The University of Kansas

Inside Spencer: The KSRL Blog

Books on a shelf

Welcome to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library blog! As the special collections and archives library at the University of Kansas, Spencer is home to remarkable and diverse collections of rare and unique items. Explore the blog to learn about the work we do and the materials we collect.

Throwback Thursday: Nightshirt Parade Edition

August 29th, 2019

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 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

We’re looking forward to the first home game of the KU football season on Saturday. During the first half of the twentieth century, that event would have been celebrated with a Nightshirt Parade tomorrow night.

Photograph of the KU Nightshirt Parade, 1951
KU students in the Nightshirt Parade, 1951. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/17 1951 Negatives: Student Activities: Nightshirt Parade (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The article “Nighty Night for the Nightshirt Parades” on the KU history website describes the event.

Nightshirt Parades became a venerable KU tradition. Typically, on the night before the first home game of the season, hundreds of students wearing nightshirts (usually over top of their clothing) would make their way north through campus to Sixth Street, then march east along Sixth until they reached Massachusetts Street. At this point, students would form “into one continuous serpentine line,” which amounted to a fair approximation of a conga line. Single file and holding the person in front of them, the students would weave their way down Massachusetts until they reached South Park where a bonfire would be held in anticipation of the next day’s game. At other times, the route was essentially reversed, with the procession beginning in the park and winding its way onto campus…

The onset of World War II marked the beginning of the end for the traditional Nightshirt Parade. Student enrollments dropped, and the annual procession filled in the depleted ranks by including coeds for the first time. When enrollments revived in the post-war years, the student body contained many veterans attending on the GI Bill. Serious, older, and less impressionable, these students were ill inclined to participate in or otherwise put up with anything they considered collegiate foolishness. They brought an end to the freshman cap tradition at KU, and saw little reason to don pajamas for a public event. Nonetheless, a version of the Nightshirt Parade continued well into the 1950s. However, the event had lost much of its original spontaneity and student enthusiasm for it dwindled.

The last Nightshirt Parade took place in 1957, replaced the following year with a “Traditions Rally.”

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

2019 Ringle Internship: Preserving Local Television History

August 28th, 2019

This summer I had the opportunity to be the first Ringle conservation intern in the Audiovisual Preservation Unit at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. I worked with videotapes from the Channel 6 program, As Time Goes By, which was a public-access program created by and for senior citizens in Douglas County that aired from 1992 to 2000. Sherry Williams, the recently retired Kansas Collection Curator at Spencer, chose the show to be the pilot for this project because of its historic and cultural value. In the eight weeks of the internship, I gathered descriptive metadata on and housed 213 tapes and digitized 30 of these tapes. By the end of my time there, I really had a feel for Lawrence’s senior citizen community in the 1990’s!

As a first timer in Kansas, I came into the project most excited to work with a large local access program that would surely teach me so much about the history and culture of Lawrence. I wasn’t disappointed. Some of my favorite episodes included a conversation with a Holocaust survivor who settled in Lawrence, a conversation with Indigenous seniors who attended the Haskell boarding school in the 1920s, and last but not least, an episode about the  “unusual” tombstones in Douglas County and in America’s Heartland.

Still frame image from an episode of As Time Goes By, a production of Channel 6 in Lawrence, Kansas.
A still from episode 186 of As Time Goes By entitled “Commemorating Our Mortality.” The episode featured Jean Snedeger and John Gary Brown, two authors who wrote books about tombstones in Douglas County and America’s heartland, respectively. Click image to enlarge.

In 2017, after its 45 year run, Channel 6 was sold to Midco Communications and the question of if and how their videotapes would be preserved was posed to the Lawrence community. Sherry felt that Spencer would be an appropriate repository to store the collection in perpetuity. On the day Channel 6 was moving out of their building, Spencer staff gathered box after box of the nearly one thousand videotapes from the station and loaded them up in a van to be sent to their new permanent home at Spencer. I am amazed and inspired by their commitment to preserving the cultural heritage of Douglas County.

Boxes containing video tapes and other material from the Channel 6 collection acquired by Spencer Research Library in 2018.
Boxes at Spencer Research Library containing materials from the former Channel 6 News station. Click image to enlarge.

Public-access programming can serve as a glimpse into communities during a certain point in time. In my time observing Lawrence in the 1990’s, through As Time Goes By, I learned about topics such as the history, buildings, fashion, public school system, museums, law enforcement, food, festivals, under-represented communities, and much more about Douglas County. It’s my hope that As Time Goes By will become highly accessible to members of the community in the near future.

Julia Davila Coppedge
2019 Ringle Intern, Conservation Services

Throwback Thursday: Move-In Edition, Part II

August 22nd, 2019

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 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Welcome (back) to KU, new and returning Jayhawks!

Photograph of Chancellor Hemenway assisting students during Move-In Day, 1999
KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway assisting students during Move-In Day, 1999. Photograph by KU University Relations. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 2/19 1999 Prints: Chancellors: Robert Hemenway (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

“My Dear Mother”: Letters by William Clarke Quantrill

August 20th, 2019

One of the most renowned collections in Spencer Research Library is a series of letters written by William Clarke Quantrill to his mother, Caroline Cornelia Clarke Quantrill, between 1855 and 1860. During this period, Quantrill wrote sporadically to Caroline, letting her know his whereabouts, describing his plans for the future, promising he would come home soon, and vowing to send money when he could. Quantrill rarely revealed his views on politics or current events in these letters, and nothing in them hints at the course he would choose after he stopped writing home altogether. On August 21, 1863, 156 years ago this week, Quantrill gained infamy for organizing and leading a guerrilla raid on Lawrence in support of the Confederate cause.

Quantrill was born in Dover, Ohio, on July 31, 1837. After graduating from high school at age sixteen, he began teaching school in Dover, a career he would return to off and on several times. His father passed away in 1854, leaving Quantrill, as the eldest of eight children, the male head of the family. Caroline took in boarders, and his oldest sister took in sewing jobs, but the family remained very poor.

In the summer of 1855, Quantrill joined a group of other Dover residents and traveled to Illinois to seek better farmland and to see what other opportunities may lie a little farther west. In the letter below, dated August 8, 1855, he tells Caroline of his safe arrival, indicates he will try to send her some money, and mentions the possibility of getting a teaching position. “This country is a great deal different from Ohio,” he writes, “for miles around I can see nothing but tall grass.”

Image of a letter from William Clarke Quantrill to his mother Caroline, August 8, 1855
Image of a letter from William Clarke Quantrill to his mother Caroline, August 8, 1855
William Clarke Quantrill’s letter to his mother Caroline, August 8, 1855. A transcription of the entire letter is available online. Call Number: RH MS 75. Click images to enlarge.

By July 1859, Quantrill had tried his luck at various occupations, in addition to teaching, and had explored business enterprises in Mendota, Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and the Kansas and Utah Territories. He had even tried his luck in the gold mines of Colorado. He was restless, and nothing seems to have satisfied him. The letter below, written to Caroline on July 30, 1859, was from Lawrence, Kansas, the place where he would gain his notoriety. In it, he relates a story to his mother that must have stirred her worst fears for her son’s safety.

Image of a letter from William Clarke Quantrill to his mother Caroline, July 30, 1859
Image of a letter from William Clarke Quantrill to his mother Caroline, July 30, 1859
William Clarke Quantrill’s letter to his mother Caroline, July 30, 1859. A transcription of the entire letter is available online. Call Number: RH MS 75. Click images to enlarge.

It has been some time since I wrote to you, and I am now a long ways distant from the place I last wrote to you. I have seen some pretty hard & scaly times, both from cold weather & starvation & the Indians & I am one of 7 out of a party of 19 who started from Salt Lake City for the Gold Mines of Pikes Peak which are talked of all over the country & undoubtedly the Humbug of all Humbugs. I say so because I spent two months in the gold region haveing [sic] my own experience & that of a number with whom I was acquainted to prove it conclusively…

I am now in Lawrence after having spent over $300 & many a day & night when I expected either to be killed or freeze to death & at last when nearly in the settlements to have my horse and all taken from me & a companion of mine shot in 3 different places & left for dead & all that saved my head was I was out hunting away from the camp about a mile and a half & hearing the firing hurried to camp in time to see the indians driving off our horses & my friend lying on the ground apparently dead but still breathing with difficulty having been shot 3 times, his leg broke below the knee, shot in the thigh with 7 iron slugs & last shot through the body with an arrow which I first thought would kill him but he lives yet & if taken care of properly will be as well as ever in 6 or 8 weeks. I hardly know what to do at present nor where to go but in my next letter I will be able to tell you some more. I think my friend & myself will make goverment pay us for our losses by the Indians if possible when he gets well.

You would hardly know me if you were to see me I am so weather beaten & rough looking that every body says I am about 25 years of age.

In his final letter to Caroline, written on June 23, 1860, Quantrill inquires about the money he says he sent to her, tells her he will send more when he can and talks about the weather and his health. H also speaks of wanting to visit, but says he cannot get away. After this letter, Caroline would contend that she had no more word from him, relying on rumors and reports that she heard from the newspapers, her neighbors, and strangers to try to know his whereabouts.

Image of a letter from William Clarke Quantrill to his mother Caroline, June 23, 1860
William Clarke Quantrill’s letter to his mother Caroline, June 23, 1860. Handwritten copy of the original. A transcription of the entire letter is available online. Call Number: RH MS 75. Click images to enlarge.

Caroline loved her son and found many of the stories about him quite hard to accept or even untrue. Caroline wrote the letter below on February 24, 1889, to the childhood friend of her son, William W. Scott. In it, she rails against Scott for what she perceives as his attempt to vilify and profit from her son. “You have told me a great-deal to hirt [sic] my feelings,” she tells him. Scott had become like a son to Caroline and often provided for her. He also wanted to write a book about Quantrill, but out of respect to Caroline, he was waiting until her death to do it. When she found out about the book, she turned on him, writing

Now I will tell you some thing of your Self The foalks in these parts did not have any confidence in you from the fact of you Being a Yankey Man They could not depend on your word They didnt know but you were a Son of Some Old Yankey. hunting up something to make money out off. I have had to tell as much as fifty time all about your place of birth, and that my Husband educated you along with My Son. & that you Boath graduated at the same time, & were fine scholars. So you see I had a goodeal [good deal] of talking to do to make it good on your side…

You may as well give up writing a History of my Dear lost Boy, for you never will get any thing correct. no one but His men & friends and my-self could get up a correct History of him. His men never will Enlighten the Yankeys on the Subject. So what they gather up will be mostely Lies.

Image of a letter from Caroline Clarke Quantrill to W.W. Scott, February 24, 1889
Letter from Caroline Clarke Quantrill to W. W. Scott, February 24, 1889. A transcription of the entire letter is available online. Call Number: RH MS 75. Click images to enlarge.

Caroline defended her son until her death in 1903.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services

Sources:

William Clarke Quantrill Correspondence. RH MS 75. Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

Leslie, Edward E. The Devil Knows How to Ride. New York: Random House, 1996.

Throwback Thursday: Cows on Campus Edition

August 15th, 2019

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 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Photograph of cows grazing near Potter Lake, 1918
Cows grazing near Potter Lake, 1918. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Potter Lake 1918 Prints: Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The buildings visible in the background are, from left to right, Dyche Hall, Green (now Lippincott) Hall, Old Fraser Hall, Strong Hall, Robinson Gymnasium, and Old Haworth Hall.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services