Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing an item from our Wilcox Collection, which is one of the largest assemblages of U.S. left- and right-wing political literature in the country. Since it was established in 1965, the Wilcox Collection has grown to include coverage of more than 10,000 individuals and organizations. The collection covers a wide array of topics including women’s rights. Most of the materials date from 1960 to the present.

The item shared today is a book titled 101 Wonderful Ways to Celebrate Women’s History. Written by Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, the book (which is also referred to as a guide) was published in 1986 by the National Women’s History Project. It offers many different ideas on ways to celebrate women’s history. Shown today are some of the ideas presented for potential school programs. The guide notes that the activities within the section were “developed and recommended by classroom teachers around the country.” Other sections within the guide include school-community programs, as well as community programs. Some program ideas include designing women’s history posters, writing short public service announcements, and exhibiting books and works written by women at libraries. The book also has a slew of appendices that offer a wealth of information surrounding women’s history.

One of the guide’s authors, Mary Ruthsdotter, was actually a founder of the National Women’s History Project in 1980. A couple of years earlier, several of the group’s founders organized a local Women’s History Week in Sonoma County, California. Inspired by their success, women’s groups around the country lobbied for the week of March 8th to be National Women’s History Week. Congress later voted to make the entire month of March National Women’s History Month. Mary Ruthsdotter worked as the National Women’s History Project director for twenty years. The organization, now known as the National Women’s History Alliance, is still around today. National Women’s History Month continues to be celebrated today to ensure important women who fought for our rights are not forgotten.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from our Kansas Collection. The book, titled Poems of the Plains, and Songs of the Solitudes, Together With “The Rhyme of the Border War,” was written by Thomas Brower Peacock and published in 1888. The book is a compilation of older revised poems as well as poems Peacock had never published before. The copy of the book housed at the library is signed and dated by the author.

The library houses many other books by Peacock including The Vendetta, and Other Poems (1876), The Rhyme of the Border War (1880), and a later addition of Poems of the Plains, and Songs of the Solitudes, Together With “The Rhyme of the Border War” (1889). As one can see, The Rhyme of the Border War is included in the book shown today and was originally published as a stand-alone book in 1880.

This is one of those books I found while walking through the stacks. It just seemed to jump out to me on one particular day and I took note of the call number to pull it for the blog. It can be frustrating sometimes when I pull a book and cannot find much information on it or the author, but I suppose that should be expected especially the older the books are. Nevertheless, I do still get to enjoy the smell of old books while fumbling through the pages.

KU’s second copy of the book is available to check out from Watson Library, or it can be viewed online through the Library of Congress. The Internet Archive also has an online copy of Peacock’s 1872 work Poems. Finally, Washburn University offers a nice overview of early poems about Kansas that includes a mention of Peacock’s work.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from Special Collections. The book, titled Flowers in Concrete, was written by Mary Ellen Solt and published in 1966. According to the Poetry Foundation, “Solt began writing concrete poetry in the 1960s and became a leader of the concrete poetry movement.” A post on the Getty’s Iris blog describes concrete poetry as a form of poetry where the poems are “composed of words, letters, colors, and typefaces, in which graphic space plays a central role in both design and meaning.” The Poets.org website describes concrete poetry as more than just poems; they are pieces of visual art. Concrete poems are meant to be viewed rather than read aloud.

While there is more to be seen than said when it comes to concrete poetry, I chose to highlight this item because I had never heard of a concrete poem before. Often, then one thinks of a poem, they think of the typical lines that tend to rhyme and tell a story. Concrete poems still tell a story but in a different way. I came across this book when Special Collections Curator Elspeth Healey was using it for a class. She took a moment to show the book to me and some students since we were intrigued. The book the library houses is copy 60 out of 100 printed. Solt signed and dated the title page of Spencer’s copy in February 1970. The library also holds a later limited-edition poster-sized portfolio version of Flowers in Concrete printed by lithography in 1969 (Call Number: R72). Below I am sharing just three examples of concrete poems from the book (zinnia, forsythia, and dogwood). The Poetry4Kids website has a great lesson on how to write a concrete poem.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a Civil War-era item from the Kansas Collection. My research for this post sent me down a rabbit hole of sorts finding new and interesting information at every turn. It has been a while since I have found an item that has piqued my interest as much as this one has and I am truly excited to be able to share it on the blog for others to see. At face value, the item itself might seem quite boring, but it is the story the item tells that truly resonates with the viewer. That’s the thing with housing rare materials: much of it might seem “useless,” but you never know what that one newsletter, postcard, banknote, diary, etc. might mean to someone and their research. Much of what the library houses is about preserving history for future generations to access.

The item I am highlighting is a daily journal (diary) that belonged to Aaron Pugh. From the finding aid, Aaron Pugh was born in Carrol County, Ohio, on January 21, 1833. Aaron enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 4, 1863, at the age of 30. The 1860 federal census says that, prior to joining the Army, Pugh was a (married?) farmer in Marcy, Iowa. Preliminary research indicates that the diary follows Pugh’s life from approximately July 4, 1863 to March 25, 1984. As a side note, I actually stumbled upon this item by looking for Fourth of July items. That’s the fun of finding aids; sometimes search terms bring up somewhat unrelated but still quite interesting results. Once enlisted in the Army, Pugh was a soldier in Company M of the 8th Regiment of Iowa Cavalry. IAGenWeb, a side project of the free genealogical website USGenWeb, lists a roster of the members of the 8th, which includes an entry for Pugh. The roster says that Pugh entered the Army as a Fourth Corporal and was promoted to Second Corporal March 26, 1864. March 26th is where the diary entries come to an end.

Much of the diary contains basic daily entries commenting on the weather or stating that the unit had stayed at camp or moved camp. Some entries are more in-depth about trips Pugh went on or letters he wrote. The diary is slightly larger than my palm with three days per page, which leaves little room for entries. When first looking over the diary, I thought it was cool but didn’t feel it was worth sharing. I wasn’t sure there was much to write about or anything that would draw users in. However, through a basic search of Aaron’s name and the dates of the diary I found that the University of Iowa houses a collection of letters that he wrote during his time in the Army. A few of those letters coincide with entries in Pugh’s diary. I one letter, from December 8, 1863, he writes to his friends about where his unit had been camping and how things were going. He notes that they had taken some thirty prisoners in recent times. He also states that in the last few days “we chased some forty [,] five or six miles and captured several there.” This is where it gets interesting because looking back in the diary, there is an entry on December 4, 1863, that says “chased Bushwhackers caught four or five.” The combination of the letter and the diary really gives you a glimpse into what Pugh was experiencing at the time. The next few days in the diary go back to mentioning being at camp all day as if nothing ever happened. Another letter on January 16, 1864, also coincides with the diary. While the letter seems to just be a general update to his friends, Pugh notes in his diary that he “wrote a letter home.” Making the connection between the letters and the diary adds a layer of excitement to the journey the items take the reader on.  

Between the diary, letters, and online resources one can follow the journey of Aaron Pugh and his regiment through the Civil War. On July 30, 1864, Pugh was captured as a prisoner-of-war during McCook’s raid on the Atlanta and West Point Railroad near Newnan, Georgia. Pugh died a prisoner-of-war at Andersonville, Georgia, on October 4, 1864. Records from the time list his cause of death as “scorbutus,” i.e. scurvy. Pugh is buried in Andersonville National Cemetery, plot 10297. There is also a memorial to Pugh in Hill Cemetery in Boone, Iowa. Historic photos of Andersonville prison – taken when Pugh was there – are available online through the National Park Service.

It took a lot of digging to find some information on Pugh and the events he may have endured but in the end, I feel it was worth it. Until I stumbled upon it, the item had no past transactions of being used. I feel like now it has a new level of meaning and might someday be of use to a researcher.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Every rare books library, at its heart, is a graveyard of forests long lost: paper has dominated the process of making books since the 15^th century in Europe, and earlier in Asia and the Islamic world, so that almost every shelf holds the lives of hundreds, thousands of different trees and plants that were repurposed into a different sort of leaves entirely.

But in a handful of volumes on Spencer’s shelves, we might find something closer to nature than wood and flax linen pulped and lined into thin sheets for writing: we can find actual plants. These volumes preserve the past between their pages in a particularly literal sense, sometimes containing once plentiful plants that are now endangered, even extinct, serving as a testament to the lost flora of centuries past. These books were created not only by botanists but by farmers and shopkeepers as well, spanning the breadth of relationships that people have with nature: as scientists, their efforts to dissect, study, catalog, and document them so perfectly and completely; as farmers, their efforts to tame them and domesticate them; and as artists, to transform them into new forms of beauty and preserved life.

Cross sections of the American Chestnut, from Hough, Romeyn Beck. The American woods: Exhibited by actual specimens and with copious explanatory text. Lowville, N.Y.: Published and sections prepared by the author, 1888; Call Number: Pryce C11. The American Chestnut, once one of the most plentiful trees in the United States, was decimated by a fungal blight that killed 3-4 billion trees beginning in 1904, and now fewer than 10% of its original number survive.

Romeyn Beck Hough, author of The American Woods, took the idea of making a forest into a book quite literally: his work is not only a comprehensive representation of over 350 different species of trees that flourished across the late 19th- and early 20th-century American landscape, but a demonstration of a new technology of his own invention: he developed a cutter that could slice wood to 1/1200th of an inch, making slices of wood so thin they were translucent. The American Woods became a manifesto of wood samples: for each of the 350 species he included three different slices together with details of their botany, habit, medicinal and commercial uses. In total, the work consisted of 13 volumes, with a fourteenth published by his daughter using his notes after his death. Scientific illustration in Natural History already sought to recreate the details of living specimens in perfect detail and accuracy; through his wood samples in The American Woods, Hough took the next step in perfect replication.

Specimens of Meadow Barley, Meadow Cattail (now called timothy hay), and Marsh Bent from Swayne, George. Gramina pascua: or, A collection of specimens of the common pasture grasses, arranged in the order of their flowering, and accompanied with their Linnæan and English names, as likewise with familiar descriptions and remarks. Bristol: Printed for the author, by London.: S. Bonner, Castle-Green; and sold by W. Richardson, Royal-Exchange, 1790; Call Number: Pryce H1. Timothy hay is now a common grass for cattle and horses, as well as small, domesticated pets, thanks to its high fiber content.

The Gramina Pascua, or A collection of specimens of the common pasture grasses, arranged in the order of their flowering was published in 1790 by Reverend George Swayne, a farmer, rather than a scientist. Swayne was a learned man, with two degrees from Oxford. In addition to serving as a vicar in Gloucester, England, he was active in the agricultural societies of the early 19th century, clubs that consisted of farmers and scientists dedicated to discussing practical and theoretical farming. Gramina Pascua had a more practical purpose to its scientific exploration of botany, however, as it was borne from a broader interest in the early 19th century in cultivating grasses in the meadowlands and pastures of Britain for grazing animals and harvesting for food. Between 1700 and 1850, agricultural output quintupled thanks to technological advances and studies that sought to understand and optimize farming, as was the case for Reverend Swayne and his Gramina Pascua.

Pressed Flowers from Gethsemane, from Meo, Boulos. Flowers from the Holy land. Carefully arranged. Jerusalem: Printed and bound by Joseph Schor, 1888; Call Number: Pryce AK1. Gethsemane was a garden of olive trees across the Kidron Valley, where Jesus was said to have prayed before his arrest and crucifixion.

Boulos Meo was neither scientist nor farmer – no, he was a shopkeep in Jerusalem, at Jaffa Gate, one of the seven main gates of the Old City walls. Technically, neither was Boulos Meo an artist – he was merely the publisher and seller of Flowers from the Holy Land, whose artist remains unknown, whether it was Boulos himself or perhaps someone he knew.  Boulos Meo sold, at first, rugs, beginning in 1872, but eventually expanded to sell antiques, religious icons, jewelry, and souvenirs to tourists and pilgrims from around the world visiting the city. Christian pilgrims had brought tangible items back from their journeys for centuries – stones were among the most popular souvenirs from Jerusalem, with one stone from each holy site in the Stations of the Cross, a processional route across fourteen sites in Jerusalem, but fragments of flowers and plants were also common. Flowers from the Holy Land took that practice and transformed it into an artbook tied closely to the place of its making, where the descriptions of the flower arrangements included not the names of the flowers, but the names of the holy sites where they were gathered, to connect the physicality of the book – the flowers themselves, and not merely their visual nature – intrinsically with places of religious meaning. As a result, the book became an embodiment of the places named in the text, its flowers an echo of its pilgrim owner’s memories of the places they visited.

One beauty of these books is that no two are perfectly alike, for each slice of wood, every pressed flower is distinct from its brethren in another copy, even when the texts are identical. Some two hundred copies of The American Woods survive in libraries, but like fingerprints, their thin slivers of wood cannot perfectly match one another. A little more than ten copies of Gramina Pascua are held on library shelves, and twelve of Boulos Meo’s pressed flower books still survive in public collections, though perhaps more are tucked away on the shelves of descendants of the pilgrims who visited Palestine at the turn of the century, their flowers still delicately pressed between the pages.

On July 24th, and throughout the coming Fall and Spring semesters, the KU Libraries will be hosting a range of events focused on plants, botany, and gardening, including a Plant Swap event on July 24th, which will feature several books from Spencer making a voyage of their own from their shelves to 3 West in Watson to be featured side by side with their living, breathing plant counterparts. Visitors will be able to pick up a potted lavender plant and then browse a 1640 illustrated herbal to see how lavender has been a part of human life and study for over 400 years. And perhaps, if you are so inclined, you might pick a few leaves of your own plants, and press them between the pages of a book at home, for future generations to see how plants still interleaf with knowledge and learning today.

Eve Wolynes
Special Collections Curator

Citations:

Brett, Jim. “Gramina Pascua,” in Collection Update, no. 15. Edited by Carol Goodger-Hill. Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph Library, 1992.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Gethsemane.” Encyclopedia Britannica, June 14, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/place/Gethsemane.

Limor, Ora. “Earth, stone, water, and oil: Objects of veneration in Holy Land travel narratives,” in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500. Ed. By Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, and Bianca Kühnel. Routledge: 2017. Pp. 3-18.

Pizga, Jessica. “Hough’s American Woods.” The New York Public Library, March 12, 2012. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/03/12/houghs-american-woods.

Sharar, Adam Abu. “The Shop and Bab al-Khalil,” in Jerusalem Quarterly File, no. 15, Winter 2002. pp. 32-38.

Van Drunen, Stephen G.; Schutten, Kerry; Bowen, Christine; Boland, Greg J.; Husband, Brian C. (September 2017). “Population dynamics and the influence of blight on American chestnut at its northern range limit: Lessons for conservation”. Forest Ecology and Management. 400: 375–383.