"Kentucky Colonels" in the Public Domain

It is said that anything created by the government for the people is already part of the public domain, no one knows that better than the Kentucky Colonel who created the very government. However creative works such as business names, identities, publications such as a newspapers or book titles are quite another story.

Public Domain Declaration & Legal Safe Harbor Notice

New York Times, April 27, 1932.— Louisville, Kentucky; The Spring meeting of [T]he Kentucky Colonels [association] (formed in 1930) will be held at the Brown Hotel on May 25. Committee and general sessions in the afternoon will be followed by the annual dinner in the evening. Governor Laffoon and several former Governors will attend. T. Russ Hill and other nationally prominent men will speak. Officers will be elected for the year.

This led our commissioner to dig into the years when the Original Kentucky Colonels Associations—Kentucky Colonels Club 1903-1921 at the Seelbach Hotel and then "The Kentucky Colonels" 1927–1933 (1937), and the Honorable Order of the Blue Goose International, Kentucky Colonel Model Initiation Club 1913–1980; and the subsequent introduction of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels in 1933 by Governor Ruby Laffoon and his friends Anna Bell Ward and Charles Pettijohn.

Governor Laffoon after spending the Kentucky Derby with James "Big Jim" Farley (US Postmaster) in 1933, shortly after they led to a Parade of Colonels when Charles Pettijohn and Anna Bell Ward announced with Governor Ruby Laffoon that the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels would operate its national headquarters in New York and have an office in Lexington. Subsequently the HOKC creates its own cover story, history and origin by 1941. All the knowledge about the Kentucky Colonel known to the HOKC can be summed up in "Howdy Colonel" in 1947 and the Social Register they maintained. It is very clear that the HOKC did not adopt any of the understanding of the state and the general public about the Kentucky Colonel as an institutional mainstay in existence from the early 1800s–1920s.

1. Statutory Public Domain Status of Historical Works

Notice of Intellectual Property Reversion: Please be advised that the original literary work titled "The Kentucky Colonels Handbook" (originally published in October 1930), along with the historic name and designation of the underlying organization "The Kentucky Colonels" (frequently styled as the Kentucky Colonels Association or Kentucky Colonels between 1930 and 1937), has officially surpassed all statutory copyright and property protection windows under United States Copyright Law. As of January 1, 2026, these historic assets, names, letterheads, and texts have fully reverted to the Public Domain and are therefore free to use by anyone with a literary or commercial use or interest for them and all such uses that have not been trademarked under the Lanham Act for other specific purposes.

2. Explicit Disclaimer of Non-Affiliation

This website, its repository, and its co-existent historical assembly operate as an entirely independent, distinct entity. We make every effort to disambiguate ourselves from others. Our use of the term "Kentucky Colonels" does not refer to, represent, or imply affiliation with:

The private 501(c)(3) corporation known as The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels (HOKC);

The commercial entity known as Kentucky Colonels Collectibles, Inc. (merchandise suppliers to Kentucky Colonels Store);

Any active proprietary trademarks held by those corporate entities, including but not limited to the registered trademark "Kentucky Colonels®" as applied to commercial merchandise, social fraternities, or institutional philanthropy.

Permitted Statutory Use: Journalistic, Educational, and Historical Motives

This digital platform is structurally organized to serve as an open-access archive and a co-existent cultural body. All materials, analyses, and titles deployed herein are utilized under protected constitutional and statutory provisions for journalistic, historical, informative, entertainment, and educational purposes.

Our explicit mission is to provide the public, academics, and legal researchers with an objective, evidence-backed counterweight to the unverified pseudohistory promulgated by the modern HOKC and its various regional chapters. We reject the foundational corporate mythos that attempts to project a modern 501(c)(3) business structure backward into an imaginary, unbroken "mystical militia" tracing to an undocumented 1813 gubernatorial decree.

By publishing primary source documentation, verified court filings, and historical archives, this platform ensures that the public is not misled by corporate marketing campaigns designed to enclose a historic identity that belongs inherently to the public domain.

Our Mission: Honoring the 1930–1937 Historical Continuity

Our organizational goal is to formally pick up exactly where the Original Kentucky Colonels (The Kentucky Colonels Association) left off during their active era spanning 1930 to 1937.

We operate as a separate, co-existent body dedicated strictly to the preservation of genuine historical facts, verified state records, and authentic pioneer heritage. Unlike the early iterations of the HOKC—which was established in its infancy by out-of-state movie executives, Hollywood personalities, and political operatives at a New York banquet in 1933—this assembly beholds an uncompromised interest in truth over publicity, and documentation over folklore. We stand as the digital and cultural successors to the original public commons of the Kentucky Colonelcy.