Category Archives: Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

by | January 22, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Political Survivors

Since the Cold War, a feature of the annual State of the Union message is the “designated survivor” status given to a member of the U.S. government.  Should a catastrophic event wipe out the Capitol and everyone inside during the President’s speech, continuity of government would rest in the hands of this individual, who watches the proceedings from a secure, Secret Service-protected location.  This year’s “designated survivor” was Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.

In 1966, giving his farewell speech after 22 years in Congress, Kentucky representative Frank Chelf remembered an event that, if not catastrophic, surely rattled the halls of that institution.  On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Ricans demanding independence from the United States fired pistols from the gallery of the House at members of the 83rd Congress.  “When the sound of the last shot was history,” said Chelf, “five of our colleagues were lying bleeding on the floor of this chamber.”  Having just left for a doctor’s appointment, Chelf concluded that the engagement saved his life because “the seat that I had just vacated minutes before, had been completely riddled by two bullets.  It just wasn’t my time to go.”  The same, fortunately, held true of the five shooting victims, all of whom survived.

Departing Congressman Frank Chelf passes the torch to William H. Natcher, 1966

Departing Congressman Frank Chelf passes the torch to William H. Natcher, 1966

Frank Chelf’s farewell speech to Congress is part of the Frank Chelf Collection in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more political collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | January 15, 2015 · 2:20 pm

Speaking with Pictures

James Proctor Knott cartoons

James Proctor Knott cartoons

James Proctor Knott (1830-1911) was a native of Marion County, Kentucky who practiced law in Memphis, Missouri before being elected attorney general of that state in 1860.  As the country moved toward civil war, he did not adopt the pieties of either side; he disapproved of secession but declined to take a prescribed loyalty oath to the U.S. government, an act that led to his disbarment and a brief stay in prison.  Knott then moved back to Kentucky (his second wife’s family lived in Bowling Green), where he became a member of Congress and then governor.

James Proctor Knott sketch of man readingKnott also liked to draw.  A collection of his sketches and cartoons is part of the Knott Collection in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Executed in pencil, ink and watercolor, they show Knott’s appreciation of human, plant, animal and architectural forms.  On one small rendering of a landscape, he has added these lines from Hamlet: “We must speak by the card [precisely, that is], or equivocation will undo us.”

James Proctor Knott landscape with Hamlet quote

Click here for a collection finding aid.  For more collections relating to artists and cartoonists, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | January 8, 2015 · 2:38 pm

A Little Flight Through History

Mona Lisa; Elizabeth Robertson Coombs

Mona Lisa; Elizabeth Robertson Coombs

January 8, 1962 saw the unveiling, for the first time in the United States, of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece La Gioconda — or, as it was probably better known to an advance audience of dignitaries at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Mona Lisa.

The painting was on loan from the Louvre, but half a century earlier a petty thief named Vincenzo Peruggia had attempted to borrow it permanently.  On August 21, 1911, he hid in the Louvre until it closed for the night, then removed the Mona Lisa from its frame.  The next morning, he sauntered out of the museum with the treasure concealed in a smock.  By the time it was recovered more than two years later, the Mona Lisa had entered the public imagination as the world’s most famous, and now closely guarded, work of art.

Traveling in Europe at the time, an aunt of Bowling Green’s Elizabeth Robertson Coombs had a unique experience of the theft.  She had spent the summer in England, touring the countryside and enjoying London — “of course it isn’t New York,” she wrote, referring to Elizabeth’s home at the time, “but it is very nice.”  After a tour of France’s chateau district, she went on to Paris for a month, where she shopped for her winter wardrobe, wandered through Montmartre, and visited the Moulin Rouge (which fell short of a promise that it was “eminently respectable”).  And yes, she reported, “we saw Mona Lisa before stealing — and the hooks where she had hung — after.”  But one can imagine Elizabeth’s aunt smiling as serenely as La Gioconda when she dropped this bomb on her 18-year-old niece: “By the way — I had my first aeroplane flight while we were in Paris . . . in a biplane — went around the horizon — and mounted to about the height of the Eiffel Tower . . . it was perfectly heavenly.”

Letters written to Elizabeth Robertson Coombs early in the 20th century are part of the Coombs Family Collection in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | December 11, 2014 · 2:45 pm

A Cavalcade of Cards

In the course of processing family papers in Manuscripts & Folklife Archives, we regularly uncover a variety of Christmas cards sent to Kentuckians from family and friends across the country and the world.  Here are a few of the more eye-catching ones that have surfaced this year; they date from the 1920s to the 1970s:

A. Ross Pittman linoleum block prints, cards sent to Drucilla Jones, Bowling Green

A. Ross Pittman linoleum block prints, cards sent to Drucilla Jones, Bowling Green

 

From Olive Sewell, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, to Marjorie Clagett, Bowling Green

From Olive Sewell, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, to Marjorie Clagett, Bowling Green

 

Sent to the Clements family, Owensboro

Sent to the Clements family, Owensboro

 

From her niece Emma to Senora Tolle, Glasgow

From her niece Emma to Senora Tolle, Glasgow

For more on Christmas letters, cards, customs and folkways, search our collection finding aids in TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | December 4, 2014 · 2:09 pm

A December Election

Elizabeth Martin's take on the 1844 election

Elizabeth Martin’s take on the 1844 election

When last we left the Whigs, they were fighting the presidential race of 1844, pitting their candidate, Kentucky’s Henry Clay, against Tennessee Democrat James K. Polk.  Both parties had dumped their presumptive heirs to the nomination, Vice President John Tyler and former President Martin Van Buren, respectively.

With their nation poised to become a continental power, the Whigs and Dems sparred bitterly over the annexation of Texas and Oregon, Manifest Destiny, and the westward expansion of slavery (Polk was for, Clay against).  But economic issues such as the tariff (Polk wanted to lower it) also hovered in the background.  Voting began on November 1–this was the last presidential election to be held on different days in different states–and when it concluded on December 4, 1844, Polk was declared the winner by a narrow margin.

In Elkton, Kentucky, 53-year-old Elizabeth Martin found herself on the wrong side of the vote (had she been able to vote, that is).  Writing to her nephew Benjamin Hinch, she mourned the outcome as “a grate calamity indeed” that left the defeated Whigs “all down in the mouth.”  Elizabeth’s daughter Avaline was also disappointed.  “The times are very hard with us,” and were likely to continue “since they have elected old Polk.”  But this joint mother-daughter letter included another, more personal debate, as the women earnestly proposed suitable names for Hinch’s newborn son.

Elizabeth and Avaline Martin’s letter 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 collections about politics, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | December 3, 2014 · 7:49 pm

WKU Special Collections Department Head Jonathan Jeffrey receives the 2014 Kentucky History Award at ceremony in Frankfort

Jeffrey History AwardProfessor Jonathan Jeffrey, department head for Library Special Collections and coordinator for Manuscripts & Folklife Archives, recently was awarded the 2014 Kentucky History Award in Frankfort, Kentucky for his efforts on the JFK Memory Project. The Kentucky Historical Society sponsors this program to recognize outstanding achievements by individuals and organizations throughout the commonwealth. Jeffrey was recognized during the Kentucky History Awards ceremony on Friday, November 7, at the Old State Capitol in downtown Frankfort.

The JFK Memory Project, organized and led by Jeffrey, was a special effort to collect people’s memories of two events: John F. Kennedy’s campaign visit to Bowling Green in October 1960 and his assassination on November 22, 1963. During a five-month period, Jeffrey encouraged anyone to forward their remembrances to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives unit of WKU Libraries for permanent retention with intent to capture a clearer picture of his local visit and to demonstrate how national/international events affect people at the local level.  As a result, 130 responses were compiled, including numerous emails, 27 photographs, 14 personal interviews, news clippings, and various campaign paraphernalia. Materials are available through WKU’s digital archives, TopSCHOLAR.

Jeffrey, a native of Texas, has been at Western Kentucky University Department of Library Special Collections since 1990. He has published numerous popular and scholarly articles and mongraphs related to local history, architecture, women’s history, the Shakers, and the history of the Commonwealth’s libraries. His most recent book is Stock Car Racing in Bowling Green. He has served on numerous boards for Kentucky historical organizations, and has been recognized with various awards, including the Historical Confederation of Kentucky’s Award of Distinction, WKU’s Outstanding Public Service Award, and WKU’s Jefferson Award for Public Service.

 

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by | November 19, 2014 · 2:51 pm

“Permit Safely and Freely to Pass”

George Crawford's 1807 passport

George Crawford’s 1807 passport

For most of us, our most-deplored photo (next to our driver’s license) is the one on our passport.  But it wasn’t until late 1914 that Americans were required to include a photographic likeness with their passport applications.

Earlier passports might simply state the holder’s name, as did the 1807 passport of George Crawford, signed by New York mayor DeWitt Clinton.  Or the document might give notice of the age and physical attributes of its bearer.  For example, the 1863 diplomatic passport of Bowling Green lawyer Warner L. Underwood described his high forehead, blue eyes, prominent nose, “ordinary” mouth and chin, round face, and “florid” complexion.  George Harris’s August 1914 passport was for a man with a medium forehead, large nose, dark complexion, and dimpled chin.  Although it included her photo, the 1919 passport of WKU teacher Elizabeth Woods also noted her medium nose and mouth, round chin, and oval face.  Like Underwood’s, her passport was not the pocket-sized book we use today, although at 8X12 inches it could be folded in quarters and kept in a cardboard cover, like that of Grayson County merchant Willis Green.

Willis Green's 1923 passport

Willis Green’s 1923 passport

What gives modern passport photos their charm, of course, is that mug-shot quality (a “neutral facial expression and both eyes open” is the rule).  But earlier specimens weren’t quite so uniformly dreadful.  From the flapper-era glory of Ruth Hines Temple’s 1926 photo, to the Cold War-era gaze on Congressman Frank Chelf’s 1959 passport (“not valid” for travel in Hungary, Cuba, etc.), these photos allowed a little of the bearer’s personality to shine through.

Click on the links to access finding aids for the collections containing the passports of these traveling Kentuckians, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Ruth Hines Temple; Frank Chelf

Ruth Hines Temple; Frank Chelf

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by | November 4, 2014 · 1:59 pm

The Whig Ticket

Whig Almanac, 1845 (Emanie Arling Philips Collection)

Whig Almanac, 1845 (Emanie Arling Philips Collection)

Before its demise in the mid-19th century, the Whig Party sent four men to the White House.  In 1844, the Whigs and their candidate, Kentuckian Henry Clay, were the choice of 16 prominent Warren County citizens, who made their case in an open letter to fellow voters.  Most of their rhetoric still infuses political debate today, and could be republished with only the date revised:

The time has come when the American people should feel and know that this great great country of theirs, belongs not to office holders and office seekers, but to them.

A most momentous crisis is at hand in the history of our beloved country…Great principles are in issue.

The Whigs are the advocates of an AMERICAN tariff…discriminating in the amount of duty imposed, between those articles which the American citizen can manufacture or produce and those which they can not…  Providence…has filled our mountains and our plains with minerals…and given us a climate and soil for the growing of hemp and wool.  These being the great materials of our national defence, they ought to have extended to them adequate and fair protection.

The Whigs are in favor of a well regulated Bank of the United States; of a reduction and reform of the expenditures of Government, and a modification of the executive powers of the President.

Remembering that we are one people, in town and country all the same, elevated by the same prosperity, depressed by the same misfortunes, subject to the same laws and warmed by the same patriotism, let us unite together as one man [sic] around our principles and sustain our men [sic] and our measures by our suffrages at the polls.

A typescript of this Whiggish appeal is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other collections about elections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.  And don’t forget to vote!

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by | October 31, 2014 · 1:21 pm

Crossing the Line

Elizabeth Woods's Equator crossing certificate

Elizabeth Woods’s Equator crossing certificate

The custom of holding strange initiation rituals to commemorate a seaman’s first crossing of the Equator dates back several centuries.  WKU graduate Jean E. Keith, later a historian for the Corps of Engineers, wrote of his experience in October 1943 to his French teacher Marjorie Clagett.  “My head is completely innocent of hair. . . by reason of having crossed the Equator,” he reported, part of a “quaint custom among us sailors to mutilate each new one who does so.”  For two days, he and other newbies–“Pollywogs”–suffered at the hands of the “Shellbacks,” veterans of the crossing whose job it was to oversee the appropriate torments for their successors.  Highlights of the initiation included crawling through a gauntlet of fire hoses shooting salt water, bobbing for hotdogs in a bucket of mustard, and enduring a patch of tar smeared on the scalp and “rubbed in good” down to the neck.  After another dousing by fire hoses, the “Royal Court of King Neptune” officially elevated the Pollywogs to the status of Shellbacks.

Equator-crossing ceremonies are also observed among civilians.  During a cruise to South America, WKU foreign languages teacher Elizabeth Woods received a certificate from “Neptune, the Great God of all the High Seas,” declaring her “duly initiated into the mysteries of Our Realm.”  Referring to the customary mock trial before Neptune’s court, she noted that afterward the condemned “is flung unceremoniously into the swimming pool.”  One hopes the 73-year-old Miss Woods merely witnessed and did not suffer this indignity.

After crossing the Equator and the International Date Line on a single trip, Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe obtained a unique souvenir: a “Short Snorter,” a $1 bill signed by fellow travelers including, in this case, U.S. Senator and Kentucky Governor Albert “Happy” Chandler.  The holders subsequently identified themselves to each other by producing their Short Snorters; if one was unable to do so, he owed the other either a $1 bill or a drink.

Belmont Forsythe's Short Snorter

Belmont Forsythe’s Short Snorter

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more of our collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 22, 2014 · 1:17 pm

“Plowed all day and never got done”

Charles & Susan Omer

Charles & Susan Omer

Union County, Kentucky native Charles Henry Omer (1865-1937) was a substitute teacher, postmaster, merchant, Mason, and elder at the Morganfield Christian Church.  He and his wife Susan were the parents of 13 children, including two sets of twins.  Somehow, they found time not only for their primary pursuit of farming, but for the maintenance of a journal that recorded the family’s daily activities from 1904-1932.  Common topics over its hundreds of pages were, as one would expect, the weather, income and expenses, with the prices of food, timber, farm supplies and labor faithfully noted.  But other details add color to this chronicle of agricultural life, for example:

May 23, 1904:  It rained a little this morning. . . . went to Morganfield to see the Bloomer Girls play Baseball in the afternoon Expenses 70c Light-Bread 10 Sausages Bananas 10 Peanuts 5 crackers 5 steak 20 Ice cream soda 10 = 1.30

May 3, 1905:  I took my crosscut saw out to Tom Berry’s and got him to sharpen it and I took his place rolling logs while he was fixing it.

July 9, 1913:  I let Uncle John Berry go down to Sister Mollie’s and got a horse collar to work on Lizzie so he could plow my patch of corn he plowed all day and never got done.

Feb. 27, 1923:  I hung 4 hams my 2nd killing today & cleaned the hog feet to my last killing & put them to soak to cook tomorrow.

Oct. 26, 1930:  I got up at 4:30 and went to the c[hristian] church and fired up the furnace and back at 7:30 and eat breakfast and then killed 2 chickens to bake.

May 31, 1932: Mrs. Omer & I have been married 33 years today.  I took about a qt. of pumpkin seed to both Wilhelm and Miller to plant.

The Omer family farm journal is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  To explore other collections relating to agriculture (the 2014 focus of Kentucky Archives Month), search TopSCHOLAR  and KenCat.

Kentucky Archives Month poster

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