Kentucky Woman's Confederate Monument Association
During the Civil War, the city of Louisville, Kentucky housed a large numbers of Union troops, but Confederate sympathies quickly took over the city after the war’s end. In the early 1880s, a group of Southern women thought up the idea of creating a Confederate monument in the city. Led by Mrs. S. P. Hepburn, these women formed into the organization known as the Kentucky Woman’s Confederate Monument Association. Ladies Monument Associations were being created all across the South after 1865. These groups became the forerunners to the later United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Kentucky Association set out to gain twelve thousand dollars to build a monument commemorating Confederate soldiers. One method of fundraising involved selling hundred of autographs from Jefferson Davis acquired by Mrs. L. E. Williams. The groups obtained the fund through thirteen years of selling the autographs, bake sales, and other social events. The Kentucky Association raised enough money by 1894 and created a contest to choose a design for the monument.