Autograph book pages at Kentucky Library & Museum
In 1890, seventeen-year-old Jonnie McFarland of Bristow, Kentucky shared a hobby in common with many other young women: she kept an autograph book, a collection of signatures of girlfriends, siblings, visitors and beaux. In an age when good penmanship was considered not only a valuable skill but a sign of discipline, industriousness and upright character, autograph books were popular keepsakes. Not only did they provide a forum in which to display one’s fanciest script, they allowed contributors to show their imagination, artistic ability and literary wit with snippets of poetry, aphorisms, Latin phrases, drawings and sketches.
WKU’s Special Collections Library holds at least 50 autograph books, including that of Miss McFarland, in its collections. Contributors to Jonnie’s book often added words of affection or encouragement over their signatures; one even wrote a message using the dots and dashes of Morse code. Common to the scribes, however, was the wish to be remembered. “When the leaves of your album are yellow with age,” one wrote Jonnie, “and the name I write here is dim on the page / Still think of me kindly and do not forget / Wherever I am I love you yet.”
A finding aid for Jonnie McFarland’s autograph book can be downloaded here.
To view finding aids for some (but by no means all) of our autograph books, click here and type “autograph books” or “autograph albums” in the search box.
Nice book! hopefully not the last book he wrote…
Sounds like a great collection. I draw a lot of parallels of today’s social networking sites to autograph books. I sometimes think maybe we should go back to autograph books exclusively!
“Remember me” what a wonderful collection. It is really amazing. I have no words to say about this article and about this picture. Thanks a lot.
A sure hit and a great collector’s item. Love to see the whole concept personally.
Thank you for writing on this subject. Using Bing for the first time, found your blog.
Following reading this posting, I pondered the same point that I invariably wonder about when scanning new blogs and forums. Just what do I think about this? Precisely how need to it impact me? This and extra posts on your weblog here absolutely give some stuff to take into account. I essentially ended up here by means of Yahoo when I was initial doing some internet research for some course work that I’ve. Always very good times browsing through and I’m hopeful that you’ll keep on writing new posts. Cheers!
Great opinion you place here.
It would be intresting to find something more concerning this post.
Thanks for inform that information.
With best regards!
Very interesting. I’ll have to stop back and see what others are saying.
Thank you for another greet post. Keep up the good work.
Great guide relating to WKU Libraries Blog » Blog Archive » Autograph books say: “Remember me” brbr Which is why I actually continue to come back and reading the material https://library.blog.wku.edu/2009/12/16/autograph-books-say-remember-me daily.