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.
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’m sharing a small and simple collection of business cards from Lawrence. The Lawrence business card collection features business cards from mostly the 1880s. The two featured today are from the Lawrence Business College and J. House.
An online exhibit from the Lawrence Public Library notes that the Lawrence Business College was “established in 1869 by W.H. McCauley [and]…was the first business college in Kansas. The school was located in the Lawrence National Bank building on the third and fourth floors.” While the business college no longer exists, it is widely unknown when and why it shut its doors. Some personal accounts from attending the college can be found in the John L. Kilworth papers at the library.
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The front (top) and back (bottom) of a business card for the Lawrence Business College, 1883-1884. Business Cards, Lawrence, Kansas. Call Number: RH MS P479. Click images to enlarge.
J. House was a clothing business operated for several decades by Jacob House at 729 Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence. The building is marked by a plaque as having survived Quantrill’s Raid in 1863. Jacob House, his wife Ricka, and their seven children resided at 805 Ohio Street for many years before relocating to 701 Tennessee in 1904. House’s 1913 obituary in the Lawrence Daily Journal-World declared that “no man in Lawrence stood higher in the esteem of the public” than him. The article noted that House was born in Austria in 1833. After emigrating to the United States in 1854 and living in a variety of places, he settled in Lawrence and opened his business in 1862. House was in his store at the time of Quantrill’s Raid; he was taken by a group of raiders and “kept as a prisoner and guide all day. He was forced to show them from place to place and everywhere he saw the dead bodies of his friends and acquaintances.”
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The front (top) and back (bottom) of a business card for the J. House clothing business, undated. Business Cards, Lawrence, Kansas. Call Number: RH MS P479. Click images to enlarge.
Happy Halloween all you screechers, screamers, and hollerers! We’ve also been celebrating over here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library in the best we know how: combing the KU Libraries online catalog and finding what cursed history we can find. We asked our student workers to recommend their picks for items that best represent the spirit of Halloween. They went beyond the safety of the Reading Room and braved the stacks to bring us these unsettling tomes and relics, but not everything is what it seems. Here are a few of our favorites!
Our very first recommendation comes from the Centron Corporation, a film production company founded right here in Lawrence, Kansas. Perhaps best known for their work in educational films, the company also had a hand in the cult classic horror film Carnival of Souls. Elly Masteller found this lovely portrait in the Centron Corporation records collection. This cheerful gentleman was used in a film to help encourage literacy and creative writing among children. Remember kids, he can’t get you if your nose is in a book!
Production still of a clown from Reaching Your Reader, undated [circa 1985]. Centron Corporation Records. Call Number: RH MS Q514. Click image to enlarge.
Kathryn Sauder sent in our next recommendation, another artifact, but this time from the Thomas Woodson Poor papers. Poor was an Olympic high jumper who competed for the University of Kansas from 1921 to 1925 and placed fourth in the high jump at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Poor is also known for his lifelong crusade in helping children receive the polio vaccine after the tragic death of his daughter, Melinda Sue, from polio. One of the toys he used to do so was this monkey puppet, and while the puppet may look demonic, it helped save lives! Absolutely heartwarming, not chilling, but perhaps maybe do not look into its eyes for too long.
Monkey puppet, undated [circa 1955-1956]. Thomas Woodson Poor Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1568. Click image to enlarge.
Literary giant Samuel Taylor Coleridge brings us our next spooky item, recommended by Nile Russo: a copy of The Devil’s Walk, or alternatively titled The Devil’s Thoughts. The Devil cuts a dapper shape as he gets himself dressed in his Sunday’s best for a walk around the town. In this poem, the Devil offers commentary about passersby, questioning perhaps if mankind might be the scariest creature of all.
The illustration accompanying the title page of The Devil’s Walk: A Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, 1830. Call Number: B4254. Click image to enlarge.
Molly Leonard recommended perhaps the most soul-wrenching item among our recommendations this year: a copy of Historie des diables de Loudun. This is a book about the Loudun possessions, a piece of history about an Ursuline convent being taken over by unusual behavior and visions attributed to demonic possession. In the end, through the intervention of Cardinal Richelieu, a local priest and decrier of Richelieu’s policies named Urbain Grandier was tried and executed for witchcraft in connection with the possessions. Again, and we can’t reiterate this enough, mankind might just be the scariest monster of all.
Title page of Histoire des diables de Loudun, 1716. Call Number: B12841. Click image to enlarge.
And finally, Ian Strasma reminds us that Halloween isn’t only about creepy clowns, puppets and possessions, and dashingly dressed demons with this recommendation: a black cat found lurking in the Ronald Johnson collection (literary estate papers). The cat may be cute, but be careful that you do not cross him!
“Cat photos,” undated [but timeless]. Ronald Johnson Collection (Literary Estate Papers). Call Number: MS 336. Click image to enlarge.
Best of luck out there as you begin finishing up semester and don’t be afraid to check out the many – completely safe, we promise – collections here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library!
The letters of Guy Hatfield are a collection of 50 letters written by a traveling salesman to his wife, Nell, living in Kansas City, Missouri. He made his living traveling throughout the Midwestern United States. His letters document his travels between Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma Territory, Colorado, Missouri, and Illinois, all in the hopes of making a quick buck. Though little is known about Guy Hatfield’s life outside of the collection of letters here at Spencer Library, he is associated as a contemporary of the better-known George B. McClellan, a traveling medicine man and Wild West showman. [i]
Guy’s letters to his wife, Nell, give a window into his business life as a traveling salesman. Rarely was business good. Inclement weather would keep the townspeople in their homes and slow business. Sometimes “biz” (as Guy called it) in company towns was centered around payday; setting up shop at the right time was key. Risk of illness and outbreak of the “grip” (also written as grippe, an old-fashioned term for the flu) could also be a detriment to business.
In a letter written from Davenport, Iowa, in September 1891, Guy’s typically neat handwriting is shaky and the message short. Is Guy in the grips of the Grippe? Letters of Guy Hatfield. Call Number: RH MS 1371. Click image to enlarge.
The letters give a wealth of information beyond Guy’s correspondence to his wife. His travels, most often by train, show the rail network in the Midwest and Great Plains around 1890. The stationery and envelopes, bearing the names and proprietors of the hotels Guy stayed at, give us a list of the hotels and innkeepers that served travelers as they crisscrossed the country.
Guy Hatfield’s travels in winter 1889/1890 outlined on a Kansas railroad map. Based on the order of his letters, he traveled to Wymore and Beatrice (Neb.) and south to Manhattan and Salina (Kan.). He then headed up to Red Cloud (Neb.) before going to Wichita and Winfield (Kan.). From there, he ventured into Oklahoma Territory. He returned, stopping in Emporia and Osage City (Kan.) before returning to Kansas City. Call Number: RH Map R452. Click image to enlarge.
The back of an envelope for the St. James Hotel in Manhattan (Kan.) features a verbose ad for Merchant’s Gargling Oil Liniment, November 1889. Letters of Guy Hatfield. Call Number: RH MS 1371. Click image to enlarge.
So what exactly did Guy Hatfield sell? His letters mention glasses and figurines (mislaid and broken by the railroad company), wigs, a mummy, a gorilla, a skeleton (in one letter, a gorilla skeleton), and medicine (though he does not say if it is for resale or personal use). In one of his letters, he mentions his attempts to sell his whole museum to one or more interested parties in Wichita, but bad luck seemed to prevent the sale from going through. He blames an associate named Converse, who he calls a “dead rank Jonah.”
Whatever it was Hatfield was trying to sell, few were interested in buying. With a few exceptions, the common thread through the letters are complaints of low revenue, high expenses, and excuses for why he cannot yet come home. The letters begin in October 1889 in Sioux City, Iowa, where Guy complains about losing lots of money. In the last letter, dated February 25, 1892, he is staying in Pittsburg, Kansas, a couple days longer with hopes of making a few dollars. As to his association with the famous George McClellan, a letter from January 22, 1891, suggests the nature of their friendship: “George has not answered any of my letters at all nor sent me a cent[.]”
Beyond these three years of flourishing (if we can call it that), little is known about Guy Hatfield or his wife Nell. The Kansas City addresses on the envelopes no longer exist. A search of digitized newspapers reveals two stories of a Guy Hatfield, who may or may not be the same as our ambitious and unlucky letter-writer. A newspaper report in the Kansas City Journal from January 1898 tells the story of a salesman of the same name attempting suicide in a saloon; a report from the Topeka State Journal from July of the same year reports on the impending execution of a soldier bearing the same name, who, “in a drunken row soon after pay day,” stabbed another soldier to death.
When we think of archival collections, we often give too much credit to the movers and shakers of history. It makes sense that the Kansas Collection at KU’s Spencer Library would hold the personal and professional papers of governors, senators, and other pillars of the civic community. But there is much to learn about the world of the past in collections like the letters of Guy Hatfield. He lived during an era we like to call the Gilded Age. But through his own words, we are reminded that to many, it may not have been so gilded.
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.
For the entire month of October on That’s Distinctive! I am going to switch things up a little bit. For those of you who don’t know me, my favorite holiday of all-time is Halloween. Things like apple cider, falling leaves, the chill in the air, and the pumpkin patch bring me so much excitement. So, for this whole month (with the exception of next week) and the first post in November, I will be featuring items from our collections that remind me of spooky season.
This week we are going to ease into it with some Halloween party invitations from the Alvin Terry Papers. The invitations, which appear to be handmade, are stored in the collection with their original mailing envelopes. The party Mr. Terry was invited to seemed to have happened annually. One invitation is undated, with the other being from 1967.
From movies, to schools, to universities, and more, Halloween parties have been a staple across the United States for decades. I would have to say my personal favorite fictional Halloween party is from the 1993 film Hocus Pocus. A clip of the famed Sanderson Sisters crashing the town’s party can be found on YouTube. Even if you don’t have a party invite this year, go out and celebrate the return of spooky season and the fresh fall breeze!
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The cover (top) and inside (bottom) of an undated Halloween invitation. Alvin Terry Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1333. Click images to enlarge.
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The front cover (top) and inside (bottom) of a 1967 Halloween invitation. Alvin Terry Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1333. Click images to enlarge.
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! we are sharing some items from our Kansas Sheet Music Collection. The collection houses a “wide variety of sheet music relating to Kansas, written by Kansans, or otherwise of significance to the state of Kansas and themes of possible interest to Kansans.” The collection consists of eight boxes with the contents organized in alphabetical order.
The pieces shown today are “The Jayhawk Song”by Arch P. Naramore (1947); “KU Forever, ‘Varsity Song” published by Frank W. Ryan (1912); and “I am Going Back to Kansas: ‘Mid the Green Fields of Alfalfa Far Away” by Jesse J. Hamilton (1908).
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The front cover and first two pages of “The Jayhawk Song” by Arch P. Naramore, 1947. Kansas Sheet Music Collection. Call Number: RH MS Q455. Click images to enlarge.
The front cover of “KU Forever, ‘Varsity Song” published by Frank W. Ryan, 1912. Kansas Sheet Music Collection. Call Number: RH MS Q455. Click image to enlarge.
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The front cover and first two pages of “I am Going Back to Kansas: ‘Mid the Green Fields of Alfalfa Far Away” by Jesse J. Hamilton, 1908. Kansas Sheet Music Collection. Call Number: RH MS Q455. Click images to enlarge.
