Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

Nathan B. Stubblefield (1860-1928)

In January 1907, in the middle of a small ledger he used to keep track of his sales, farmer, grocer and inventor Nathan B. Stubblefield (1860-1928) made some highly unusual entries.  Between the accounts for sugar, molasses, peaches and melons was a brief record of the capital and expenses of the “Stubblefield Wireless Telephone Company.”  Stubblefield’s ventures into the wireless transmission of sound would, in fact, give him a claim to the title “father of broadcasting,” and some have even gone so far as to call his home of Murray, Kentucky, the “birthplace of radio.”

According to his biographer Bob Lochte, Stubblefield developed an “electromagnetic induction wireless telephone” independently of better-known inventors like Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi.  After initial acclaim for his invention, Stubblefield sold the rights and began work on a different design, for which he received a patent in 1908.  Indeed, his ledger recorded his trip to Washington, D.C. and his payment of a “first patent fee” of $60.

Despite Stubblefield’s attempts to show that his device improved on earlier inventions, better technology soon rendered it obsolete.  After losing his financial backing and suffering personal reverses, the disillusioned Stubblefield became a recluse.  Upon his death, however, The New York Times remembered his triumphant claim that “I can now telephone a mile without wires” and that his system would “be developed until messages can be sent and heard all over the country, to Europe, all over the world.”

Nathan Stubblefield’s ledger 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, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

The Still Cemetery, by Larry D. Montgomery

Created out of a gift of land from the Still family of Warren County, Kentucky, the Still Cemetery became the final resting place for many residents of the Blue Level community of Bowling Green.  A descendant of the Still family, Larry D. Montgomery, has recently completed an inventory of the cemetery and donated a copy to WKU’s Special Collections Library.  The grave listings will be useful to genealogists as they provide names, dates and epitaphs for the farmers, quarrymen, railroad workers and their families who are buried there.  In addition, Montgomery’s research supplies other data such as family relationships and cause of death.

Making use of records held in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of the Special Collections Library, Montgomery also outlines the role of the Still family in the establishment of two local churches, Providence Knob Baptist Church and White Stone Quarry Baptist Church.  Combining documentary research and hands-on field work, the book is the author’s tribute to his own family and the history of a community.

Click on the church names to download finding aids for records held in WKU’s  Manuscripts & Folklife Archives.  For other collections of church and cemetery records, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Separated at birth? Judge John B. Rodes and Confederate general Robert E. Lee

As we have previously reported, the 1957 renovation of Bowling Green’s Warren County Courthouse gave rise to some interesting discoveries.  Here’s another:

While dismantling the interior, workmen discovered some old file cabinets stowed in a forgotten corner.  Inside was a bundle of Warren Circuit Court criminal indictments dating from the Civil War, and in particular from the period following the six-month occupation of Bowling Green by Confederate troops in 1861-1862.

The persons charged in the indictments included not only local citizens who had aided and abetted the Southern cause, but three Confederate heavyweights: Generals John C. Breckinridge, Simon Bolivar Buckner, and John Hunt Morgan.  Their offense was to “wilfully, feloniously, and traitorously and with force levy war” against the Commonwealth of Kentucky by “uniting and assembling themselves into and with an army . . . of the so called Confederate States of America.”

Since these indictments had been handed down, however, the three men had redeemed themselves in the eyes of most Kentuckians.  Breckinridge was pardoned in 1868 and welcomed home from exile in Canada, Morgan became legendary for his audacious raids on Union forces, and Buckner went on to serve as governor of the same state he was charged with betraying.  Accordingly, early in January 1958, at the Warren Circuit Court’s opening session, Judge John B. Rodes quickly granted Commonwealth Attorney J. David Francis’s request to erase “the stain of indictments from the names of valiant Confederate generals and their followers” and dismiss all charges.  Newsweek magazine reported the decision in its January 20 issue, noting Bowling Green’s “warm, unanimous agreement” with the outcome — and Judge Rodes’s coincidental resemblance to General Robert E. Lee.

The Warren Circuit Court’s Civil War indictments are now part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For more collections relating to the Civil War and to Warren County courts, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.