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 5,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Follow the lead of these KU students and put on your dancing shoes; this Saturday is National Dance Day!

Homecoming dance in the Kansas Union Ballroom, 1956. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/1 1956: Student Activities: Homecoming (Photos).
Click on image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Popular pianist and bandleader Frankie Carle provided the music at the dance. Watch him perform with his orchestra in 1947, via footage available through YouTube.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

Friday marks the 118th birthday of the famous aviatrix and Kansas native, so this week we’re highlighting a letter in the Kansas Collection that Earhart (1897-1937) wrote to a young girl, encouraging her to pursue her interest in flying.

The recipient of the letter was sixteen-year-old Helen Edna Mason of Greenfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. Helen was the oldest sister of Alexandra (Sandy) Mason, a longtime and distinguished librarian at Spencer Research Library. Preliminary research indicates that Helen (1911-2000) was a lifelong resident of Franklin County, located in the northwest part of the state. She married Lawrence H. Wheeler in the late 1930s and had at least three children. It’s unknown whether she studied aviation, worked in the industry, or became a pilot.

Amelia Earhart’s letter to Helen Mason, September 12, 1927.
Earhart flew on the first official flight out of Dennison Airport
nine days earlier; she had also helped finance its construction.
Charles Lindbergh had completed his solo nonstop flight
across the Atlantic earlier that year, May 20–21, 1927.
Helen E. Mason Correspondence and Memorabilia.
Call Number: RH MS P23. Click on images to enlarge.

September 12, 1927.

My dear Miss Mason,

Your letter contained so little about yourself that I do not feel I can advise you adequately about aviation possibilities. I do not know whether you must earn your own living or just wish to. Nor do I know whether you are willing to leave your family.

Presuming that you are “foot-loose” I should think application at one of the large airplane factories would be the best move. Ofcourse you could not get the “job” you wish, but even if you entered as a stenographer or a factory worker, you would be on the staff and could use the knowledge gained in one department to help you in another.

Frankly, I fell into aeronautics. I took my first “job” to pay for flying instruction. I am not in on much of an earning basis yet, as I have divided my time between social work, teaching and various other occupations.

I have given your name, and the substance of your letter, to Mr. Kurt, the general manager of the Dennison Company. There are several women students and I asked him to tell you of them and give you any advice he could.

I quite agree with you that everyone should as far as possible do what he or she really wishes. If an inclination is very strong, not conforming to it means unhappiness.

I wish you luck in your inclination.

Very truly yours,
Amelia M Earhart

Interested in learning more about Amelia Earhart? Collections of her papers can be found at Purdue University and the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College, Harvard University. See also the Wikipedia article about Earhart, which provides links to various other paper and online primary and secondary sources.

Spencer Research Library also houses materials about other female pilots. See, for example, the records of the Northeast Kansas Chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots that elected Amelia Earhart its first president in 1931, and the reminiscences of member Dorothy Maloney.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public 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 5,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Today’s photo combines two things we love at Spencer Research Library: ice cream and KU basketball. This week, especially, we’re celebrating the Jayhawks’ gold medal at the World University Games (as Team USA) and National Ice Cream Day, which is Sunday.

KU Hall of Fame basketball player Clyde Lovellette in front of a Dairy Queen
eating an ice cream cone, 1952. University Archives Photos. Call Number:
RG 66/13 Clyde Lovellette: Athletic Department: Basketball: Players (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

One of my favorite group of objects that has come to Conservation Services for housing is the Zodiac Club peanut doll collection, housed in the Kansas Collection. As the name implies, it is a series of dolls made from shelled peanuts for heads, with wire bodies and intricate, period-appropriate dress.

The Zodiac Club was founded as women’s studying group, organized on February 5, 1878, by nine women from the Lawrence, KS area. Over the years the club met in members’ homes every Tuesday to read and discuss items relating to “cultural improvement.”

In 1943, when the Zodiac Club celebrated its 65th anniversary, twelve dolls were made to represent the original members of the Zodiac Club. The dolls are made of a frame of covered wire with peanuts for faces and dressed in costumes from the 1870s. Besides the dolls, the collection includes miniature period furniture, as well as leather-bound books, a tea service, spinning wheel, tintype photographs, needlepoint, and braid rug.

Left: Zodiac Club doll collection before housing. Right: Examples of the other items housed with the dolls.
Kansas Collection, call number RH MS Q61.

All the dolls, furniture, and other items were wrapped in paper towels and placed together in a box, making it difficult to tell what was in the box and to access particular items. A museum studies student intern was assigned to rehouse the collection into a more usable form.

Peanut-headed doll wrapped in paper towel. Note the fine detail in the costume.
Kansas Collection, call number RH MS Q61.

I asked her to create a housing that would keep the dolls and the other items in one box. She devised an ingenious two-tray system: the furniture and other items that are less frequently accessed are on the bottom layer, and the dolls are in a removable tray on top. Featured on the outside and inside of the box is a diagram that indicates how everything fits in the housing. Now the peanut ladies will be better protected and more easily displayed for many years to come.

Left: Top tray with dolls and housing guide. Right: Bottom tray with furniture and other items.
Kansas Collection, call number RH MS Q61.

Whitney Baker
Head, 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 5,300 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game is next Tuesday, so this week we’re sharing a fun picture of an early KU baseball game. A horse and buggy along the outfield wall is something you certainly don’t see today!

KU baseball game at McCook Field, late 1890s. McCook was located
approximately where Memorial Stadium is today. This photo looks south/southeast
from the field; Spooner Hall and Old Fraser Hall can be seen in the background,
on top of Mount Oread. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/12 1890s Prints:
Athletic Department: Baseball (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Robert Taft writes in Across the Years on Mount Oread (1941) that baseball has been played at KU since 1866, “almost from the first day of University history.” Games were sporadic until April 18, 1880, the date of KU’s first intercollegiate game of which there is a definite record. Washburn College emerged victorious, winning 29-23. This was a decade before the first intercollegiate football game at Kansas.

Taft also writes that “the baseball team in the earlier years was handicapped by the lack of a suitable playing ground.”

During the late eighties [1880s] a field was used on South Massachusetts street (the site of the present Liberty Memorial High Central Middle School) but its use, however, had to be divided in time with the town team. As the field was also some distance from the University, regular practice was seldom attempted (40).

The construction of McCook Field – also used by the football and tennis teams – in 1892 established “baseball as a permanent sport on campus” (40).

McCook Field, 1890s. This view was taken from Mount Oread and looks north.
Note the Old Dutch Windmill in the background, at what is now the corner of
Emery Road and 9th Street. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/47 1890s: Campus: Buildings: McCook Field (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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