Programs · For Educators
Filson collections, exhibits, and digital projects mapped to the Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies — for K–12 teachers, college instructors, and homeschool families. Plus class visits to the Ferguson Mansion campus and a speaker-request channel for your room.
Bring a class
School groups can tour the historic Ferguson Mansion and exhibit galleries, and book research time in the library. Reservations are required — we work with teachers to scope each visit to the standards you’re teaching.
Request a speaker
Filson curators, archivists, and historians are available to visit your classroom — in person in greater Louisville, or over video for any Kentucky district. Topics matched to your unit; we lean into primary-source-driven sessions.
Email info@filsonhistorical.com with your grade level, topic, and date window.
How to use this page
Every link below opens a Filson digital collection or exhibit. Photographs, manuscripts, posters, sheet music, and oral histories you can project, print, or assign. These are a small slice of the full archive — if you don’t see your topic, search the catalog or email Jennie.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
The trans-Appalachian West from European-American settlement through the end of the frontier period — focused on the Ohio River Valley and Kentucky. Includes Filson’s curated digital project on western encounter.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
Primary-source collections aligned to the Kentucky Academic Standards High School U.S. History progression. Camp Zachary Taylor, WWI posters, the Speed family, and the Ingram social-work papers.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
Music, foodways, the Derby, the State Fair, and mourning traditions — collections you can put in front of a class to anchor a unit on regional identity.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
Primary sources for teaching the history of slavery, escape, and self-liberation in Kentucky — including The Reckoning, the Filson’s long-running collaboration with educators across the Commonwealth.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
Black-owned insurance, the Southern Exposition, and the women whose labor and art reshaped the public sphere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
Suffrage, presidential collections, and the long Kentucky path to the polls.
Kentucky Academic Standards · Theme
From the Lusby family photographs to the Walnut Street Black business district — primary sources for teaching Louisville’s Black communities and institutions.
For older students
The Filson’s research library is open to anyone — high-school AP capstone students, undergraduates, independent researchers. Reservations aren’t required, but we recommend reserving a seat for groups.