Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

The Kentuckians menu, 1904, and dance program, 1909 (WKU Special Collections Library)

As transplants from the Bluegrass State began to make their mark in the finance, legal, business and literary sectors of New York City early in the 20th century, a group of them decided to organize a club in order to perpetuate their heritage in Gotham.  Incorporated in 1904, “The Kentuckians” was designed to promote fellowship among its members and to “conserve interest and pride in Kentucky history.”  Today, the group known as the Kentuckians of New York continues that tradition.

In the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library, we can see evidence not only of the club’s prestige but of the pleasure that its social events have given members hailing from southcentral Kentucky.  Auburn native Harold H. Helm (1900-1985), who attended Bowling Green’s Ogden College as a young man, joined The Kentuckians as soon as he arrived in New York to begin his distinguished career with the Chemical Bank & Trust Company.  Speaking at a club dinner in 1957, he delighted in telling stories of the exceptional characters he loved back home, such as his father-in-law, Warren Circuit Judge John B. Rodes.  Bowling Green native Phineas Hampton Coombs (1869-1919), who worked in New York from 1901-1918 as agent for the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, kept some of The Kentuckians’ dance and dinner programs, yearbooks and menus from what were undoubtedly glittering social events held at such New York landmarks as Delmonico’s Restaurant and the Plaza, Knickerbocker and St. Regis hotels.

The Kentuckians, needless to say, began as a male preserve, but in 1913 the club held a dinner to honor authors of both sexes who had contributed to the state’s literary fame.  Among those invited was Bowling Green native Lida Calvert Obenchain, who, under the pen name Eliza Calvert Hall, had published two highly successful short story collections, Aunt Jane of Kentucky and The Land of Long Ago.  Lida was also a tireless worker for women’s equality and voting rights.  When the after-dinner speaker, humorist Irvin S. Cobb, chivalrously noted that “In Kentucky, we don’t admit that women are our equals; we insist that they are our superiors,” Lida bristled.  “What on earth made you talk belated nonsense like that?” she demanded afterward.  “Aw, I’m a suffragist,” Cobb replied meekly, “but a fellow’s got to say something at a dinner!”

For more of our collections documenting the lives of distinguished Kentuckians, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Gordon Wilson, in his ornithological habitat.

Among those who witnessed WKU’s two-day-long move from downtown Bowling Green to its new hilltop campus was Calloway County, Kentucky native Gordon Wilson (1888-1970).  But he and his classmates were not just mere spectators.  “At 1:00 p.m.,” he wrote in his journal on February 3, 1911, “students assembled at the old building and under the supervision of various teachers marched to the Hill carrying such furniture as was convenient, such as chairs.”  Books and heavier items were hauled in wagons to their new home, which was barely ready.  “[T]he Rotunda is unfinished,” Wilson wrote of Van Meter Hall, “and the great steps leading into the Auditorium are only about half complete.”

Gordon Wilson joined WKU as an instructor in 1915, and in August 1959 retired from a 31-year career as head of the English department.  Not only had he taught generations of students (in 1968, the former library building was named in his honor), but over his career had distinguished himself in two pursuits: folklore and ornithology.  Wilson published his first major article on birds in 1921, and was a founding member of the Kentucky Ornithological Society.  In 1935, he began his column “Tidbits of Kentucky Folklore,” which appeared in local newspapers for the next 35 years.

After retiring, Wilson ramped up his research and writing in both fields.  He was especially interested in the Mammoth Cave region of southcentral Kentucky–not just its bird life, but the speech, lore, superstitions and folk beliefs of its people–and his fieldwork generated numerous monographs, including Birds of the Mammoth Cave National Park and Folkways of the Mammoth Cave Region.  Always a prolific writer, Wilson still had time to compose his chatty “Diary to Kelly.”  Part autobiography, part history and gossip, it was a collection of musings to WKU president Kelly Thompson about life in general and the state of the university in particular.

Gordon Wilson’s research, writing and correspondence are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For other collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Halley’s Comet in 1986 (NASA photo)

On this day (April 11) in 1986, all eyes were on Halley’s Comet as it passed its closest point to earth (39 million miles) before returning to the depths of space.  A few of the collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library document the fascination and trepidation that these phenomena have evoked in humans across time.

Issachar Bates (1758-1837) recalled that as a child, he feared that “God would come upon me some day in judgment because I was not good” and he began to “watch the heavens” for signs of that momentous time.  Sure enough, he soon glimpsed “a blazing comet [perhaps the Great Comet of 1769] which could be seen every clear night for weeks.”  As if to underscore its terrible portent, it was trumpet-shaped, and sometimes “would look as red as blood.”

Lucilla Booker, who lived in the Shaker community at South Union, Kentucky, recorded the approach of Halley’s Comet in 1910.  “People in country all excited about the Comet all this year fearing it will do harm to some of them,” she wrote on May 18.  Nine days later: “Moonshines bright & People see Halley’s Comet with a new Tail on it.”

Meanwhile, over in Floyd County, Kentucky, young Sarah Copeland was witnessing the same wonder.  “My mother hollered ‘come out here you all, see what I’d seen,'” she remembered.  “And when we got outside. . . it just looked like an airplane. . . a great long tail.  And we watched it as far as we could.”  Later, she heard a rumor that the “thing we seen in the sky, they said it fell in Italy and burnt up a lot where it landed.”

Late in 1985, WKU faculty member Marjorie Clagett wrote alumnus Dee Carl Perguson that she was looking forward to the latest arrival of Halley’s Comet, but despite her work “determining compass points and degrees and elevation, and despite looking out the window at 3:00 every morning,” she was still waiting for a glimpse of the celestial visitor.

Click on the links above to access finding aids for these collections.  And be patient: the next chance to see Halley’s Comet won’t be until 2061.

The Barons, Bowling Green’s semi-pro baseball team, and mascot “Spot,” about 1938 (WKU Special Collections Library)

For baseball fans, the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library holds several collections relating to the history and folklore of America’s pastime.

Oakland, Kentucky native Jennie Bryant Cole recalled that community’s first baseball team in a short historical sketch written in 1939.  Known as the Oakland Reds, the team formed about 1881.  Each player wore red flannel trousers and “any kind of shirt that suited him.”  Perhaps their greatest victory was in a game at Horse Cave in which they trounced their opponents 22-2.  At home, the team’s field consisted of a patch of pasture and a grandstand, where fans enjoyed watching for some 30 years.

Baseball’s rich folklore–stories, superstitions and oral traditions–is explored in several papers housed in the Folklife Archives.  Examining newspaper reports surrounding some of the great milestones of the game, Kevin Kelly found allusions to the supernatural and the superhuman, as well as the usual obsession with numbers and statistics.  During an oral history interview in Floyd County, Kentucky in 1984, James Spradlin heard about industrial leagues of coal miners and the excitement of witnessing baseball commissioner “Happy” Chandler (in between his two terms as governor of Kentucky) speak at the dedication of one of their fields.  Another collection includes some of the countless player superstitions relating to the game:  Always touch third base when returning from the field to the dugout.  Never cross the bats when stacking them.  Don’t put your right shoe on first or you’ll lose the game.  Fans are equally superstitious.  In 2009, Brendan Sullivan documented the extremely elaborate ritual of cap-touching, tongue-clicking and “bird noises” performed by a young fan in order to conjure up a win for his Philadelphia Phillies.

Click on the links above to access finding aids for these collections.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Vette City Roller Derby

Thomas Harper, a folklife intern in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library, writes this about a collection he has recently processed:

Beginning in 2009, the Bowling Green sports scene was forever changed with the introduction of Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby.  Vette City Roller Derby offers a thrilling, fast-paced spectacle of skill, speed and bone-jarring hits at each bout.

“Derby girls” come from all walks of life; they are women you know and interact with on a daily basis in the community.  They are housewives, stay-at-home mothers, university professors, and other professionals.  These amazing women share a common passion for competing in the sport and participating in the unique culture of roller derby, among them costuming and body art.

Folk studies graduate student Molly Bolick conducted ethnographic fieldwork during the fall of 2011 for her course in Folk Art (FLK 561).  A copy of Bolick’s paper, Embodied Art: Identity, Adornment, and Style in Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby, is housed in WKU’s Folklife Archives.  In her paper, Bolick explains that she centered her research around Pravina Shukla’s idea that everyday dress is a marker of identity in everyday life and can therefore be a means to explore personal differences within cultures.  With Shukla’s basic model for the study of body art as her guide, Bolick focused her research on the personal choices of adornment, aesthetics, and taste in the dress of the individual skaters, and how these choices fit within the broad scope of “derby style,” yet maintained individual expression.

A finding aid for Embodied Art can be downloaded by clicking here.  For more folklife collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Oral history project interviewees

For many years, WKU history students have been assigned the task of finding some history in their own back yard–that is, to interview a Kentuckian about his or her life, create a record of the interview, and write a summary paper about the experience.  A large collection of these oral history projects, consisting typically of an interview recorded on cassette tape, a complete or partial transcript, a paper and sometimes a photo, is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.

The interviews open a window for students onto the early lives of their parents, grandparents, friends and acquaintances, many of whom grew up poor or in rural areas, saw military service in World War II, Korea or Vietnam, worked on farms and in coal mines, taught school, and endured the Depression, segregation and the struggle for civil rights.  But the projects also acquaint students with the craft of interviewing and the challenge of eliciting a compelling oral history.  They often comment on the difficulty of drawing out a taciturn subject, unwilling to talk about poverty and war, or simply puzzled at why anyone would be interested in such an “ordinary” life.  “Some things,” like the loss of his wife, “were too painful to discuss,” wrote one student of her grandfather.  And: “Although he didn’t mention this in the interview, I know that his hearing was forever damaged due to his role as a gunner in the Navy.”

But once the students have gotten their interviewee to “open up,” they achieve a new appreciation of history as experienced by those around them.  Wrote another student of his 86-year-old subject: “A person listening may think that Bessie and people like her are ignorant.  That would be a mistake.  I believe Bessie is one of the smartest people I know.  She knew things about . . . surviving hard times that many more ‘informed’ people would be ignorant of in her world.”

Click here to download a finding aid for the WKU History Department’s Oral History Project Collection.  For other interviews and oral histories, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

African American marriage declaration, 1866

Among the many indignities visited upon enslaved African Americans was their disqualification from entering into civil contracts, most notably marriage.  Many slaves, nevertheless, performed their own marriage ceremonies in which they pledged themselves to each other as husband and wife.

With emancipation came the freedom to marry and to have the marriage legally recognized.  In A History of Blacks in Kentucky, WKU professor Marion B. Lucas writes that “[s]tate laws prohibiting legal marriages for blacks and mulattoes remained in effect until February 14, 1866.  Then an 1866 law declared cohabiting blacks legally married and their children legitimate if they paid a fifty-cent fee and recorded with a county clerk their intention to remain husband and wife.”

Exactly 5 months after it became legal to do so, Nancy and Vilindee Beason appeared before the clerk of the Logan County Court and declared that they had lived together and desired to keep living together as husband and wife.  Their declaration was duly filed, but like many newly freed slaves, they may have had difficulty paying the extra 25-cent fee required to receive a marriage certificate to take home with them.

A copy of the Beasons’ declaration is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For more of our collections relating to African Americans, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.