This rare newsletter, The Kentucky Club Woman: Official Organ of the State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs is representative of the collection focus of Special Collections Library. We hold materials that are either irreplaceable or unusually rare and valuable. We also maintain items in a secure location with environmental controls to preserve the items for posterity. This newsletter was produced by the Kentucky State Association of Colored Women’s Clubs which was organized in 1903. They boasted a membership of 2,500 women in 112 clubs. The Kentucky clubs specialized in “fostering day nurseries, hospitals, old folks homes; homes for delinquent girls, building club houses and community centers.” We are the only holding library for this issue. Find this and other one-of-a-kind items by using the One Search box, TopScholar and KenCat.
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Food is one of the necessities of life. It is no surprise that Library Special
Collections—which documents the Commonwealth’s culture—has quite a few items
related to food. To celebrate this culinary
material, an exhibit titled “Food, Glorious Food!” has been installed in the
Jackson Gallery, on the second floor of the Kentucky Building. The exhibit will run through June 26.
Our exhibit panel features a photograph from Library Special Collections of a big cookout held at the top of WKU’s hill in 1915.
Each case within the exhibit represents different aspects of
Kentucky’s culinary heritage. Chief
amongst the cases is one that highlights the collection’s cookbooks. In 2003 the Kentucky Library was the
beneficiary of a large number of cookbooks from the estate of Jeanne (Leach)
Moore, a Morgantown native. This
collection included over 1,500 titles that were added to the collection. This was expanded significantly with a gift
from Albert Schmid a few years later.
Without a doubt, Library Special Collections boasts one of Kentucky’s most
significant cookbook collections. This case
features the variety of cookbooks found in the collection ranging from an 1823
early-American cookbook to children’s guides to cookery. Because of the depth of this collection, cookbooks
are used throughout the exhibit.
Walgreen’s menu, ca. 1944.
Another focal case features menus from restaurants across
the state, ranging from dime store soda fountain menus to those from fine
Louisville restaurants. These items are
cultural treasures, as they share fares available at various food
establishments, costs of items, logos and trademarks, and colorful
graphics. This case also includes examples
of matchbooks, once a ubiquitous give-away at restaurants, postcards, and
business cards.
A toy stove that once belonged to Marjorie Claggett. Courtesy of Kentucky Museum
One case includes material related to stoves and ranges. Generally a stove uses coal or wood for a fire source, and a range uses electricity or gas. This case features cookbooks from several appliance companies, photographs of these appliances, and promotional material issued by various manufacturers. Included is a photograph of the showroom of the Louisville Tin & Stove Company which shows many of the company’s wares on display. Also included is a catalog from the same company which indicates the great array of stoves and other items produced by this concern. The last two items were donated by Pam Elrod. The highlight of this case is a miniature toy stove donated by Marjorie Claggett and appears courtesy of the Kentucky Museum.
Other cases feature images and publications from Western Kentucky University food science classes and other campus food related activities; labels and other items of food packaging; material highlighting some Kentucky food specialties such as cream candy, Hot Browns, derby pie, and mint juleps; and large posters and photographs that document certain aspects of food in the Commonwealth.
A rare and apparently unrecorded broadside, recently acquired by the Department of Library Special Collections, describes a public meeting in Hickman, Kentucky. From this meeting, a committee of five men were appointed to approach the Kentucky legislature about the creation of a state tobacco warehouse. They wanted to “memorialize” or remind the Legislature of the heavy charges which are imposed at New Orleans and present Hickman, KY as an alternative. Hickman, they note is a desirable location that is easily navigable all year round. They record that Hickman’s shipments for the year, 1846 are: 3000 hogshead of tobacco, almost 20,000 bushels of wheat and 1350 bales of cotton. Senator Thomas James presented to the Kentucky Senate this memorial for the people of Hickman and Fulton County. Hickman, the county seat of Fulton County, is situated on the Mississippi River in western Kentucky’s Jackson Purchase region. There is no evidence, in later Senate journals that the Legislature chose Hickman as a state shipping center. However, tobacco, cotton, timber, and other products were shipped both by rail and by steamboat from Hickman and it gained increasing prominence as a transportation center.
The “Great Experiment” began on January 17, 1920, the day the Volstead Act took effect in the United States. Better known as Prohibition, it banned the production, sale and transport of “intoxicating liquors” and instantly turned many thirsty Americans into outlaws. Thanks to an enterprising Iowa whiskey maker, it’s now designated as “National Bootlegger’s Day.” Even better, it’s also the birthday of Al Capone, boss of the “Chicago outfit” of gangsters who made his name in the bootlegging business.
The history and folklore of bootlegging and moonshining (or, as we more delicately catalog it, “illicit distilling”) is well represented in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections. In addition to books and historic photographs, research projects created by students are housed in the Folklife Archives. For example:
A 1970 paper by Mike Harmon profiled the moonshiners “Google” and “Red.” Both took pride in the quality of their homemade whiskey, although Google, who never drank, professed to be much better at his craft than Red, who did. A commercial fisherman, Red set up his still on the Ohio River and transported his materials there by boat. He recalled fishing on the river one day and glimpsing as many as a dozen working stills along its banks.
A 1972 paper by Virginia Antonini gave a portrait of “Jim,” an Indiana farmer who made moonshine to supplement his income. While running some of the moonshine to a farmer’s market in Louisville, his wife was stopped by the “revenue men,” but talked her way out of trouble by explaining that selling “shine” was the only way she could buy shoes for her children. Virginia also talked to her own mother, who recalled making “home brew” from malt, water, sugar and yeast, and learned of the technique of a Louisville restaurateur who added food coloring to moonshine to pass it off as aged whiskey.
A 1972 paper by Joe Griggs profiled E. Y. (“Uncle Yegi”) Hurt of Todd County, Kentucky. Living in a house built on blocks allowed him to set up a still underneath, accessible though a hole in the floor of his dining room (the same room where the preacher came for dinner). He also told of Prohibition-era bootleggers, such as the woman arrested in a car with 60 gallons of whiskey. The confiscated evidence was “put in the basement of the Court House where it mysteriously evaporated” before the trial.
A 1994 paper by Michelle Jackson included an interview of Clay County, Tennessee sheriff Jerry Rhoton. Interestingly, he observed that illegal stills in his jurisdiction were now more likely to be dismantled and preserved than destroyed, and some were even put on display during civic celebrations as part of the region’s heritage—a testament to the interest in moonshining of folklorists and students of material culture. Like other student writers, Jackson also outlined the process of distilling, a low-tech enterprise that required only “a few barrels, some corn mash, sugar, copper tubing, yeast, and a fresh water supply.”
Click on the links to access finding aids for these materials. For other resources about distilling (legal and illegal) and Prohibition, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.
In the pocket notebook of William Henry Gough (1826-1910) were many of the things that occupied the mind of a young man: money matters, his lessons at Mt. Merino Seminary in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, and later his duties as a surveyor and sheriff of Meade County. But given its intricacies, he also devoted two pages to the workings of “Love’s Telegraph,” the rules regarding transmission of one’s intentions in matters of courtship and romance. Most valuable was the way one could avoid any need to explain oneself in words–those awkward stammerings, repeated entreaties, apologies, and other messy emotional declarations that go with the business of finding (or avoiding) a potential mate. Here was the tutorial:
If a gentleman wants a wife he wears a ring on the first
finger of the left hand, if he be engaged he wears it on the second finger, if
married on the third and on the fourth if he never intends to be married.
When a lady is not engaged she wears a hoop or diamond on
her first finger; if engaged on her second, if married on the third and on the
fourth if she intends to die a maid.
When a gentleman presents a fan a flower or a trinket to a lady with the left hand on his part and overtures of regard should she receive it with the left hand it is considered as an acceptance of his esteem but if with the right it is considered as a refusal of the offer.
Thus by a few simple tokens explained by rule the passions
of love are expressed and through the medium of the Telegraph the most timid
and diffident man may without difficulty communicate his sentiments of regard
for a lady and in case his offer should be refused avoid expressing the
mortification of explicit refusal.
For many travelers, the first step of a journey involves navigating a busy airport. During World War II, passengers faced additional stress when civilian air travel took a back seat to military priorities. This was doubly true for airline employees, who coped with challenges that went far beyond the ordinary joys of dealing with the public.
One such employee was 25-year-old Kate Hopkins, an American Airlines ticket agent in 1943 at Detroit’s City Airport. Her letters to boyfriend Thomas Tichenor, a Kentuckian serving in the Navy, give us a unique perspective on wartime air travel through the eyes of a clever and observant young woman.
Kate often found herself on the overnight shift–an assignment that, while wearying, gave her an opportunity to use her people-watching skills. After one such night, she wrote poignantly to Thomas about “the little sailor and his girl who sat locked in each others arms for a full forty minutes before his flight left, while his mother very quietly sat beside him, waiting to bid him good-by; about the little girl–she couldn’t have been much more than nineteen–who was going out alone to meet her husband, a Ferry pilot, in Spokane–and her family who came to see her off.” When the flight was announced, “her Father said ‘Well Ruthie–’ with all the pride and eloquence and love that only a Father could put into those two words, because what else could he say?”
Ferry pilots–members of the Air Transport Command, largely made up of civilians who flew aircraft from manufacturing plants to training facilities and ports for shipment overseas–were frequent airport patrons. Some of them, Kate observed, “are nice–others tough–some, surprisingly young and all very interesting.” One of them “came in last nite with an enormous plush Easter bunny–its long white ears protruding from a paper sack–He’d brought it back from Wilmington for his little girl.”
Kate grew accustomed to watching irritated Ferry pilots call the nearby base to complain when their ground transportation was not waiting. On other occasions, she became the object of customer ire. Determining that a passenger was too drunk to fly, she feared “he was going to hit me” when she declined to ticket him. She “finally eased him away from the counter” by inviting him to spend his unscheduled six-hour layover trying “some black coffee at the airport restaurant–that I knew was vile enough to cure or kill him.”
On still other occasions, the drama escalated. In the middle of one night, Kate received a message asking to have a cab waiting for an incoming flight “to take a Lieutenant and his eleven day old premature baby to Ann Arbor.” To her disgust, she could find no driver interested in the life-and-death mission unless they could also find a paying fare for the 40-mile return trip. As negotiations continued, the plane landed and “the captain himself escorted the Lieutenant and the baby, which he was carrying in a cardboard carton not much larger than a shoe box, to the cab.” The captain also grew furious with the cab driver, “especially when he’d flown at 2,000 feet all the way from Buffalo because every time he went higher the baby turned blue. . . . We finally got things arranged,” Kate reported, “to no one’s satisfaction.”
More often than not, however, Kate maintained her equilibrium. After checking in a line of difficult customers, she ticketed a young corporal who “was on an emergency furlough trying to get to San Francisco to see his six months old son who he’d never seen.” The baby was sick, as was his wife, exhausted from trying to run their ranch and summer camp by herself. But the soldier never lost his smile, and “was such a big person about it all,” wrote Kate, “that I felt awfully silly after all the minor irritations I’d had that day.”
“Incoming mail censored shall be opened by clipping with scissors on the shorter side of the envelope.”
Every special collections library that holds war materials has them: soldiers’ letters vaguely addressed from “somewhere in France” or “somewhere in the Pacific.” They might also show more revealing words or lines deftly excised with a sharp blade, and their envelopes may bear a stamp indicating that the contents have been inspected prior to delivery to waiting parents, wives or sweethearts. The reason, of course, was that the letters were censored to keep potentially valuable intelligence from falling into the hands of the enemy.
During World War II, the task of censor fell to Calhoun,
Kentucky’s Thomas Tichenor after he entered the Navy and received his officer’s
commission in 1942. As a convoy
communications officer, he was handed the censor’s stamp and a lengthy booklet
of regulations governing both outgoing and incoming military mail.
Tom Tichenor, Navy censor
Under the regulations, Navy personnel were permitted to send mail in six ways: by letter; “urgent letter” (an expedited communication arising out of an emergency); V-mail (short for “Victory mail,” in which specially designed letter sheets were microfilmed to save space and the reduced images printed out and delivered to the recipient); post cards; Navy post cards (with preprinted, pre-authorized text and fill-in-the-blanks options); and Parcel Post. Most of the censorship rules were easily justified: no photographs of a military character; no writing in a foreign language; no details of ship locations or strength of forces, munitions and equipment; no disclosure of casualties ahead of the official publication of same; no detailed meteorological data; and no criticisms of the “morale of the collective or individual armed forces of the United States or her allies.” Other communication restrictions barred the keeping of diaries and the transmittal of personal recordings to or from Navy personnel.
The regulations also provided detailed instructions to censors tasked with inspection of the mail. Outgoing mail came to the censor unsealed, but incoming mail was to be “opened by clipping with scissors on the shorter side of the envelope.” All mail was to be read with an eye to prohibited content, with additional attention paid to the possibility of “secret writing”—even to a message written underneath the stamp—or “any unusual sign which might be a prearranged signal for a secret message.” Other things to watch for: differing ink colors; seemingly “pointless” content; traces of liquids or pastes to be harvested for invisible ink; and code in the form of letters, numbers, drawings, indentations or pinpricks above, below or through the writing. Photographs, of course, came in for the same scrutiny; nevertheless, the regulations advised, “Censors should use care in suppressing private prints, particularly in view of their value as keepsakes to personnel.” In addition to shears and razor blades, the weapons available to the censor included ink, prepared according to a special formula, for obliterating unacceptable content. Censoring ink, however, was to be used “only where deemed particularly advisable for casual indiscretions” in letters home.
The Warren County Fair has always been a great time to gather for fun, competition and education. Despite being in the throes of war in 1918, the Fair Board decided to continue the tradition in the first full week of September that year. To take advantage of the large number of visitors to the fair, the local Red Cross chapter petitioned the Fair Association for permission to serve meals to the crowds. The money raised would benefit the Red Cross’ war efforts, and the ladies were determined to raise $10,000 via this effort. The patriotic rhetoric was thick: “When we stop and think that all the money that is made in this way goes to the aid of wounded boys who are fighting for us, we will not do out bit , but our VERY BEST for them.”
A World War I poster advertising the Red Cross.
Bettie (Robertson) Hagerman assumed chairmanship of the endeavor. In order to provide the food necessary for the four-day event, Hagerman divided the city proportionately by major streets and appointed a street chairman for each area. Although we don’t have the aggregate figures for each type of food item, we do have several forms filled out by the street chairmen. The image below shows the contributions recorded by street chairman Mrs. B.S. White from Woodford Street: 8 fried chickens, 14 dozen tomatoes, 10.5 dozen eggs, five bowls of salads (tuna fish or pimento and cheese), 2 pounds of ham, $8.20 in cash to buy bread, 5 dozen lemons, 4 pans of potatoes, and 1 pound of sugar. It’s pretty obvious that the canteen was going to serve lemonade as the meal’s beverage.
The reply sheet from the Woodford Street Chairman which indicated what they would provide for the effort.
Each of the twenty-five street chairmen was encouraged to get everyone on the street to donate “whether they are Red Cross members or not. Remember, if we give till it hurts, that is small, for the boys “Over There” are giving their all.” We don’t know if the ladies were successful in their effort to raise $10,000, but these preparation documents certainly indicate that they were determined. To see other collections containing information about the Red Cross or World War I search KenCat or TopSCHOLAR.
My name is Hannah Hudson, and this
fall, I have had the privilege of being the fourth Dr. Delroy and Patricia Hire
intern in the Department of Library Special Collections. I am a sophomore at
WKU, majoring in Cultural Anthropology and minoring in Folk Studies. I have
always enjoyed learning about local history and the importance of rural
communities in the development of the southeastern United States. When the head
of my department mentioned this internship to me, I knew it would be the
perfect opportunity to develop my professional skills. Throughout my time as an
intern in Special Collections, I have worked on projects from Monroe County,
Kentucky, Allen County, Kentucky and Macon County, Tennessee.
Kentucky Governor Louie B. Nunn presents the Commonwealth’s first personalized congressional license plate to Congressman Tim Lee Carter, March 1969.
One project I have worked on this
semester involves sorting, scanning, and categorizing photographs from the Tim
Lee Carter Collection. Dr. Tim Lee Carter was from Monroe County, Kentucky, and
he served eight terms (1965-1981) as a U.S. Representative for Kentucky’s Fifth
Congressional District. Due to my interest in visual anthropology, it has been
very interesting for me to see how Carter’s work as a public servant was
documented through these photos. I also gained practical experience while
working with this collection as I learned about the process of cataloging in
Past Perfect, a widely-used collections archiving database. The work that I
have done on this collection will aid in the curation of an exhibit celebrating
Monroe County’s Bicentennial in 2020.
Another project I completed was
transcribing the 1850
and 1860
slave censuses from Monroe County, Kentucky to make them accessible on
TopScholar. This was a particularly significant project to me because I feel
that a lot of valuable information is contained in these records. The slave
census gives insight into the early history of Monroe County and the significance
of enslaved people in its development. I learned a great deal from this
project, and it sparked many questions that led me to look deeper into the
county’s history. Not only do the records give information on slave owners, but
they also give information on the age-sex distribution of slaves and the ways
in which they were classified in that time period.
I also researched my hometown of
Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee and wrote a historical overview
that is available on TopScholar. Red Boiling Springs borders the
Tennessee-Kentucky line and is known for the several types of mineral waters
that flow throughout the city. The medicinal properties of the springs once
attracted visitors from all over the country and created a booming resort
industry in the small town. I am passionate about preserving the history of Red
Boiling Springs, and I have done independent research on it for over a year
now. I am grateful that I had the opportunity and support from Library Special
Collections to publish information on this small but significant community.
Dr. Delroy Hire, WKU Alumni from Pensacola, FL, visiting with Hannah Hudson, 2019 Hire Intern.
Throughout my time as an intern with Special Collections, I have gained experiences that will be valuable in my future such as scanning, writing, and cataloging in Past Perfect. Most importantly, I have learned how to use library and archival resources for research. I also learned so much about myself and the Kentucky and Tennessee counties that have influenced my life. I am grateful for the sponsorship of Dr. Delroy Hire and the opportunities that this internship has opened up for me. Any student who is interested in the Hire Internship can contact Department Head Jonathan Jeffrey by phone at (270) 745-5265 or by email at jonathan.jeffrey@wku.edu.
“Someone sent me ‘Beauchampe,’” wrote Sallie McElroy in her
journal on October 26, 1857. The
anonymous gift she was referring to was a book by William Gilmore Simms—a
reboot, actually, of his 1842 work Beauchampe;
or the Kentucky Tragedy: A Tale of Passion.
Ann Cook
The volume was a novelized version of a true story that began on November 7, 1825, with the fatal stabbing of a man in Frankfort, Kentucky. The victim, former state attorney general Solomon P. Sharp, had allegedly fathered a stillborn child whose mother, Ann Cook, was now living in seclusion near Bowling Green. Sharp, however, had not only denied paternity but had shockingly claimed that the child had been of mixed race. The disgraced Ann then fell in with Jeroboam O. Beauchamp, a young law student 15 years her junior, married him, and convinced him to kill Sharp to avenge her honor. Just before Beauchamp was to hang for the crime on July 7, 1826, he and Ann attempted a double suicide in the jailhouse, but only she succeeded. They were buried together in an “eternal embrace,” as they had requested.
Beauchampe was a
rather unusual gift for 23-year-old Sallie, then teaching at a female academy in Bowling Green and boarding under the
rather Puritanical eye of its headmistress.
As Sallie knew, tradition demanded that women be shielded from such
scandal lest it send them to the fainting couch, or worse, to a life corrupted
by the taste of forbidden knowledge. One
of her male friends, in fact, seems to have had her debating the wisdom of
opening the book’s cover.
Sallie McElroy
But she did not hesitate for long. Well-read, wryly observant, and Bible-literate enough to slice and dice the sermons of local clergymen, Sallie understood the double standard behind such male hand-wringing. “Yes, I will read it!” she wrote in her journal. “Men are extremely anxious to preserve uspure as saints—we must know nothing of the stream of pollution which ‘flows down our streets like a river’ for fear we shall be spattered a little by the spray as it dashes on in its headlong course!” True, there was the old saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise,” but a “man wrote that,” she observed, “& I’m suspicious of the wholeof‘em! At least in this instance, I had rather have the wisdom than the bliss, as dear old mother Eve chose before me!”
So read she did, and emerged unscathed. Disappointed in the style of the book and its divergence from generally accepted versions of the incident, Sallie nevertheless found it “a most thrilling tale.” She was somewhat forgiving of Ann Cook—“a most extraordinary woman” who fell victim to “pride & ambition” and whose relatives still lived in the area. But Beauchamp was “a ninny of a fellow,” his reason captive to his passion. Sharp, too, was “a monster.” The bottom line, she concluded, was that “All three met only a just fate.”
