Monthly Archives: November 2019

by | November 25, 2019 · 4:03 pm

A Fair Dinner

The Warren County Fair has always been a great time to gather for fun, competition and education. Despite being in the throes of war in 1918, the Fair Board decided to continue the tradition in the first full week of September that year. To take advantage of the large number of visitors to the fair, the local Red Cross chapter petitioned the Fair Association for permission to serve meals to the crowds. The money raised would benefit the Red Cross’ war efforts, and the ladies were determined to raise $10,000 via this effort. The patriotic rhetoric was thick: “When we stop and think that all the money that is made in this way goes to the aid of wounded boys who are fighting for us, we will not do out bit , but our VERY BEST for them.”

A World War I poster advertising the Red Cross.

Bettie (Robertson) Hagerman assumed chairmanship of the endeavor. In order to provide the food necessary for the four-day event, Hagerman divided the city proportionately by major streets and appointed a street chairman for each area. Although we don’t have the aggregate figures for each type of food item, we do have several forms filled out by the street chairmen. The image below shows the contributions recorded by street chairman Mrs. B.S. White from Woodford Street: 8 fried chickens, 14 dozen tomatoes, 10.5 dozen eggs, five bowls of salads (tuna fish or pimento and cheese), 2 pounds of ham, $8.20 in cash to buy bread, 5 dozen lemons, 4 pans of potatoes, and 1 pound of sugar. It’s pretty obvious that the canteen was going to serve lemonade as the meal’s beverage.

The reply sheet from the Woodford Street Chairman which indicated what they would provide for the effort.

Each of the twenty-five street chairmen was encouraged to get everyone on the street to donate “whether they are Red Cross members or not. Remember, if we give till it hurts, that is small, for the boys “Over There” are giving their all.” We don’t know if the ladies were successful in their effort to raise $10,000, but these preparation documents certainly indicate that they were determined. To see other collections containing information about the Red Cross or World War I search KenCat or TopSCHOLAR.

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by | November 18, 2019 · 9:51 am

Learning by Doing

My name is Hannah Hudson, and this fall, I have had the privilege of being the fourth Dr. Delroy and Patricia Hire intern in the Department of Library Special Collections. I am a sophomore at WKU, majoring in Cultural Anthropology and minoring in Folk Studies. I have always enjoyed learning about local history and the importance of rural communities in the development of the southeastern United States. When the head of my department mentioned this internship to me, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to develop my professional skills. Throughout my time as an intern in Special Collections, I have worked on projects from Monroe County, Kentucky, Allen County, Kentucky and Macon County, Tennessee.

Kentucky Governor Louie B. Nunn presents the Commonwealth’s first personalized congressional license plate to Congressman Tim Lee Carter, March 1969.

One project I have worked on this semester involves sorting, scanning, and categorizing photographs from the Tim Lee Carter Collection. Dr. Tim Lee Carter was from Monroe County, Kentucky, and he served eight terms (1965-1981) as a U.S. Representative for Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District. Due to my interest in visual anthropology, it has been very interesting for me to see how Carter’s work as a public servant was documented through these photos. I also gained practical experience while working with this collection as I learned about the process of cataloging in Past Perfect, a widely-used collections archiving database. The work that I have done on this collection will aid in the curation of an exhibit celebrating Monroe County’s Bicentennial in 2020.

Another project I completed was transcribing the 1850 and 1860 slave censuses from Monroe County, Kentucky to make them accessible on TopScholar. This was a particularly significant project to me because I feel that a lot of valuable information is contained in these records. The slave census gives insight into the early history of Monroe County and the significance of enslaved people in its development. I learned a great deal from this project, and it sparked many questions that led me to look deeper into the county’s history. Not only do the records give information on slave owners, but they also give information on the age-sex distribution of slaves and the ways in which they were classified in that time period.

I also researched my hometown of Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee and wrote a historical overview that is available on TopScholar. Red Boiling Springs borders the Tennessee-Kentucky line and is known for the several types of mineral waters that flow throughout the city. The medicinal properties of the springs once attracted visitors from all over the country and created a booming resort industry in the small town. I am passionate about preserving the history of Red Boiling Springs, and I have done independent research on it for over a year now. I am grateful that I had the opportunity and support from Library Special Collections to publish information on this small but significant community.

Dr. Delroy Hire, WKU Alumni from Pensacola, FL, visiting with Hannah Hudson, 2019 Hire Intern.

Throughout my time as an intern with Special Collections, I have gained experiences that will be valuable in my future such as scanning, writing, and cataloging in Past Perfect. Most importantly, I have learned how to use library and archival resources for research. I also learned so much about myself and the Kentucky and Tennessee counties that have influenced my life. I am grateful for the sponsorship of Dr. Delroy Hire and the opportunities that this internship has opened up for me. Any student who is interested in the Hire Internship can contact Department Head Jonathan Jeffrey by phone at (270) 745-5265 or by email at jonathan.jeffrey@wku.edu.

Written by Hannah Hudson

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by | November 7, 2019 · 9:23 am

“I’d rather have the wisdom than the bliss”

“Someone sent me ‘Beauchampe,’” wrote Sallie McElroy in her journal on October 26, 1857.  The anonymous gift she was referring to was a book by William Gilmore Simms—a reboot, actually, of his 1842 work Beauchampe; or the Kentucky Tragedy: A Tale of Passion.  

Ann Cook

The volume was a novelized version of a true story that began on November 7, 1825, with the fatal stabbing of a man in Frankfort, Kentucky.  The victim, former state attorney general Solomon P. Sharp, had allegedly fathered a stillborn child whose mother, Ann Cook, was now living in seclusion near Bowling Green.  Sharp, however, had not only denied paternity but had shockingly claimed that the child had been of mixed race.  The disgraced Ann then fell in with Jeroboam O. Beauchamp, a young law student 15 years her junior, married him, and convinced him to kill Sharp to avenge her honor.  Just before Beauchamp was to hang for the crime on July 7, 1826, he and Ann attempted a double suicide in the jailhouse, but only she succeeded.  They were buried together in an “eternal embrace,” as they had requested. 

Beauchampe was a rather unusual gift for 23-year-old Sallie, then teaching at a female academy in Bowling Green and boarding under the rather Puritanical eye of its headmistress.  As Sallie knew, tradition demanded that women be shielded from such scandal lest it send them to the fainting couch, or worse, to a life corrupted by the taste of forbidden knowledge.  One of her male friends, in fact, seems to have had her debating the wisdom of opening the book’s cover.

Sallie McElroy

But she did not hesitate for long.  Well-read, wryly observant, and Bible-literate enough to slice and dice the sermons of local clergymen, Sallie understood the double standard behind such male hand-wringing.  “Yes, I will read it!” she wrote in her journal.  “Men are extremely anxious to preserve us pure as saints—we must know nothing of the stream of pollution which ‘flows down our streets like a river’ for fear we shall be spattered a little by the spray as it dashes on in its headlong course!”  True, there was the old saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise,” but a “man wrote that,” she observed, “& I’m suspicious of the whole of ‘em!  At least in this instance, I had rather have the wisdom than the bliss, as dear old mother Eve chose before me!”

So read she did, and emerged unscathed.  Disappointed in the style of the book and its divergence from generally accepted versions of the incident, Sallie nevertheless found it “a most thrilling tale.”  She was somewhat forgiving of Ann Cook—“a most extraordinary woman” who fell victim to “pride & ambition” and whose relatives still lived in the area.  But Beauchamp was “a ninny of a fellow,” his reason captive to his passion.  Sharp, too, was “a monster.”  The bottom line, she concluded, was that “All three met only a just fate.”

Sallie McElroy’s journal is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here for a finding aid, and here to read about a more recent book on the famous Beauchamp-Sharp Tragedy, written with the aid of our collections.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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