Kenneth Spencer Research Library

“I’m off Friday noon, destination Russell, Kansas…Direct all letters to Russell, Russell Co., Kansas, until you hear from me to the contrary”

Letter from Louie C. Walbridge, September 27, 1882

Louie C. Walbridge was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1859, the youngest of six children. In 1878, after finishing his education at the Riverview Military School in Poughkeepsie, he headed west to take a clerical job in St. Louis, Missouri. He left that job in the summer of 1879 to join his brother in Sioux City, Iowa, where together they worked for the government, surveying the Missouri River. Next, Louie went to Chicago and worked in a hardware store for a couple of years. Sometime after his 23rd birthday, he made the decision to move to Russell County, Kansas, and on October 24, 1882, Louie signed papers to form a partnership in a plot of land that would eventually grow to 3,000 acres and a herd of over 1,000 sheep. This would be the start of his life-long career as a sheep rancher and farmer.

Louie C. Walbridge on porch of his home,
Profile Ranch, Russell County, Kansas, 1884.
Walbridge Collection. Call Number: RH PH 21.
Click image to enlarge.

About two years later, Louis bought out his partner and proceeded in business alone. He named the property Profile Ranch. He wrote, “I have made this purchase basing all my calculations on the future prosperity of the country.” And just to remove all doubt as to who owned the property, he painted “WALBRIDGE” on the roof of his most visible barn.

Wool wagons on Profile Ranch, circa 1885. Walbridge Collection.
Call Number: RH PH 21. Click image to enlarge.

Sheep on Profile Ranch, circa 1885. Walbridge Collection.
Call Number: RH PH 21. Click image to enlarge.

On January 21, 1892, Louie married Louise Rachel Castle (1861-1947). They had six children: Margaret (1893-1974), Louise (1895-1966), Caroline (1898-1989), Anne (1900-1971), Chester (1903-1984), and Henry (1905-1949).

Five of the Walbridge children: Caroline, Margaret,
Louise, Anne, and Chester, undated (circa 1904).
Walbridge Collection. Call Number: RH PH 21.
Click image to enlarge.

One of Louie’s hobbies was photography. He owned his own equipment and set up a darkroom in his family’s home. He photographed his property and his herd, but his favorite subject was his family. What sets Louie’s family photographs apart from those of other amateur photographers of his time is the intimate and candid way in which he captured their images. Many of his photos show his children relaxed and smiling, often leaning on or touching one another, looking at each other and not at the camera. In one image, their faces, hands, and clothes are dirty, as though they had just come in from playing outside, and their attention is on a cat they are holding, seemingly unaware of the camera. It is as though Louie wanted to portray his family as they really were, and he did not try to get the “perfect” photo of “perfect” children. In this way his photographs are quite endearing.

Louie C. Walbridge with Louise, Caroline, and Margaret, undated (circa 1899).
Walbridge Collection. Call Number: RH PH 21. Click image to enlarge.

Louise Walbridge with her children Margaret, Caroline, and Louise, undated (circa 1899).
Walbridge Collection. Call Number: RH PH 21. Click image to enlarge.

Margaret, Caroline, and Louise Walbridge holding a cat, undated (circa 1900).
Walbridge Collection. Call Number: RH PH 21. Click image to enlarge.

The Walbridge family enjoyed many years of overall success in ranching, and later in farming, but the Depression hit Louie and Louise hard, and their business suffered greatly. Poor economic conditions were made worse by dust storms, drought, crop failures, and Louie’s declining health. He was eventually forced to sell the ranch, and Louie and Louise moved to town. Perhaps the words he wrote years earlier gave him comfort: “There is one prominent feature of the Walbridges that I hope will descend to the coming generations, i.e., enduring with good grace what cannot be helped.” On February 1, 1939, just two months after moving to town, Louie passed away at the age of eighty. Louise would follow him in death eight years later.

Sources

“Louie Walbridge, Renaissance Man,” Kansas State Agriculturist, March 1981.

Walbridge, Caroline K. Ranchorama and Louie C. Walbridge: An Illustrated Story of Profile Ranch and the Owner, 1859-1939. Russell, Kansas: The Russell Record, 1966. Call Number RH D787.

Walbridge, Caroline Knickerbacker. Gallant Lady 1861-1947. Topeka, Kansas: Clyde E. Gilbert, printer, 1968. Call Number RH D3896.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services

Abilene, Kansas is a small city of under 7,000 people, but it managed to produce one of the most influential U.S. presidents. The only president to come from Kansas, Dwight D. Eisenhower served 8 years in the office from 1953-1961. Here he worked ceaselessly to deescalate the cold war and poured his energies into working towards world peace. But before he became the 34^th President of the United States, Eisenhower served as the commanding general of the U.S. troops in Europe during World War II. After Victory in Europe Day on May 8, 1945, then General Eisenhower returned to his hometown of Abilene. Here at the Spencer Research Library, as a part of our Kansas Collection, we have General Eisenhower’s Homecoming train brochure signed by the man himself and the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle issue reporting on his historic return. If you’re interested in learning more about our nation’s only president from Kansas, check out this great entry in the Kansas Historical Soceity’s Kansapedia, book a trip to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, or come visit us here at Spencer Research Library!

Eisenhower homecoming train brochure and menu front cover, signed by Dwight D. Eisehower.
Papers of Harry Darby, Kansas Collection, call number: RH MS 1345, Box 9, Folder 35. Click image to enlarge.

General Eisenhower homecoming train seating chart and menu, Papers of Harry Darby, Kansas Collection,
call number: RH MS 1345, Box 9, Folder 35. Click image to enlarge.

“Abilene’s Greatest Son Comes Home”, Abilene Reflector-Chronicle front page
from June 22, 1945. Kansas Collection, call number: RH H319. Click image to enlarge.

  
Article discussing General Eisenhower’s arrival by train titled “Ike is at Home”,
Abilene Reflector-Chronicle front page and page 6 from June 22, 1945.
Kansas Collection, call number: RH H319. Click images to enlarge.

Article describing the speech given by General Eisenhower to Abilene residents titled “Eisenhower Calls Friends to Realize Responsibility in United Effort for Peace”, Abilene Reflector-Chronicle front page from June 22, 1945.
Kansas Collection, call number: RH H319. Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Reference Specialist
Public Services

The Josephson Collection contains booklets and pamphlets having to do with the labor union movement in the United States. The items were collected by Leon Josephson and later acquired by KU Libraries. The materials are not only from the United States, but also from Europe and Russia.

Leon Josephson, and his more famous brother Barney, were avowed Communists. Leon was an attorney and accused of aiding the Communist Party of the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. He was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947.

The Josephson Collection also includes material on Communism and Socialism, but in honor of Labor Day weekend, here are some images of several of the U.S. labor-related items it contains.

Title pages of selected items from the Josephson Collection.
Call Numbers, from left to right: Josephson 5396, Josephson 4172,
Josephson 5608, and Josephson 4164. Click image to enlarge.

A selection of materials from the Josephson Collection.
Call Numbers, from left to right: Josephson 1455, Josephson 4749,
Josephson 3472, and Josephson 3487. Click image to enlarge.

A selection of materials from the Josephson Collection.
Call Numbers, from left to right: Josephson 2904, Josephson 3883,
Josephson 3974, and Josephson 3489. Click image to enlarge.

Cover of an issue of Labor Unity, February 1928.
Call Number: Josephson 4200. Click image to enlarge.

Cover of May Day vs. Labor Day: A Comparison of the
Social Significance of the Two Days of Labor Celebration by Olive M. Johnson, 1936.
Call Number: Josephson 5757. Click image to enlarge.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services

With the end of summer, and the start of school just around the corner, perhaps you are thinking about squeezing in just one more road trip. Maybe you’d like to explore a state you’ve never been to, or get to know the one you’re in a little better. You’ll need a good, concise guidebook for the journey, one with interesting facts and historical information, as well as reliable maps and tourist information. To start with, you might consider consulting the American Guide Series. Although they were published from the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, they still provide excellent background information to get you started, although you’ll probably want to get an up-to-date map.

American Guide Series for Missouri (1941), Colorado (1946), Nebraska (1939),
and Kansas (1939). Call Numbers: RH C9550, RH C11457,
RH C11415, and RH C11429. Click image to enlarge.

When Franklin Roosevelt became our 32nd president in 1933, the biggest national issue he and his administration had to contend with was the country’s severe economic depression, then in its fourth year with no end in sight. The plan they came up with to address this predicament became known as the New Deal, and it put in place a series of programs created by Congress and by presidential executive order to provide relief, recovery, and reform, all aimed at getting people back to work and the national economy on its feet again. The Works Progress (later Projects) Administration (WPA) was the largest of the New Deal agencies.

Fold-out map of Kansas from the American Guide Series volume on the state, 1939.
Call Number: RH C11429.Click image to enlarge.

One of those WPA projects was the agency called the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). Begun in 1935 and ending in 1943, the FWP, at its peak, employed approximately 6,600 unemployed writers, editors, researchers, historians, art critics, archaeologists, geologists, cartographers, and clerical workers. They produced more than 276 books, 701 pamphlets, and 340 other publications, such as articles, leaflets, and radio scripts. The most popular of these works was the American Guide Series. Each state, through the FWP, hired staff to create a guidebook that contained information about the state’s history, cities, landmarks, and historic sites; the culture of its people; and the geology and geography of the land. Each guidebook also contained a detailed highway map, usually folded up at the back of the book. In addition to the states, guidebooks were created for the territories (except Hawaii) and large cities, such as Washington, D.C. and New York. Some states, including Kansas, were able to create guidebooks for a few of their towns, as well. For their time, there is also a surprising amount of information about minority populations in the guidebooks, although often stereotypical and exploitative. The goal of the guidebooks was to familiarize Americans with their own state and country and to keep them in the United States on their vacations, where their tourism dollars were most needed.

Title page of American Guide Series for Washington, D.C., 1937.
Call Number: RH C3424. Click image to enlarge.

Title pages for American Guide Series for Leavenworth (1940) and Larned (1938), Kansas.
Call Numbers: RH C4787 and RH C4999. Click image to enlarge.

Describing the Series, Harry Hopkins, federal relief administrator, perhaps said it best when he asserted (as quoted in Catherine A. Stewart’s Long Past Slavery):

The American traveler gets into his automobile and travels for four days…and has the conviction that there is nothing of interest between New York and Chicago. Outside of a few highly advertised [sites]…he isn’t conscious of what America contains, of what American folk habits are. Americans are the most travel-minded people in the world; but their travel is two percent education and 98 percent pure locomotion. Speeding through towns whose chain stores look as if they had been turned out on an assembly line, the American motorist is unaware of the infinite variety and rich folklore of the American scene…For the first time, we are being made aware of the rich and varied nature of our country…By producing books that are helping us to know our country, the Writers’ Project helps us become better acquainted with each other and, in that way, develops Americanism in the best sense of the word.

Sources:

Hobson, Archie. Remembering America: A Sampler of the WPA American Guide Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Shortridge, James R. The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1984.

Stewart, Catherine A. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services

Around the time of our Care and Identification of Photographs workshop here at Spencer, I had four photographs from the John W. Temple Family Papers on my bench in the lab for cleaning and rehousing. The timing was fortunate for me, because from the workshop I picked up some tips for housing these items, and I also learned about the unique process by which two of the prints were created.

The photographs arrived, as so many of their age and type do, in precarious condition: two medium-format portraits were housed in heavy, dusty frames that were held together with brittle nails, and two military panoramic photographs were mounted to brittle, acidic boards. All of the photographs had varying degrees of surface dirt and apparent water staining, and had sustained some amount of physical damage caused by their housings and mounts. Before they could be safely handled and described by processing archivists, it was necessary to stabilize their condition and provide them with protective housings.

The two panoramas, which depict Troop D of the 9th Cavalry during the time of John Temple’s service in the Spanish-American War, were mounted to boards about two inches larger on all sides than the prints themselves. One board had a large loss along one edge and the other had a long vertical break in it that was causing the photograph to tear. Rather than removing the photographs from the backing entirely (a time-consuming and rather harrowing process), I trimmed the mounting board close to the edges of the photographs to reduce the potential for further breakage. I also cleaned the photographs with polyurethane cosmetic wedge sponges, which are gentle on the delicate emulsion surface. I then created a folder of archival corrugated board fitted with pieces of 1/8” archival foam to hold the photographs snugly in place, leaving spaces to allow them to be removed if necessary. The foam is firm enough to support the photographs but will not abrade the fragile edges.

Panoramic photographs of 9th Cavalry, Troop D, circa 1898.
John William Temple served in this unit during the Spanish-American War.
Photographs shown in housing with foam inserts.
John W. Temple Family Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f).
Click image to enlarge.

Detail of panoramic group portrait of Troop D of the 9^th Cavalry
(with adorable canine companion), circa 1898. John W. Temple Family Papers.
Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

The two portraits were in more fragile condition and therefore needed a few more layers of protection than the panoramas. They depict Fred Thompson, and a young Pearl Temple, wife of John W. Temple. With the curator’s and archivist’s consent, I removed the frames; the frames’ backings were loose and unsealed, which made removal easy, but the portraits were covered in surface dirt that had made its way in through the unsealed backings. I cleaned the portraits as I had the panoramas, with soft cosmetic sponges. Each portrait is mounted to a thin board, and I again considered but ultimately rejected the idea of removing the mounts. Even though past water damage has caused the portraits to warp slightly, they were stable enough once removed from the frames.

To house the portraits, I first affixed the portraits to sheets of mat board using large archival paper corners as shown in the photos below. The corners gently hold the photographs in place to prevent shifting, and they can be easily unfolded to allow for viewing or removing the items. Such corners are often used in photograph and art conservation and framing, but they are usually small and discreet and not as generously sized as these. Because the main purpose of this housing is to protect the portraits, I made these corners extra-large to distribute any stress on the photograph edges. Next I hinged window mats to the lower mat boards and lined the inside of the window mats with the same thin foam I used in the panorama housing, again to prevent abrasion of the photograph surfaces. Finally I added a front cover of mat board, and placed all three of the housings together in a flat archival box.

Two undated historic portraits in their new housings:
Fred Thompson (left) and Pearl Temple (right).
John W. Temple Family Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f).
Click image to enlarge.

Detail of paper corners, closed to secure photograph (left) and
open to allow access (right). Pearl Temple portrait, undated.
John W. Temple Family Papers.
Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

Photograph housing with foam-lined window mat.
Fred Thompson portrait, undated. John W. Temple Family Papers.
Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

Completed photograph housings in a flat archival storage box.
John W. Temple Family Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

When I first began working on the portraits, I noticed evidence of retouching on the images – a common practice. During the photograph identification workshop, I learned that this type of portrait is called a crayon enlargement, and that they were popular in the early twentieth century. In a crayon enlargement, the photographer uses a smaller photograph, often a cabinet card, to make an enlarged print that is usually slightly underexposed, and then adds hand-drawn or painted touches to the enlargement. The result can be subtle, as in our two portraits here, or so heavily augmented as to be difficult to identify as a photograph.

Both of these portraits are probably gelatin silver prints; the neutral tone and silver mirroring on Fred’s photograph point to that process (Pearl’s photograph was probably sepia toned to give it its warm color). In Pearl’s portrait, the embellishments are limited to a few brushstrokes accentuating features of her face and ruffles in her dress. There is also a patterned background that was probably created with an airbrush and stencil. To the naked eye these are the only additions, but under magnification (our workshop fee included a super handy handheld microscope) it’s possible to see pigment droplets throughout the image, indicating more airbrushing.

Detail of hand-drawn embellishments on the portrait of Pearl Temple.
Note the brushstrokes under mouth and nose and along ruffles in clothing.
John W. Temple Family Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

The accents made to Fred’s portrait are more extensive. Because the enlargement would have been underexposed, the details in light areas would have been lost, so the photographer has used airbrush and stencil to recreate the washed-out tie and collar, and also to darken the background. As in Pearl’s portrait, pigment drops are visible throughout the image under magnification, even where it doesn’t appear at first look.

Detail of airbrush accents to shirt and tie on portrait of Fred Thompson.
John W. Temple Family Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1387 (f). Click image to enlarge.

With the housing complete, these photographs are ready for processing and will soon be added to the finding aid for the collection. It was such a pleasure to work on these wonderful portraits; not only are they lovely objects, but I always love a good housing challenge, and seeing examples of this historical photographic process so soon after learning about it was a happy and instructive coincidence.

Angela Andres
Special Collections Conservator
Conservation Services