Category Archives: Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

by | December 5, 2013 · 2:30 pm

Keep Bowling Green Dry!

The "drys" added a moral component to their campaign against alcohol sales.

The “drys” added a moral component to their campaign against alcohol sales.

On May 9, 1960 a group of concerned citizens and clergymen, both white and African-American, organized the Warren County Anti-Liquor Association.  Their aim was to fight efforts to legalize the sale of alcohol in Bowling Green, thereby preserving the outcome of a 1957 local option election in which both the city and county had gone “dry.”

In their intense campaign to influence the vote in the upcoming September election, the Association clashed not only with pro-legalization forces (“wets”) but with the Park City Daily News over publicity tactics.  The Association submitted an ad to the Daily News announcing its intention to print the names of citizens who had signed petitions calling for the new vote, but the paper refused to publish it.  While the petitions themselves were public records, the editors argued, the Association’s action constituted intimidation and would expose the paper to lawsuits for invasion of privacy.

Unbowed, the Association heaped disdain on the attempts of its opponents to drape themselves in the mantle of “law and order.”  Both factions despised bootleggers, “whiskey houses” and other manifestations of the illegal liquor trade, but the “wets,” who called themselves the Citizens Committee for Law and Order, favored undermining criminal profits by regulating and taxing legal sales, while the “drys” insisted on enforcement of current laws to keep all sales illegal.  The rhetoric became heated as the Association accused the Citizens Committee of “fraud and deception” and even called for the indictment of its members.  “Don’t be Hoodwinked,” warned its ads, predicting runaway corruption and immorality if Bowling Green went “legal.”

Pro-liquor legalization forces sought to eliminate both bootlegging and prohibition.

Pro-liquor legalization forces sought to eliminate both bootlegging and prohibition.

The election of September 24, however, saw the “wets” prevail by a 2,750-vote margin, decisively ending Bowling Green’s last experiment with prohibition.  “We threw everything we had at them,” a “dry” spokesman told the Daily News the next day, “but it was not enough.”

Minutes, correspondence and other records of the Warren County Anti-Liquor Association and the 1960 local option election are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other collections on prohibition and temperance, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | November 26, 2013 · 3:29 pm

Turkey Time

Virginia Hoskinson's letterhead

Virginia Hoskinson’s letterhead

Her letterhead, dating probably from the 1930s or 1940s, advertised Virginia Hoskinson, a turkey and chicken breeder in Glendale, Kentucky, as a member of the National Bourbon Red Turkey Club.  “These turkeys are direct descendants of a $175.00 trio . . . and we have bred them 11 years,” she explained to a prospective purchaser.  “I believe these turkeys would please you in every way.”

Known for their dark red plumage, Bourbon Red turkeys originated in Kentucky’s Bluegrass region late in the 19th century.  They’re now considered “heritage turkeys”: no longer raised specifically for consumption, they are nevertheless touted by some turkey pundits as being tastier and healthier than today’s dominant Broad Breasted White variety.

Virginia Hoskinson’s letterhead and sales pitch can be found in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other collections search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | November 15, 2013 · 2:04 pm

“Closed on Account of Influenza”

It was a disaster rarely spoken of today, yet it killed more Americans than all of our 20th-century wars combined.  Over 10 months alone in 1918, a vicious strain of influenza took the lives of more than half a million in the United States, and some 30 million worldwide.  Today, as many obtain their routine vaccination in anticipation of flu season, it is difficult to imagine such a sudden and destructive plague.

Scottsville teacher Eva Dalton's monthly report during the 1918 flu epidemic.

Scottsville teacher Eva Dalton’s monthly report during the 1918 flu epidemic.

But evidence of influenza’s shadow, especially in the terrible autumn of 1918, is preserved in several collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Some Kentuckians seemed to wait in resignation for the illness to strike.  Returning home to Auburn, a correspondent wrote Smiths Grove farmer Carlos Moore of a passenger “on the train last night almost dead with ‘Flu.'”  She was planning another trip the next week, “if I don’t take the ‘Flu.'”  Butler Countian Stella (Phelps) Minton and her family became so ill that her 7-year-old son had to assume all household duties.  Grief-stricken when two other sons died, Stella and her husband kept a small trunk filled with the boys’ belongings for the rest of their lives.

Entire institutions shut down in an attempt to curb the epidemic.  “The flu is on again here pretty badly,” wrote Cumberland County Circuit Court clerk Nevins Hume to a litigant in November 1918; consequently, “we did not have any Court, and will not have any until March.”  Scottsville teacher Eva Dalton recorded lines of zeroes in her attendance register as her school was “closed on account of influenza.”  Naomi Strum reported to her soldier husband that the Webster County schools were closing; nevertheless, she assured him there was “no danger in me taking it for I am not going in a crowd until it is over.”

The flu, of course, gave soldiers and their families additional cause to worry about one another in the closing months of World War I.  Serving overseas in December 1918, James McWherter heard from his father in Monroe County that the “The flu is still here, some are still dying with it.”  Drucilla Short wrote her brother George Harris in October that “influenza has put a ban on all churches, theaters and schools.”  Unfortunately, Drucilla’s letter was returned, for her brother had also lost his life–not to the flu, but to battlefield wounds.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For other collections relating to the 1918 influenza epidemic, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | November 7, 2013 · 2:07 pm

A Nautical Keepsake

Front, back and insert, Galveston Deep Water Jubilee invitation, 1891

Front, back and insert, Galveston Deep Water Jubilee invitation, 1891

Bowling Green native Phineas Hampton Coombs (1869-1919), an executive with the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, had distinctive opportunities for leisure during his postings in Texas, Atlanta and New York.  One of the most interesting social invitations he received was a delight for the eyes that promised even more to come.

The intricately colored, multi-sided invitation arrived from “Momus,” the Greek god of satire and jest.  Drawing back its eight triangular flaps, the recipient found another, equally eye-catching insert commanding him to be present in Galveston, Texas on February 7-9, 1891 for the city’s Deep Water Jubilee.  Images of sailing and steam vessels, nautical flags, masked ladies, musical instruments and an idyllic seashore all beckoned those looking for food, fun and spectacle.

The Deep Water Jubilee was an elaborate festival celebrating the oldest, and at that time the busiest port west of New Orleans.  The event featured trade displays, flotillas, seagoing excursions, speeches by visiting dignitaries, parades, banquets and fireworks.  In time, other deepwater ports would lessen Galveston’s economic clout, especially after the Great Hurricane of 1900, but today the port remains an embarkation point for cruise ships as well as for industrial, agricultural and military cargo.

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by | October 31, 2013 · 1:21 pm

JFK and the Country Ham

John F. Kennedy receives a country ham from Bowling Green mayor Bob Graham, October 8, 1960

John F. Kennedy receives a country ham from Bowling Green mayor Bob Graham, October 8, 1960

Southcentral Kentucky Democrats were waiting on the morning of Saturday, October 8, 1960, when presidential candidate John F. Kennedy arrived in Bowling Green for a highly anticipated campaign appearance.  After landing at the airport, Kennedy traveled by motorcade to City Hall, where he spoke before a platform of dignitaries that included Governor Bert Combs, Lieutenant Governor Wilson Wyatt, Congressman William Natcher and Bowling Green mayor Robert D. “Bob” Graham.

After the speech, Mayor Graham presented Kennedy with a token of his visit: a two-year-old “Kentucky country ham,” courtesy of Jimmy Siddens’ market.  Many remember Kennedy’s reaction as he looked at the ham, then ran his hand over its coating of greenish mold — a proper but, to a New Englander, perhaps unappetizing byproduct of the aging process.  One onlooker interpreted his expression as “What in the *** do I do with this?”

But Kennedy, a clever and witty politician, recovered quickly.  Drawing on the skills he had employed the previous evening in his second debate with Republican opponent Richard Nixon, Kennedy joked that back in Massachusetts, “it took a brave man to eat the first oyster,” so “I’m going to take your word for this.  If you say it’s good, I’ll eat it.”

Back at the airport, before boarding the plane for his next stop in Paducah, Kennedy asked Mayor Graham to send instructions for cooking the ham to his wife, Jackie, in Washington, and scrawled the address on a slip of paper.  Graham taped the souvenir into his scrapbook, then quickly obliged — sending two recipes, in fact, so that Jackie would “have a choice.  Just like in politics.”  The story of the country ham was reported both locally and in newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and, ironically, the Dallas Morning News.

As part of the JFK Memory Project at WKU, those who witnessed Kennedy’s Bowling Green appearance and/or experienced the shock of his assassination three years later have added their own recollections to the historical record.  Click here for a finding aid to the JFK Memory Project at WKU.

JFK's handwritten address for the country ham recipe

JFK’s handwritten address for the country ham recipe

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by | October 25, 2013 · 12:57 pm

Fairview Cemetery

Fairview Cemetery, about 1886

Fairview Cemetery, about 1886

As Pioneer Cemetery filled up during the Civil War, the town of Bowling Green began looking for land on which to establish a new public burying ground.  One of the sites considered was WKU’s own hill (then known as Copley Knob) but the property, stripped of trees and littered with the debris of war, was deemed unsuitable.  (Perhaps the city fathers also took note of what might wash out of and down the hill during a heavy rain?)

Instead, in 1864 the town established Fairview Cemetery on 30 acres of land purchased from one William McNeal.  Formally dedicated in 1865, the cemetery has expanded to more than 100 acres and has become the final resting place for many notable citizens, including Mariah Moore (daughter of city founder Robert Moore), WKU’s first president Henry Hardin Cherry, and cake mix magnate Duncan Hines.

The Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library recently received a donation of an early cash book for Fairview Cemetery.  Spanning the years 1871 through 1897, the well-worn book records transactions for lots and supplies, and for the manual labor required to maintain the cemetery — planting flowers, sodding and, of course, digging graves.  Alongside regular lot purchases appear payments from the sheriff for “paupers graves” as well as expenses for “reinterring,” reflecting the decision of some families to transfer their loved ones’ remains from Pioneer Cemetery and elsewhere.

Coincidentally, among some stereographic photo cards recently donated to the Special Collections Library are two 1880s images of the cemetery, showing a general view as well as the Confederate Monument, dedicated in 1876.  These photos and the cash book recall a time when Fairview Cemetery was only a few decades old, yet well on its way to becoming Bowling Green’s “city of the dead.”

Click here to access a finding aid for the Fairview Cemetery cash book.  For other collections relating to cemeteries, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

Deed to Fairview Cemetery lot, 1878 (McElroy Collection)

Deed to Fairview Cemetery lot, 1878 (McElroy Collection)

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by | October 17, 2013 · 7:45 pm

A Thinking Man Laments

Jason Wiltse and his diary

Jason Wiltse and his diary

“Another Christmas Day has come. . . .  One year ago today we were at Bowling Green Kentucky and at picket duty,” noted Jason Wiltse in his diary on December 25, 1863.  A corporal with the 23rd Michigan Infantry, 20-year-old Wiltse had spent the past year on a tour of duty that took him through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.  On his long marches, he observed the weather, local geography, timber, crops, road conditions, and the fortunes of his fellow soldiers as they endured heat, cold and dust, and skirmished with the Confederates.

Crossing from Clinton County, Kentucky into Tennessee, Wiltse found himself marching through the Cumberland Mountains over rough roads before arriving at Jamestown, “mostly desolate & forsaken.”  Approaching London, Tennessee, his company “commenced drawing rations of green corn, 3 ears per day for a man.”  But he wrote with satisfaction in September that “East Tennessee, long considered impenetrable by any considerable force, has been penetrated by a large army, with wagon trains and artillery, and the country is now in our possession and the loyal inhabitants relieved of the tyranny of a desperate enemy.”

The enemy, of course, was not quite vanquished, and in November 1863, Wiltse wrote, “we halted to give them battle” at Campbell’s Station.  Enduring a “murderous fire,” he and his men “lay flat upon the ground for a long time,” the attack “sending some of our comrades to eternity”: one shot through the shoulder “and probably through the heart,” another through the cheek, and another wounded in the left knee, requiring an amputation the next day.  They withdrew from the field “obliged to leave the dead unburied, though not unmourned.”  Wiltse found the battle “a terrible example of the mad passions of man,” a sight to “make a thinking man lament more deeply, if possible, the terrible condition of a once happy country.”

Corporal Jason Wiltse’s diary, recently donated to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library, is available to interested researchers.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more Civil War collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 10, 2013 · 3:50 pm

“The Best Known Little Folks”

P. T. Barnum and Tom Thumb wedding party, 1863; Tom Thumb wedding, Bowling Green, 1905

P. T. Barnum and Tom Thumb wedding party, 1863; Tom Thumb wedding, Bowling Green, 1905

Born in 1838 in Connecticut, Charles Sherwood Stratton stopped growing at about 6 months of age.  He had what today is termed proportionate dwarfism; that is, he was normal and healthy except for his exceptionally diminutive stature.  Although he experienced minor growth spurts later in life, he was a mere 3 feet 4 inches tall at his death in 1883.

Under the tutelage of master showman P.T. Barnum, Stratton turned his natural talents into a show business career that brought him wealth and worldwide celebrity.  Beginning at age 5, he travelled the U.S., Europe and Australia as “General Tom Thumb,” delighting the public with songs, dances and impersonations.  For his 1844 tour of Europe, Barnum introduced a hugely popular accessory: a small carriage, drawn by miniature ponies.

Collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library show that, like audiences everywhere, Kentuckians were fascinated when the “fabulous midget” (a term now considered pejorative) came to their town.  In an 1850 letter to his wife, William K. Wall of Harrison County asked her to tell his son Dick that he had seen Tom Thumb and his scaled-down conveyance: “He is 18 years old, 2 feet 4 inches high & weights 15 pounds,” wrote Wall (Barnum had added several years to his star’s age).  “His carriage body is about as big as a corn basket and carriage horses the size of sheep and his driver not larger than Dick.”  In 1853, 10-year-old Lizzie Edmunds wrote her grandmother from Princeton, Kentucky about her introduction to the little General: “he is only eighteen inches high and is very pretty, he kissed me and [another] little girl; I saw his little carriage and two little black horses about the size of a dog.”

In 1863, Tom Thumb further captivated the nation when he married Lavinia Warren, a 2-foot-8-inch-tall Barnum troupe member and former schoolteacher, in a lavish ceremony capped by a reception at the Lincoln White House.  Their marriage inspired the phenomenon of “Tom Thumb weddings”–mock nuptials, often to raise money for charity, in which children played all the roles.  One such event took place in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1905, when young Margie Mitchell “wed” Jessie Sweitzer before a large crowd at the Southern Normal School’s Vanmeter Hall.  Whether or not these toddlers behaved as well as their role models, the “best known little folks of the city,” as the local paper termed them, were given a chance to experience the unique fame of General and Mrs. Tom Thumb.

Click on the links to access finding aids for the relevant collections.  For more of our collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 2, 2013 · 1:03 pm

The Economics of War

Henry McLean's commutation money receipt, 1864

Henry McLean’s commutation money receipt, 1864

“A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” was the often-heard complaint of military draftees during the Vietnam War.  But the cry was also raised during the Civil War, after the Enrollment Act, passed in March 1863, established a quota system for drafting men into the Union Army from each Congressional district.

The most unpopular parts of this unpopular law were its exemptions, and in particular the provisions allowing draftees to procure a substitute, or simply to avoid service by paying the government a $300 fee.  The logic behind “commutation” money was that it would not only raise funds for the war effort but keep the cost of hiring a substitute below what it cost to exempt oneself entirely.  Still, the fee (equivalent to about $5,500 today) was no small sum for the farmers, laborers and clerks who found themselves called to war.

Nevertheless, when Henry J. McLean was drafted on May 13, 1864, he quickly paid over his $300 at Owensboro, Kentucky and was issued a receipt which, according to section 13 of the Enrollment Act, discharged him from further liability under the draft.  He might have considered himself lucky, for in July the federal government eliminated the commutation fee option, effectively removing the ceiling on the price of a substitute to serve in a draftee’s place.

Henry J. McLean’s commutation money receipt is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For other collections relating to compulsory military service, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | September 20, 2013 · 2:44 pm

“Conditions Could Not Be Worse”

Mary Leiper; Louisville flood scene

Mary Leiper; Louisville flood scene

As the Colorado rainwaters recede, we remember that Kentuckians are no strangers to floods.  One of the worst occurred early in 1937, when record rainfall swelled the Ohio River from Pennsylvania to Illinois.  Louisville, Kentucky, where the river eventually crested at 57 feet above flood stage, was one of many communities to suffer severe damage.

In the face of the growing disaster, Mary Taylor Leiper (1885-1973), a librarian at WKU, left Bowling Green with a motorcade of about 200 other cars to help evacuate Louisville residents made homeless by the flood.  In a letter to President Henry Hardin Cherry’s wife Bess, she vividly described what she encountered.  Arriving in Louisville, she was directed to a spot at the water’s edge where rescue workers pulled up in a boat and deposited in her car an 84-year-old man and his nurse.  Clutching his little Boston bulldog, the man was grateful for having survived three days in a house surrounded by water–and, Leiper’s nose told her, more than a week without a bath.

Leiper witnessed the grim conditions in the refugee centers: no heat or light, little water, and “shanties” set up in the middle of the street and connected to sewer lines to serve as toilets.  Finally, she set out for Bowling Green carrying “four lovely people,” a couple and their grown son and daughter.  At the end of the four-hour drive, Leiper took them to a church for food and coffee, then to the Armory for beds, the gymnasium at WKU having already been filled to capacity.

As she was leaving, Leiper described running into four other refugees, “old maid sisters” who, despite the circumstances, proved to be “the most attractive and interesting people” she had met in a long time.  She put them up in her own house for the next two days, where the women related harrowing stories of moving from place to place as the flood waters rose.  But they also made their hostess laugh as they told of watching two soldiers struggle to lift a 325-lb. woman into a truck, and of agreeing that if “Christ was not too good to be born in a manger,” then surely they could accept transportation in a railroad boxcar.  “I can never tell of the joy that we all got during the time these women were with me,” Leiper wrote, marveling at their courage and sense of humor.

Along with many other citizens of Bowling Green, Leiper spent days serving food, obtaining clothes (the four sisters helped alter some of her late husband’s suits to fit the two men she had taken to the Armory), and arranging for hot baths.  But her experiences with Louisville’s flood victims taught her that “there is a funny side to it all as well as a tragic one.”

Mary Leiper’s letter is available in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more on the Ohio River flood of 1937 and other Kentucky floods, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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