Kentucky Countryside in Transition

Kentucky Countryside in Transition charts the rise of the American middle class at the turn of the twentieth century by examining migration from the Kentucky countryside to suburban Louisville. The formation of the suburban middle class in Louisville was made possible by two factors: a boom in white-collar employment and the electric streetcar, an innovation that fundamentally changed the urban landscape. Ultimately a narrative of industrialization and modernity, this study focuses on a group of forty-two families who lived at the end of the Broadway Trolley line in an area that came to be known as the Cherokee Triangle. This suburban neighborhood was dominated by white-collar commuters who were driven to Louisville by a desire to achieve the economic success that an urban environment promised them but continued to embrace a nostalgia for the country life they came from.

In this meticulous three-generation study, Stephanie Bower follows groups of families as they make the transition from being rural farmers and cultivators to city laborers and white collar workers. By mining census records, city directories, and county records, as well as diaries and memoirs, Bower carefully reconstructs the biographical details of residents in an effort to paint a broad picture of life in the Cherokee Triangle during this transformational period. Regional studies of suburbanization during this pivotal era are often overlooked in contemporary scholarship. Consequently, this analysis will be of interest to those researching Louisville, middle-class formation, and suburbanization, as well as to local genealogists tracing their family histories.