United States History Commons^™

Bowman, Johnston & Company - New York, New York (Sc 2853), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2853. Letter, 1 July 1840, of Bowman, Johnston & Company, New York, to P. W. Vaughan and Son, Greensburg, Kentucky commenting on the tobacco market; also letter, 20 November 1840 with particulars of a recent sale of 35 hogsheads of tobacco on account.

Mammoth Cave National Park Association - Land Acquisition (Mss 503), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 503. Records related to the formation of the Mammoth Cave National Park Association and the acquisition of certain lands for Mammoth Cave National Park. Includes deeds, title abstracts, summaries of land acquisition, correspondence, and financial records. Click "Additional Files" below for an acreage map (Box 2, Folder 11).

Jfk Memory Project At Wku (Mss 491), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and full text of remembrances (Click on Additional Files), photographs, and oral history interviews for Manuscripts Collection 491. Materials collected during a commemorative project related to a campaign visit John F. Kennedy made to Bowling Green, Kentucky in October 1960 and to his November 1963 assassination. The core of the collection is a set of remembrances that were sent into the Department of Library Special Collections, WKU about both events. Other items include oral history interviews (8), photos (36), contemporary news clippings as well as clippings about the project, a scrapbook of post-assassination clippings, and assorted other ephemera …

Mt. Vernon United Baptist Church Of Christ - Butler County, Kentucky (Mss 507), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 507. Minutes, financial reports, membership lists, articles of incorporation, deeds, etc. for Mt. Vernon United Baptist Church of Christ in Butler County, Kentucky, now Mt. Vernon Missionary Baptist Church.

Steen Family Papers (Mss 502), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 502. Correspondence, deeds, receipts, family photographs and business and personal papers of the Steen family, principally Isaac Newton Steen, his son Thomas W. Steen, and Thomas’s family, of Barren and Monroe counties in Kentucky.

Infectious Diseases, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides information about the role of infectious diseases in the early years of U.S. History, with particular emphasis on how they impacted injuries sustained in military conflict.

Trade, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of analysis of U.S. foreign trade policy during the early decades of the country's history. Examines bilateral U.S. trade relations with France and Great Britain, provides import and export statistics, details on commodities and products imports and exported, trade statistics, and information on the political and economic factors shaping U.S. trade during this period.

Coastal Defenses, U.S., Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides an overview of U.S. military coastal defenses during the period up to and including the War 1812.

Revenue, U.S. Government, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of U.S. Government revenue receipts and spending during the early years of national history. Presents revenue generation statistics, information on revenue sources, and information on domestic and international political and economic factors affecting government revenue receipts.

New York Stock Exchange, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of the origins and early development of the New York Stock Exchange.

A Time To Remember U.S. Rise As A World Power, Ian A. Isherwood

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

This summer marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. In the United States, the war has been long eclipsed by the other great conflicts straddling it - the Civil War and Second World War - and as a result has been unfairly pushed to the margins in our national memory.

My hope is that the First World War's centennial, starting this summer and ending in 2018, will be an opportunity for Americans to break out of our intellectual isolationism and discover again a conflict that not only transformed world history, but also America's place within it. …

In Their Footsteps, In Their Words: Special Section, 1964-2013

Colby Magazine

Civil rights, the Vietnam War, end of fraternities—Colby explores the past 50 years.

Pohanka Reflection: Special Collections & Archives, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, Bryan G. Caswell

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The reading room of Gettysburg College’s Special Collections is one of those singular spaces where the denizens of academe encounter the uninitiated yet insatiably curious members of that nebulous group known as the public. Indeed, many summer afternoons on the fourth floor of Musselman Library witness researchers diligently pouring over primary source material and rare books while intrigued visitors study the numerous displays of artifacts with equal dedication. While my duties in Special Collections are mostly confined to working with the collections themselves, I have upon occasion received the opportunity to observe our visitors as they interact with the history …

The Definitive History Of Marco: The Mascot Of Marshall University, Katherine Endicott

Marshall History

Marshall University has a long and unique history, but perhaps the most endearing custom of the institution rests in its furry friend, Marco, the school’s mascot. Initially nicknamed the ‘Big Green’, Marshall’s idea of a mascot did not come to fruition until Huntington sportswriter Duke Ridgley coined the phrase the ‘Thundering Herd’ in 1925. Later in the same year, football coach Charles ‘Trusty’ Tallman guided Marshall to its first win of the season. Headlines everywhere read ‘Trusty Tallman’s Thundering Herd.' The headlines, along with Zane Grey’s hit novel The Thundering Herd, popularized the term within the community. As such, …

A Carriage Ride From Home, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Elias Sheads Jr. worked in his father's shop. They made wagons and coaches, some of the bedrock laborers in Gettysburg's society. In 1860, when census taker Aaron Sheely walked the streets of the borough counting heads and recording in vivid detail what Gettysburg looked like, Elias lived with his mother and father. [excerpt]

One Year On: A Glorious Frightening Fourth, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

When in the Course of human events...

In the mottled shade of Culp's Hill's trees, Dr. Charles Horner read the words of the Declaration of Independence clear and loud. A year earlier, rebel troops surged past his home on Chambersburg Street chasing soldiers flying the flag of the United States crafted by that document. Cannon fire reverberated off of the walls of his home. And this morning, a year on, cannon fire again echoed off his walls. But today it was a salute fired atop Cemetery Hill. America was preserved.

We hold these truths to be self-evident... [excerpt]

Spiller, Cora Jane (Morningstar), 1928-2020 - Collector (Sc 2852), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2852. Letter to Cora Jane Spiller, 29 April 2014, from Ronnie Doyle, Park City, Kentucky, with reminiscences about Ford's Farm and Ford's Farm Cave in Barren County, Kentucky.

One Year On: New Gettysburgians, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

It's been one year since freedom was preserved on a black man's farm. It's been one year since the rebel charge of men from North Carolina and Virginia crashed against Abraham Brien's stone wall and were repelled, since men from South Carolina and Maryland found their best laid plans for independence dashed upon the rocks of Emancipation and American Liberty. [excerpt]

O'Er Silent Fields, Bryan G. Caswell

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Followers of the Compiler may remember a piece I wrote in the early autumn of 2013 on the last stand of the 16th Maine Regiment of Volunteer Infantry on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. As I am living in Gettysburg this summer while I work as a Brian C. Pohanka intern in Gettysburg College’s Special Collections, I of course could not miss the chance to hike up to the location of that stand on Oak Ridge to pay tribute to those boys from Maine. [excerpt]

Miller, Russell Hale, 1905-1968 (Mss 498), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 498 and full text of "Shakertown Revisited" (click on "Additional File" below). Working copies of scripts for two plays, “This Fair Land” and “Shakertown” by Russell Miller, a faculty member of WKU’s Department of Speech and Theater. Also includes working copies of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Herbert Kanzell and “The Boor” by Anton Chekhov, two plays that were staged by Miller.