Most of the information on Ballard Thruston’s life comes from The Encyclopedia of Louisville, J.E. Kleber, ed. (Lexington, KY: 2000), p. 882; T.D. Clark, “Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston, Engineer, Historian, and Benevolent Kentuckian,” The Filson Club History Quarterly 58.4 (October 1984), pp. 408–435; and P.M. Hessel, “The Ballard-Thruston Collection of Roman Funerary Monuments in the J.B. Speed Art Museum,” The Filson Club History Quarterly 63.4 (October 1989), pp. 419–38.