Author Archives: Lynn Niedermeier

by | April 15, 2010 · 10:17 am

Search for 3,500 Local Death Records Online

Bowling Green death record, 1891

Bowling Green death record, 1891

Kentucky did not maintain death records at the state level until 1911, but earlier records kept by municipalities can sometimes solve riddles for genealogists and other researchers.  In the case of Bowling Green and Warren County, WKU’s Special Collections Library holds a unique collection of almost 3,500 “Return of a Death” certificates dating from 1877 to 1913.

Submitted to the city clerk in order to obtain a permit for burial within the city of Bowling Green, the Return of a Death certificate was filled in by both an attending physician and undertaker.  Although many certificates are not complete in all respects, they offer information about the deceased including: date and cause of death, age, race, birthplace, residence, place of interment, and parents’ names (if the deceased was a minor).  If the death occurred elsewhere and the remains were sent back to Bowling Green for burial, additional documentation from the place of death is frequently present.

Besides supplying genealogical data that might not otherwise be accessible, these death certificates provide a fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking glimpse at the types of disease and injury that afflicted local citizens and the frequency of child mortality in families during the late nineteenth century.

A complete alphabetical listing of Bowling Green, Kentucky death records (1877-1913), together with images of the records themselves, can be downloaded by clicking here.

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by | April 8, 2010 · 2:47 pm

1828 Letter Describes Presbyterian Revival

Rhoda Anderson's 1828 letter

Rhoda Anderson’s 1828 letter

In the summer of 1828, Presbyterian pastor Nathan H. Hall spearheaded a memorable religious revival in and around Lexington, Kentucky.  The protracted meeting lasted four days and brought several hundred new members to the church.  In the summer’s other news, Thomas Metcalfe, recently resigned from the U.S. Congress, won a narrow victory in the state gubernatorial election.  On August 9, 52-year-old Rhoda Anderson sat down to write of these events to her nephew, Joseph O. Boggs.  Her letter has recently been added to the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.

Mrs. Anderson had been a close observer of the revival.  She described the public response to Hall’s sermons, quoting an elderly convert’s cry of “Sir I can’t resist any longer I must surrender.”  She told her nephew that “you might have heard a pin drop” when an assembled congregation of some 600 bowed their heads to pray.  Nevertheless, she was somewhat disappointed in the aftermath.  “I lament a coldness already,” she mourned, when church attendance dropped off after the revival.  As for the election, Mrs. Anderson proudly reported “very little noise or fighting,” although she might have revised this remark had she known that Metcalfe’s predecessor, Joseph Desha, briefly considered making a stand inside the governor’s mansion rather than vacate in favor of a candidate of whom he strongly disapproved.

To download a finding aid and typescript of Rhoda Anderson’s letter, click here.

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by | April 2, 2010 · 1:14 pm

Homeward Bound

YMCA Guest Book, Rennes, France, 1919

YMCA Guest Book, Rennes, France, 1919

After the United States entered World War I, the YMCA played a crucial role in providing for the welfare of the troops.  Soldiers both at home and overseas frequented YMCA posts, called “huts,” to relax, socialize, worship, write letters, and partake of educational opportunities.  The YMCA was particularly active in France, where it also operated canteens in order to free up more soldiers for military rather than kitchen duty.  The YMCA continued its work after the Armistice, serving soldiers while they endured the long process of demobilization.

A guest book maintained at the YMCA post in Rennes, France (now part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library), vividly documents the mood of the troops following the end of hostilities.  “Nine months ago today the Armistice was signed, still here?” mused a soldier from Oregon.  “We’ve paid our debt to Lafayette.  Who in Sam Hill do we owe yet?” asked another from New York.  Other signatories were more cheerful, expressing gratitude to the YMCA for providing amenities, such as chocolate, that they had long missed.  But, as might be expected, the most common expressions were of a longing to go home “toot sweet“. . . “where they make good whiskey,” declared a soldier from Kentucky.

To see the YMCA’s Rennes, France guest book, visit WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  To explore other KYLM collections relating to World War I, search KenCat and TopScholar.

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by | March 26, 2010 · 12:55 pm

Women’s History Month, Part IV

Margaret Morehead Hobson, 1890-1987

Margaret Morehead Hobson, 1890-1987

By the time Margaret Morehead Hobson (1890-1987) graduated from Bowling Green’s Potter College for Young Ladies in 1909, she had become known to her teachers and classmates for her artistic ability.

But over the next few years, Margaret had more practical things in mind as she searched for economic opportunity following the death of her father.  In 1918, when Bowling Green became the center of a five-county oil boom, she schooled herself in the region’s geology, examined surveys, and established relationships with investors, petroleum scientists, and potential lessees.  Eventually, she earned the rights to drill for oil in more than 14 Kentucky counties.  Even as the oil boom subsided in the late 1920s, Margaret’s particular interest in the resources of Edmonson County put her into partnership with an association formed to secure national park status for Mammoth Cave.  In exchange for drilling rights in the area, she obtained purchase options for the association covering some four thousand acres.

Besides her career in the oil industry, which lasted well past her eightieth birthday, Margaret was devoted to another traditionally masculine pursuit, fox-hunting.  Still, her artistic ability and sense of style served her well.  Maps she created for oil development projects became valuable resources for the Kentucky Geological Society.  Margaret had also made it a rule to appear at every lease negotiation meticulously dressed and coiffed because, as this successful businesswoman put it, “first impressions are important.”

To download finding aids for collections at WKU’s Special Collections Library relating to the life and career of Margaret Morehead Hobson, click here and here.

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by | March 22, 2010 · 8:15 am

Women’s History Month, Part III

Rachel Eddington letter, 1858

Rachel Eddington letter, 1858

“This is not the Country that was recommended to me,” mourned Rachel Eddington.  Rachel, her husband Sandy, and their seven children had been the property of Charlotte Belt, an Ohio County, Kentucky widow.  In 1857, however, the family found themselves in Liberia, the subjects of a decades-old movement to free American slaves and recolonize them in Africa.  After her emancipation, we might have known nothing more of Rachel, but she was determined to hold Mrs. Belt to a promise to correspond with her.  The result was a unique and heartbreaking story that is preserved in WKU’s Special Collections Library.

Rachel had much to tell her former mistress, as she and her family quickly fell on hard times in Liberia.  Like many newcomers, they became ill with fever and suffered from skin wounds that would not heal.  They had no horses or cattle, and insufficient land and implements for farming.  They were chronically short of work and food.  Over the next several years, Rachel sent letters to Charlotte Belt and Charlotte’s brother, Henry Stevens, pleading for everything from meat, lard and butter to thread, soap, candles and nails.  Her situation became even more dire when her husband, making a return visit to America, abandoned her, then three of her children died.  “I want to come back to my old home for this is a poor place,” she declared; still, she expressed her resolve to do all she could to provide for her family.  Here, unfortunately, after six years, is where the fate of Rachel Eddington is lost to history.

Click here for a finding aid, scans and typescripts of Rachel’s letters.

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by | March 11, 2010 · 11:39 am

Women’s History Month, Part II

Emanie Nahm Sachs

Emanie Nahm Sachs

As a child growing up in Bowling Green, she was a self-described ugly duckling whose conventional parents disparaged her attempts at music, painting, and writing.  But Emanie Louise Nahm (1893-1981) rebounded.  Snaring a job as a writer for the New York Times, she claimed to have rejected 26 marriage proposals before wedding Goldman Sachs partner Walter E. Sachs in 1917.  While studying writing at Columbia University, Emanie began to publish short stories in popular magazines.  By the end of her life, she had also published three novels, a memoir, and a biography of feminist icon Victoria Woodhull that remains a standard reference.

But it was Emanie’s 1924 novel, Talk, that set her home town abuzz.  Her story of Delia Morehouse, a young woman who crumbles beneath the weight of public opinion and strict gender roles, was a thinly disguised portrait of early twentieth-century Bowling Green, warts and all.  Reviews of the book were rhapsodic, one noting that it was as compelling as Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street in its depiction of small-town tragedy.  Citizens of Bowling Green, however, were scandalized by what they saw as Emanie’s magnification of their pettiness, hypocrisy, and destructive gossip.  Emanie dismissed the controversy.  Her quarrel, she claimed, was not with the cruelty of those who gossiped, but rather the “stupidity” of those who allowed gossip and negative opinion to hurt their self-image.  The goal of her own life, one might conclude, was to overcome that same stupidity.

For more on Emanie Nahm and the materials about her life that are available at WKU’s Special Collections Library, click here and here.

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by | March 4, 2010 · 10:11 am

March is Women’s History Month

Pearl Carter Pace

Pearl Carter Pace

“Well-behaved women seldom make history,” observed Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  But what about a woman who took issue with the behavior of others — for example, the rumrunners of Cumberland County?  Pearl Eagle Carter Pace, born in Tompkinsville in 1896, became the first woman in Kentucky elected to a four-year term as sheriff.  Before taking office in 1938, she had taught school, kept the books for several family businesses, and become the mother of three children.  Succeeding her husband, Stanley D. Pace, as sheriff, she declared war on the bootleggers of Cumberland County.  Although she insisted that she’d never used a gun, she was tagged with the nickname “Pistol-Packin’ Pearl.”

After her husband’s death in 1940, Pace immersed herself in state Republican politics.  In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed her to the War Claims Commission; as its chairman in 1959, she became the second-highest ranking woman in the administration.  Pace’s work for numerous civic, political, business and professional organizations in both Kentucky and Washington, D.C. continued, despite failing health, until her death in 1970.

Through the generosity of her family, WKU’s Special Collections Library holds a large collection of Pearl Carter Pace’s personal and professional papers.  Included are her arrest log book and other sheriff’s records, dozens of speeches, correspondence relating to her political and civic work, photos, family letters, and much more.  A finding aid for the Pearl Carter Pace Collection can be downloaded here.

Search for more women’s history resources in KenCat.

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by | February 25, 2010 · 9:54 am

What’s in a Name?

A postcard to Mary Lou

A postcard to Mary Lou

Sometimes, postcard collections donated to WKU’s Special Collections Library have a specific theme.  A handful of 10 from collector James H. Holland, for example, were mostly scribbled by merchants in Lexington, Winchester and Somerset during the 1880s to arrange for the delivery of whiskey, hemp seed or tobacco.  But among them is one addressed anonymously to Miss Mary Lou Barker of Lexington and posted from Maysville in the early 1900s.

“A mystery solved,” its writer declares.  “Coming in on the bus this morning, it was my good fortune to be seated by a sweet little girl of about two years of age.  She soon made friends with me,” the card relates, until, growing sleepy, she “nestled her head against me and I loved her all the more.”  Puzzled at the source of such sweetness, the writer soon found a simple answer.  “The veil was lifted, the cloud vanished–the mystery was solved, for her name was Mary Lou.”  Left to us is the small mystery of this turn-of-the-century token of affection, written by someone to a little girl named Mary Lou.

To learn more about our postcard collections, search for “postcards” in KenCat.

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by | February 18, 2010 · 12:11 pm

A Jazz Age Memorial

Julian Whitfield Potter, 1889-1926

Julian Whitfield Potter, 1889-1926

It was the Roaring Twenties, and Bowling Green native Julian Whitfield Potter was riding high.  The son of prominent banker J. Whit Potter (for whom WKU’s Potter Hall is named), Julian served an apprenticeship with his father’s businesses before becoming vice president of the American National Bank at age 27.  Following service in the Naval Flying Corps during World War I, he headed for New York City to make a name for himself in commercial banking.  In 1923, at age 33, Julian Potter was elected president of the Coal and Iron National Bank.  As bankers are inclined to do, he was soon contemplating a merger of his firm with the Fidelity International Trust Corporation, a deal that would have put him at the head of one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

But it was not to be.  On New Year’s Day, 1926, after an eight-week bout with typhoid fever, 36-year-old Julian Potter died of pneumonia.  For his business colleagues in New York, memorials took the form of beautifully inscribed manuscripts forwarded to Potter’s mother in Bowling Green.  One arrived nestled in a polished wooden box, while another was in a slipcase edged with sterling silver from Tiffany & Co.  These are now in the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library, along with many other resources documenting the history and accomplishments of the Potter family.  For a finding aid, click here.

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by | February 11, 2010 · 3:40 pm

Ronald Reagan and William H. Natcher

Congressman William H. Natcher and President Ronald Reagan, with Senator Robert C. Byrd looking on

Congressman William H. Natcher and President Ronald Reagan, with Senator Robert C. Byrd looking on.

Last Saturday (Feb. 6), Americans noted the 99th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), U. S. President from 1981-1989.  Reagan’s relationship with William H. Natcher (1909-1994), Bowling Green native and U. S. Representative from Kentucky’s 2nd District, began in the late 1960s.  Then governor of California, Reagan wrote Natcher about funding issues related to various federal programs.

On election day, November 4, 1980, Democrat Natcher was reelected to Congress with the largest margin he had ever received but, in a Republican landslide, Ronald Reagan carried both Natcher’s district and Kentucky to become the nation’s 40th president.  Natcher had believed to the end that incumbent president Jimmy Carter might eke out a victory–but, he confided to his journal, “I was just as wrong as I could be.”

After becoming president, Reagan continued to correspond with Natcher, now chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, on legislative matters, but he also sent the congressman Christmas cards, birthday wishes and social invitations.  These and much more are now part of the William H. Natcher Collection at WKU’s Special Collections Library.  For more information, contact mssfa@wku.edu.

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