Kenneth Spencer Research Library

This post was written by Tiffany McIntosh, who was Spencer’s Administrative Associate unit until last month. She is now the Outreach Manager at the Watkins Museum of History in downtown Lawrence.

This exhibit was developed over the last thirteen weeks as part of a final project for my master’s program in museum studies at the University of Oklahoma. To be able to graduate, I had the choice of doing a project, an internship, or a research paper. The choice of doing a project was fairly clear to me from the beginning. With guidance from an onsite supervisor, students were asked to find a museum (or similar institution) to work with to fill a need they had and to create a project that would further the student’s learning. Looking for some fun insights behind the process of curating an exhibit? Look no further!

How did the idea for this exhibit come about?

In order to graduate from my master’s program, I needed to do an independent project that I created in partnership with a cultural heritage institution. Having worked at Spencer, I felt it allowed me the opportunity to develop new skills in an environment I was already comfortable in. The project had to be outside our job scope which is why this was a great opportunity to learn new skills. Originally I was going to do an exhibit on a different topic, but my interest in the diaries in Spencer’s collections led me to the idea of Kansas in the 1800s. Knowing little about this topic, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

What was the process of creating the exhibit?

Once I came up with the idea and my project was approved, I started planning the direction I wanted to take. I began by digging through the finding aids and pulling collections to look through. I dug through over 115 collections before I found the right items for my exhibit. With the help of my onsite supervisor, Kansas Collection Curator Phil Cunningham, I was able to pin down layouts for my cases. Once my items and layouts were settled on, I scanned everything for my Omeka exhibit and sent them off to the conservation lab for treatment. After that I started the process of writing my exhibit labels. Writing labels was probably the hardest part of this whole process. There’s only so much you can portray in 100-200 words. Once my labels were ironed out, it was all just waiting for installation day. As I waited for installation, I wrote this blog post, created an activity, and worked on my Omeka exhibit.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered?

I would say I was most surprised by how hard it was to find things about rural life in the 1800s. There were plenty of ledgers, bank books, diaries (sometimes in illegible handwriting), and other things. But, there was a limited number of exhibit-worthy items that would get people thinking and talking. Finding photographs was the hardest. Every time I found one that I liked I would realize it was from the early 1900s. I suppose could have included those photos in the exhibit, but I was determined to stick to my plan.

What is the most interesting thing you learned while working on this exhibit?

I was pretty amazed that collections that have never been looked at together are interconnected. Many items in my case on Lawrence relate to each other but come from different collections. For example, I had previously worked with the J. House business card from the Lawrence business cards collection, so finding the J. House receipt in the Bowersock collection was super cool to me. It was also fun putting things into perspective. The exhibit includes a Steinbergs’ Clothing House business card, and one of the images I found has Steinbergs’ storefront in it. This might not seem cool on the surface level. When looking at the original photo you can’t read the business names. It wasn’t until I scanned and blew up the photo that I realized it showed Steinbergs’. I could go on forever but those were two of my favorite findings.

What do you hope visitors take away from this exhibit?

I hope viewers walk away with an understanding of how surprisingly different lives can be lived in a relatively close area. The author of the anonymous farmer’s diary talks about going to Kansas City, and imagining what that may have been like compared to life on the farm is just really interesting to me. I also hope people see the parallels of life in the 1800s to now. While there have been many advancements, rural farmers are still secluded from city life in a way while Massachusetts Street in Lawrence is still booming with business.

At the end of the day, this project has been a blast. I never thought I would be creating a physical exhibit as part of my program, one curated entirely by me at that. I have learned so many skills and things about my thought process throughout this semester. Things like the ups and downs of writing labels, or thinking you found the perfect item only to find it is in poor condition, or you can’t read it, or it does not fit the time frame. I hope visitors are able to feel some connection when they walk away from the exhibit.

Tiffany McIntosh
Spencer Public Services/Watkins Museum of History

I developed Spencer’s current short-term exhibit to compliment the research I conducted about Clinton Lake and the Wakarusa Museum as an undergraduate student. While writing my thesis paper last year, I used a lot of the materials featured in this exhibit as primary sources. I hope this blog post will elaborate more on the complex history of Clinton Lake and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from a community perspective.

Originally passed by Congress in 1917, the Flood Control Act directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin evaluating issues of flood control along tributaries of the Mississippi River. This included the longest tributary of the Mississippi River: the Missouri River, which feeds the Kansas (Kaw) River. On July 13, 1951, after a series of storms produced up to 16 inches of rain, the Kaw spilled over its banks. More than 115 cities along its path in eastern Kansas – most notably Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City – were flooded. In Lawrence, the river crested at 29.90 feet (11 feet above flood stage). The flood also washed out 1 million acres of land and nearly 10,000 farms. For many local community members, the Flood of 1951 represented a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. The flood forced 85,000 people to abandon their homes and amassed $760 million in damages (nearly $5 billion today).

In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a network of levees and reservoirs to prevent future flooding. The Flood Control Act of 1962 authorized funding to dam the Wakarusa River, a major tributary of the Kaw, and build Clinton Lake. In addition to flood control, Clinton Lake would also supply the city of Lawrence with water and provide a source of recreation for locals and tourists alike. Located southwest of Lawrence, Clinton Lake ushered in an era of excitement and uncertainty for the people of Douglas County. Despite protests from many Wakarusa River Valley citizens, the Corps of Engineers began buying land as early as 1968, and construction of the dam started in 1972.

Swift action on behalf of the Corps of Engineers prompted local residents of the Wakarusa region to form the Clinton Lake Landowner’s Association, which advocated for the landownership rights of Wakarusa River Valley citizens. According to Martha Parker, a lifetime resident of Clinton and an active community member, “they did nothing but lie to you. We used to have a saying, ‘How can you tell a Corps man is lying? When his lips start moving.'” An auxiliary group, the Clinton Lake Historical Society (or CLHS) was formed alongside the Landowner’s Association with the goal of gathering and preserving the region’s history, which many feared would be lost forever beneath the lake. Many local community members held feelings of great anxiety about the proposed construction of Clinton Lake. This anxiety was not only rooted in an intense fear of the unknown, which often accompanies forced displacement, but the idea that the disappearance of regional history meant the erasure of one’s personal identity. “People just had no idea what was about to happen to them,” Parker explained. “Tons of people were selling all their belongings, their land, everything. I kept telling folks, don’t sell. Nobody listened.” With the support of the Landowner’s Association and the CLHS, Parker went on to establish the Clinton Lake Museum, known today as the Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum.

However, it is important to remember that Clinton Lake displaced more than just rural residents of the Wakarusa River Valley. The process of artificial lake building results in the forced displacement and subsequent migration of different groups of peoples at different moments in time. Yet this process cannot be viewed from a static perspective. Dispossession is not merely an event; it is a process that continues long after initial physical removal. Beginning in the 1800s, Native American nations located within the Wakarusa River Valley were removed from their federally promised lands in order to make room for white settlers. This included the Kaw Nation (whose ancestral homelands included the river valley) along with tribes relocated from the East (namely the Shawnee and Delaware). Therefore, Clinton Lake serves as a force of continuous dispossession. Flooding the land removes any future opportunity for communities, both Native and non-Native, to return to their homes and restore their sense of historical, cultural, and spiritual connection to that place.

This exhibit is free and open to the public in the North Gallery through February 28th.

Claire Cox
Public Services Student Assistant
KU Graduate Student in History

While each year we at Spencer process many new collections, we are also adding to preexisting collections through the continued generosity of our donors. From Pulitzer Prize-winning authors to LGBTQIA2S+ activists, an individual’s history doesn’t end when their collection comes through our doors. Individual and organizational histories continue to evolve past the snapshots their historical records provide, and we at Spencer aim to provide as complete a picture as we can! One collection we’d like to draw particular attention to is an addition to the Reuter Organ Company photograph collection (Call Number: RH PH 68). Through this collection, patrons can follow the construction of uniquely hand-crafted pipe organs before they were built into their new homes in institutions all over the world. And now, with a 2023 addition, patrons can see even more of the grandeur of these massive instruments as well as the incredible skill and historical craftsmanship of this Lawrence-based company!

The history of the Reuter Organ Company starts in 1917 when Adolph Reuter established the Reuter-Schwarz Organ Company with his business partner Earl Schwarz. After a disastrous tornado blew through the company factory, the company relocated to the Wilder Brothers Shirt Factory on New Hampshire Street in Lawrence, Kansas, after fulfilling a commission for the city’s Masonic Temple in 1919. Schwarz departed from the company shortly afterwards, and the company was renamed the Reuter Organ Company. In less than ten years, the company grew from a six-employee operation to over 50 full-time employees with over 50 commissions a year. However, after lean years during the Great Depression, the Reuter Organ Company faced a manufacturing ban on musical instruments during World War II and stayed afloat by producing government-sanctioned boxes for munitions materials with a skeletal crew. After the war, the company began to flourish again, and Reuter began hiring skilled staff with formal music education and expertise in organ construction. Through the knowledge base of its staff, the company began to experiment and further develop traditional construction techniques with new pipe organ technology to develop a signature “Reuter sound.”

After Adolph Reuter’s retirement in 1961, the company continued to evolve under the direction of longtime employee Franklin Mitchell. Mitchell, with then newly appointed production manager Albert Neutel, purchased the company in the early 1980s. Together, the two continued to refine the Reuter technical craft, particularly with the mechanical aspects of organ construction and the tonal sound of the company’s organs. After Mitchell’s retirement in 1997, Albert Neutel was joined in management by his son, Albert “J.R.” Neutel, a former longtime employee of the company. Under the Neutel family’s direction, the Reuter Organ Company moved operations from New Hampshire Street to a newly constructed and specially designed factory and administrative facility in northwest Lawrence in 2001. Sixteen years later, the company celebrated its 100th anniversary by holding a public open house in their newer facility and inviting old and new customers alike. By this time, the company had constructed over 2,200 pipe organs for public and private institutions around the world. The company had also built a respected name in organ rehabilitation within the pipe organ community. In 2022, amid the retirement of several longtime key staff members, J.R. Neutel, the company’s current president, decided to sell Reuter’s factory and administrative facility. A major selling point of the Reuter Organ Company is the institutional and craft knowledge of its staff. There is a strong tradition of old staff mentoring new staff and passing down historic pipe organ construction techniques. Operating at the same scale without that same level of institutional knowledge was deemed impossible. And in the beginning of 2023, the Reuter Organ Company further scaled back operations to only fulfilling the customary 11-year warranties offered to their past clients with special consideration for smaller projects.

To honor this historic company and to showcase a new addition to the Reuter Organ Company photograph collection, we here at Spencer have created a temporary exhibit to display images of a few of the beautiful pipe organs Reuter’s has constructed over the years and to dip into some pipe organ terminology. Have you ever wondered were the phrase “pulling out all stops” comes from or just how big the biggest musical instrument in the world can get? Come on by to learn more about this incredible company and the incredible instruments it made! The exhibit opened free to the public in Spencer’s North Gallery on November 1st and will continue to be on display until early January 2024. We hope you “stop” by!

Charissa Pincock
Manuscripts Processor

Stoker-ed about Halloween? Count get enough spooky stories? Excited to sink your teeth into this year’s Booktoberfest Community Read at Lawrence Public Library?

But of corpse!

Stop by and check out Spencer’s current short-term exhibit (ahem, exhi-bite) featuring a selection of materials by Bram Stoker, special editions of his novel Dracula, and copies of other early vampire stories. Highlights include:

• the first installment of The Primrose Path, Stoker’s first novel that was initially published as a serial in 1875;
• a handwritten draft of an unpublished article written and signed by Bram Stoker in 1887;
• an early edition of the first fully realized vampire story in English; and
• a copy of Dracula printed for servicemembers during World War II.

We hope to see you if you’re in our neck of the woods! The display is free and open to the public in Spencer’s North Gallery until October 31. Be sure to also download, print, and enjoy Spencer’s Halloween-inspired coloring pages and Frankenstein-themed MadLibs.

Caitlin Klepper
Head of Public Services

Spencer’s renovated North Gallery includes two new cases in which staff members can display materials on a short-term basis. During October, we’re exhibiting items in Spencer’s holdings that relate to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The exhibit is free and open to the public in the Spencer North Gallery during the library’s regular business hours.

One of the most well-known and popular American socialists
during the early 20th century, Eugene V. Debs was the
Socialist Party’s candidate for U.S. President five times.
As a result of this speech, Debs was arrested and convicted
in federal court under wartime espionage law.
Call Number: Josephson 5687. Click image to enlarge.

“During a revolution, millions and tens of millions of people learn in a single week incomparably more than in a whole year of every-day sluggish life.”

– Vladimir Lenin

Marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Spencer Research Library is currently displaying highlights from the Leon Josephson Collection on Modern Socialism. Extensively documenting the international socialist movement during the first half of the 20th century, the Josephson Collection contains over 8000 pamphlets, books, and ephemeral materials.

Examples of materials on display include Lessons of the Revolution and The Land Revolution in Russia by Vladimir Lenin, as well as a copy of the first constitution adopted by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in 1918.

As a result of the magazine’s consistent denouncement of
World War I and American involvement, nearly all of the
editors and writers of The Masses were charged with violating
the Espionage Act of 1917. Call Number: D2009. Click image to enlarge.

John Reed later published his eyewitness account of the Bolshevik Revolution
as a book, Ten Days that Shook the World (1919). Reed died in a Moscow hospital
in 1920; he is buried in the graveyard of revolutionary heroes near the
Kremlin Wall. Call Number: RH WL D1614. Click image to enlarge.

“The Russian Revolution is an incomparably mightier even than any previous revolution; larger in scope and deeper in ultimate meaning than the French Revolution.”

– Louis C. Fraina, a founding member of the American Communist Party

Socialist publications from America such as The Masses and its successor The Liberator are also on display. These magazines were illustrated with realist and modernist artwork, which they combined with poetry, short stories, and articles discussing and interpreting the Russian Revolution and its influence on the international socialist movement.

Statement from Public Services student Zachary Lassiter

I started KU in the fall of 2015 as a History major, and began working at Kenneth Spencer Research Library in August 2016. I’ve spent most of my time as an undergraduate studying the former Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and the Cold War. I had the desire to take part in researching and constructing one of the many exhibits that are showcased at Spencer throughout the year. With the recent renovation of Spencer’s North Gallery, and with the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it was a perfect opportunity. Going through countless pamphlets, magazines, and ephemeral materials, I have gained a better understanding of the Russian Revolution from the perspectives of the Bolsheviks and American socialists in their own words as it was happening. I also gained experience in the research and development process of constructing an exhibit, knowledge I hope to utilize in future work. Finally, I want to thank Caitlin Donnelly, Head of Public Services, for helping me through this process and providing me with this opportunity.

Zachary Lassiter
Public Services Student Assistant