(Editor’s note: We’re celebrating ten years of Our Rich History! You can browse and read any of the past columns, from the present all the way back to our start on May 6, 2015, at our newly updated database.)
By John Schlipp and Paul A. Tenkotte, PhDOur Rich History editor
Amid Louisville’s modern cityscape, the Brennan House at 631 South 5th Street offers a historic nineteenth-century retreat. Its most noted owner, Thomas Brennan (1839–1914), was an inventor and business owner, working in two of the Ohio River watershed’s most innovative cities, Cincinnati and Louisville.
Born in January 1839 in Ireland, Thomas M. Brennan (1839–1914) accompanied his grandmother to the United States in 1842. They landed at New Orleans, where they lived for a time. Thomas demonstrated mechanical skills at an early age and became a talented machinist, working in St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Brennan married Anna Virgina Bruce (1848–1908) in September 1869 in Louisville (Ancestry.com; Find a Grave; “Thomas Brennan,” “Courier-Journal,” March 1, 1914, p. 9; “Life’s Close: Thomas M. Brennan, Manufacturer, Dead at 74,” “Courier-Journal,” February 28, 1914, p. 7)…