Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

by | September 16, 2011 · 8:34 am

Civil War Sesquicentennial Events at Kentucky Library & Museum

Martial law broadside, Kentucky Library Collections

Martial law broadside, Kentucky Library Collections

Visit the Special Collections Library tomorrow, Saturday, September 17, as we join in a city-wide series of events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War.  Featured will be hands-on children’s activities, a film screening, speakers, photography and military demonstrations, and more.  The Kentucky Museum’s exhibit, A Star in Each Flag: Conflict in Kentucky, is also a must-see.

All events are free and open to the public, and refreshments will be available for purchase.  Click here for a full list of events.

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by | September 14, 2011 · 10:18 am

Kentucky Library & Museum Fellowship

Fellowship recipient Matthew E. Stanley

Fellowship recipient Matthew E. Stanley

Each year, the Kentucky Library & Museum awards up to three $500 fellowships to a faculty member or graduate student to encourage scholarly use of our nationally significant collections.  One of this year’s recipients is Matthew E. Stanley, a doctoral student in American history at the University of Cincinnati.

A native of White County, Illinois, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Louisville respectively, Matt became interested in our collections as part of his research into regional and sectional identity in southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois during the Civil War era.  How did people in the free states of what one historian has termed the “Lower North,” who had political, familial and cultural ties with the South and West, understand their regional and national identities during the war and reframe them afterward?  How did people use the Ohio River as a “physical and metaphorical border” to define the meaning of the war?  These are some of the questions Matt is exploring through the use of manuscript collections, rare books and newspapers in the Kentucky Library.

Invitations to apply for fellowships are distributed at the first of the year; review of applications begins early in April and recipients are notified in mid-April.  For further information, contact Jonathan Jeffrey (jonathan.jeffrey@wku.edu) at the Kentucky Library & Museum.  To learn more about our Civil War collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | September 8, 2011 · 10:12 am

Folklife in the Digital Age

Digitization Equipment at Kentucky Library & Museum

Digitization Equipment at Kentucky Library & Museum

WKU’s Manuscripts & Folklife Archives is a repository for papers and projects created by undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members in the WKU Folk Studies program.  Established in the early 1970s, the archives provide an extensive and ever-growing source of knowledge about folk ways, art, beliefs and customs, and regional dialect and speech patterns.

Also included in the Folklife Archives are thousands of sound recordings–interviews, oral histories and musical performances–on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes.  Advances in technology, however, are quickly rendering these formats obsolete.  With the aid of recently acquired equipment, we are now working hard to digitize these recordings and store them electronically, in order to preserve their unique content and make them more accessible to researchers.

For more information on our folklife collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | September 1, 2011 · 9:06 am

Cinched!

Bertha Ashley writes from Berkeley, 1893

Bertha Ashley writes from Berkeley, 1893

As WKU freshmen settle in and tackle the challenges of higher education, consider this letter from Miss Bertha Ashley to her former schoolmate, Mary Martin, in Sunnyside, Kentucky (halfway between Bowling Green and Smiths Grove).  It was November 1893, and Bertha had just enrolled at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I am getting along very well at the University,” Bertha told her friend, despite being harried by her teachers’ endless demands for compositions on subjects such as “Charlemagne in Legend and History,” “Aesthetic Value of the World’s Fair,” and the “Scientific Value of Arctic Explorations.”  If their work failed to satisfy the “lordly instructor,” she wrote, “we are ‘cinched'”–college slang, Bertha explained, for being required to do it over.  Even worse, she complained, “the teacher has so many to correct it takes him a long time to finish them so we are all trembling in our boots lest we get ‘cinched.'”

Bertha also noted the customs of some of her upper-year classmates.  “A great many of the girls wear mortar boards,” she observed, drawing a sketch for Mary of an 1890s college girl sporting a shirtwaist, tennis racquet, and scholarly headgear.  Thinking about her old friends back in Kentucky, Bertha admitted that the news of their impending marriages left her feeling “quite old maidy”; nevertheless, in the company of the “very bright people” at Berkeley she was confident that she could “jog along comfortably enough in life and ‘paddle my own canoe.'”

Bertha Ashley’s letter is part of a collection of correspondence from assorted families in the Jane Hines Morningstar Collection at WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For other collections on schools and student life, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | August 25, 2011 · 10:41 am

The Delineator Club

Delineator Club yearbook and its namesake magazine

Delineator Club yearbook and its namesake magazine

The November 1900 issue of The Delineator, a magazine offering fiction, fashion news and homemaking advice, noted the value of women’s clubs in keeping their members’ brains “busy with high thoughts” of literature, history and art.  When eleven women met on February 7, 1952 to form Bowling Green’s newest literary club, they sought to delineate their goals with the same care and precision as the popular magazine had shown in fulfilling its journalistic mission.

With a membership limited to fifteen, the Delineator Club, they determined, would meet monthly.  First on the agenda would be the enjoyment of a “dessert course”; next would come the presentation of a program by one of the members.  Finally, every member agreed to purchase one book per year, to become part of a circulating club library.

While many of the club’s programs (between 20 and 45 minutes long, stipulated its constitution) consisted of book reviews, the members also discussed political, historical and cultural topics and heard from guest speakers.  Club minutes not only recorded visits from artists, librarians and local professionals, but regularly remarked on the sinfulness of the rich desserts to which that month’s hostess treated her guests.  More important over the years has been the intellectual and social pleasure that the Delineator Club has offered members of every age and background.

The records of the Delineator Club’s first half-century are now part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Included are minutes, correspondence, yearbooks and photos.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For more on local clubs and organizations, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | August 18, 2011 · 9:36 am

Freeman Kitchens Exhibit Opens August 22; Reception on August 27

Freeman Kitchens, Drake Vintage Music & Curios, & Jenn Jameson

Freeman Kitchens, Drake Vintage Music & Curios, & Jenn Jameson

WKU’s Special Collections Library is hosting a new exhibit, “Yours for the Carters”: The Vintage Sound Collections of Freeman Kitchens.

For more than 60 years, Freeman Kitchens has collected and sold country music recordings at his store, Drake Vintage Music & Curios, in Drake, Kentucky, just south of Bowling Green.  Kitchens is also the founder and president emeritus of the official fan club of the legendary Carter Family.  Kitchens’ collection of rare artifacts and the club’s devotion to the careers of the Carters and other artists has earned Drake Vintage Music & Curios a unique place in the preservation and celebration of American country music.

“Yours for the Carters”: The Vintage Sound Collections of Freeman Kitchens is curated by WKU folklife graduate student Jennifer Joy Jameson.  In her blog about the project, she writes: “I’ve spent the last 10 or so months occupying Freeman’s perfectly good weekend hours; snapping portraits, bugging him about names, places, sounds and sights, while listening to some of his best records together–all in the name of researching the history of his shop, his recordings, and the vibrant legacy of grassroots music journalism and documentation that he’s fostered through the Carter Family Fan Club.”

The exhibit will feature a sampling of letters, publications, photos, artifacts and multimedia items from Mr. Kitchens’ store, as well as artifacts from the folklife collections of the Special Collections Library.

“Yours for the Carters”: The Vintage Sound Collections of Freeman Kitchens is open from August 22 to November 11, 2011.  On August 27, an opening reception from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. will feature refreshments, entertainment by Nashville’s Hogslop String Band and, afterward, an excursion to Drake Vintage Music & Curios.  All are invited!

Click here and here to download finding aids for collections relating to Freeman Kitchens in the Special Collections Library’s Folklife Archives.

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by | August 12, 2011 · 2:13 pm

Capital Ideas

Stock Certificates at the Kentucky Library & Museum

Stock Certificates at the Kentucky Library & Museum

As white-knuckled Americans endure the stock market’s wild ride, WKU’s Special Collections Library continues to acquire historical records of Kentucky businesses and investors.  A look at our collections reveals many visually appealing (if not always dividend-paying) stock certificates issued by banks, railroads, turnpike companies, private schools, and other enterprises.

For example, in 1852, seven years before the L&N Railroad reached Bowling Green, the Henderson & Nashville Railroad Company issued five dollars’ worth of stock to James Thomas.  From 1907 to 1922, the Warder family of Glasgow received certificates for their shares in Kentucky businesses like the Fountain Run Oil Company, the Marrowbone and Leatherwood Oil & Gas Company, and the New Trutona Medicine Company; they also issued stock in their own Warder Tobacco Company.  W. B. Mayes invested more locally, paying $100 in 1913 for one share in the Bowling Green Home Telephone Company.  In 1950, Julius and Emilie Twesten purchased 11 shares of preferred stock in Fruit of the Loom at $20 apiece.  Click on the names to download finding aids for the relevant collections.

For more information about our collections, visit WKU’s Special Collections Library or search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | August 5, 2011 · 10:59 am

“A Building for the Betterment of Men”

YMCA Building, Bowling Green, Kentucky

YMCA Building, Bowling Green, Kentucky

In 1907, a whirlwind campaign raised enough money to begin construction of a building for the Bowling Green branch of the YMCA.  Workers broke ground at 1044 State Street in June 1908, and in September about 1,000 spectators attended the cornerstone laying.  As part of the ceremony, which included speeches, a military band and choral performances, officials placed a time capsule in the cornerstone.

The tin box remained there until 1985 when a fire in the building, then being used as a hotel, rendered it unfit for occupancy.  During demolition, local attorney Ray Buckberry ensured that the time capsule was salvaged and its contents sent to WKU’s Special Collections Library.

Included in the time capsule were documents and memorabilia relating to the Bowling Green YMCA and the building campaign: donor lists, membership cards (including a 25-cent punch card good for 20 towels), pledge forms, news clippings, the cornerstone ceremony program, photos, and a small Bible bearing the signatures of prominent citizens involved in the building effort.

Click here to download a finding aid for this Bowling Green YMCA collection.  For other collections at WKU’s Special Collections Library relating to local clubs and organizations, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | July 28, 2011 · 2:12 pm

A Victorian Wardrobe Malfunction

Edward Everett, 1794-1865

Edward Everett, 1794-1865

After winning the presidency in 1840, William Henry Harrison appointed Edward Everett as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James–diplomat-speak for ambassador to Britain.  Everett, a former professor, Congressman and governor of Massachusetts, was also a legendary orator.  On November 19, 1863, he would uncork the two-hour-long speech that preceded Abraham Lincoln’s remarks at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg.

Everett enjoyed some diplomatic success in Britain, but in 1845 was recalled by the new president, James K. Polk.  Late in August, rushing to depart from London for home via Liverpool, he attended to one minor matter.  Everett had hired the firm of Stultz and Company, tailors to no less a personage than Beau Brummell, to make some pantaloons for himself and his 15-year-old son.  He had found “with great regret,” however, that they had arrived “a little too long & too full at the foot,” and that young Edward’s were “so much too long that they would seem not to have been made from his measure.”  He asked that the garments be re-hemmed and sent to Liverpool on the evening train.  As Everett himself was not leaving London until later that morning, he hinted that a Stultz tailor might even attend him in person as it was quite “unsafe to alter clothes without seeing them on.”

Edward Everett’s note to his tailor is part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here for a finding aid.  For other collections relating to politicians and diplomats, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | July 20, 2011 · 1:17 pm

Wigged Out Kentucky Style

Alphonse Duteil, human hair merchant

Alphonse Duteil, human hair merchant

English-born Alphonse Duteil was a dealer in human hair work.  In 1872, his store on Fourth Street in Louisville, Kentucky advertised a “large assortment of Wigs, Braids, Curls, and the latest styles of Chignons,” both on hand and made to order.  Accordingly, Duteil was in the market not just for hair, usually imported from Europe, but for all the accessories necessary to make it look stylish.  Writing to a New York supplier, Duteil asked to be shipped 10 pounds of hair pins, 2 dozen boxes of blond powder, and 5 pounds of watch springs (sewed into wigs for a secure fit).  But women weren’t his only customers; Duteil also included an order for a foundation for a man’s wig, “same color as sample enclosed.  I do not want it to have any less grey,” he wrote, probably on orders from his client, but “would prefer it with more grey hair.”

On the reverse of Duteil’s letterhead was a mini-directory of some of his fellow Louisville merchants, including brewers, piano makers, grocers, tobacconists, coppersmiths and wrought iron dealers, a snapshot of the city’s busy and varied commercial life late in the 19th century.

Alphonse Duteil’s letter is part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here for a finding aid.  For other collections relating to Kentucky businesses, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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