Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

by | October 31, 2014 · 1:21 pm

Crossing the Line

Elizabeth Woods's Equator crossing certificate

Elizabeth Woods’s Equator crossing certificate

The custom of holding strange initiation rituals to commemorate a seaman’s first crossing of the Equator dates back several centuries.  WKU graduate Jean E. Keith, later a historian for the Corps of Engineers, wrote of his experience in October 1943 to his French teacher Marjorie Clagett.  “My head is completely innocent of hair. . . by reason of having crossed the Equator,” he reported, part of a “quaint custom among us sailors to mutilate each new one who does so.”  For two days, he and other newbies–“Pollywogs”–suffered at the hands of the “Shellbacks,” veterans of the crossing whose job it was to oversee the appropriate torments for their successors.  Highlights of the initiation included crawling through a gauntlet of fire hoses shooting salt water, bobbing for hotdogs in a bucket of mustard, and enduring a patch of tar smeared on the scalp and “rubbed in good” down to the neck.  After another dousing by fire hoses, the “Royal Court of King Neptune” officially elevated the Pollywogs to the status of Shellbacks.

Equator-crossing ceremonies are also observed among civilians.  During a cruise to South America, WKU foreign languages teacher Elizabeth Woods received a certificate from “Neptune, the Great God of all the High Seas,” declaring her “duly initiated into the mysteries of Our Realm.”  Referring to the customary mock trial before Neptune’s court, she noted that afterward the condemned “is flung unceremoniously into the swimming pool.”  One hopes the 73-year-old Miss Woods merely witnessed and did not suffer this indignity.

After crossing the Equator and the International Date Line on a single trip, Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe obtained a unique souvenir: a “Short Snorter,” a $1 bill signed by fellow travelers including, in this case, U.S. Senator and Kentucky Governor Albert “Happy” Chandler.  The holders subsequently identified themselves to each other by producing their Short Snorters; if one was unable to do so, he owed the other either a $1 bill or a drink.

Belmont Forsythe's Short Snorter

Belmont Forsythe’s Short Snorter

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more of our collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 22, 2014 · 1:17 pm

“Plowed all day and never got done”

Charles & Susan Omer

Charles & Susan Omer

Union County, Kentucky native Charles Henry Omer (1865-1937) was a substitute teacher, postmaster, merchant, Mason, and elder at the Morganfield Christian Church.  He and his wife Susan were the parents of 13 children, including two sets of twins.  Somehow, they found time not only for their primary pursuit of farming, but for the maintenance of a journal that recorded the family’s daily activities from 1904-1932.  Common topics over its hundreds of pages were, as one would expect, the weather, income and expenses, with the prices of food, timber, farm supplies and labor faithfully noted.  But other details add color to this chronicle of agricultural life, for example:

May 23, 1904:  It rained a little this morning. . . . went to Morganfield to see the Bloomer Girls play Baseball in the afternoon Expenses 70c Light-Bread 10 Sausages Bananas 10 Peanuts 5 crackers 5 steak 20 Ice cream soda 10 = 1.30

May 3, 1905:  I took my crosscut saw out to Tom Berry’s and got him to sharpen it and I took his place rolling logs while he was fixing it.

July 9, 1913:  I let Uncle John Berry go down to Sister Mollie’s and got a horse collar to work on Lizzie so he could plow my patch of corn he plowed all day and never got done.

Feb. 27, 1923:  I hung 4 hams my 2nd killing today & cleaned the hog feet to my last killing & put them to soak to cook tomorrow.

Oct. 26, 1930:  I got up at 4:30 and went to the c[hristian] church and fired up the furnace and back at 7:30 and eat breakfast and then killed 2 chickens to bake.

May 31, 1932: Mrs. Omer & I have been married 33 years today.  I took about a qt. of pumpkin seed to both Wilhelm and Miller to plant.

The Omer family farm journal is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  To explore other collections relating to agriculture (the 2014 focus of Kentucky Archives Month), search TopSCHOLAR  and KenCat.

Kentucky Archives Month poster

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by | October 7, 2014 · 12:00 am

Josie Underwood’s Civil War: A Tale of Two Diaries

Josie Underwood's two diaries (Nancy Baird, editor) have now been published

Josie Underwood’s two diaries (Nancy Baird, editor) have now been published

It’s a dramatic story of a young Bowling Green woman’s life during the Civil War, both at home and abroad in Scotland, but it also has some contemporary elements of mystery and surprise.  Come hear retired WKU professor Nancy D. Baird talk about Josie Underwood’s diaries at the Kentucky Building on Sunday, October 12, 2014.

In her will, Johanna Louisa “Josie” Underwood (1840-1923) bequeathed her two-volume journal “kept during the Civil War” to her granddaughter.  No one knew the fate of the two diaries until, in 1976, an envelope containing a typed copy of the first volume, together with a copy of Josie’s marriage certificate from Christ Episcopal Church, landed in the Postal Service’s dead letter office.  For lack of a better idea, the Postal Service forwarded the package to Episcopal Rector Howard Surface, who then gave it to WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  The original sender, as well as the whereabouts of the original diary, remain unknown.

After years of research and editing by Nancy Baird, the University Press of Kentucky published this fascinating record in 2009 as Josie Underwood’s Civil War Diary.  Then, as luck would have it, a Louisville woman purchased a copy of the book because her late husband was an Underwood descendant.  Remembering the box of old family papers she had stored at home, she discovered the second volume of the diary!  This small, leather-bound book begins in September, 1862 as Josie travels with her father, Warner Underwood, to Scotland where he takes up his duties as U.S. Consul in Glasgow.  During her year-long stay, Josie sampled the culture and society of Britain and the continent, hobnobbed with ambassadors and diplomats, and wrote perceptively about Scottish life and people.

Cover of Register of the Ky Historical SocietyJosie’s second diary containing “the rest of the story,” as editor Nancy Baird puts it, has now been published as a special issue of the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, giving us an even fuller picture of her experience of the Civil War and the war’s impact on Great Britain and the rest of Europe.

Nancy Baird’s presentation about Josie Underwood will be on Sunday, October 12 at the Kentucky Building from 2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m. (remarks begin at 3:00) and is free and open to the public.  For directions, click here (parking is easy on the weekend).  Copies of the Register will also be available for purchase.

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by | September 25, 2014 · 1:06 pm

Park City, Dude.

The Park City Dude mastheadThey were some of the rising young men of Bowling Green, the twenty-something sons of bankers, lawyers and merchants.  About 1883, some of these society swells decided to launch a journalistic venture “in the interest of the vast number of dudes of our city.”  The product, the Park City “Dude” (Bowling Green, Ky.: Dude Publishing Co.), sought to entertain its readers with humor, anecdotes and parody, the chief objects of which were the “dudes” themselves.

Park City Dude "published semi-occasionally"Promising regular biographical sketches of the members of its circle, the Dude first profiled Jim Roberts, a native (we are told) of Hong Kong, an escapee from P.T. Barnum’s circus and currently a “knight of the yardstick” at a local clothing establishment.  Next we hear of Solomon “Sol” Cain, a “genial, affable, whole-souled and industrious” young entrepreneur who, having contracted to furnish city businesses with hash and sausages, was in search of “500 fat dogs and 1,000 cats.”  The Dude generously offered advertising space at the rate of 75 cents per inch, but directed all complaints to its Grievance Committee, open “from midnight until daybreak.”

The Park City “Dude” can be found in the Lissauer Collection, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 18, 2014 · 12:56 pm

A Scriptural Divide

Reuben Alexander

Reuben Alexander

From their roots in Henry County, Virginia, the Alexander family migrated to plantations in Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere.  Members kept in touch, but there were two that patriarch Reuben Alexander (1785-1864) might not have wanted to seat next to each other at Thanksgiving.  One was his nephew, Edward Fontaine, of Hinds County, Mississippi.  The other was Reuben’s own son Miller, who caused his family to drop its collective jaw when he freed his slaves and struck out for Iowa to go into business.

In a letter to his father from Keokuk in 1859, Miller acknowledged the damage he had done to his net worth, but the deeply religious man felt compelled to explain himself to his skeptical parent.  “I knew I had not your approbation in moving North–And am sorry for it, but it was my duty to obey the voice of conscience and of God,” he wrote.  Moreover, “if you were possesser of ten thousand slaves and would give them to me to return to Ky. I could not do it.”  While not an activist for abolition, Miller declared that “every feeling of my nature revolts at the idea of owning a fellow creature, when I am but a worm myself.”

Only a month earlier, Reuben had received a letter from nephew Edward, who weighed in on his cousin’s struggles.  “I regret to find from Cousin Miller’s Letter that his fanatical freak, freeing his slaves, and settling among the pious Yankees had led him into difficulties.”  Nevertheless, Edward–a pastor–hoped that Miller’s youth and energy would “enable him to extricate himself from the embarrassments into which his unscriptural views of the question of Slavery have drawn him.”  Edward prayed that Miller, whose former slaves had doubtless been rendered equally unhappy by this unholy state of affairs, might recover from his “fanatical freak” and regain his former prosperity.

Reuben Alexander’s family correspondence is part of the Alexander Family Papers in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more collections about Kentucky families, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 4, 2014 · 3:43 pm

Greetings from Panama

Postcard to Nell Baird, 1947

Postcard to Nell Baird, 1947

In May 1947, Mrs. Nell Baird of Bowling Green, Kentucky found in her mailbox a postcard from a friend visiting Panama.  During a trip to the interior, moving from seashore to jungle to mountains in one day, the writer sighted a “small boa constrictor snake and orchids growing wild.”  The card itself pictured a native village that the visitor found “very picturesque,” with its huts “made of bamboo poles and palm branches.”  Observe, however: “no windows on account of mosquitoes,” added the writer, referring to the carriers of yellow fever and malaria that had felled tens of thousands of laborers during construction of the Panama Canal from 1904-1914.

Panama Canal LogoNell Baird’s postcard is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections and is one of our featured collections as we observe the Panama Canal Centennial.

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by | August 21, 2014 · 1:07 pm

Only a Nickel

Panama Canal LogoThe Panama Canal’s original cost came in at about $375 million, but for a mere five cents, early 20th-century movie-goers could marvel at “Life Motion Pictures” showing the construction of “the greatest piece of civil engineering attempted by any one country.”  So declared a flyer inviting patrons to the Dixie Theatre for a one-day-only screening.

President Theodore Roosevelt would have been highly pleased by such an exhibition, since he considered the Panama Canal one of his greatest foreign policy successes.  It is likely that, in addition to scenes of technological wizardry, the Dixie Theatre film would have shown Roosevelt himself during his 1906 visit to inspect the construction—the first trip outside the U.S. by a president while in office.  Clad in a splendid white suit and hat, Roosevelt even climbed into a massive steam shovel to experience the project firsthand.

By 1911, Bowling Green, Kentucky had four theatres: the Bowling Green Opera House, the Columbia, and the Princess Theatre.  An earlier theatre, the Crescent, was located on Park Row.  The location of the Dixie Theatre is uncertain, but it was possibly a temporary venue set up by enterprising showmen to capitalize on both the technical marvel unfolding down in Panama and the novelty of “Life Motion Pictures.”

Dixie Theatre advertisementThe Dixie Theatre’s advertisement is part of the Kentucky Library Research Collections and is one of our featured collections as we observe the Panama Canal Centennial this month.

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by | August 14, 2014 · 8:00 am

Battle of the Flags

Panama Canal LogoAlmost from the beginning, the 1903 treaty granting the United States perpetual rights to a 10-mile strip across the Isthmus of Panama for canal construction became a political problem.  By the late 1950s, Panamanian grievances against the U.S. over the Canal Zone were well defined:  insufficient payments for its use, wage and employment discrimination against Panamanian workers, and nationalist resentment over American control of the territory itself.  A particularly sensitive question, one with enormous symbolic significance, was whether the Panamanian flag should be flown alongside the Stars and Stripes in the Canal Zone.

As Panama observed the anniversary of its independence, on November 3, 1959 some 2,000 student demonstrators attempted to enter the Canal Zone to raise the flag of their country.  Tensions quickly escalated.  The students threw rocks at Canal Zone police, who responded with fire hoses and tear gas.  Finally, the Governor of the Canal Zone, Major General William E. Potter, frustrated by the lukewarm response of the Panamanian authorities, called in U.S. troops to quell the violence.

When the Panamanians criticized Governor Potter’s actions, Kentucky Congressman Frank Chelf was livid, and wrote to President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploring the calls for Potter’s resignation.  Having recently visited the Canal Zone and met “real” Panamanians who had nothing but admiration for the U.S., he believed the riots to be a cynical move by Communist-inspired opportunists.  No doubt referring to presidential candidate Aquilino Boyd, a leader of the “flag invasion,” Chelf accused “free-loading politicians” of casting their lot with “flea-bitten, cheap Communist demagogues” in order to poison public opinion against the U.S. and gain votes on election day.  Meanwhile, America’s long friendship with Panama went unrecognized.  “We gave them more than a just trade for the original Canal Zone by and through a fair and honorable treaty,” Chelf wrote Eisenhower.  “We ended yellow fever, completed the job the French had left undone and started the ships moving.”  With Canal Zone operations pumping some $180 million annually into Panama’s economy, seeing his country portrayed as the “big bad wolf” was a bitter pill for Chelf to swallow.  Nevertheless, in September 1960 Eisenhower authorized the flying of both the Panamanian and U.S. flags in the Canal Zone.

Frank Chelf (in checked shirt) and Mrs. Chelf visit federal judge and fellow Kentuckian Guthrie F. Crowe and Mrs. Crowe in Panama, 1959

Frank Chelf (in checked shirt) and Mrs. Chelf visit federal judge and fellow Kentuckian Guthrie F. Crowe and Mrs. Crowe in Panama, 1959

The Frank Chelf Collection in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections includes his letter to President Eisenhower and is one of our featured collections as we observe the Panama Canal Centennial this month.

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by | August 1, 2014 · 1:13 pm

Panama Canal 100th Anniversary

Panama Canal Anniversary logoA century ago this month, on August 15, 1914, the steamship Ancon traveled fifty miles through the Panama Canal, making it the first vessel to pass from ocean to ocean through one of the world’s greatest shortcuts.

The Ancon‘s transit through the Canal marked the completion of a daring and ambitious engineering project.  This decade-long effort to save seagoing traffic the time-consuming and hazardous 8,000-mile detour around the southern tip of South America nevertheless cost about 5,600 laborers’ lives through accidents and tropical disease.  Amazingly, another 22,000 are estimated to have died during a failed French attempt to construct a canal in the 1880s.

In 1979, a treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter returned most of the Panama Canal Zone, then a U.S. territory, to Panama’s control.  The remainder of the territory, known as the Panama Canal Area, was returned in 1999.  Today, the Canal is a neutral international waterway through which some 15,000 ships pass each year.

SS Ancon in the Panama Canal, 1914

SS Ancon in the Panama Canal, 1914

Significant anniversaries such as the Panama Canal’s centennial allow WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections to showcase relevant material about the landmark occasion and to demonstrate how international events affect even local people.  Besides printed material related to the Canal, Special Collections also holds photographs of the engineering marvel, letters of people who worked in and visited the Canal Zone, and sound recordings that feature comments about the Canal when it became a political topic in the 1970s.  We will be sharing some of these items on the blog during the month of August.

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by | July 17, 2014 · 4:49 pm

“V” for Victory

Winston Churchill; signing pen for his honorary U.S. citizenship proclamation

Winston Churchill; signing pen for his honorary U.S. citizenship proclamation

It first appeared in Nazi-occupied Europe, then took hold in Great Britain.  Promoted by the BBC, the “V for Victory” campaign of World War II featured the letter “V” defiantly chalked on walls, sidewalks, streetcars and other public places, and its Morse code equivalent, three dots and a dash, musically rendered in the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.  But its most iconic manifestation was the two-fingered sign unforgettably employed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  “The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories and a portent of the fate awaiting Nazi tyranny,” Churchill declared in a special message broadcast on July 19, 1941.

In 1963, Kentucky Congressman Frank Chelf took the floor of the House of Representatives as a co-sponsor of legislation to make the British leader an honorary U.S. citizen.  The son of an American mother, Churchill already commanded the deep affection of Chelf and his countrymen, but more importantly, Chelf declared, “as long as any of us shall live we shall carry the memory of the resolute, valiant Churchill . . . always holding his hand aloft, with his fingers forming his famous V-for-victory sign, standing as a shining symbol of hope and man’s determination to remain free.”

A week after Chelf’s speech, Churchill wrote a letter thanking him “for the very agreeable things you say about me and for the graceful way you expressed them.”  On April 9, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the proclamation conferring citizenship on Churchill, Chelf received the signing pen as a souvenir.

The papers of Frank Chelf, which include his work for Churchill’s honorary citizenship, are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more political collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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