Category Archives: Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

by | April 30, 2015 · 1:21 pm

Scenes from a Companionate Marriage

Joseph and Elizabeth Underwood and their home, Ironwood

Joseph and Elizabeth Underwood and their home, Ironwood

In the Winter 2014 issue of Ohio Valley History, WKU assistant history professor Jennifer A. Walton-Hanley’s article uses the letters of Joseph and Elizabeth (Cox) Underwood, housed in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, to study “an antebellum southern companionate marriage.”

Married in 1839 when he was 48 and she only 21, Joseph and Elizabeth Underwood experienced long periods of separation from 1847 to 1853 when Joseph, serving as a U.S. Senator in Washington, left Elizabeth to raise their children (and stepchildren from his first marriage) and manage their Bowling Green, Kentucky farm.  During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of letters that offer, as Walton-Hanley writes, “a case study of one Kentucky man’s struggles to preserve his domestic connections and maintain his family position.”

Using the letters as evidence, Walton-Hanley shows how Joseph relied heavily on Elizabeth to run their household but remained actively involved in all its affairs.  He consulted and advised on finances, closely monitored his children’s health, education and behavior, and eagerly sought reports on even the most ordinary details of life at home.  But Joseph’s practice of 19th-century “masculine domesticity” did not stem simply from a sense of male privilege; rather, it reflected his unabashed yearning for home and family.  Worrying about his children and candidly expressing his love for his intelligent and capable wife, Joseph bridged their separation and maintained an emotional presence in Elizabeth’s life even as she exercised considerable autonomy within their partnership.

Click here to access a finding aid for the Underwood Collection containing the letters of Joseph and Elizabeth Underwood.  For more collections on Bowling Green families, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | April 24, 2015 · 4:38 pm

Hats On for the Derby

Collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives  section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections offer a variety of materials on the history and traditions of the Kentucky Derby.  For example:

Derby hats in the making at Dee's

Derby hats in the making at Dee’s

Our folklife collections include a project focusing on the Derby’s great tradition of distinctive headwear.  In “Dynamics of a Kentucky Derby Hat,” WKU folk studies student Becky Proctor explored the search for the perfect hat at Dee’s Craft Store in Louisville.  In their customers’ choice of ornament, color scheme and accompanying wardrobe, the proprietors of Dee’s have long known that the Derby hat combines personal expression, social statement, performance art and, perhaps, setting the trend for next year.

Ashland Oil's Derby Party programs

Ashland Oil’s Derby Party programs

For guests of the Ashland Oil & Refining Company, the 1969 Derby highlighted a packed weekend of tours, receptions and parties.  VIPs from U.S. Steel, Getty Oil, B.F. Goodrich, Texaco, du Pont and other companies received a kit that included an event schedule, name badges, taxicab vouchers, and invitations to cocktails, country club breakfasts, champagne dinner parties and a Derby Ball. “If the weather pays any attention to our instructions, you’ll be enchanted with Kentucky in the spring,” wrote a representative, providing some helpful hints for appropriate dress at the opening dinner, bluegrass farms tour, and farewell banquet.  Derby Day itself was to begin with brunch on board the Belle of Louisville–but, she warned, “a little food ahead of time might be a good idea, as mint juleps on an empty stomach can be devastating.”

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more historical materials on the Kentucky Derby, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | April 17, 2015 · 1:55 pm

What They Saw

Lowell Harrison; Jewish memorial at Bergen-Belsen (Wikimedia Commons)

Lowell Harrison; Jewish memorial at Bergen-Belsen (Wikimedia Commons)

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  Arriving on April 15, 1945, British troops surveyed a landscape of unspeakable suffering and cruelty.

Kentuckians serving in Europe at the end of the war were among many eyewitnesses to the atrocities perpetrated in the camps.  Their experiences are documented in some of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

WKU history professor and Russell County native Lowell Harrison was serving as a combat engineer when his division arrived at the concentration camp at Nordhausen, in the heart of Germany.  “It was something that was unbelievable,” he recalled.  “You see pictures. . . , you read about it, but you couldn’t believe that people could be treated that way until you actually saw them.”  Richardsville native William R. Hudson, drafted after the Nazi surrender and sent to Germany to serve with occupation forces, was exposed to German atrocities when he was appointed to guard war criminals, including Hermann Goering.  It was then that he witnessed the evil infrastructure of the Holocaust: railroad cars, gas chambers, crematoria, and the bones of victims “stacked up like haystacks.”

Soldiers struggled to convey their experiences to incredulous civilians.  Writing from Germany in May 1945, Bowling Green native Harry L. Jackson reacted sharply when his sister complained of being inundated with “atrocity propaganda.”  “I HAVE seen more than enough,” he assured her, to know that the reports were not exaggerated.  But trying to describe to her the sight of a German slave labor camp, with its stench, filth, and starving inmates reduced to “the basic instincts of the animal” was beyond his capacity.  While man’s power to degrade and destroy seemed boundless, “our inadequacy and limitations surface,” he declared, “when we are asked to define what WAR really is.  It cannot be put into words.”

Click on the links to access finding aids to these collections (contact us at mssfa@wku.edu about the Harry Jackson Collection).  For more collections on World War II in Germany and beyond, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | April 2, 2015 · 8:55 am

Easter Greetings

Easter cards customarily combine a religious message of hope and renewal with images of a kinder and gentler season.  Whether adorned with Easter eggs or Easter lilies, they celebrate the promise of brighter days ahead.

Easter card of artist Mazie Lee Thomas

Easter card of artist Mazie Lee Thomas

Homemade Easter cards are included in some of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  One is from Mazie Lee Thomas, a largely self-taught African-American folk artist who resided in Adairville, Kentucky.  Perhaps the most unusual card is one created by Mary Alice Kimbrough in 1944.  Made with tiny, hand-cut pieces of postage stamps, the colorful greeting was sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was undoubtedly a unique addition to his beloved stamp collection.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For other Easter materials in the Department of Library Special Collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Mary Alice Kimbrough's card (with detail)

Mary Alice Kimbrough’s card (with detail)

 

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by | March 17, 2015 · 1:12 pm

“Irish folklore flourishes”

St. Patrick

St. Patrick

On St. Patrick’s Day, as we all get in touch with our inner “Irish,” here are two collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections that offer a glimpse into the folklore and traditions of The Emerald Isle in America.

“In the month of March, Irish folklore flourishes,” confirmed Andrew Oberdier in his paper examining its usage in the media, most notably The Boston Globe.  For example, as way of enhancing the holiday mood, raising interest in its news stories, or selling advertised products, the Globe‘s content during the 1988 holiday was replete with images of shamrocks, leprechauns, and even the Blarney Stone.  Oddly enough, except for one feature article, St. Patrick himself remained largely in the background, confirming that, for many, the day’s religious aspects have taken a back seat to commerce and general revelry.

In 2005, a representative of the Kentucky Folklife Program documented the St. Patrick’s Day parade and associated activities in Louisville, Kentucky.  Sarah Milligan identified several parade participants–trade unions, neighborhood associations, musicians, and members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians–as sources of information about Irish heritage in the city.  Her video record highlights both the parade and a performance of Irish music at the Filson Historical Society.  While she found that the “Irish scene” in Louisville is not comparable to that in major centers like New York and Chicago, the roots still run deep and, as we see every March, the green bursts forth anew.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more of our collections documenting folklore across the country and the world, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Will of John McCollock, County Antrim, 1790 (Will S. Hays Collection)

Will of John McCollock, County Antrim, 1790 (Will S. Hays Collection)

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by | March 4, 2015 · 2:40 pm

A Stormy Inauguration

Lyrics sung to the tune "Yankee Doodle" alluded to the pre-inauguration plot against Lincoln (SC 2264)

Lyrics sung to the tune “Yankee Doodle” alluded to the pre-inauguration plot against Lincoln (SC 2264)

Prior to 1937, Inauguration Day for U.S. presidents was March 4.  On that day in 1861, there was great excitement, but also grave uncertainty.  Abraham Lincoln took office at a time of national crisis, with the South in the midst of secession and Lincoln himself the recent subject of a rumored assassination plot.  Soon after his swearing-in, tensions only escalated with the attack on Fort Sumter and the secession of Virginia in April.

Collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections afford a glimpse at the mixed emotions the new president elicited from Americans.  In August, a letter to Barren County, Kentucky merchant Wade Veluzat from a Lincoln voter denied that either he or his candidate were abolitionists.  “But,” he wrote, “if the people of the South will make war on us because we vote for whom we please for President, then let it come.”  In September, a defiant secessionist in Russellville, Kentucky took up the challenge in a letter sent to Ohio.  “We are not afraid of the Lincoln Negro Party, we say whip us if you can.”

Four years later, Lincoln’s first-term record drew a similarly wide range of comment.  As we have previously seen, Bevie Cain of Breckinridge County had nothing but scorn for supporters of the President’s “wicked unwise rule.”  She dared a Unionist friend to “just tell me one item of good that his reign has accomplished or will accomplish.”  An Indiana man was on the other side of the fence, finding Lincoln to be, in fact, insufficiently radical.  He expected, nevertheless, to vote for the reelection of “old Abe,” observing presciently that he “is a good honest man, and has already said and done enough to make his name famous among the friends of universal Liberty everywhere and for all time.”

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more on Lincoln, presidents and presidential inaugurations, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | February 26, 2015 · 2:38 pm

Bookworms

Eclectic Book Club yearbook, 1957-58

Eclectic Book Club yearbook, 1957-58

During last week’s snowstorm, you might have spent some extra time relaxing with a book.  Bowling Green’s long history of literary clubs testifies to its citizenry’s love of the same pursuit, regardless of the weather.

Take the Eclectic Book Club, organized in 1939 by WKU librarian Edna Bothe with the expressed aim of promoting “the mutual enjoyment and mental development that result from the reading and discussion of good books.”  Throughout its 65-year history, the club’s members met regularly to exchange books and to deliver programs on travel, famous men and women, and other topics of intellectual interest.  Their reading was indeed eclectic–from Random Harvest, Berlin Diary, The Psychology of Christian Personality and God is My Co-Pilot to Famous Kentucky Duels, Essays of E. B. White, Jackie O!, The Bell Jar, Elvis and Me and Seabiscuit.  At the conclusion of business, however, all found common tastes in enjoying the refreshments served by that meeting’s hostess, arranging picnics, Christmas parties and pot luck suppers, and taking rueful delight in having a club name that was “more consistently misspelled in the local press” than any other.

The records of the Eclectic Book Club are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other collections relating to Bowling Green’s many literary clubs, search TopSCHOLAR and Ken Cat.

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by | February 12, 2015 · 2:23 pm

The NAACP in Bowling Green

Reverend Henry D. Carpenter was a leader in the Bowling Green NAACP.

Reverend Henry D. Carpenter was a leader in the Bowling Green NAACP.

On this day (February 12) in 1909, a group of activists in New York decided to reinvigorate African Americans’ post-Reconstruction quest for civil and political rights by forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  Exactly a decade later, the Bowling Green, Kentucky branch of the NAACP was organized.  At a mass meeting at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, after hearing the urgings of various speakers on “the good that can result from same,” the first 37 members enrolled.

The Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Special Collections Library include copies of the membership lists and minutes of the Bowling Green NAACP from its inception to June 1927.  Meetings, which rotated through the churches of the city, featured music, prayer, speakers, and discussions of local issues affecting African Americans.  For example, at an executive meeting in March 1919, the problems of “unequal accommodations for our race in traveling,” the “unsanitary conditions existing in the colored Waiting Room at the [train] depot,” and “The Need of a lunch stand for our Race at the depot” were referred to a committee on grievances for follow-up with the proper authorities.  In May, a clergyman “spoke of indignities heaped upon our people by arresting them on suspicion and when proven guiltless nothing done to exonerate the suspect.”

The chapter also considered issues brought to its attention in press releases from the national organization.  At a meeting in June 1921, local churches were asked to take special offerings for the “stricken & suffering” victims of a destructive race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in October 1922 the executive resolved to collect funds to support the NAACP’s advocacy of a federal anti-lynching law.

Click here for a finding aid to the NAACP (Bowling Green Chapter) Collection.  For more collections on African Americans in Kentucky, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | February 5, 2015 · 2:42 pm

Measles: The Sounds and the Silence

Thomas E. Bramlette, immunotherapy counselor

Thomas E. Bramlette, immunotherapy counselor

Measles “attacked every part of our camp at once,” wrote John W. Tuttle, a native of Wayne County who served with the Third Kentucky Infantry during the Civil War.  In 1861, while at Camp Robinson near Danville, he noted the deaths of 61 soldiers and the suffering of countless others.  It “settled upon the lungs of hundreds, perhaps thousands, and more or less seriously impaired their constitutions.”  The effects were so debilitating that “at times, the spasmodic coughing” of the sick, especially in the cold, rainy autumn weather, made it “almost impossible” to hear orders during drills and parades.  Their commander, Colonel Thomas E. Bramlette, was so irritated by the cacophony of his non-immune troops, remembered Tuttle, that he once “severely reprimanded the men of his regiment for not having had the measles when they were children.”

In Breckinridge County toward the end of the war, Bevie Cain saw a different side effect of the illness.  “We are just recovering from a long round of the measles which has been in our family for nearly three weeks!” she wrote a friend.  “I have escaped thus far, though I am grieved that they have so sadly afflicted my brother, who is almost deaf.”  While out hunting near a road, the boy failed to respond when some passing soldiers called out to him.  “I do not know what the consequence would have been,” Bevie wrote, “if a friend of his . . . had not come to his assistance, and informed them of his misfortune.”  The proud young woman, an unrepentant Confederate sympathizer, mourned her brother’s condition.  “Oh!  I don’t know how I could bear the thought of his remaining thus all his life.”

These accounts of the measles are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click on the links to access finding aids.  For other collections documenting Kentuckians’ battles with contagious diseases, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | January 29, 2015 · 2:12 pm

The Buchanan Heirs

Any resemblance? President James Buchanan and Mattie (Buchanan) Gerard

Any resemblance? President James Buchanan and Mattie (Buchanan) Gerard

Like those e-mails we get today from Nigerian princes, it was surely too good to be true. . . but then again, maybe not.  Way back when, a cousin of President James Buchanan was said to have left an estate comprising dozens of valuable properties in New York’s Manhattan and at least six other states.  By the 1920s, all the long leases on the properties had expired and the estate, now worth as much as $850 million, was due for liquidation and distribution to Buchanan’s descendants.

As America entered the Depression, rumors of the jackpot awaiting those who could prove their Buchanan ancestry spread like wildfire.  The ringmaster of the proceedings was one L. D. Buchanan, a Houston, Texas grocer, great-grandson of the Buchanan tycoon, and self-appointed coordinator of the estate settlement.  In Bowling Green, Kentucky, Martha “Mattie” Gerard (1869-1962), the daughter of Lawson Lafayette Buchanan, was skeptical, but if the rumors were true, why not give it a shot?  She swore an affidavit as to her ancestry, carefully prepared her Buchanan history, and mailed it to L. D. Buchanan with a request that he file her claim.

Letters and genealogies flew between Mattie and other prospective beneficiaries in the family, none of whom could completely suppress their doubts. . . or their expectations.  Mattie’s cousin Clara had heard that the mysterious L. D. Buchanan was “sincere and honest” and that the money “might be paid in a month, and it might take 5 years.”  Another potential claimant, she wrote Mattie, “does not think there is any estate, but if there is, he thinks the man will be square.”

Eventually, it all became too much for old L. D. Buchanan.  Protesting mightily that he had received no financial benefit from his efforts, but under suspicion of fraud, he refused all further mail from claimants.  And in 1932, at the urging of an exasperated New York Surrogate Court judge, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a statement: There were no–repeat, NO–Buchanan estate settlements pending in the courts of his state, and “money contributed by claimants for the purpose of establishing their existence is money wasted.”  He might have added that any genealogies prepared for the express purpose of cashing in on an ancestor’s millions should be taken with a grain of salt.

Mattie (Buchanan) Gerard’s file on the Buchanan estate claim is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other genealogical collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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