Monthly Archives: August 2014

 Maurice Hudson Thatcher was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 15, 1870.  The Thatcher family moved to Morgantown, Kentucky when Maurice was about 3-yrs-old and he grew up in Butler County.  Maurice Thatcher worked as a circuit court clerk for Butler County, before he became Assistant U. S. District Attorney for Kentucky’s Western District, 1901-1908.  Thatcher held the office of State Inspector and Examiner for Kentucky, 1908-1910.  In 1910, Maurice Thatcher was appointed by the former U. S. President William Howard Taft as a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission which supervised construction of the Panama Canal.

Maurice H. Thatcher served as Civil Governor of the Canal Zone, 1910-1913, during the construction of the Panama Canal.  The Thatcher Ferry Bridge over the Panama Canal was named for Maurice Thatcher in 1961.  Former U. S. President Robert F. Kennedy reportedly gave Maurice Thatcher the pen with which Kennedy signed the bill that named the bridge after Thatcher.  However, the Thatcher Ferry bridge was later renamed as the Bridge of the Americas.

Maurice H. Thatcher served in the House of Representatives, 1923-1933, from Kentucky’s 5th District.  Thatcher sponsored legislation for the establishment of Mammoth Cave as a National Park.  Thatcher actively supported a national parkway system from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park through the Mammoth Cave National Park and to the Natchez Trace Parkway near Nashville, TN.  Thatcher also helped establish the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama City for the study of tropical diseases in honor of his old colleague on the canal commission, Colonel William C. Gorgas.

In the House of Representatives address on May 29, 1930, the Honorable Maurice H. Thatcher concluded his speech on page 20 about the History and Significance of the Panama Canal with, “This slight ligament, which through the centuries gone has physically bound together North and South America, in the centuries to come, by the fact of its severance, shall bind and hold together the two continents in the closest bonds of commercial, political, and social friendship, and shall quicken and increase our contacts with all the lands of the earth.”

 *Photo of Maurice H. Thatcher can be found in the Department of Library Special Collections.

Thatcher was honorary life president of the Panama Canal Society in Washington, D. C. and honorary life member of the Isthmian Historical Society.  Other honors include: a medal and plaque of the Order of Vasco Nunez de Balboa from the Panama government, as well as honors from Venezuela and Ecuador for his service.

Maurice H. Thatcher was the sole surviving member of the Isthmian Canal Commission when he celebrated his 100th birthday on the 56th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal.  Former U. S. President Richard Nixon called to wish Thatcher a happy birthday.

In a newspaper article written by William Greider, February 18, 1968, entitled …Always a Congressman, Thatcher said, “I keep my citizenship back in Kentucky,” he explained, “but I am domiciled here.  I stayed here because of these public matters I was interested in.  I felt I could do more good by staying here and could serve Kentucky and the Panama Canal better than I would by going back.”

Maurice Hudson Thatcher died on January 6, 1973 at the age of 102 at his home in Washington, D. C. and he was buried in Frankfort, Kentucky.

We’ve recently added some exciting new resources, and upgraded several of our databases! All resources listed below can be found through the library catalog or under “databases” on the library homepage.

Oxford English Dictionary online:  The definitive dictionary of the English language, with over 600,000 entries. (Now there’s no excuse for dictionary.com citations).

Applied Science & Technology Full text (EBSCO): We upgraded our citation index to include full text from over 700 publications.

JSTOR Arts & Sciences IX & X: An upgrade to our JSTOR subscription providing access to an additional 400 titles in Sociology, Law, Education, Archaeology, and other disciplines.

EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete: Through our partnership with the Kentucky Virtual Library, we have upgraded our main EBSCO database to include an additional 4,000 full text titles.

And more:

New York Review of Books (online)

Records of the Antebellum Southern Plantations (online)

Chronicle of Higher Education (online — off campus users must register with their wku.edu email address)

Harvard Dictionary of Regional English (online)

A native of Alabama, William L. Sibert was born on October 12, 1860. Studying at the University of Alabama and the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, he graduated as one of the top cadets in his class in 1884. Prior to his work on the Panama Canal, Second Lt. Sibert was assigned to oversee improvements as the lock and dam system on the Green and Barren Rivers near Bowling Green, Kentucky was transferred from private ownership to the Federal government. In a letter currently housed in WKU’s Manuscripts Collection dated April 9, 1889, Sibert notified Mr. Morgan of Green Castle, Kentucky, that the United States was taking “possession of the fifteen acres of land at Lock No. 1 Barren River, for which it holds the deed.” Sibert’s next assignment was to construct a new lock in a lock-and-dam system which would enable ships to travel between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes.

On March 16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Major Sibert as a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission. As the head engineer of the Atlantic Division, Sibert was in charge of building the Gatun Locks and Gatun Dam. Gatum Dam is one and one-half miles long, built across two deep gorges which were formerly soft sea muddy beds of the Chagres River. Sibert knew that water pressure would exist under the floor of the upper flight of locks at Gatun and under the floor of the spillway channel below the dam. Thus, the Gatun Locks were built to resist upward water pressure induced by the huge lake which the dam created.

Sibert’s superiors expected his assignment to take two years longer than any other part of the Panama Canal construction. Determined to prove them wrong, Sibert had to pour concrete at a faster rate than had ever been done. He doubled the world’s maximum rate despite the fact that it was necessary to tow the required stone and sand from Porto Bello across an arm of the Carribean Sea to the job site. The Gatun Locks were operational on September 26, 1913, before Culebra Cut and the Pacific Locks at Miraflores and Pedro Miguel were finished. Sibert also built the wet breakwater, Colon Harbor, and excavated the channel from Gatun to the Atlantic Ocean. He was relieved from duty with the Canal when the commission was abolished on March 31, 1914.

At the outbreak of World War I, Sibert became the first commanding general of the First Infantry Division, known as “the Big Red One,” supervising their combat training and leading them to France in 1917. Soon thereafter, advancing to the rank of Major General, Sibert was named commander of the newly formed Chemical Warfare Service. For his war service, he received the Distinguished Service Medal and the French Legion of Honor.

In December 1918, Sibert accepted membership in Bowling Green’s XV Club, stating “This act makes me feel sure that when I come back to Bowling Green to live I will be among friends . . . . There is nothing that brings the same satisfaction in life as the good will of those whom you know and who know you.” When asked why he chose to retire to Bowling Green, he replied, “….in Bowling Green there are more men than anywhere else who will stop whatever they’re doing, no matter how busy they are, to go fishin’ or fox-huntin’ with me. (New York Times Magazine, Nov. 2, 1924) On the centennial of Sibert’s birth, a Bowling Green newspaper man wrote: “If the late Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert loved anything better than his slide rule and the thrill of getting big tough jobs done in jig time — perhaps it was his foxhounds and the stir the pack brought deep within him as it closed on quarry at full cry.” Sibert died at his country home near Bowling Green on October 16, 1935 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

This biographical sketch was researched using Kentucky Library Research Collections in the Kentucky Building.

Nancy Richey received a Collections Care certificate earlier this month from the Campbell Center.

Nancy Richey, Visual Resources Librarian in the Department of Library Special Collections (DLSC), recently received “Collections Care” certification from the The Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies in Mount Carroll, Illinois.  Over several years, Richey has completed the following courses at the Campbell Center:  three sections of progressively intensive classes titled Care of Photographic Collections, Care of Historic Scrapbooks, Archives Principles and Practices, and Digitizing Museum Collections.

“Because of the diversity of materials in my care,” noted Richey, “the training I received at the Campbell Center in Collections Care, enables me to more carefully identify the nature of the material in question and the cause of its deterioration and subsequently prescribe preservation remedies.”  Richey currently manages illustrative material in the Kentucky Library Research Collections, including photographs in many formats, maps, broadsides, prints, and postcards.  “We are always pleased when faculty proactively seek out additional training to add to their expertise,” said Jonathan Jeffrey, DLSC Department Head.   “Besides completing an arduous curriculum of courses, Nancy helped procure funding to assist her in attaining this certification.  She has enchanced her own professional resume, while concurrently boosting the reputation and expertise of our department.”

Founded in the mid-1980s and located on a historic school property, The Campbell Center provides interdisciplinary and continuing education to meet the evolving training needs of individuals who work to preserve historic landscapes, and cultural, historic, and artistic properties.  Workshop topics range greatly and include hands-on training in areas such as art restoration, tombstone repair, historic masonry, preservation of historic properties and landscapes, basic archives training, and document preservation.