Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 27,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

This week’s photograph combines several things we love: good friends (in honor of National Best Friends Day), summertime fun, and a cold soda on a hot day.

A page from a scrapbook attributed to Margaret R. French showing
five KU students in Neodesha, Kansas, June 1918. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/0 1918 Prints: Student Activities (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The scrapbook in which this page appears has been attributed to Margaret R. French. However, a search of University Archives records did not turn up any KU students by that name in the 1910s, so the volume’s creator remains somewhat of a mystery. Information from the scrapbook suggests that she attended KU from approximately 1916 through 1919. She apparently participated in the Patterson Club and was a member of – and/or had several friends in – Mu Phi Epsilon, a musical sorority or honorary organization.

One of the girls probably shown in the pictures is Gladys Nelson. Her home address was 606 Indiana Street in Neodesha, shown in the photo on the left. A member of Mu Phi Epsilon, Gladys graduated from KU in 1918 with a fine arts degree in drawing and painting.

The picture on the right shows the same group of friends, apparently on Main Street in Neodesha on the same day. (Note that they’re wearing the same dresses in both photos.) The 1916 Neodesha city directory in Spencer’s Kansas Collections confirms that the girls are standing in front of Edson’s Bakery and Ice Cream Parlor (609 Main, sign visible behind the car on the left); Shoemaker Furniture Co. (611 Main); H. C. Tralle, Plumber and Electrician (613 Main); and Porter drugstore (615 Main, sign visible behind the car on the right). Look up these addresses on Google Maps and you can see what the buildings look like today. MaBelle, mentioned in the caption, might be MaBelle Galloway, another Mu Phi Epsilon member at the time.

Update, 1 August 2017:

Additional research indicates that the scrapbook was compiled by Marium Aeo Hill (1899-1979). She usually went by her middle name, which she shared with an aunt. Aeo was born and raised in Neodesha, Kansas. Her father Burritt H. Hill (1873-1953) was a banker, community leader, and KU alumnus; Aeo’s mother Essie (1874-1899) died within a month of her daughter’s birth.

Aeo attended the University of Kansas from 1916 to 1922, graduating first with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Commerce (1920) and then with a Bachelor of Music (1922). Aeo Hill married attorney Harvey Roney (1895-1971) in 1923; the couple had three children and settled in Independence, Missouri.

Aeo’s daughter Margaret French, also a KU alumna, donated three of her mother’s scrapbooks to University Archives.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

To celebrate architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s 149^th birthday on June 8^th, I’m highlighting a few photos from the Wright Collection. This collection deals specifically with Frank Lloyd Wright and his buildings, but we have a number of other architecture items in our Special Collections. Come visit us anytime this summer from 9-5 pm on weekdays and explore these amazing collections yourself!

Photograph of Olgivanna and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library.
Call Number: Wright P:III:4:67. Click image to enlarge.

Photograph of the Juvenile Cultural Study Center (Also known as the Harry F. Corbin Education Center)
in Wichita, Kansas by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957. Special Collections, Spencer Research Library.
Call Number: Wright P:I:7:3. Click image to enlarge.

Color print of the Bott residence in Kansas City, Missouri by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library. Call Number: Wright P:I:49:1. Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Reference Specialist
Public Services

Much as Martha Stewart sought to guide the American home-makers of the 1980 and 1990’s through the intricacies of family care and entertaining, so were authors such as Sarah Rutledge endeavoring to do over one-hundred years earlier. Rutledge published The Carolina Housewife by a Lady of Charleston in 1847 to provide her contemporaries with “receipts for dishes that have been made in our own houses, and with no more elaborate abattrie de cuisine than that belonging to families of moderate income” (Rutledge, p. iv, 1979 edition). As a longtime reader of books related to cooking and the domestic arts, I have observed that writers of these tomes feel a fierce pride about their local flora, fauna, and the manner in which these things are combined to create meals. Additionally, they often feel it is their duty to give instruction to the readers that as keepers of home and family; they are also guardians of the physical and moral well-being of the body of their community and even their nation.
KSU

While researching Rutledge’s book, I was pleased to find the work of a contemporary in the Spencer Research Library collection. While not strictly a cookbook, Resources of the Southern fields and forests, medical, economical, and agricultural, by Francis Peyre Porcher, fits nicely within the domestic economy genre. Porcher, a physician for the Confederacy during the Civil War, was granted a stay from service to write and publish this “Hand-book of scientific and popular knowledge, as regards the medicinal, economical and useful properties of the Trees, Plants and Shrubs found within the Southern States, whether employed in the arts, for manufacturing purposes, or in domestic economy, to supply for present as well as future want” (p. v, 1869 edition). The contents of its nearly 800 pages are a rich repository of botanical information, important today as they describe many plants now extinct or nearly so, including the much-beloved heirloom grain, Carolina Gold Rice.

Title page (l) and text page (r) of Resources of the
Southern Fields and Forests
(Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1869).
Call Number: C6678 item 1. Click images to enlarge.

It is in Porcher’s introduction to the Spencer’s 1869 edition, though, that we gain a peek into some less than botanical thoughts running underneath this seemingly straightforward text; those being about the abolishment of slavery and its effect on the southern states. The 1869 introduction is seven pages longer than the 1863 edition (written during the war), much of its added length owing to Porcher’s description of how the south’s many swamps and bogs must continue to be converted into farmable land. This was work that until emancipation, had been carried out by African and African-descent people held in slavery in the southern states. He writes, “[i]t is true that much of this work was done under the system of primogeniture, when it was in the power and to the interest of the owner of the soil…to look for the permanent welfare of his descendants.” While not mentioning slavery, Porcher seems to imply that the “owner of the soil” also “owns” the workers of the soil. Porcher acknowledges that the task of reclamation will be impossible without governmental assistance.

In his final paragraphs, he writes, “the State; which should, when it becomes necessary, perform for its citizens those acts of public utility, the right or ability to do which depended on systems and institutions which it has, from reasons of policy or interest, abolished or destroyed, and being deprived of which, they suffer” (p. xv). Once again, Porcher does not mention slavery directly, but instead uses the word “institution” in its place. The idea of slavery being an institution was first made popular by the South Carolina statesman, John Calhoun, when he spoke of it as the South’s ‘peculiar domestick(sic) institution’. Though veiled in euphemism, Porcher makes clear that he believes that the end of slavery is a punishment for the southern states; a punishment by which “they suffer”. This deprivation renders its population unable to protect its physical and moral interests.

Advertisement page from
Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, 1869.
Call Number: C6678 item 1.
Click image to enlarge.

Roberta Woodrick
Assistant Conservator, General Collections
Conservation Services

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 27,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Pools are now open across Lawrence, so this week’s photograph shows a time when swimming at Potter Lake was a popular summertime activity.

Diving into Potter Lake, 1912. Strong Hall is visible in the background,
on the top of Mount Oread. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Potter Lake 1912 Negatives:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

You can see two other early images of swimmers and diving boards at Potter Lake – one from the 1910s and another from 1926 – in the University Archives online photograph collection.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants