Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

Anne Pence Davis, 1901-1982

After she graduated from WKU in 1925, Anne Pence Davis moved to Wichita Falls, Texas with her new husband.  She became involved in marketing, literary and volunteer activities, including radio production, poetry writing and the Camp Fire Girls.  Davis’s interest in programming for the Camp Fire Girls led her to try her hand at juvenile fiction.  The results were three popular books for young adolescents, Mimi at Camp, Mimi at Sheridan School, and Mimi’s House Party.  Davis drew on her experiences in Bowling Green to create the character of Mimi Hammond, a red-haired extrovert who sometimes cast aside the Pollyanna-like qualities of her fictional contemporaries.  Davis’s success prompted her election to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1937.

Davis wrote two other well regarded works of juvenile fiction, Wishes Are Horses and The Top Hand of Lone Tree Ranch.  Her 1940 novel The Customer is Always Right, about the characters who populate a large Texas department store, was an alternate Book of the Month Club selection.  Throughout her career, Davis also published poetry, haiku and reviews, and participated in writer’s conferences, book fairs and workshops.

The papers of Anne Pence Davis are part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Included are correspondence with editors, colleagues and friends; scrapbooks; photos; poetry journals; and even a Braille edition of The Top Hand of Lone Tree Ranch.  Click here and here for finding aids.  To explore other collections relating to authors and poets, search TopScholar and KenCat.

Warren County Court Stray Books

Perhaps the most famous stray animal in Kentucky history was the unsuspecting hog that trotted onto Hatfield land and was claimed by the McCoys, thus ramping up the multi-generational feud between those two families.  Most incidents regarding strays are less dramatic, but given their value, their number and their tendency to wander off, horses and other livestock have long been the subjects of “finders-keepers” law in Kentucky.

At first, Kentucky used the relevant statute inherited from Virginia, but in 1794 passed its own stray law.  Persons finding and taking custody of such animals had to make a report to a local justice of the peace, who transmitted the information to the county court clerk.  Subject to the qualifications of the finder, proper publication of notices, and payment of applicable fees, the animal became the finder’s property as long as no one claimed it within two years (for horses) or one year (for other livestock).

The collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library include several stray books maintained by the Warren County Court.  Dating mostly from 1797-1825, they include required details about the location and description of the animal, thus giving its owner a chance to identify and claim his lost property.  In February 1809, for example, Vincent Willoughby gave notice that he had “taken up one dark bay mare eight or nine years old blind of the right eye a small star in her forehead & some white spots above her jaws & saddle spots both hind feet white about fifteen hands high,” appraised at $40.  Many of the entries record single stray horses, but also included are cows, sheep and hogs.  In December 1800, Burwell Jackson took up 13 head of stray hogs “marked with a swallow fork in the right ear & a crop and half crop in the left,” and in January 1824 William Gardner took up nine head of stray sheep three miles north of Dripping Springs.

These stray books are part of a large collection of Warren County Court records held by the Special Collections Library.  Click here for a finding aid.  To explore our other collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.

A $1000 note – or is it $100?

In spring 1827, John Boon took four flatboats of tobacco to New Orleans and made a killing.  His earnings of more than $6000 included two $1000 bills drawn on the Bank of the United States.  On the way home to Logan County, Kentucky, Boon instructed an agent to make a payment to Urban E. Johns, a member of the religious society of Shakers at South Union, for another boat that Johns had agreed to build for Boon at a cost of $110.  Unfortunately, the agent didn’t notice the extra zero on the bill, and paid Johns $1000 instead of the $100 intended.  A year and a half later, Boon discovered the error and sued the Shakers to get his $900 overpayment returned.

The claim was fabricated, answered nine representative Shakers on whom it had been served.  They lived and worked together for their economic as well as spiritual benefit, they explained, and the arrival of a $1000 windfall, dishonestly retained by a member, would have spread through the society like wildfire.  The con, they alleged, had been recently suggested to Boon by a disgruntled ex-Shaker.  Hoping that the society, already sensitive to public suspicion of its creed, would simply pay up to avoid bad publicity, he “hungrily caught at the bait.”

Boon misjudged the Shakers, who not only beat him in court but received judgment against Boon for their costs.  Along the way, the Shakers took particular exception to a state law passed in 1828 that allowed anyone with a money claim against them in excess of $50 to sue in chancery court in the absence of a jury.  Finding themselves singled out “as the peculiar object of legislative severity,” the Shakers protested bitterly that their constitutional protections had been unjustly diminished on account of their religion.

The documents relating to John Boon v. Society of Shakers at South Union are part of the Billy Holman Collection at WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For more on the Shakers, search TopScholar and KenCat.