United States History Commons^™

Houchin, W. M. (Lg 41), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and full scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Land Grant 41. Original land grant, 15 November 1871, by which Preston H. Leslie, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, granted to W.M. Houchin, W.B. Thompson, D.B. Curd, and H.F. Curd, assignees of John Maiden, 200 acres in Edmonson County, Kentucky.

Clinton, William Jefferson, B. 1946 (Sc 1267), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1267. Letter written to Bowling Green, Kentucky dentist Michael W. Howell by President Bill Clinton in response to Howell’s letter expressing concerns about Social Security.

Metcalfe County, Kentucky - Elections And Election Campaigns (Sc 1268), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1268. Unsigned letter, 5 November 1909, written to Bruce Taylor, East Fork, Kentucky, asking repayment of money loaned to Taylor for his unsuccessful political campaign.

Thompson, Douglas (Sc 1265), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1265. Paper, described as a report from “an average American Joe,” written by Douglas Thompson for a WKU history class. He writes about his interview with Joe Neil Blair, who recounted his experiences in the Vietnam War. Includes Blair’s service record and his Bronze Star citation.

Autographs - Political (Sc 1234), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1234. Autographs of Robert T. Lincoln as U.S. Secretary of War and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen as U.S. Secretary of State.

Buckeye Blood Waters The Longleaf Pines, John M. Rudy

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

In the woods south of Wilmington, men in blue uniforms moved forward in a loose skirmish line. They were probing, trying to find General Hoke's last line of defense. Brig. General Charles Paine sent the men forward to develop the enemy. But in the pine thicket ahead, in a thin, ragged line, the bedraggled rebel troops likely had more to fear than bullets as those skirmishers probed and prodded on a February day in 1865. [excerpt]

Ashland Oil & Refining Company - Ashland, Kentucky (Sc 2791), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2791. Orientation and information kit prepared by Ashland Oil & Refining Company, Ashland, Kentucky, for Mrs. James I. Maguire, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and other guests of its 1969 Kentucky Derby Party. Includes informational letters, full guest list, event schedules, taxicab vouchers, the company’s 1968 annual report, and horse racing-related publications.

“I Am Not Afraid Of The Gallows” : The Public Executions Of Six Pirates In Puritan New England, Mary Bogart

HIST 4800 Boston (Herndon)

This research analyzes the trial and execution of six men accused of piracy, robbery, and murder in 1704, as it relates to the objectives of Puritan leaders. The entire trial and execution process was held in public for anyone to bare witness. Puritan magistrates oversaw the process while recording both in some detail to be later published to the public. I breakdown and critically analyze the story each of the three publications tells to further assess the motives of the Puritans of this era.

Through the analysis of the 1700s publications and previous research conduct by historians Masur, Cohen, Bosco, …

Lg Ms 028 Robin Lambert Collection Finding Aid, Elizabeth Sistare

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Robin Lambert was politically active in Maine for more than 40 years, was for many years the most prominent Republican to publicly support LGBT civil rights, and persuaded many in his party to join him in that struggle. He was one of the founders of the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance (MLGPA)(now EqualityMaine) in 1984, and was twice recognized by MLGPA for his outstanding work for civil rights. As an early advocate of addressing the issues surrounding HIV and its impact on the state, Lambert was a founding member of both The Maine Health Foundation and The AIDS Project …

Direct Responsibility: Caspar Weinberger And The Reagan Defense Buildup, Robert Howard Wieland

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the life of Caspar Weinberger and explains why President Reagan chose him for Secretary of Defense. Weinberger, not a defense technocrat, managed a massive defense buildup of 1.5 trillion dollars over a four year period. A biographical approach to Weinberger illuminates Reagan’s selection, for in many ways Weinberger harkens back to an earlier type of defense manager more akin to Elihu Root than Robert McNamara; more a man of letters than technocrat. And yet Weinberger, the amateur historian, worked with budgets his entire public career. Essentially, Pentagon governance is the formation of a military budget that proscribes …

Luddington Family, Susie Van Kirk

Susie Van Kirk Papers

Annotated citation list of six sources from Susie Van Kirks Luddington Family research.

Appendix: Thoughts On John Evans And Sand Creek, Gary L. Roberts

John Evans Study Report

Apart from political rivalry, there was little reason to oppose John Evans as governor of Colorado. He was a success by almost any standard one chose to apply. He was a self-made man, a son of the Middle West. He grew up in a Quaker family in Indiana, and although he converted to Methodism later, Protestant evangelism was a central feature of his character and experience. As a young man, he set his goals high—to build a city, to found a college, to create a fortune, to become a governor, to be elected to the United States Senate, and to …

Razing Awareness: The Bethlehem Steel Administration Building, Steve Bukowski

Museum Studies Projects

Razing Awareness: The Bethlehem Steel Administration Building is a practice in the process of coordinating and opening a professional-grade museum exhibit. Hosted by the Steel Plant Museum of Western New York, "Razing Awareness" explored the history and controversial demolition of the Bethlehem Steel Administration Building in Lackawanna, New York. The exhibit featured artwork, photography, and artifacts from the building itself, weaving art and history together to construct a narrative about historic preservation and the establishment of a sense of place.

The Art Of Steel: As Seen Through The Eyes Of Norman Rockwell, Megan S. Hahin

Museum Studies Projects

For this project the author partnered with the Steel Plant Museum of Western New York (SPM) in South Buffalo to create a special exhibition focused on their 14 prints of Norman Rockwell paintings in the museum’s collection. The exhibition used supplementary artifacts to add personal narratives to Rockwell’s paintings. The exhibit diversified the audience of the SPM and created a potential new audience the museum could target, while still appealing to their current audience through the use of personal narrative. The museum had not curated an art exhibition before and this project proved to be beneficial by exploring new themes …

From Border Ruffian To Abolitionist Martyr: William Lloyd Garrison’S Changing Ideologies On John Brown And Antislavery, Devon Proudfoot

HIST 4800 Boston (Herndon)

The master narrative portrays a strict boundary between the pacifist abolitionists, and the militant abolitionists. My project looks at the letters of correspondence sent by William Lloyd Garrison in the six months following John Brown’s killings at Kansas in 1856 and Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. My research aimed at gauging Garrison’s responses to the militaristic approaches taken by Brown, which differed from his self-proclaimed pacifist views. I looked at fourteen letters from June to November 1856 and ten from November 1859 to April 1860. The recipient of these letters ranged from Garrison’s son, to local ministers, and …

Can I Get A Yee-Haw And An Amen: Collecting And Interpreting Oral Histories Of Texas Cowboy Churches, Jake R. Mcadams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With more than 850 Christian cowboy ministries worldwide and approximately 160 individual cowboy churches in Texas, the cowboy church movement is an immensely important religious movement that speaks volumes about contemporary culture. Cowboy churches' "Low Barriers Model" Christianity attracts many disenchanted with traditional evangelicalism's assumed sterilized and feminized religion. Despite the cowboy church movement's exponential growth since the late-1980s, few outside the movement understand the complexity cowboy churches envelop. Using Cowboy Christians' oral histories, Jake McAdams argues that the cowboy church movement is a suburban seeker church movement centered around the mythic cowboy identity in which participants have a sincere …

Loyalist Or Patriot: The Precarious Position Of Edmund Randolph, 1774-1786, Tanisha Jean Staten

Master's Theses

On May 29, 1787, Governor Edmund Randolph took the floor of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia with a radical plan for a new federal government. Randolph was a key member of the influential Virginia delegation which paved the way for United States' Constitutionalism. An examination of his early life, legal career, and politics offers a new lens with which to view the emergence of American constitutional ideology. Building off the work ofT.H. Breen, who argues that Virginia's landed gentry inhabited a distinct culture, this work illuminates the dynamics of these elites who were absolutely pivotal in shaping a new sense …

"Hunger Is The Best Sauce": Frontier Food Ways In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books, Erin E. Pedigo

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House book series for the frontier food ways described in it. Studying the series for its food ways edifies a 19th century American frontier of subsistence/companionate families practicing both old and new ways of obtaining food. The character Laura in Wilder's books is an engaging narrator who moves through childhood and adolescence, assuming the role of housewife. An overview of the century's norms about food in America, the strength of domesticity as an ideal, food and race relations, and the frontier as a physical place round out this unexplored area of Little House …

A Nation That Wasn't: The Whiskey Rebellion And A Fractured Early Republic, Kevin P. Whitaker

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Scholars often present nationalism as a cohesive social construction, modeled on Benedict Anderson's theory of imagined communities.1 The strength and popularity of Anderson's immensely useful paradigm of nationalism, however, perhaps leads to excited scholars over-extending his theory or seeing imagined communities that are little more than imaginary. The early Republic forms one such historical time period where, evidence suggests, historians have conjured nationalism where only a fractured nation existed. The various riots and rebellions during the early Republic strikingly expose a severely fractured nation. This paper will examine and critique some theoretical frameworks of nationalism and mobs in order to …

Archaeological Geophysics, Excavation, And Ethnographic Approaches Toward A Deeper Understanding Of An Eighteenth Century Wichita Site, Michael Don Carlock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research exemplifies a multidirectional approach to an archaeological interpretation of an eighteenth century Wichita village and fortification located on the Red River bordering Oklahoma and Texas. A battle that is believed to have occurred at the Longest site (34JF1) in 1759 between Spanish colonials and a confederation of Native Americans led to several Spanish primary documents describing the people that lived there, the fortification and surrounding village, and of course the battle itself. Investigation of the Longest site (34JF1) in Oklahoma presents a remarkable opportunity to combine extensive historical research, archaeological prospecting using geophysics, and traditional excavation techniques in …