Tag Archives: Education

by | April 4, 2019 · 8:34 am

“Get me some whisky”

“Do they miss me at home?” asked student Sarah Boyd

Students,

Exams and end-of-year assignments looming?  Roommates getting on your nerves?  Out of money?  Ready for a change of scenery?

Then pity Sarah Boyd, attending boarding school in Flemingsburg, Kentucky.  For Sarah, it was a matter of hanging on until the Christmas holiday, when she could escape home to Bath County.  Without telephones, Facebook, FaceTime and all the modern tools we have to bridge distance, Sarah was at her wit’s end, despite receiving some unusual care packages from home.  Here are some excerpts from her letters to her mother in the fall of 1865:

I am very mutch heart (hurt) to think that no one at home cares any thing about me I am hear and can not hear from home I (have) writen t(w)o leters this is thre(e) and have received no answer.

The first thing in the morning I have my bible class next my arithmetic and then recess and then Ph(y)siology and (w)riting then we have noon and then the first thing is Gramer (grammar) and then . . . science and then young ladies reader.

I am not dissatisfied with Mr. Turner (the schoolmaster) for him and Mrs. Turner is as good to me as they can be but there is some hateful girls at this Boardinghouse.

Mary Bats and Em Franklin quarled at me they are the hateful girls . . . (Em) has been trying to run over me ever since I have been here and I have took as much of her as I am a going to . . . Ma I wish you would make me some bit(t)ers and send me.  (G)et me some whisky and put some sasparela (sarsaparilla) in it. . . . Mrs. Turner is very kind to me but we do not have very good victiles (victuals).

Dear Ma I received your leter and was glad to hear from you . . . I am so glad you sent me that whisky for I kneed it.

I wish you would send me some money as I kneed some very bad to get stamps and I want to have my photographs taken to bring home . . . Ma that whisky has done me a great deal of good and there is not any of the girls knows I have it.

 Ma I want you to have something good to eat for me . . . I am growing impatient about going home.

Poor Sarah.  We can only hope that this lonesome and stressed 13-year-old (that’s right, 13) found her way back to the bosom of her family. 

A finding aid for Sarah’s letters can be accessed by clicking here.  For more collections housed in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections about Kentucky schools and their students through the generations, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | October 19, 2017 · 8:22 am

Education in the Archives

Green River Female College diploma

Green River Female College diploma

For October’s Kentucky Archives Month and its theme of “education,” the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections can boast of many collections documenting the work of teachers and schools in Kentucky.  We hold materials relating to WKU faculty such as Marjorie Clagett, Nelle Travelstead and Arndt Stickles, as well as distinguished educational administrators (and WKU alumni) like Chester Travelstead.  The classroom labors of many other teachers such as Erleen Joiner Rogers, Mary Woodrow Smith, Frances Hart and Dudley Whitmer are also represented in our collection.

We have previously blogged about several early schools in our area:  Cedar Bluff College, Franklin Female College, Smiths Grove College and St. Columba Academy.  A recent acquisition is an 1866 diploma from the Green River Female College of Bowling Green.  The diploma certifies Julia Woodburn Adams as a “Regular Graduate of the College,” having completed its course of study and “maintained during her connection with it a high moral character.”

Green River Female College, Bowling Green

Green River Female College, Bowling Green

Green River Female College was the child of Baptist minister Thomas H. Storts.  He initially held classes in a church basement, but after the Civil War he moved the school to a large house at 1253 State Street, where he and his small staff of teachers accepted both day and boarding students.  Unfortunately, Storts struggled financially and lost the school in 1877, only a year after receiving a formal charter of incorporation.  Then as now, education could be a costly endeavor for all involved.  Storts’s struggle to collect tuition (and the creativity of methods used to pay) was evident in the forbearance he gave the family of Lida, Mary, and Maggie Calvert, sisters who attended early in the 1870s.  Two years after they first enrolled, Storts had credited against his $308 account only $10 in cash and $28 worth of goods consisting of two counterpanes, two blankets and a set of silver spoons.  Before marrying and embarking on a career as a successful author, Lida Calvert went to work for Storts as a teacher in order to retire her younger sisters’ indebtedness.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more on schools, teachers and teaching, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | April 15, 2010 · 7:22 am

Southern Normal School

One of WKU’s five founding institutions was the Southern Normal School and Business College, generally referred to as the Southern Normal.  The teacher training school was founded by A.W. Mell and Tom Williams when they moved the Glasgow Normal School to Bowling Green in 1884.  The University Archives holds some administrative records, publications, class lists and photographs for the school.  An outline of sources and a finding aid are available online.  These are available to researchers in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room Monday – Saturday 9 – 4.

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