lawrence Smith was born on December 16, 1818 in Charleston, South Carolina. He received his college education at the University of Virginia in Civil Engineering and later the Medical College of South Carolina. Smith graduated in 1840 with his medical degree. He continued his scientific studies in Paris, France and Giessen, Germany until 1843 when he moved to Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Smith became an expert on agricultural chemistry. From 1846-1850 he helped the government of Turkey cultivate cotton and discover new mineral resources. While there, he discovered a uranium carbonate mineral he named liebigite. Once Smith was back in the United States, in 1852 he marries Sarah Julia Guthrie the daughter of Kentucky politician James Guthrie (1792-1869). 

 

James Guthrie was an important figure in Louisville's history. In 1847, he encouraged some of the medical faculty for Transylvania University to leave [among them Dr. Lunsford Pitt Yandell, Sr.] and form the Louisville Medical Institute which later became the University of Louisville (U of L). Guthrie became U of L's first president. He also got Louisville's first railroad bridge built across the Ohio River, the city to buy the land that became Cave Hill Cemetery and he was the president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

 

Through his father-in-law, Dr. Smith got work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1853. The next year, he and his wife moved to Kentucky where he became the chair and Professor of Medical Chemistry on Toxicology at the University of Louisville. After leaving the university in 1866, he spent time traveling Europe collecting and studying meteorites ("aerolites").

 

The newspaper the Republican Banner published an article on August 8, 1874 entitled "The Troost Collection". From the article, "The Trustees of the Public Library having purchased at a cost of twenty thousand dollars cash, the Troost cabinet recently of Nashville, it may be interesting to present to the public full information in regard to this celebrated and very valuable collection... The cabinet of Dr. Troost has been long recognized among the scientific men of Europe and America as one of the most extensive as well as valuable private collections in the world. It contains: 1. Minerals in number 13,582, 2. Fossil organic remains-paleontology-2,851; 3 . Geology-rocks, etc. from granites to lavas, between 2,000 and 3,000; 4. Shells- not numbered; 5. Indian relics from ancient mounds, with dresses, ornaments, war clubs and other weapons, arrow-heads, images, etc... In appropriation of the large sum of money necessary to secure for Louisville this vast treasure, the Board of Trustees have been influenced by the advice of our eminent scientists, Dr. J. Lawrence Smith, Drs. L. P.  Yandell, Sr., James Knapp, Thomas E. Jenkins, T. S. Bell, and others, who have interested themselves in a successful attempt to bring to Kentucky this result of the labor of one of the most busy and practical scholars of modern times;...The collection of meteoric stones of Dr. Smith is probably the best in this country, as be has made these "messengers from other worlds" the subject of his special study."

 

Somehow Dr. Smith was able to get the meteorites from the Gerard Troost (1776-1850) collection and incorporate them into his collection. Upon his death, his wife sold the meteorite collection to the Harvard Museum. The proceeds from the sale were used to create the J. Lawrence Smith Medal. Since 1888, it has usually been awarded every 3-5 years by the National Academy of Sciences for investigations of meteoric bodies.

J. Lawrence Smith is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section B Lot 1 Grave 12 with his wife Sarah Julia Guthrie Smith (1827-1901) and her sister's family who are buried in a triangular pattern around their parents very large monument James Guthrie (1792-1869) and Eliza Churchill Prather Guthrie (1799-1836).

 

Dr. James Knapp (1821-1885)

James Knapp was born on January 29, 1821 in Groton, New York and grew up there. He moved to Floydsburg, Kentucky in 1821 and apprenticed as a saddler. He studied medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute and graduated from there in 1852. Once a doctor, his practice flourished and he became quite wealthy. In 1863, he enlisted in the Union Army as a physician.  In a 1868 document Cave Hill Cemetery had created it states,  "Dr. Knapp and Prof. L. P. Yandell have very kindly presented the Trustees of Cave Hill Cemetery a collection of the fossils belonging to the rocks of the Cemetery. They constitute a good record of a very early manifestation of life on this planet. The Trustees will provide for the preservation of these fossils as an instructive and interesting portion of the history of the Cemetery." It is uncertain what became of this fossil collection. As mentioned above, Dr. Knapp played a role is getting the Gerard Troost mineral collection transferred to the Louisville Public Library which was finished in 1882. The collection was later transferred to the Louisville Science Center who in 2019(?) transferred it to the Indiana State Museum. The picture of the fossil in the right corner is a Bordenia knappi (Hall, 1882) named after James Knapp by the famous paleontologist James Hall (1811-1898) of New York. Professor Hall named another after him (see grey shell drawing above) called Pentamerus knappi.

 

Dr. Knapp never married and his only heir was a brother in Pennsylvania. His estate was about $65,000 in 1885 which would be equivalent to about $2 million dollars today. After his death, Dr. Knapp's fossil collection was sold to William Borden (1823-1906), who at one time was one of the wealthiest people in the state of Indiana. The Borden fossil collection was sold to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago after Borden's death. James Knapp is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section P, Lot 576 Part WP Grave 0 (the obelisk like stone is under a tree, the text is somewhat hard to read).

 

 

Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887) 

Henry Nettelroth was born on June 6, 1835 in the Kingdom of Hanover (Germany). He attended universities there and graduated as a civil engineer. After graduating he became an engineer in the Hanoverian army. After their defeat in 1866 to the Prussians, he emigrated to the United States and settled in the Louisville area. He collected fossils there from about 1872-1887 and created a book entitled Kentucky Fossil Shells: A Monograph of the Fossil Shells of the Silurian and Devonian Rocks of Kentucky. It was published after his death in 1889. Nettelroth wrote positively about Dr. James Knapp and Professor Lunsford Yandell in some of the fossil descriptions in the book and he listed that they are both dead at the time of its writing. He named fossil species after them and said they had some of the oldest fossil collections in Louisville.

His sons sold his fossil collection the Smithsonian Institution where it still resides as of this writing. The picture of the spiny snail fossil above is a Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840). In 2023, that fossil was on display on the 1st floor of the Smithsonian Museum of National History. Henry Nettelroth is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section A, Lot 502 N1/2 Grave 500 near his wife and another son and his family are in Section 29 Lot 41 NW1/2 Grave 3.

 

Ruth Gillespie Browne (1905-1999)

Ruth F. Gillespie was born on July 28, 1905 in Syracuse, New York. Her father was telecommunications engineer with Western Electric Corporation. He was sent to Sweden to install phone systems there and took his family. Ruth attended school in Europe as a result. After returning to the United States, she graduated from Cornell University in 1929 with a bachelor's and master's degrees in geology with emphasis on paleontology. She was married not long after graduating from college and raised a family in Virginia and they later moved to the Louisville for her husband's job.

She became involved in the Ohio Falls Chapter of Kentucky Society of Natural History as a geologist and director. Ruth also became involved in the formation of a natural history museum in Louisville and Falls of the Ohio State Park. Between 1958-1977 she published a number of papers on local area fossils particularly on Ordovician Period corals like the one shown above Foerstephyllum vacuum (Foerste, 1909). Ruth is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section 35 Lot 23 Part B Grave 2 next to her husband.

Dr. James Elvin Conkin (1924-2017)

James Elvin Conkin was born October 14, 1924, in Glasgow, Kentucky, USA. He graduated from Louisville's Male High School in 1943 and joined the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II where he served in the Pacific theater of operations. After the war, he graduated with a degree in geology from the University of Kentucky in 1950, a master's degree in geology from University of Kansas in 1953 and a doctorate from the University of Cincinnati in 1960. He was married to his wife Barbara in 1951 who was also a geologist and frequent research collaborator. He founded the Geology Department at the University of Louisville in 1964, served as its first chairman until 1968, and taught there from 1957 until 2001 before becoming professor emeritus. Dr. Conkin named numerous fossils especially in the Coral Ridge layer south of Louisville and had 100s of publications (like the one shown above written with is wife Barbara entitled Ancient Animals Locked in Louisville's Rocks.) He and Barbara are interred together at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section U, Crematory Garden Space 5.

Barbara Ellen Moyer Conkin (1928-2019)

Barbara was born on July 17, 1928, in Wilmette, Illinois, USA. She grew up there and graduated New Trier High School. Afterwards she graduated from Smith College and earned her Master's Degree in Geology from The University of Kansas. While at Kansas she met James Conkin (see above) and they were later married in 1951. She and her husband raised a family of 4 children. The family traveled though out the world for various geological studies.  She became the first geology teacher for Jefferson Community College, beginning there in 1969, retiring in 1995. She authored a number of books including the one shown above Why Are The Highlands High? The Geology Beneath the Landscapes of Jefferson County and co-authored a number of publications with her husband Jim. They are interred together at Cave Hill Cemetery in Section U, Crematory Garden Space 5.

A Nettelroth Fossil Displayed at the Smithsonian

 

This picture was taken in June 2023 while visiting Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It is the Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840) snail fossil found by Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887)  probably in the 1870s in Clark County, Indiana or Jefferson County, Kentucky. This gastropod existed in the Devonian Period and Jeffersonville Limestone. Nettelroth documented the specimens his book Kentucky Fossil Shells published in 1889. I am not sure which fossil on the plate is the one in the picture above. The curator at the Smithsonian said that spines had broken off while in storage over the last 110 years. The institution acquired the collection in 1907.

 

You can read my past experiences with the Smithsonian staff and their help in getting the specimens of USNM PAL 51268 imaged. So I was surprised on my visit to the museum earlier this week and saw on the specimens in a display case in the exhibit labeled PLAYING THE NUMBERS. They had it labeled as sea snail 1 Spinyplatyceras dumosum lived 391-389 million years ago and found in the Columbus Limestone of Clark County, Indiana.

From my personal perspective I was happy to see one of Louisville's fossils being displayed in the main fossil hall at the museum. Hopefully, if Henry Nettelroth were alive today he would be too.

Nettelroth's Fossil Snail Images

 

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Specimen Catalog Number:  USNM PAL 51268 Specimen GUID: http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3cffa9b15-4a41-4c0b-8664-be0c46084ecc Photographer Holly Little. Specimens housed in the collections of the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

 

Recently, I gave a presentation about the 1889 book entitled Kentucky Fossil Shells by Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887) to a local geology group. During my presentation I brought up one of the snail fossils found called Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840). They are found from time to time in Clark County, Indiana USA and Jefferson County, Kentucky USA. I consider them to be the porcupines of the Devonian sea with their array of long spines covering the whorled shell. Nettelroth had one illustrated plate XXIII just for these snail fossils. You can learn more about Henry Nettelroth in my December 3, 2022 posting about him.

 

In 1907, his two sons Herman and Alexander Nettelroth sold his prized fossil collection of about 8,000 specimens to the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. National Museum. This collection was documented by Ray S. Bassler (1878-1961) in the 1908 publication of Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. V Quarterly Issue Part 2 in an article "The Nettelroth Collection of Invertebrate Fossils". 

Almost always the spines are broken off on these fossils and I wondered if the ones still at Smithsonian were still intact as shown in the plate illustration. So on December 21, 2020 I sent an e-mail to them asking if the fossil USNM PAL 51268 could be imaged. As it turns out 15 specimens were assigned to that number. To my surprise Mark Florence, Deputy Collections Manager Invertebrate Paleontology responded that they could image those fossils but the facility was on COVID-19 lockdown.

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Specimen Catalog Number:  USNM PAL 51268 Specimen GUID: http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3cffa9b15-4a41-4c0b-8664-be0c46084ecc Photographer Holly Little. Specimens housed in the collections of the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

 

 

COVID lasted a lot longer they I anticipated but they did not forget my request and on October 13, 2022 when they returned to the facility I was asked if the images were still needed. Later on December 22, 2022 I received a message from Mark Florence that a Smithsonian Institution's photographer Holly Little had imaged the fossils. Happily, images of those fossils have now been added to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Department of Paleobiology Collections database at this link: https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/paleo/?ark=ark:/65665/3cffa9b154a414c0b8664be0c46084ecc

 At our next geology group meeting, I hope to give an update to my group and show the images they took in comparison to the ones illustrated on the plate. I think the top image matches figure 3 in the original plate illustrated by Chas Starck of Louisville Lithographic Company. As pointed out in the recent e-mail from the Smithsonian, some of the spines had been broken off the original fossils.

A question I do have is why some of the fossils have green diamond shapes attached to them. I assume the ones attached to wooden boards where put on display at one time. It is nice to see fossils that were collected from the Louisville area 137-152 years ago and sent to Washington D.C. 116 years ago.

 

Paleontologist Henry Nettelroth

Recently, I have been working on a presentation about the 1889 book Kentucky Fossil Shells by Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887). It is an impressive work for amateur paleontologist.

This biographic information appeared in the 1908 publication of Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. V Quarterly Issue Part 2 in an article "The Nettelroth Collection of Invertebrate Fossils" by R.S. Bassler. 

Early Life

"Henry Nettelroth was born in the Kingdom of Hanover, on June 6, 1835. His family from a remote period were land-owners, inhabiting that portion of German territory, with estates located about the village of Nettelrode. Henry Nettelroth attended the German universities and was graduated as a civil engineer just before the war between Prussia and Hanover; he was an engineer officer in the Hanoverian army, but came to America shortly after the battle of Langensalza (1866). Here he took up the practice of civil engineering."

Career & Death

"His first employment as topographical engineer on the Elizabethtown and Paducah Railroad, then building, taking him to Kentucky, determined his subsequent location in Louisville. In that city he continued the pursuit of civil engineering, both active and consultant, until incapacitated by ill health a few years before his death. He became an American citizen, having immediately on his arrival in this country renounced allegiance to any European government. In 1867 he was married, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Emma Vassmer, also of Hanover. Mr. Nettelroth died on September 2, 1887."

Henry Nettelroth's grave stone at Cave Hill Cemetery Louisville Kentucky USA

 

Contributions to Paleontology

He had been interested in paleontology while still in his native country, and it was but natural that the collection and study of fossils should be continued in connection with a profession which offered such good opportunities. In his spare time, therefore, during more than fifteen years, he enthusiastically collected geological specimens, wisely limiting his cabinets principally to those fossils found in the immediate vicinity of Louisville and the Falls of the Ohio, but including, however, related specimens  from other sections of the country. His zeal in this pursuit stimulated the local interest in paleontology, and there appeared a number of collectors, several of whom became known later as capable and discriminating paleontologists. As a result of the enthusiasm of this coterie, a number of excellent collections were brought together and some rich beds and fossil-bearing strata were discovered which are now known universally to geologists.

Mr. Nettelroth's contribution to geological literature consists of a quarto volume of 245 pages and 36 plates, entitled "Kentucky Fossil Shells : A Monograph of the Fossil Shells of the Silurian and Devonian Rocks of Kentucky." This work, which was issued by the Kentucky Geological Survey in 1889, two years after the death of its author, is strictly biological in its scope. Over two hundred species of mollusca from the strata mentioned in the title were described and illustrated, in addition to a few Ordovician brachiopoda, sponges, and bryozoa. A short sketch of geology and paleontology, written for the general reader, introduces the purely descriptive part, but no particular reference is made to the geology of the Ohio Falls region. Forty-three new species were instituted by Mr. Nettelroth, the remainder being for the most part re-descriptions and illustrations of forms described by others in various scattered publications."

Legacy

After his death, two paleontological things happened. First, his reference to his best fossils was published by Kentucky Geological Survey in 1889. Second, his two sons, H.H. Nettelroth (1871-1936) and Dr. Alexander Nettelroth (1869-1952) of Louisville, Kentucky sold about 8,000 fossil specimens to the Smithsonian Institution and U.S. National Museum in 1907. The collection still exists today housed in the collections of the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

As a point of Louisville interest, after Herman Nettelroth's wife Mary Aylett Buckner Nettelroth (1880-1957) died, she setup in her will that a trust be setup for charitable giving to certain causes in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Courier Journal reported that after her husband died December 10, 1936 he left in his will $118,000 to her. After she died April 24, 1957 The Courier Journal reported her estate of about $600,000 set up the Herman H. Nettelroth Fund administrated by Citzens Fidelity Bank & Trust Company. The newspaper reported in an June 17, 1958 that the fund would create an one acre fenced bird sanctuary at Cherokee Park that would have a three-tier fountain and bird bath. It provided $500 to setup the sanctuary and about $150 each year for maintenance & bird seed.

The Fund would help with eight civic projects: bird sanctuary, "the providing for and equipping of children's playgrounds", "establishment and maintenance of day nurseries for working mothers", University of Louisville scholarships, "promotion of animal rescue work", money to buy children's books for public libraries, "support of the community chest", and "support of disaster-relief work of the Red Cross". 

As of 2019, the Herman H Nettelroth Fund had grown to $2.4 million in assets and distributed 8 projects totaling $134,000. PNC Bank now administrates the fund. This LINK will show who they distribute money to (e.g. U of L, Metro United Way, Louisville Free Public Library, YMCA)

Looking back at past Courier-Journal issues, an auction notice appeared in 1978 The Courier-Journal classified section listing. "LIQUIDATION OF SMALL ANTIQUE SHOP AND OTHER CONSIGNMENTS WED. July 19th, 1978 12 NOON... A collection of rocks and Indian arrowheads from the collection of Henry Nettelroth a noted Paleontologist of the Falls of the Ohio Region, included are Flint arrowhead, stone tools, igneous rocks, fossils, corals, etc. AUCTIONS UNLIMITED DOUG WEST AUCTIONEER" So it appears not all of the Nettelroth collection went to the Smithsonian. 

As of June 2023, one of his spiny snail Platyceras dumosum fossil specimens can be viewed at the PLAYING THE NUMBERS display of the first floor at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.

Lituites marshi Fossil

 

Lituites marshi (Hall, 1867) ammonoid fossil found in Louisville, Kentucky USA. It dates to the Silurian Period and was probably found in the Louisville Limestone. This image is from the 1889 Kentucky Fossil Shells by Henry Nettelroth in Plate XXX figure 1. "Found in the Niagara rocks of the quarries east of the city of Louisville, where fragments of this shell are not rare, but fair specimens are not often found. In the speciment illustrated on plate 30, both termini of the shell are missing; it has preserved more than three complete volutions. The vacant central space indicates that, probably, two full volutions are obliterated there at the apex. How much there is destroyed at the other end can not be acertained, but that there is a large part of a volution missing can not be doubted. Thus it appears that the illustrated specimen, in its perfect condition, had six full volutions." Professor James Hall (1811-1898) named this species in honor of Professor Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899).

This fossil is stored at the Smithsonian and was assigned catalog number: USNM PAL 51378.

Here is a posting from 2009 of one of these fossils found in Louisville:

https://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2009/05/silurian-coiled-cephalopod-lituites.html

Kentucky Fossil Shells - Henry Nettelroth & Brachiospongia Fossil

Recently, I acquired a book entitled Kentucky Fossil Shells A Monograph of the Fossil Shells of the Silurian and Devonian Rocks of Kentucky by Henry Nettelroth 1889. I like to collect the old reference books to see the fossil plates even if I already have a digital copy. The copy I bought was discarded from the Adelbert College of Case Western Reserve University Library in Cleveland Ohio. It does not appear the school teaches paleontology classes anymore so no need for this book.

It just so happened that I got to see an Ordovician Period poriferan (sponge) fossil at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, USA last week. The museum display list it as Brachiospongia  sp. (490-443 million years old) and found Bridgeport, Kentucky. That same type of fossil is shown in the book. It is described as Brachiospongia digitata (Owen, 1857) on pages 29-30 and image listed in Plate XXXV figure 3 (image below). The fossil was first described by David Dale Owen in First Kentucky Geological Report Volume 2 page 111 as Seyphia digitata. The genus was later named by Marsh in 1867 in American Journal of Science and Arts, 2d series, Volume  44.

Next are two more figures from Plate XXXVI figures 1 and 2.

More images of another specimen at the museum.

It was a treat to see this fossil as I had only read about it before. They are very rare finds and only found in a few localities. The Peabody Museum at Yale have specimens can be seen here: https://collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Record/YPM-IP-030074 and https://collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Record/YPM-IP-030063

Dan Phelps the president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society (KPS) gave a talk about these glass sponges to the Dry Dredgers fossil group in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in 2008. I did not realize how many he had found and the large number of specimens that The Peabody Museum have in their collection.

Also it is brought up that a sponge fossil was found in Tennessee in the 1830s. It turns out that it was documented by Dr. Gerard Troost who I have written about before on this blog in 2009. The Field Museum of Natural History published Annotated Bibliography of Lower Paleozoic Sponges of North America by J. Keith Rigby and Matthew H. Nitecki in Fieldiana: Geology Volume 18, Number 1 on October 25, 1968 which lists references on sponge fossils. Find at this link.

The bibliography reports that Gerard Troost probably described the first fossil sponge from North America in 1838 but did not name it in Description d'un noveau genre de fossiles. Mem. Soc. Geol. France, 3, pt. 1, Mem. 4: pp. 87-96, pis. 9-11.

Fossils of Belknap Bridge

Belknap Memorial Bridge is located in Cherokee Park (Louisville, Kentucky).  It spans over Beargrass Creek which exposes Louisville Limestone and Waldron Shale from the Silurian Period.  As the plaque says, it was built in 1901.

The bridge seems to be constructed of Louisville Limestone to provide a road over Beargrass Creek shown in the picture above.  After finding the index fossil Halysites (chain coral) in the stone blocks used in the construction of this bridge, the stone is most likely Louisville Limestone.  See image below.

The next fossil might be some sort of sponge found in another block on the bridge.

Here is maybe another sponge.

Last, not sure what this fossil is but does appear to be branching.  It is worn but should be after being exposed to the elements for at least 109 years.

Cherokee Park - Louisville, Kentucky
Cherokee Park was designed in the late 1800s by Fredrick Law Olmsted Sr (1822-1903). One can assume the park is named after Native American people known as the Cherokee.  The Cherokee do not appear to have ever lived in the Louisville area though. Other Olmsted parks in Louisville seemed to be named after different Native American groups (e.g. Iroquois, Seneca, Shawnee, Chickasaw).

 Fredrick Law Olmsted Sr.

Oil Painting by John Singer Sargent (1895)

Biltmore Estate - Ashville, North Carolina

Courtesy of Wikipedia

The park covers about 390 acres around the Bluegrass Creek valley and opened in 1892. Of interest is Big Rock in Beargrass Creek that marks an area of Silurian Period rock (Louisville Limestone & Waldron Shale), Hogan's Fountain, and the Nettelroth Bird Sanctuary. The sanctuary was named Herman H. and Mary Buchner Nettelroth Memorial Sanctuary according to a 1958 Courier Journal article. It listed "sanctuary will be a one-acre fenced-in site centering on a three-tier fountain and bird bath... The Nettelroth estate will provide $500 for setting up the sanctuary and about $150 each year to maintain it and buy seed for birds... provided for in the will of Mrs. Nettelroth who died April 24, 1957... The projects will be financed from income from the estate of about $600,000, which as been set up as the Herman H. Nettelroth Fund."

Herman was the son of the Louisville naturalist/geologist Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887).  He compiled an 1889 paleontology monograph entitled: "Kentucky Fossil Shells" that can still be used today. His sons donated his about 8,000 specimens fossil collection to the Smithsonian Institution in 1907.

Belknap Memorial Bridge
The Belknap Memorial Bridge is named for Lily Buckner Belknap (1858-1893). Her husband, Morris Burke Belknap (1856-1910) had it built in her honor. The bridge was completed in 1901. Lily was the daughter of Kentucky Governor and Confederate Civil War General Simon B. Buckner (1823-1914). Her half brother, General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. (1886-1945) who die during World War II's Battle of Okinawa.

Learn more about Louisville's Olmsted parks at Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

UPDATED (11-22-2022): While research Henry Nettelroth and his family I discovered a number of my assumptions were wrong about the bird sanctuary and also who the bridge was named for. I have re-written a number sections of this posting to reflect more accurate information.

Sources:

"Estate Paying at Cherokee Park to Get Bird Haven", The Courier-Journal 17 Jun 1958, Tue Page 1; note article confuses the occupation of Herman H. Nettelroth (1871-1936) who was a attorney. It mistakes him as a Crescent Hill physician which was his brother Alexander Walter Nettelroth (1869-1952). 

Morris B. Belknap - Wikipedia

Image | Belknap Bridge. | ID: 3d95a8ee-ba3a-412f-bdcc-576da0035cf4 | Hyku (louisville.edu)