My Old Kentucky Home
During February, PBS aired Kent Masterson Brown’s ninth documentary film, “The Lincolns in Kentucky,” which chronicles the 34 years Abraham Lincoln’s family lived in Kentucky. Kent is a 1974 graduate of the Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Beginning with Lincoln’s grandparents, Capt. Abraham Lincoln and Bathsheba Lincoln, and continuing through the years that his parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, spent in Kentucky, the documentary focuses on the lawsuits against Thomas Lincoln over land claims in Hardin County. Kent first uncovered this aspect of the Lincoln story in the mid-1990s, when he conducted a title examination for the National Park Service of the Knob Creek Farm, the place of Abraham Lincoln’s first memory.
As a result of Kent’s work, the National Park Service was able to add the Knob Creek farm to the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park.
“The Lincolns in Kentucky” drew rave reviews and had more than 1.5 million viewers, rivaling Kent’s previous broadcast production, “Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West in 2015.”
Kent practices law with offices in Lexington, Kentucky, and with Webster, Chamberlain & Bean, in Washington, D.C. He is the founder and former editor in chief of The Civil War: The Magazine of the Civil War Society and has won numerous awards for his books, which include “Retreat From Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign” and “The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State.” In addition, he has hosted and produced nine award-winning documentary films for public and cable television on various aspects of American history. In October, he was named a 2014 Distinguished Graduate of Centre College of Kentucky for his efforts challenging government authority as a practicing lawyer, as well as for his Civil War scholarship.
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