Author Archives: Haiwang Yuan

The October 2007 issue of Kentucky Humanities includes a photograph and story related to a letter held in the Manuscripts area of the Kentucky Library & Museum. The letter is dated August 1, 1830 and was written by Rebecca Condict of Warrick County, Indiana, to her sister Mary Condict of Ohio County, Kentucky. In the letter Rebecca writes her sister that she has found a possible remedy for “the sick spells that you are subject to.” Rebecca proceeds to explain to her sister how to bathe.

She tells her sibling, “the first time you wash you had better take a little soap and a cloth and rub hard. Have someone one to rub your back where you can’t rub, when you are done washing rub off with a dry cloth every time, you need not use the soap only the first time, but the cloth every time. You must commence at your head, put the water on your head, plenty of it, put it on with your cloth or pour it on if you can stand it. We have tried it all of us and we think it makes us feel better every time we do it.”

This fun excerpt is only one of a thousand stories that can be abstracted from the letters, diaries, journals, court records and documents housed in Manuscripts & Folklife Archives at the Kentucky Building. The Kentucky Humanities Council publishes Kentucky Humanities semi-annually.

Lynn E. Niedermeier, archival assistant in WKU’s University Archives, has written a biography of Eliza Calvert Hall which has recently been published by the University Press of Kentucky. Hall (1856-1935) was an author, poetry, essayist, and folk art historian. She is best known for her several collections of short stories about an inimitable character known as Aunt Jane of Kentucky. Her books are said to have had a contemporary readership estimated at one million people.

Hall is also known as a significant Kentucky suffragist, joining the ranks of Laura Clay and Josephine Henry in the fight for women’s suffrage and equality. The book jacket declares: “While her passionate essays served as a direct appeal for this cause, her creative writing also carried a feminist spirit, celebrating the strength, humor, love, and art of the common woman.”

Niedermeier mined the rich resources of the Kentucky Building to assist her in writing the biography. “Several manuscript collections housed at WKU’s Kentucky Library & Museum,” noted the author, “were indispensable to the writing of this book. Most notably, the Calvert-Obenchain-Younglove collection which contains many of Eliza Calvert Hall’s poems and suffrage articles and scores of her letters, as well as letters and journals kept by members of her family.” Additional collections that were helpful in piecing together the story of Eliza’s life included: Clarence Underwood McElroy Collection, Presbyterian Church records from Bowling Green, the John B. Rodes Collection, the Mackie Bennett Collection, and Henry Hardin Cherry’s Papers which are housed in University Archives.

A public book signing for this new work will be held on November 8 at the Kentucky Building from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m.

Several stories collected by June Baskett in 1965 and archived in the Folklife Archives at Western Kentucky University have been used in a new book by Elizabeth Tucker entitled Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses (University Press of Mississippi, 2007). The stories are from a Folklife Archives project produced by Baskett entitled “Scare Stories Found in Women’s Dormitories.” One story involves a young Bowling Green woman that was supposedly chased and captured by three young men and raped. On the anniversary of the terrible deed, she appears as a “white form” and looks in the cars of unsuspecting young people who are found “necking” on “Lovers Lane.” Another story features an African American woman that was allegedly burned to death; thereafter she was said to haunt the 8th Street neighborhood in Bowling Green.