Category Archives: Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

by | June 25, 2010 · 7:27 am

Korean War Remembered

Vice President (and Kentuckian) Alben Barkley meets with Korean War amputees, May 1951. (Kentucky Library photo)

Vice President (and Kentuckian) Alben Barkley meets with Korean War amputees, May 1951. (Kentucky Library photo)

Sixty years ago today, on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea.  Two days later, President Harry Truman ordered U. S. military aid to the South Koreans and the United Nations Security Council recommended that its members do the same.  The ensuing conflict did not end until the signing of an armistice on July 27, 1953.  The war cost approximately 54,000 American lives.

Though sometimes called the “forgotten war,” the Korean War is well remembered in the manuscript collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Oral history projects conducted by WKU and Bowling Green’s Presbyterian Church include interviews with Korean War vets.  Other interviews feature Martin B. Schenck and General Barksdale Hamlett talking about their Korean War-era military service.  Letters from soldiers written during the conflict include those of Joe Stephens to WKU professor George V. Page, and those of Wayne Runner.  An honors thesis tells the story, with the aid of his letters, of Ernest Robertson, a young Russell County man killed in the war.

Find out more about our materials on the Korean War by searching TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | June 17, 2010 · 8:25 am

Find Kentucky Church Records Online

Church Records at WKU's Special Collections Library

Church Records at WKU’s Special Collections Library

Among the holdings of WKU’s Special Collections Library are records relating to scores of churches in Kentucky and even a few in other states.  These records typically include church constitutions and articles of faith, minutes of church meetings, and lists of pastors and members.  Membership lists can be helpful to genealogists because they may reveal the names of other family members, and sometimes include notations about baptism, marriage and death.  Lucky researchers might even discover extra tidbits of information about an ancestor–for example, a reprimand (or worse, expulsion from the flock) for poor attendance, fighting, gambling, profanity or adultery.

A new web page now allows researchers to gain easy access to information about our church records, and to download a finding aid from TopScholar, WKU’s digital repository, that describes the records in more detail.  The page will be updated whenever more records are donated or acquired.  Click here for a look.

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by | June 10, 2010 · 9:24 am

Kentuckians Remember D-Day

James A. Parrish, Sr., writes of D-Day

James A. Parrish, Sr., writes of D-Day

As another anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy passes, here are some memories of Kentuckians who fought on that historic day, and whose reminiscences are preserved at WKU’s Special Collections Library:

We were anchored 12 miles off shore . . . The sound was deafening.  It looked like a tornado from all the dust and smoke in the sky. — Ralph J. Glaser

I had land mines, supplies and men loaded on my truck . . . As I prepared to drive off the boat ramp, my truck stalled just before I got to shore and I had to be towed . . . I was deeply saddened as I looked upon the many American soldiers lying dead in shallow water on the beach . . . it was a shocking sight for a country farm boy who had grown up in the serene countryside of Daviess County. — Beverly Gilmore

It did not dawn on me until we were nearly on the sand that it was not raining.  What I had assumed to be rain hitting the water all around us was actually bullets fired from shore . . . Later I was taken along with the other wounded out to a hospital boat anchored off shore . . . they insisted upon putting me on a stretcher and strapping my arms to my sides.  They they . . . began to hoist me to the ship high above.  The rough seas caused the stretcher to swing out 10 to 15 feet from the ship’s sides.  I screamed awful things on the way up. — Bradley M. Green

We arrived at Utah Beach a little before dawn . . . Off shore with a rough sea running and in darkness, the assault waves climbed down landing nets into the bouncing landing crafts . . . Soon after hitting the beach, my foxhole buddy said, “Man, this is the real thing, isn’t it?” . . . He and I were approximately 20 yards apart at the time, and when I turned to respond, he was hit and killed by a large shell. — Russell C. Goddard

 

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by | June 4, 2010 · 1:07 pm

A Young Rebel from Breckinridge County

Bevie W. Cain, 1844-1883

Bevie W. Cain, 1844-1883

Bevie Cain was only sixteen when the Civil War broke out.  Over the next few years, however, the Breckinridge County, Kentucky schoolgirl took time from her studies and social life to express her increasingly partisan opinions about the conflict.

In a remarkable series of letters to her friend James M. Davis, Bevie warned him not to be too open about his Unionist sympathies.  “Not one word would I write to an abolitionist knowingly.  I would consider it an everlasting disgrace to myself,” warned the self-described rebel.  After the Emancipation Proclamation freed Southern slaves, Bevie asked James “how you can still be for Lincoln.”  The President’s acts as commander-in-chief drew further scorn.  “Lincoln does a great deal of mischief under cover of ‘military necessity,'” she observed.

But Bevie Cain could also turn an unsentimental eye on herself and her society.  She thought marriage a rather curious institution, often contracted for convenience above all else, and sometimes found the courtship strategies of her male friends tiresome.  In one of her more petulant moments, Bevie expected “to be a school marm, if my education is ever sufficient — if not I will live and die a happy ‘old maid’ hated by all and loving none in return.”  Clearly, Bevie was a rebel in other matters besides the Civil War.

A finding aid for Bevie Cain’s letters, available at WKU’s Special Collections Library, can be downloaded here.

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by | May 14, 2010 · 10:32 am

Mail Call !

Bert J. "Jay" Borrone, WKU Class of 1941

Bert J. “Jay” Borrone, WKU Class of 1941

In the extensive collections of war letters in WKU’s Special Collections Library, no expression is more common than the joy of a soldier who has received mail from home.  In April 1943, Corporal B. J. “Jay” Borrone, stationed in North Africa, wrote to Dorthie Hall, his former classmate at Western Kentucky State College, and vividly described the whirlwind of anticipation, exhilaration, and sometimes disappointment, known as “mail call”:

“The truck driver is pestered all day to go into regimental headquarters for the mail even tho all know that it is not finished being sorted until 4 p.m. . . .  Usually it is about 7 before they get back and no lynching mob in all its fury ever went after a victim like we go after that driver. . . . [F]inally someone grabs the bunch of letters and starts yelling off names.”  Those lucky enough to receive mail, Borrone continued, “go off into a corner and get that beatific look for hours while the other poor guys that didn’t get anything pretend (very poor pretending by the way) that they didn’t expect any anyhow.  Pretty soon the score is tabulated on just how many letter[s] each fellow got and the winner comes in for a lot of kidding.  Then the discarded envelopes are looked at and sniffed at for evidences of female traits and more kidding follows.”

It was 3 a.m. as Borrone wrote these words, but even at such a late hour and so far from home, he was looking forward to “the promise of a grand sunrise and a perfect day” — and, no doubt, the next mail call.

A finding aid for the Dorthie A. Hall collection of World War II letters can be downloaded here.

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by | May 7, 2010 · 7:10 am

Kent State 40 Years Ago

Peace symbol

Peace symbol

Edgar L. McCormick was an English professor at Kent State University when, on May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students demonstrating against the Vietnam War, killing four and wounding nine.  A month later, McCormick sent a letter to Julia Neal (1905-1995), then the director of WKU’s Kentucky Library.  “Strangers and lovers of alma mater, miles away, have seen this tragedy more clearly than many of us close enough to see the bayonets and hear the shots,” he wrote, noting the expressions of sympathy that had come from as far away as England.  The university had been closed to students, and McCormick and other faculty, though “permitted to enter the one unchained door to each building,” were “lonesome without them.”  After classes resumed in the summer, McCormick was saddened by the continuing turmoil: campus police “beefed up,” townspeople refusing to rent to students, and rumors that Kent State would be closed permanently.  “So it goes,” he mourned, “this lamentable confusion,” abetted by “little politicians.”  McCormick hoped that summer, with its outdoor concerts, gardening, and family activities, would offer some consolation.  “Meanwhile,” he wrote, closing his letter to Miss Neal, “Peace!”

A finding aid for the (Mary) Julia Neal papers in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections  can be downloaded by clicking here.

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by | April 30, 2010 · 12:43 pm

1855 Letter Ends Chapter of Family’s History

"I became sad and melancholly" - Winford G. Bailey

“I became sad and melancholly” – Winford G. Bailey

By the time old Elijah Bailey died in 1853 at his farm just north of Stanford, Kentucky, all but one of his children had dispersed to homes elsewhere.  It was left to 52-year-old Winford Green Bailey to settle his father’s affairs.  Elijah’s farm had been in the family for more than 50 years and the son had resolved to keep it going, but maintaining it along with his own property soon became too burdensome.  After two years, he regretfully decided to sell.

In a letter to his brother recently added to the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library, Bailey expressed his anguish at leaving the farm for the last time.  “I lingered a while alone in the yard,” he wrote, “and surveyed with my eye the old house, yard, garden, orchard and fields.”  He thought of “fond parents now no more, and beloved brothers and sisters, some of whom gone to the world of spirits, others alive but scattered in the world.”  Departing down the “old familiar lane,” Bailey turned once more to gaze on the family homestead, “soon to be occupied by strangers,” and reflected on the simple truth that “this is a changing world at best — it ever has been and ever will be so.”

A finding aid and typescript of Winford G. Bailey’s moving letter can be downloaded here.

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by | April 22, 2010 · 9:05 am

“Mrs. Kennedy is most grateful”

John F. Kennedy campaigns in Bowling Green, 1960

John F. Kennedy campaigns in Bowling Green, 1960

According to the publicity for a new book, Ellen Fitzpatrick’s Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation, in the first seven weeks after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, more than 800,000 letters to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy poured into the nation’s capital.  Over the next two years, the total grew to more than 1.5 million.

Although the volume of mail rendered it impossible for Mrs. Kennedy to reply personally, embossed acknowledgement cards, hand-addressed by a group of Washington women, were eventually mailed to her many sympathizers.

One of these cards, bearing John F. Kennedy’s coat of arms and a simple but elegant expression of gratitude, is held in the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  A finding aid and image of the card and envelope can be downloaded by clicking here.

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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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