Category Archives: Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

by | November 6, 2015 · 2:50 pm

Tearing Up the Roads

Minute obstacles can cause huge delays when moving armies.  If anyone doubts this, they need only see how a small accident or distraction can stymy traffic on a major interstate.  During wars, strategic transportation routes are often heavily reconnitored or destroyed in order to impede an army’s progress.  In Kentucky roads and railroads were of major importance for moving troops and supplies during the Civil War, particularly in the interior.  Steamboats were more significant on the Commonwealth’s perimeters.

A Civil War era illustration from Frank Leslie's.

A Civil War era illustration from Frank Leslie’s.

In a letter recently donated to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives unit of the Department of Library Special Collections, Confederate J.J. Williams writes to his wife Emeline about how the southern army had played menace with the Louisville and Nashville railroad, which had only recently been completed through Bowling Green.  To disable the railroad, Williams wrote, “our men had torn up the rail road some 5 or 6 miles and Blowed up the tunnel and burnt the ties[,] beat the rails to pieces with a Sledg[e].”  They wreaked further havoc by blockading the Louisville and Nashville road “by cutting the trees a cross it for a bout 3 miles and Some other Place they have plowed up the road so they can not haul a thing a long it.” To see the finding aid for this small collection and a typescript of the letter, click here.

To search finding aids for hundreds of other Civil War letters in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives unit, click here.

The salutation of J.J. Williams' letter to his wife, 13 January 1862.

The salutation of J.J. Williams’ letter to his wife, 13 January 1862.

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by | October 22, 2015 · 1:21 pm

“I have seen enough”

Verdun, 1918

Verdun, 1918

In May 1918, Simpson County, Kentucky native James Knox Polk Lambert (1864-1960) left his Chicago law practice to volunteer with the YMCA in ministering to American soldiers fighting overseas.  During his 15-month tour in England and France, Lambert witnessed the transformation of Europe: a last-ditch German offensive, the Armistice, the wild celebrations following successful negotiation of a peace treaty, and the appalling destruction left behind by the war.  He kept a diary of his activities, and reflected on his experiences in a lengthier journal.  Both are now part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

After the U.S. entered the war, the YMCA was charged with bolstering the welfare and morale of American soldiers with entertainment, educational, religious and other programs.  The end of hostilities, however, did not signal the end of the YMCA’s mandate.  Millions of weary servicemen now turned their eyes toward home, and James Lambert and his colleagues faced the daunting task of keeping them emotionally, spiritually and recreationally occupied as they endured the logistic and bureaucratic trials of mass demobilization.

In addition to the ruin the war brought to the French countryside, Lambert was most struck by the ferocious impatience of the soldiers awaiting repatriation.  “The months of January, February and March [1919],” he wrote, “were marked by the most intense agitation of the boys to go home.”  He found most soldiers he encountered “in the grip of that mania,” unreconciled to the fact that, even at an exit rate of 300,000 men per month, it would take 7 months to get everyone home.  Some of the men, observed Lambert, were obsessed with a rumor that the government was secretly plotting to keep them in the Army for life; so high was the level of anxiety that General John J. Pershing, Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, actually feared a mutiny.  When Lambert suggested that the men spend their time sightseeing and enjoying some postwar tourism courtesy of the YMCA, the reply was predictable: “I have seen enough.  I never want to see this country again.”  For all he had seen, however, James Lambert’s experiences at the close of the Great War marked the beginning of a lifelong fascination with European history and culture.

Touring the battlefields

Touring the battlefields

Click here to access a finding aid for the James Lambert Collection.  For other collections about World War I, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 8, 2015 · 6:58 pm

Fortress Bowling Green

When Union troops arrived in Bowling Green, Kentucky in February, 1862 after a 5-month-long Confederate occupation, they found a town stripped of its timber, livestock and foodstuffs, its railroad depot set afire, its Barren River bridges destroyed, its secessionist sympathizers in flight, and its Northern sympathizers relieved but still apprehensive at the sight of another occupying force.

Bowling Green defenses, 1863

Bowling Green defenses, 1863

Despite the destruction, the troops also found a daunting array of Confederate fortifications.  Bowling Green, at the confluence of road, rail and river routes into the South, was considered a prize by both sides, and the defenses constructed during their occupation had emboldened the Confederates.  We “are too well fixed for the Yankees to come here,” Tennessee volunteer James McWhirter boasted to his sister.  “If they ever come we will give them a genteel whipping.”

The Confederates, nevertheless, had evacuated without a major clash ever taking place, a stroke of luck that left the Union forces relieved.  “I don’t think it would pay them to attack this place from the looks of the forts around here,” Erasmus Shull wrote his aunt.  Lieutenant Colonel George Jouett was similarly impressed, calling Bowling Green a “city of fortifications.”  The College Hill fort was “an almost unapproachable fortress,” he wrote his mother, and Baker Hill is “quite as strong and perfect.”  Ohio infantryman George Jarvis notified his family of “a glorious but bloodless victory” that “gives us possession of one of the strongholds of this state.”

Accounts of the war came to describe fortified Bowling Green as the “Gibraltar of Kentucky.”  Two of the above letters, however, confirm that this was a contemporary characterization.  George Jouett found Bowling Green a “Gibraltar which could not be taken by assault,” and George Jarvis agreed that “in fact it is the Gibraltar of Kentucky.”  Only lack of supplies, illness, and setbacks elsewhere (losses at Mill Springs and Fort Henry, and pressure at Fort Donelson) had convinced the Confederates to withdraw before a serious test of its defenses.

These letters about Bowling Green’s Civil War fortifications are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click on the links to access finding aids, and click here to browse a list of our Civil War collections.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 30, 2015 · 9:03 pm

Gethsemani Magnificat

Fondation de Gethsemani coverIn his address to Congress on September 24, Pope Francis gave special recognition to four individuals who “shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people.”  One was the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton, “a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church.”

Born in France, Merton (1915-1968) converted to Catholicism as a youth.  In 1941, he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastic community founded in 1848 near Bardstown, Kentucky, and spent the next 27 years of his life in contemplation (which included a controversial exploration of Asian religion), social activism, and writing.

Crucifix presented to Frank Chelf, 1954

Crucifix presented to Frank Chelf, 1954

The Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections hold materials relating to the Abbey of Gethsemani, such as a small olive wood crucifix presented to Congressman Frank Chelf in 1954.  Also included are materials collected by WKU faculty member Marjorie Clagett.  As part of her lifelong interest in the French in Kentucky, she researched their Catholic institutions, and in 1949 wrote a paper on the centennial of the Abbey.  She also collected articles, brochures, and a photo essay commemorating the anniversary.

The Abbey’s centennial brought renewed attention to Thomas Merton, who published his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, that same year.  In a review of the book, Life magazine found Merton still searching for the peace he desired.  Despite the contemplative atmosphere of the monastery, he said, with farming, maintenance and other chores, there was still “too much movement, too much to do.”  Nevertheless, he concluded, “Anybody who runs away from a place like this is crazy.”

Crowds gather for the Gethsemani centennial, 1948

Crowds gather for the Gethsemani centennial, 1948

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more on religious orders, including our extensive collections of Kentucky church records, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 25, 2015 · 1:11 pm

Birthday Greetings

As a federal judge blows out the candles on the claim that the iconic song “Happy Birthday to You” is subject to copyright, let’s look back at a few charming early 20th-century birthday postcards sent to members of the Howell family of Warren County, Kentucky.

1912 birthday postcard

1910 birthday postcard

1910-era birthday postcard

And this 1930s card to Senora Tolle of Glasgow, Kentucky.

Birthday card to Senora Tolle

And this World War II V-mail birthday card, sent to Jo Reba Pope of Nashville by her serviceman husband.

V-mail birthday greetings, 1944

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more greeting cards of all kinds in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.  And if today happens to be your “natal day,” well, “Happy Birthday to You”!!

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by | September 14, 2015 · 1:07 pm

Passage to India

Benjamin Covington Grider; Edwin Barter's letter

Benjamin Covington Grider; Edwin Barter’s letter

The acquaintance of Edwin Barter and Colonel Benjamin Covington Grider of Bowling Green dated back to the first year of the Civil War, during Grider’s command of the Union’s 9th Kentucky Infantry.  When Grider next heard from him, Barter had left his home in England to pursue the cotton and coffee trade in India.

In an August, 1865 letter from Madras Province, Barter observed that America had finally turned a page.  “The war for Southern rights is well nigh over, and ‘subjugation’ ‘Coercion’ and ‘precipitation’ are words buried,” he declared.  Now it was time to “count the cost” of “3/4 century’s folly and vice.”  Barter had heard that a local judge was out to get Robert E. Lee, but couldn’t imagine Americans being vindictive toward the Confederate general.

Once in India, however, Barter struck a more mercenary tone toward its brown-skinned inhabitants.  Regarding them with an air of superiority common to many in the West, he likened them to primitives who “draw water from the well and cook their simple food after the same style as their ancestors who lived before Britain was known to the Romans.”  He scorned the natives at length as mendacious, lacking in “go-a-headativeness,” and seemingly immune to attempts to introduce them to the benefits of Christianity and European civilization.  India, he remarked, has “180 million of inhabitants who are governed by 3 or 4 hundred thousand Britains [sic] who exile themselves for a certain number of years, never, or very seldom indeed, permanently settling in the Country, but ever looking forward to the day when they will have pocketed enough to turn their faces towards home.”  Barter described his own prospects as good, but agreed that he was not “at home.”  “How long residence?” he asked tersely–wondering, perhaps, about the political costs awaiting Britain in three-quarters of a century.

Edwin Barter’s letter to Benjamin Grider is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more of our collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 3, 2015 · 6:48 pm

His Dream Home

J. C. Browning

J. C. Browning

In thousands of World War II soldiers’ letters in the collections of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, servicemen express their patriotism, love of family, apprehension, boredom, determination, and a host of other emotions.  Reading of a man’s hopes for the future, however, is especially moving if we know that he didn’t make it home to realize those hopes and dreams.

Edmonson County, Kentucky native James “J.C.” Browning left his teaching job, wife Lila and infant daughter for service with the U.S. Army at Fort Knox in August 1941.  He trained in Ireland, then embarked for North Africa, where he was killed in November 1942 during the Allied invasion campaign known as Operation Torch.  But J.C.’s letters to Lila rarely dwelt upon the threats he faced (he seemed more worried about what would happen to their baby if Lila died while he was overseas!)  Instead, he returned time and again to one of his fondest wishes: that after the war they would purchase a home.  As these excerpts from his letters show, J.C.’s dream was vivid, and no doubt sustained him until his death:

If we really save while I am in the army this year we can make a down payment on our home somewhere. . . . We would admire it and love it as we made it better and better.  I’m really looking forward to that.

I would like to buy a home as quickly as we can. . . .  It takes an awful long time to build up a farm home that we would be proud of.  That is what I want and I will never be satisfied until we get started on it.

We want a very fertile farm close to town.  It should contain about 80 or 90 acres and have the modern conveniences of town.  In other words we want a town home out in the country.

Remember that we have a home to establish and it is a semi-country home.  It should contain about a hundred acres of good land and a tenant house because most of our work will be done for the public.

We must select a good location, one that we would like when we are old as well as now.  We should know what we are going to be doing 10, 20 or more years from now.  We must think and plan things to the best of our ability.

Click here to access a finding aid for J. C. Browning’s letters to his wife Lila.  For other World War II collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | August 27, 2015 · 2:47 pm

A Railroad Man

Bowling Green depot, 1936; Morehead Hotel, 1921

Bowling Green depot, 1936; Morehead Hotel, 1921

Edwin “Ed” Tanksley (1898-1975) joined the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in 1925.  By the time he retired in 1960, he had witnessed many changes in the railroad industry and its significance for his home city of Bowling Green, Kentucky.  The transcript of a 1967 interview in which Tanksley talks about his long career is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

As a clerk and then a yardman, Tanksley became closely acquainted with the mechanics of train operation and the skill of his fellow workers.  There was Smith Wood, “one of the grandest men you ever saw handle a throttle,” able to “tool those big steam engines around these bends in the track and not spill a drop of coffee.”  There was engineer “Grandma” Garr, known for his love of buttermilk, and John “Dink” Petty, a wizard on the air brakes who could give his crew in the caboose a whiplash-free ride.  Their jobs could be stressful: Tanksley recalled the anguish of engineers unable to stop their trains to avoid hitting someone on the tracks.  There were also hazards in the yard, especially for those handling the couplers between rail cars.  “I used to work with men that didn’t have but two or three fingers left on a hand because they would get them pinched off,” he remembered.

Tanksley became familiar with many of the Bowling Green hotels that catered to railroad employees and the traveling public in the 1920s and 1930s.  There were the upscale hotels, the Mansard and the Morehead, the smaller Webb Hotel, operated by a former railroad conductor, and the Rauscher House, known for its good food.  Travelers on a layover in Bowling Green could pass the time at 5-cent picture shows, or at the Potter Opera House being entertained by minstrel companies whose actors and scenery came to town via the railroad.

The railroad also brought many VIPs through Bowling Green.  Tanksley remembered evangelist Mordecai Ham and whistle stops by governors, senators and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  FDR was a “railroad man’s friend,” said Tanksley.  The Railroad Retirement Act, a piece of New Deal legislation that provided pensions to those two- and three-fingered retirees, was “the reason a railroad man is pretty crazy about Franklin D.”

Click here to access a finding aid for Ed Tanksley’s interview.  For more collections on railroads, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | August 20, 2015 · 2:55 pm

High School Confidential

Letters to B.G. Davidson

Letters to B.G. Davidson

At this time of year, high school seniors face many changes in making the transition to college freshmen.  It was no different for Benjamin Gideon “B.G.” Davidson and his friends in Bowling Green High’s Class of 1933.  Some enrolled at WKU or at the Bowling Green Business University down the street, but B.G. headed off to Centre College in Danville, where he hoped to make the football team.

Nevertheless, the old crowd kept in touch.  In particular, tall, dark and handsome B.G. was a sought-after correspondent among the young ladies he had known at Bowling Green High.  “We are having a time up on the Hill,” wrote one.  She was happy with her schedule, which gave her Tuesdays and Thursdays off to “sleep as long as I want.”  But another was nostalgic for the days of their senior hijinks.  “Sam, Allen and I were talking about some of your all’s escapades in chemistry laboratory the other day,” she wrote.  “We had a good time down there at B.G.H.S.”

Of special concern among the group was whether the flirtations and romantic attachments of high school could survive distance and the new social whirl of their college lives.  As they reported on their leisure (and occasionally academic) activities, the young ladies B.G. had left behind couldn’t resist pulling his strings.  “Darling, the Cotillion Club is giving a Thanksgiving dance,” wrote a longtime sweetheart.  “But someone asked me to go with them; however, I thought it was going to be the night you’d be home for the holidays and we’d rather go together, hadn’t we? . . . At least that’s the way I feel about that night and every other night and day you’d be here.”  Her main rival for B.G.’s affections had joined him for a dance at Centre, but afterward nervously wrote: “I don’t see how you could remember me even a tiny little bit after all those good-looking women. . . .  I noticed you weren’t sporting your frat pin — so I guess one of them has ’bout beat my time.”  Nevertheless, she had returned home to dream of seeing her favorite beau “coming down the street — and all the good times we’re gonna have this summer.”

Letters to B.G. Davidson, which give a vivid picture of the joys, pastimes and obsessions of Bowling Green’s college-age youth in the 1930s, are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more collections about schools and students, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

A letter to B.G. Davidson

“Dear B.G. (Benjamin to you), Too bad we could not get together last Saturday, but after much arguing and persuasion mother consented to let me come to the Beta formal next Saturday night.”

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by | August 13, 2015 · 4:32 pm

V-J Day: “It has passed like a tornado”

Happy warriors: Dee Perguson and Chester Travelstead

Happy warriors: Dee Perguson and Chester Travelstead

Kentuckians heard the first report on August 13, 1945: the war with Japan was over.  Stationed at a center for returning servicemen in Miami, Florida, Ohio County native Dee Perguson reported that “a scream rose to the roof” among his fellow soldiers listening to the radio.  On duty at an air base in India, McLean County native John Owens witnessed joyful men “firing off flare guns, machine guns, pistols and hollering at the top of their voices.”

Unfortunately, the report was premature and quickly retracted.  As surrender negotiations continued, Perguson stayed close to the radio, “hoping to hear the longed-for news.”  Angry at both the false report and Japan’s apparent recalcitrance, he declared himself “all in favor of dropping some more atomic bombs to help them decide to accept.”

Still, when the surrender was confirmed on August 15 — Victory in Japan Day — Perguson had a hard time believing that, at last, “the United States is not at war.”  Navy officer Chester Travelstead, stationed in Seattle, agreed.  Writing to his mother, WKU music teacher Nelle Travelstead, of the atomic bomb, the negotiations and the surrender, he remarked that “It has passed like a tornado.”

But there was little calm after the storm.  First came the celebrations.  In Miami, Dee Perguson witnessed streets filled with people and cars, a Navy band playing, Russian trainees bellowing out songs, and soldiers and sailors trading hats in a communal expression of joy.  Bars and liquor stores had closed the moment the surrender was announced, but “many people who had prepared for the day had their bottles.”  In Seattle, Chester Travelstead wrote, “Everybody kissed everybody.  Paper was thrown from the buildings by the wagonload . . . . The horns tooted a constant din; people shouted and ran.”

Then came the avalanche of work, gathering force since V-E Day, that would be necessary to accomplish the orderly demobilization of millions of soldiers.  The day after V-J Day, Travelstead found himself deluged with directives and orders.  Perguson, working in one of many Miami hotels commandeered by the military, expected to be kept busy either reassigning soldiers who remained in service or providing occupational counseling to veterans returning to civilian life.  And both men were thinking about where they stood in the long line of servicemen eager to get their discharge papers, go home and get on with their lives.

Letters of Kentuckians about V-J Day are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click on the links to access finding aids.  For other collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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