The Quest for a Lost Race

At the turn of the 20th century, a Kentucky journalist and member of the prestigious Filson Club embarked on a peculiar intellectual journey. Thomas Edward Pickett had one question: where do the people of Kentucky really come from? Not in a genealogical sense, but in a deeper, more contentious one. He explores the controversial theory of ethnologist Paul B. Du Chaillu, who argued that contemporary English-speaking people descend from Scandinavians rather than Teutonic tribes, from Normans rather than Germans. Pickett transports readers to Maysville, Kentucky, in its antebellum heyday, where Du Chaillu was once feted as a celebrity explorer. The narrative becomes a meditation on blood, soil, and belonging in a young nation still inventing itself. This is a fascinating artifact of early American intellectual life, when scholars seriously debated which ancient peoples lived on in the blood of modern nations.