WVU Libraries

Blog post by Linda Blake, University Librarian Emerita

I am always somewhere in the process of reading an eBook, an audiobook, and a book-book, old-fashioned print on paper.  Recently I have been migrating toward West Virginia authors and West Virginia history probably because of the in depth look at West Virginia history working in the West Virginia and Regional History Center has afforded me.  The books I am featuring in this blog post are all non-fiction, except Ludie’s Life, which is a novel in poetry, and the Kentucky novel, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.  All include themes of particular interest to Appalachia: the importance of place, family loyalty, and struggle.     

Note:  Each title links to the WVU Libraries catalog entry.  Those held in the West Virginia and Regional History Center book collection cannot be removed from the Center, but those in the Appalachian Collection or the general book collection may be borrowed by WVU faculty, staff, or students.  Most West Virginia academic and public libraries should have these titles, or they can be requested through the libraries’ interlibrary loan services.   

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The Buffalo Creek Disaster: How the Survivors of One of the Worst Disasters in Coal-Mining History Brought Suit Against the Coal Company—And Won by Gerald M. Stern. 1977. 

In 1972 on a quiet Saturday morning a Pittston Coal Company slurry impoundment broke and flooded Buffalo Creek hollow with 132 million gallons of water creating a 25-foot wall of water and debris.   It washed away either all or partially 17 communities along the creek in Logan and Wayne Counties.  The disaster resulted in the total annihilation or destruction of homes leaving thousands homeless; the death of 125 men, women, and children; and left behind devastation and guilt-ridden and confused survivors.  This book details why this was not “an act of God” as declared by Pittston Coal and the legal battle by over 600 tenacious survivors and family members.  The group hired the book’s author’s law firm to represent them in a class action suit.  In the 1970s, terms such as post-traumatic stress did not exist, but in a unique move for the time, Stern sued for compensation for “psychic-damage” in addition to property damage and bodily injury. Stern also had to delve into the morass of corporate ownership and its legal implications.  This book provides a fascinating account of how the legal case was won. 

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Diamond Doris: The Ture Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Doris Payne and Zelda Lockhart. 2019 

West Virginians are amazing people full of surprises.  Doris Payne is one of these amazing people.  She was born in the small segregated southern West Virginia town of Slab Fork during the Depression.  She became one of the most notorious jewelry thieves ever.  Payne was a woman, and she was Black, but refused to conform to the stereotypes of what a Black woman could accomplish.  She used her intellect, good looks, and flair for style to rescue her mother from her abusive father and to rescue herself.  How did she accomplish this notoriety?  What drove her to steal jewelry around the world?  Was she justified?  What happened to her as she aged?  All the answers are in this fascinating memoir, an autobiography which reads like a novel. 

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Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy. 2018 

Dopesick is an eye-opener for those of us who thought where we live made us immune to the opioid epidemic.  How could opioid addiction, once considered isolated to urban areas, come to small town America and what role did West Virginia play in the epidemic?  Macy gives us a very personal and detailed view by tracing the story of some addicts and their families from the beginning of drug abuse. She not only explains how addiction occurs but also the chain from pharmaceutical companies to user, current therapeutic practices, and the justice system’s involvement.  The subtitle indicates that Macy points a finger directly at drug companies.  This book is not about the oxycotin use in southern West Virginia but about the link between Martinsburg, West Virginia, sitting next to the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan areas, as a wide distribution point for illegal drugs.   

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Ludie’s Life by Cynthia Rylant. 2006 

I am a fan of Cynthia Rylant and I particularly like When I Was Young in the Mountains, a picture book.  Rylant is a true West Virginia treasure for the way she captures our traditions and attachment to home with joy and reverence.  In Ludie’s Life, a life told in free verse, Rylant again works her magic by giving us Ludie through birth, marriage, childrearing, old age, and death.  The book also traces the changes to her coal field community as Ludie observes from her company house. While promoted as a young adult book, I think the themes such as childbearing, illness and death, aging, and loneliness are too raw for youth.  For example, Ludie describes her husband’s brother as “a man just teetering on the line between good and bad. No one knew for sure if he was crazy or just plain mean. This much was true: Ludie feared him.”  The book is full of truths such as this passage about change “…it seemed to Ludie that little by little life was packing her up for the long journey home.  The chickens and chicken pens gone. The hogs gone from the hog lot. No beagle tied to the doghouse. No doghouse.”  Maybe you don’t care for poetry, but I promise you that you will fall into Ludies’ Life, see it to its end, and then keep it close by for rereading.   

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Running on Red Dog Road: and Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood by Drema Hall Berkheimer 

My friend loaned me Running on Red Dog Road. I put it in my “to read” pile and left it there since I thought it was probably another vanity press title.  I had seen red dog roads, created by reusing coal mining slate, when I visited McDowell County in the 1970s, so after the book sat in that pile for years, I finally read it.  As I began to read, I discovered that the little memoir of life in 1940’s Beckley was a very pleasant surprise.  Ms. Berkheimer captured the life of a young girl in southern West Virginia with such detail that I was transported back to my own childhood.  I could almost taste the foods my mother made, including thick crust blackberry cobblers, stewed tomatoes, leather britches, and peas with pearl onions.  I remembered stories of hobos coming to Mom’s door for food.  I remembered long church services and tent meetings on hot summer nights.  I remembered playing freely and falling into the stories people liked to tell. The one about her aunt’s experience with a lonely-hearts club was laugh out loud funny.  Berkheimer recounts these stories with not only humor for the lightness of life but with compassion for the hardness of life.   

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The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson. 2019 

Richardson deals with two fascinating topics in her recent popular novel.  The “book woman,” Cussy Carter, is based on the New Deal circuit-riding librarians of Kentucky, part of the Pack Horse Library Project.  Cussy is also one of the genetically altered blue-skinned people of Kentucky. Two themes emerge then: the power of reading and education for escapism as well as practical information; and the bigotry and isolation faced by someone who looks different. As Cussy travels her route on her mule over rough terrain, she meets and befriends a cast of characters, mostly poor and struggling.  They are the women, men, and children of the isolated Kentucky mountains.  Poverty, class, and hunger are other prevalent themes in this Depression era engaging novel.   

Blog post by Katie Lehosit, WVRHC Graduate Assistant.

October 2020 marks the 26^th anniversary of a section of highway being opened near Elkins, West Virginia. This highway, which spanned 16 miles and 4 lanes, was the highly debated Corridor H. Opening day, which was on October 29^th, 1994, drew such guests as Governor Gaston Caperton and Senator Robert C. Byrd. The day also brought anti-Corridor H groups to Elkins, which included the Corridor H Alternative Alliance and North for Corridor H Alliance.

The Corridor H project was part of Appalachian Regional Development Act’s (ARDA) Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS). This plan, originally formed by President John F. Kennedy, was signed into action by President Lydon B. Johnson in 1965. The ARDA’s main goal was to connect Appalachia with the rest of the United States by economic, educational, and physical means. To physically connect the region with the U.S., the ADHS planned for corridors to be built in 13 states. Six of these corridors were planned for West Virginia. While many of these corridor projects went by relatively smoothly in the state, Corridor H was a different story, estimating to cost $10 million per mile.

Originally set aside due to financial reasons in the 1970s and 80s, Senator Jay Rockefeller began to push for construction to begin on Corridor H in the 90s. Environmental, historical, and activist groups were quick to band together. Groups like North for Corridor H Alliance (NCHA) fought against the original proposed route, which would have cut through wetlands, Corrick’s Ford Battlefield, Canaan Valley, and other natural wonders of the Mountain State. While Rockefeller argued the construction would create jobs, make travel to Washington D.C. faster, and bring tourism to West Virginia, NCHA argued the opposite. While the groups against Corridor H did agree the highway would create faster travel time to the nation’s capital, they also argued the highway would do more harm than good.

Aside from destroying popular tourist areas in the state, like Canaan Valley, NCHA and other groups also brought up other forms of harm the highway would bring. These included harm to West Virginia’s wetlands, endangered species like the Northern Flying Squirrel, streams, forests like the Monongahela forest, small town economies, and historical sites like Corrick’s Ford. While a northern route was chosen in 1993, the decision was not a happy one for anti-Corridor H groups. The proposed northern route still cut through wetland and other important areas, which lead NCHA and similar groups to file a federal suit against the West Virginia Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration in 1996.

Through various legal battles, the construction of Corridor H has been slowed. In fact, as of December 2019, 16.8 miles of the route do not have a final design. While the future of Corridor H is still in question, we can look back at October 29, 1994 and see how activism has changed the course of West Virginia history. Regardless of if you are pro-Corridor H, anti-Corridor H, or somewhere in between, it is impressive to see how grassroots activists changed the planning of the now 55 year old project.

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

October 16, 2020, was the 161^st anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.  Over 160 years after the event, John Brown, and the people and events surrounding him, remain a powerful topic for depiction such as the new program currently airing on Showtime, “The Good Lord Bird” starring Ethan Hawke as John Brown. 

The last couple of years have seen several books published on figures that were involved in the raid including the story of an escaped enslaved person, The Untold Story of Shields Green by Louis A. Decaro, Jr., Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army by Eugene L. Meyer, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H.W. Brands, and of course, the book that inspired the Showtime series, James McBride’s novel, The Good Lord Bird. 

While Brown remains the subject of much interpretation, little has been said about the multiple moves of the Harpers Ferry building Brown and his men occupied on that fateful raid, the Arsenal Engine House, later to called John Brown’s Fort. 

At the time, the engine house served as the government arsenal where guns and ammunition were stored.  Brown’s plan was to capture the armory and the engine house, using the ammunition inside to supply a hoped for uprising of enslaved people he believed would join him to fight for freedom following his initial strike.  This did not happen.  Brown and his small band of men were left to fend for themselves. The following day, U.S. Marines arrived to storm the engine house, led by Col. Robert E. Lee and his aide, J.E.B. Stuart.  Brown and his surviving men were captured, tried and executed.

This drawing was made on the scene by David Hunter Strother, a journalist, artist and illustrator, from Martinsburg. Strother, pictured below, who used the pen name, Porte Crayon, often wrote articles and provided illustrations that frequently appeared in the pages of Harper’s Monthly magazine.

During the Civil War, the engine house was the only part of the armory to survive.  This stereograph card shows the tents of Union troops stationed in front.   

By 1885, still in its original location in downtown Harpers Ferry, the engine house was used as a tourist attraction.  The words “John Brown’s Fort”, seen here, were painted over the arches where windows were formerly. 

First Move:

In 1891, the engine house was purchased by a group, headed by Iowan, A. J. Holmes, a former confederate soldier and congressman, with plans to make it an exhibition at the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition, to be held in Chicago in 1893.  The fair was planned as a celebration of the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in America. 

This was to be the first move for John Brown’s fort.  Since Chicago is a long way from Harpers Ferry, the engine house was dismantled and shipped via railroad. Once it arrived in Chicago, it was reconstructed inside one of the fair buildings.  Unfortunately, it drew little attention.  Reports state that only 11 people came to view John Brown’s Fort in 10 days. 

Second Move:

Unhappy with the turnout, the second move for the building occurred when the fort was dismantled once again and moved to an empty lot where it was abandoned.

The following year, a Washington D.C. journalist, Kate Field, publisher of Kate Field’s Washington, a weekly magazine, began a fund-raising effort to save John Brown’s Fort and move it back to Harpers Ferry. 

Although, no photographs could be found documenting John Brown’s Fort as an exhibition at the Columbian World’s Fair, or dismantled and abandoned on the vacant lot, the newspaper, the Wheeling Intelligencer, reported on June 21, 1893, an article entitled “OUR STATE BUILDING,” referring to the West Virginia building constructed on fair grounds.  Each state was responsible for building a site to exhibit their state’s products and industries.  The article touted the 30^th anniversary of the state and reported memorabilia on display, “There are a number of interesting relics to be found in the building, among which are the chair and safe used by Lee in writing his terms of surrender to Grant, and several John Brown relics.”  Fair goers visiting the West Virginia building could have picked up this John Brown Souvenir ticket, pictured below.   

Third Move:

Things began to look up for John Brown’s Fort when a local farmer, Alexander Murphy, encouraged by Kate Fields fundraising efforts, donated five acres of his property for the site.  The Baltimore and Ohio railroad stepped in and agreed to ship the building at no charge.  In move number three, a mere two years after it was shipped to Chicago, John Brown’s Fort was successfully returned to Harpers Ferry, and reconstructed on the Murphy Farm. 

Although it remained on the Murphy Farm for a number of years, the building had no purpose.  Positioned out of town, it failed to serve as a tourist destination.  Things took a turn for the worse when it was used as just another farm building to store fertilizer.

Move Four:

1909 was to be an important year for yet another rescue and rehabilitation of John Brown’s Fort.  That year was the fiftieth anniversary of John Brown’s raid.  In move number four, the building was once again removed, reconstructed and renovated, this time on the campus of Storer College, also located in Harpers Ferry.  Storer College, with its roots in the Civil War, had a strong connection to the fort.  Founded by Freewill Baptists immediately following the Civil War, and dedicated to the education of African Americans, Storer College was housed in Harpers Ferry buildings that served military purposes during the war. 

John Brown’s Fort was to remain on the campus of Storer College, serving as museum housing John Brown and Harpers Ferry memorabilia.   Though Storer College closed its doors as an educational institution following the passage of the landmark case, Brown vs Board of Education, in 1954, John Brown’s Fort remained on its campus.  But not for long.

Move Five:

In its fifth and final move, John Brown’s Fort was once again purchased and relocated, this time by the National Park Service, who became the owners of the Storer College campus in 1960. 

While positioning the fort on the original site would have been ideal, it was impossible due to a railroad embankment constructed on that site 1894, when John Brown’s Fort was sitting lonely and abandoned in a field outside Chicago.  The Park Service re-sited it as close to the original site as possible, a mere 150 feet away from its first home.   

And that is where John Brown’s Fort remains today, restored and open to visitors as an important historical site in one of the most important moments in West Virginia history. 

All of the books mentioned in this post and many of the photographs are available at the West Virginia and Regional History Center, open by appointment to West Virginia University affiliates only during the pandemic.

Resources:

• All images from the West Virginia and Regional History Center photographic collection, West Virginia History OnView, with the exception of the Fort during transfer and the final image of the Fort today.
• John Brown’s Fort by Clarence S. Gee.  West Virginia History, Volume 19, Number 2 (January 1958), pp. 93-100.  http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh19-1.html     
• Wheeling Intelligencer quote:  http://www.wvculture.org/history/miscellaneous/columbian02.html 
• John Brown’s Fort exhibition ticket, World’s Columbian Exposition.  West Virginia Archives and History, “On This Day in West Virginia History:” http://www.wvculture.org/history/thisdayinwvhistory/0314.html 
• Images and information from the National Park Service:  https://www.nps.gov/hafe/learn/historyculture/john-brown-fort.htm 
• John Brown’s Fort in Chicago, 1893:  https://watermark.silverchair.com/987906.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAqUwggKhBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggKSMIICjgIBADCCAocGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM2GkbJ8GD9AWvV6bdAgEQgIICWE5QHsa_ERnFRSvhtTG0adoKcH3d1vcW9GN9fHU1w0xarzP-7CbXCOUAjjD29KIHZTDwR_cKz0pBkfNEN4kh7fu3S9yzsehwtX0Xod8GBCC-hVyFcsYuMgMBi-uFSRgH22xCs3NhGDCkSRTIaGPFjx9rR6yDi8o1sJGIVF6G8IgZ0Y4GWmByiXKiQ7zXVGj9zJK7lr-UgwvvwzG73EeN8svVL0k-pnBgnRhHXQdT3bJqwp-CQ6QkM30fG4QR07nl-MpdeIZqmDyglbWbeCtyeQAO7j86bpWCYr-vkVgHOAZAcsDbbzapMIX4tmRnJF3Mh-0uBSocZwOiw4FZDlw-7IMj2WnmgSBa4ONE34L55Y_IbzQTf5J-KjGkCx8qPktZ_cZEQhp_fvAq4MEi0k20R6xABPxJue0kbjYx8CUvB7CnI3HWeLy0xco6LRAsITRY2sbd8-A40cS2HnDRkOWLkfwS-MJrLw2M_9jxx-QuNuh9Yqn1_fWv_Uoq329tGtJI-kaHAQAdn_1uPo3cLw7K9LMGHrLgEZSLYYr3-8WkHHyP4vM2Fx8Xe3FWDbJbOFD6o_jxbeLum3NLLEQJzrziVxNYt884Mw7SMOY2rRS4yO_Zi505VzR6VAjI4c8rzYCcN6TPLdoyrLFOX9eg_A9bcjG_Q98idRLtMgHjnHZiUvvcosioHIpsE–RefhS9_l0SRiCEwFq2BWzE6yEFDD5gb7_neNr_lV-3bxrs1uIDCPTahdVYHT2s8QqiNBl3FIvU3d25gDI2PDatbsUgL2J5jq00DMe_OXHqw 
• Wikipedia:  John Brown’s Fort:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Fort 
• Wikipedia: David Hunter Strother:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hunter_Strother

By Nathan Kosmicki, WVRHC Graduate Assistant.

Fayette County reserves the third Saturday in October for an exciting and unique celebration of outdoor recreation, civil engineering, and local pride. This celebration is known around the country as Bridge Day. The New River Gorge attracts thousands of visitors annually for both outdoor recreation and its scenic views. Historically the gorge was a source of coal mining in the now abandoned town of Thurmond, West Virginia. Crossing the gorge prior to the completion of the famous New River Gorge Bridge took 45 minutes. After the completion of the bridge on October 22, 1976, crossing the New River Gorge took mere seconds. The bridge is over 800 feet tall and over 3,000 feet long. The bridge was listed to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 thirteen years prior to the standard 50 year mark for eligibility. 

The bridge has become a symbol for the state, marking the back of the West Virginia state quarter from the U.S. Mint, and as a wonder of modern engineering. At the time of its construction it was the largest project the West Virginia Department of Highways had ever completed and today draws crowds from around the country to revel at not only the bridge’s amazing structural presence but also the beautiful nature surrounding the established New River Gorge National River which has been managed by the National Park Service since 1978. From the development of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and coal mining to natural preservation and civil engineering the New River Gorge is a testament to West Virginia’s natural beauty, industrial past, and civic achievements. 

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC

The West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC) is the archives and special collections library at West Virginia University. We acquire, preserve, and provide access to materials that document the history and culture of West Virginia and central Appalachia. Each year in October, we take time to emphasize the importance of the records we collect, highlight the services we provide, and recognize the people who maintain the historical records of our state and region.  October is American Archives Month! 

Archives are records created by people or an organization that are collected because they have continuing value.  Archives can include letters, photographs, reports, sound and video recordings, maps, newspapers and other primary sources that provide firsthand evidence and data. They can be in physical or digital form. Archives are critical resources for historical research and study.  They can be inspirational for writers and artists.  They are also important tools for teaching history and literature and many other subjects.  To learn about the archival materials at the West Virginia & Regional History Center, visit the Center’s website, particularly the Guide to Archives and Manuscripts as well as the Collections page. 

Archivists have an important role. An archivist summarized it as, “Archivists bring the past to the present. They’re records collectors and protectors, keepers of memory. They organize unique, historical materials, making them available for current and future research.” Indeed, archivists acquire materials, organize them, make sure they are preserved for the future, and provide access to them.  Archivists also teach classes, curate exhibitions, and create digital collections. The staff at the West Virginia & Regional History Center do all these things and more. They are excellent stewards of the archival materials in their care.  As Assistant Director, I wish to thank them for all their hard work.  To the staff of the Center, your efforts are very much appreciated! 

Beyond the West Virginia & Regional History Center, many other archives exist across the state.  The West Virginia State Archives in Charleston, Special Collections at Marshall University in Huntington, the Richard J. Trefry Archives at the American Public University in Charles Town, and the Archives and Special Collections at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling are just a few.  Many of the schools in the West Virginia state college and university system have archival collections in their libraries.  Public libraries, museums, and historical societies also hold archival collections.  There is a good chance there is an archive near you. I hope you will support them by researching, donating, and advocating.  

While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all institutions, many are still offering services.  The WVRHC is currently open by appointment to open faculty, staff, and students at WVU.  We continue to provide limited research and reference services remotely.   

A unique opportunity to interact with Center staff, #AskAnArchivist Day, takes places tomorrow, October 7, 2020.  Archivists from the Center will take over the WVU Libraries Twitter feed and answer any question you might have about archives. We hope you will participate! 

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC

Recently, my cousin gave me a shoebox of family photos that belonged to his mother, my dad’s sister. I am curious about all my ancestors, but I don’t know as much about my father’s side of the family. So, these pictures are especially treasured.  The box contains images dating from ca. 1910-1994. I am grateful and very happy to have them.  There is just one problem – very few of the images are labeled.  While I recognize some people and places quickly, more than half of the images are unknown to me.  I am lucky that there are context clues and a couple family members that might help me, but there are some photos that I may never identify.  It is a simple endeavor that we often put off: labeling our photographs.  This post will give some quick tips for adding descriptive information to print photographs and digital images.  

Labeling photographs will help your family members who inherit your pictures. It will also greatly assist archivists who might work with your family photos if they are donated to the archives.   

If you can record information about photographs separately and not write on the backs of the photographs, that is ideal.  But you must be able to keep the information connected to the image. If you are placing photographs in paper or plastic sleeve you can write descriptive information on the sleeve with a pencil or special pen as needed. Sleeves should be archival quality and care should be taken when placing or removing photographs from the sleeves.  The same goes for archival quality photograph albums. 

If you choose to write on photographs, you should always write on the back side. If the photograph back has a matte surface, you can use a pencil to very lightly write a date, location, and any other identifying information on the back of the photo.  Pencil lead will not bleed through the backing material.  Writing lightly is important.  Pressing too hard will imprint the text through to the front of the photo. 

If you have a photograph with a glossy backing, the Library of Congress recommends using a film marking pen to write on the back of the photographs. The pen must have acid free ink that dries quickly and doesn’t bleed into the photograph material. Be careful not to stack photos while the ink is still drying to prevent unwanted transfer onto other photographs.  

Instead of writing out a full description, photos can be numbered on the back with pencil or a special pen. Details about the image can be recorded on a sheet of paper or in a digital file with information corresponding to the numbers. Again, that paper or digital file must always be available to the owners of the photographs for this method to work. 

Most of our modern photographs are digital, so there are different challenges for “labeling” the images. Developing a naming system for digital images can help you to retain a minimal amount of descriptive information about the files.  You can include dates, location, and other details in the filename, but you don’t want your filenames to be too long. If you name them with a consistent pattern such as YYYY-MM-DD_Location_Name, they will be easier to search and keep organized.  You can also create a folder structure with some subject information in the folder names.  

For large collections of digital images, you might consider a photograph management program such as Adobe Lightroom or Picasa.  These programs will allow you add tags and descriptive information about your photograph files.  If you don’t want to use a program, this blog post gives an overview of adding information to digital photographs without using special software. 

I hope this post will inspire you to organize and label your photographs collection.  It will make your family and archivists happy in the future.  

Resources: 

Library Congress Photographs Preservation FAQ 

4 Easy Ways to Label Photographs Blog Post 

How to Add Photo Metadata without Special Software Blog Post 

Northeast Document Conservation Center Care of Photographs Preservation Leaflet 

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

A woman of many talents, Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, (July 15, 1793 – July 15, 1884) was passionately engaged in the education of young women at a time when the ideal was marriage and children.  Over the years she wrote many textbooks, but this volume, Familiar Lectures on Botany, from the West Virginia and Regional History Center rare book room, is perhaps her most popular and enduring. 

Familiar Lectures on Botany was her first textbook.  Designed to teach young women natural history and the science of botany, the book went through nearly 40 editions with revisions made by her daughters.

The Rare Book Room copy is the fifth edition, revised and enlarged, and it goes by the formidable title, Familiar Lectures on Botany; Practical, Elementary and Physiological, with an Appendix, containing the descriptions of the Plants of the United States and Exotics, etc. For the Use of Seminaries and Private Students. It was published in Hartford by F.J. Huntington, 1836. 

While many believe that the first edition of a text is the most important as well as the most valuable, that is not necessarily the case. The fifth edition, revised and enlarged with “many additional engravings.”  would be of greater interest due to the extra illustrations and their accompanying text. 

Born in Connecticut, Almira Hart came from a large family, the youngest of 17 children.  Her parents strongly believed in education for young women.  One of her older sisters, Emma Willard, pictured below, was a well-known educator, who taught herself geometry as a young girl.  The Emma Willard School she founded in Troy, New York is still educating young women today.  It was Emma who would teach the intellectually inquisitive and capable Almira. 

At that time, there were few schools dedicated to educating young women.  In addition, academic institutions taught boys and girls separately at schools that were privately owned, not state supported.  These schools were frequently operated under personal ownership, mostly by the educators themselves, such as Emma Willard’s School for Young Women.    

Another New Englander, the poet Emily Dickinson, was a student of botany at the Amherst Academy in her home town of Amherst, Massachusetts.  She would often roam the woods, gathering plants, bringing them home to press, then pasting them onto pages, creating a personal herbarium that documented the world around her. 

Dickinson’s botany textbook was Phelps’s Familiar Lectures on Botany. As her poetry was often filled with flowers, it is no surprise that her own copy of Phelps’s textbook holds a pressed flower between its pages, placed there by Dickinson herself.

The original owner of the rare book room’s copy of Familiar Lectures on Botany, was Ellen Beirne, of Belmont.  Though we don’t know which state she lived in, there are three towns named Belmont in New England, we do know that she was probably the first person to own this book.  Published in 1836, the date she wrote beneath her signature, December 11, 1837, hints that she acquired it shortly after publication. 

In this year, 2020, as we mark the centenary anniversary of women’s right to vote and celebrate the suffragists that made it possible, it is interesting to note that Phelps, as a passionate advocate for the education of women, was fervently against women’s suffrage.  Though she believed that women should be educated in the event that they would have to work outside the home, she spoke out against suffrage and wrote articles against it. 

The next time you take a walk and find your eye attracted to a beautiful wildflower along the way, think of Mrs. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps and her Familiar Lectures on Botany, a book that educated an aspiring poet as well as many other young women who may not have had the opportunity to learn botany without her. 

Resources:

• Emma Willard:  Emma Willard School:  https://www.emmawillard.org/
• Engines of our Ingenuity:  No 2032. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps:  https://uh.edu/engines/epi2032.htm
• Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almira_Hart_Lincoln_Phelps
• Wikimedia Commons:  Order Trygenia   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Familiar_lectures_on_botany_(Page_217)_BHL17169507.jpg 
• Title page: HathiTrust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hw24fa&view=1up&seq=9
• Image of Emily Dickinson’s copy of Familiar Lectures on Botany:  Books, Health and History: The New York Academy of Medicine:  https://nyamcenterforhistory.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/lincoln_lecturesbotany_1839_32-33-pressedflower_watermark.jpg
• Portrait of Emily Dickinson:  Books, Health and History: The New York Academy of Medicine:  https://nyamcenterforhistory.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ed_dag_color_mttd_30020dpi_16x20.jpg

Blog post by Linda Blake, University Librarian Emerita

Family papers are those things that we have saved because they mean something to us – they are our paper treasures – and they tell us something about ourselves, our families and our friends: how we’ve lived our lives and what we value most.

Society of California Archivists

Many of us are using this unusual amount of time at home during the COVID-19 epidemic to sort through our treasures.  This is especially true for folks like me who have a 40-50 year accumulation of stuff.  During my raid on the basement, I found boxes of photographs and family documents which I took responsibility for after my mother’s death in 1998.  This was a role expected of me since I am the librarian in the family and I am a part time employee of the West Virginia and Regional History Center.  I get to decide what to keep or what to get rid of and how to preserve records that are important to us. 

My job in the Center is to process papers and records of families and organizations. Every single collection I process in the Center provides me with more knowledge about how to preserve materials and how to make the information in them accessible for researchers.  Records come in a wide variety of formats and media but they are mostly paper based.  One of the collections I processed last year had obviously been stored in a non-climate-controlled area.  One sign of that was that the papers contained a large number of rusty paper clips, staples, and metal binders. 

This blog post will not be dealing broadly with preservation of materials in archival collections or family documents, but will look only at metal fasteners such as staples, paper clips, and binders, with some rubber bands thrown into the metal mix.

Since the worst enemies of paper are heat, moisture, and light, metal paper clips frequently degrade on archival records and they should be removed if possible when you find them in old records, ideally before they completely adhere to the papers.  Instead, it is best to use plastic or plastic-coated clips.  Major retailers sell these as well as office supply stores.  Some archives prefer to use stainless steel paper clips, which are supposed to be rust-proof.

To remove rusty paper clips which are adhering to the paper, I stabilize the paper on a flat surface by holding the corner down as I insert a knife or letter opener under the open end of the paper clip keeping it parallel to the surface.  I open the paper clip while sliding the knife under the open end while continuing to stabilize the paper on a surface.  When the clip is fully open, I can remove the paper clip without damaging the paper.  Sometimes the paper is so brittle that it will crumble no matter how careful you are with getting the clip from around it.  It’s a very meticulous process requiring patience.

I will mention one last commonly used fastener which will cause damage to our family papers.  Rubber bands are susceptible to the same enemies as metal fasteners: moisture, heat, and light.  Rubber bands will melt, crack, and degrade leaving their mark over time. 

According to a flyer from the National Park Service, you can use a microspatula to remove both paper clips and residue from rubber bands.  The microspatula is available online at major retailers and scientific instrument stores.  I haven’t used it, but this source has some excellent suggestions on removing fasteners.  

If you aren’t able to check your family papers for problematic fasteners now, you can buy time by storing the papers in an environment that is climate controlled, not exposed to extreme temperatures or humidity fluctuations.  That should help the fasteners degrade less rapidly.

I hope my experiences working with the documents in the West Virginia and Regional History Center will help you preserve some of your meaningful family treasures.

Additional Resources:

Society of California Archivists, “Family Papers: Preservation and Organization.”  Accessed at on July 28, 2020: https://calarchivists.org/Resources/Documents/Brochure_Series/Papers_in-English.pdf

U.S. Library of Congress. “Care, Handling, and Storage of Works on Paper.” Accessed on July 28, 2020 at: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/paper.html

U.S. National Parks Service. “Removing Original Fasteners from Archival Documents” Conserve O Gram, July 1993, 19(5). Accessed September 1, 2020 at: https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/19-05.pdf

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

It may surprise you to learn that I read a lot of books about books over the summer.  I didn’t intend to.  It just happened that way.

As Mark Twain said, and I paraphrase, “a good book worth reading is a book worth reading again.”  I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.  I read three of the four books on my summer reading list for a second time and I am none the worst for it.  In fact, I enjoyed reading these books again.  Most of them I read when they were first published.  One of the books I read was new to me, but had been available for a couple of years.  I’ll save that one for last.    

Given the current climate, with the many troubling realities of the ever changing news about the virus, the new sensations of working from home, the constant barrage of daily updates, and all the other things that trouble our world, I felt the need for something comforting, something I had read before and enjoyed, something that would remind me of a pleasant journey strolling through pages I had already traveled, and so, I embarked on a re-reading adventure. 

The first book I re-read this summer was Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop.  Fitzgerald is a British author, and her works are considered national treasures in her homeland.  Fitzgerald has written a number of novels, all appealingly brief.  The Bookshop is only 122 pages in length, and that was a point in its favor for this second go round.  The novel was first published in Britain way back in 1978, but it did not make an appearance in America until 1997, when I first read it.  Back then, I was working in a book shop downtown so I was very interested in it. 

The book may be short, but Fitzgerald packs a lot in it.  The story takes place in the 1950s, when the effects of World War II are still heavily felt in England, and there is little “extra” in everyday life.  It centers around a young widow who moves to a new town with plans to start a bookshop.  It seems a simple enough dream, and one that should bring something new and welcome to the townspeople but there are others who find her plans disruptive.  The main antagonist is an aristocratic matron.  She is so disturbed by the widow’s plans that she orchestrates other townspeople in various roles within the community to thwart the widow’s every move. 

I won’t say more about the novel, but I will say that I have only read one other work of fiction that captures this level of cruelty, through societal means and methods, against another human being.  That book is Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a shockingly cruel novel.

In 2018, The Bookshop was made into a film starring Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, and one of my favorite British actors, Bill Nighy.  In one of those rare instances, I found the film to be better than the book.  Extraneous details were removed that were unnecessary in the novel, and new life was brought to the characters in such a way that added poignancy and drama.  Both are highly recommended.

Next on my list of “read it again” titles was Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes, a book I first read back in 2003. I love to read first novels and this was a first that really appealed to me.  I’ve always found the conundrum of Easter Island to be interesting.  Who was responsible for the creation of the Moai – those massive stone heads spread across the island?  How did the islanders carry off such a feat with simple tools?  How were the Moai moved into place?   There were other questions too.  Why are there no trees on the island?  Why is there little vegetation at all?  How hard would it be to live there?  I wanted to know and I hoped this book would tell me and entertain me at the same time.  Reader, I am here to tell you it did!

The story interweaves two threads.  Two stories of newlyweds, separated by nearly a century, experience the same trials.  Both couples are scholars, both follow their research interests and Easter Island is at first, a haven.  Neither relationship survives intact, but the events that transpire to tear them apart are full of pathos.  Among the most compelling elements of the story to me was the discovery of the rongorongo, a type of hieroglyphic writing carved into wood fragments.  This form of writing is completely original and it was discovered on Easter Island in the 19^th century.  The surviving glyphs are studied to this day.  Although many scholars have attempted to decipher them, no one has.  The rongorongo remains a mystery.

I found Vanderbes book to be exceptionally well researched and equally well written.  It did indeed answer my questions and provide an excellent read, even for the second time.  After all, 2003 was a long time ago!  If you have an interest in archaeology and enjoy historical fiction, I recommend it. 

I suppose no one will be surprised that Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book, was on my re-reading list.  This is one of those books that many people have recommended to me and I’m glad they did.  First published in 2008, People of the Book was definitely worth a second read.  When the story opens, Hanna, a book conservator, has been brought to Sarajevo to examine an ancient haggedah, a Jewish text that describes the order of the Passover Seder, only this copy comes with mysterious illustrations.   

As Hanna works through the text, she discovers bits of material that represent the life of the book, the many people and places that, when researched, will reveal its travels. A fragment of a butterfly wing found only in a specific geographic location, a cat’s hair that leads to the discovery of the artist’s technique, and wine stains that point to an historic moment in time, all of these things slowly reveal the book’s journey, chapter after chapter. 

As a librarian, I have even used this book in a material culture class, where discussions center around the elements and materials that make up the book and how they point to the book’s origins, its moment in time.  The names of previous owners, a flower pressed between pages, doodles and drawings, labels and bookplates, all of these things, when examined, can illuminate the life of the book to the student and the scholar. 

Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, is the one book that I read for the very first time.  You might be surprised that, since it was published in 2018, I might have had the opportunity to read it before this date, but no, I had not.  There I was, browsing the shelves in our local Barnes and Noble and the hard red cover of The Library Book jumped right out at me on the shelf.  Oh yeah, I thought, I’ve been meaning to read this.  So I bought it.

To be honest, I don’t like the hard, thick, red boards that make up the covers.  I don’t like the printed endpapers.  And usually, if I see a sticker on the book that says this is recommended by so and so’s book club, I tend to shy away from it.  I prefer to make my own reading choices and not follow the crowd.  But this was a book about library books, after all, and as a librarian I felt compelled, nay, it was my duty, to read it.  I walked right up to the counter and purchased it, along with some frivolous but highly enjoyable magazines. 

Despite all of these initial turn offs, I was engaged with this book from the get go.  Frankly, I couldn’t put it down.  Orlean is a fantastic writer.  I have read other books by her and enjoyed them, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that I would find this book so compelling.  I love a good mystery and the fire that destroys the Los Angeles public library is both tragic and fascinating. The efforts to find the arsonist, if there was one, do not come to a happy conclusion.  The biographical descriptions of the librarians, from the 19^th century to the present day were nothing short of revelatory.  Each generation of librarians initiated programs and events that helped to revolutionize librarianship throughout the nation.  I loved reading these stories and felt inspired by them.

Finally, I found a twist I wasn’t expecting within these pages.  Orlean discussed book burnings of other kinds and the one that really grabbed me was the burning of comic books in the small town of Spencer, West Virginia, instigated by a school teacher, Mabel Riddle, in the 1940s.  Not only was I surprised to see a West Virginia story in the book but I was doubly surprised to read about a book burning in the state that I had never heard of!  Just saying – future blog post alert!

So, there you have it.  The books I read and re-read this summer.  I recommend all of them.  If they read as well the second time around, think how much you might enjoy them the first time.  And the best news of all, they can be found at your local library.

Sources: 

• The Bookshop image:  https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-bookshop_penelope-fitzgerald/320850/item/4779389/?mkwid=IB9PtBiX%7cdc&pcrid=70112865792&product=4779389&plc=&pgrid=21323651472&ptaid=pla-293630284930&utm_source=google_shopping&utm_content=IB9PtBiX%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c70112865792%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7c%7cproduct%7c4779389%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c21323651472%7cptaid%7cpla-293630284930%7c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgbWh84Wy6wIVh56zCh1W6wwbEAYYBCABEgJ3SvD_BwE#isbn=0395869463&idiq=4779389 
• Easter Island image: https://www.abebooks.com/Easter-Island-Vanderbes-Jennifer-Dial-Press/30651693962/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade-_-used-_-naa&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgKv5ipyy6wIVgp6zCh1QXQCkEAQYBCABEgJnr_D_BwE 
• People of the Book image:  https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/people-of-the-book-by-geraldine–brooks/247350/item/6351054/?mkwid=PH40dz3R%7cdc&pcrid=70112865792&product=6351054&plc=&pgrid=21323651472&ptaid=aud-376656233455%3apla-293630284770&utm_source=google_shopping&utm_content=PH40dz3R%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c70112865792%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7c%7cproduct%7c6351054%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c21323651472%7cptaid%7caud-376656233455%3apla-293630284770%7c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImea645uy6wIVXwiICR0rRQPTEAQYASABEgLoBPD_BwE#isbn=0143115006&idiq=6351054 
• The Library Book image:  https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51aGsKkSnCL._SL350_.jpg 

Initial research and writing by Jessica Eichlin, Reference Supervisor, WVRHC; additional writing and pie making by Jane LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC.

Today I’d like to look at mock foods.  The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America defines “mock foods” in a number of different ways[1].  A mock food can be a dish made with the substitution of a primary ingredient, a food that tastes like another, a dish that looks like another, an economical alternative, a dish with less of a key ingredient, or a dish made with vegetarian alternatives.  Mock foods can trace their roots back to the medieval period, where expert chefs would manipulate the appearance of a dish to impress or entertain eaters.  In one way or another, mock foods have persisted since the medieval period.

Curious about the presence of mock dishes in West Virginia, we turned to the collections at the West Virginia and Regional History Center.  Seven cookbooks sampled by Jessica yielded a dozen different recipes for mock cherry pie, mock apple pie, mock duck, mock oysters, and mock turtle soup.  The presence of mock dishes in these cookbooks indicates their popularity in the region, as most of the cookbooks she sampled were those with recipes submitted by community members.  Mock dishes likely appealed to cooks in West Virginia in the early 1900s who were tasked with creating familiar dishes using the resources at hand.  Resourceful cooks turned to mock dishes because the usual ingredients were either too hard to obtain or expensive.  With West Virginia’s rugged terrain, isolation often forced cooks to creatively bake with what they could get and what they could afford, not just during times of particular hardship such as war or economic downtimes. Mock foods seem like a great COVID-19 pandemic blog suject because they have a bit of a “what can I make with pantry staples without having to mask up and go to the store” vibe.

The mock food item I want to focus on today is mock apple pie.  Mock apple pie has a long history. Thanks to the Food Timeline website’s entry on mock apple pie, I found a recipe for “cracker pie” from the February 14, 1857 issue of the Saturday Evening Post: “CRACKER PIE—As apples are very scarce in many sections of the country, I think the housewife will find the following recipe for making an apple pie out of crackers, very acceptable. For a common sized baking plate, take four of the square or six of the round crackers, a teacupfull of sugar, and a teaspoonfull of tartaric acid; break the crackers into a pint of water, add the sugar and acid and finish as an apple pie.”[2]

Potentially the most well known version of mock apple pie was introduced to Americans by Nabisco in the 1930s, as a way to use their Ritz crackers when apples were perhaps out of season or too expensive. The “Mock Foods” entry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America confirms that the Ritz recipe “evolved from mid-nineteenth-century imitation apple pies and mock mince pies, which were made with soda crackers [a.k.a. saltines], sugar, and spices. Crackers have a history of approximating apple pie in both texture and taste.”

That last sentence is where things get contentious.  When I explained to my husband that I would be making this pie and asking him to taste test it, he expressed skepticism at the idea that mock apple pie could taste similar to apple pie, or even be something worth eating.  When I suggested that apple pie doesn’t really taste like apples, and that crackers and spices could come close to the same taste, he expressed mock dismay that I didn’t remember how the apple pies that he makes actually taste like apples.

A Book of Favorite Recipes Compiled by Bruceton Mills Community, 1965, includes two recipes for mock apple pie, both made with Ritz crackers, on pages 44-45. Since the second recipe includes attribution, cinnamon, and a baking time, I decided to try that one. I’ve copied both below in case someone wants to give the first one a try.

Mock Apple Pie (no attribution)

Filling

2 c. water

1 c. sugar

1 lump butter

2 tsp. cream of tartar

23 Ritz crackers, broken in quarters. Put in a two quart saucepan

Boil together for 2 minutes. Pour this over Ritz crackers and boil 1 minute but do not stir. Put in double crust pie.

—

Mock Apple Pie, Mrs. Betty Casteel

3 c. sugar

4 c. water

4 tsp. cream of tartar

40 Ritz crackers

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon (or more)

Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar and boil 5 minutes. Add to sugar mixture Ritz crackers, crumbled and cinnamon. Cook 2 minutes longer. Bake in a two crust pie at 425 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or cream and sugar if desired.  Filling for 2 pies. [emphasis added]

—

For anyone else who uses this recipe, I recommend seriously considering your pie plate size versus your filling amount. I used a 9 inch pie plate that was about 2 inches deep, and I made half the recipe, which should have been enough for one pie. The pie filling didn’t fill up the pie as much as I would have liked, leading me to wonder if pie plates were smaller in 1965.

The three people who tasted the pie for me all agreed it turned out better than expected.  The general feeling was that if someone gave you a slice after dinner and you ate it quickly, you wouldn’t question that it was apple pie. The biggest critique is the lack of chunks that would add to the real-apple feeling. I wonder if bakers could overcome this lack of chunks by using a more substantial cracker, or not crumbling the crackers before baking. Overall, I decided this mock apple pie was a satisfying substitution.

If anyone is interested in exploring mock foods at home, there are a few recipes to get you started in one of our digitized texts, Souvenir cook book compiled from the best recipes of members of the Woman’s Club of Harper’s Ferry District, 1915, 1920, which is part of the History Center’s Printed Ephemera Collection. These include mock duck, mock oysters, and mock cherry pie. If you make a mock dish, or if you have any great mock food recommendations, let us know!

---

[1] Olver, Lynne M. “Mock Foods.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195154375.001.0001/acref-9780195154375-e-0531

[2] “Useful Receipts.” Saturday Evening Post (1839-1885) Feb 14 1857: 4. ProQuest. Web. 18 Aug. 2020.

By Danielle Emerling, WVRHC

Fifty-five years ago today, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, meant to remove racial discrimination in voting. The Act was a landmark for the civil rights movement. However, its passage was met with debate, and its legacy continues to be challenged. The Act’s path through Congress is the topic of an online exhibition from the WVRHC archives, For the Dignity of Man and the Destiny of Democracy: The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Voting Rights Act is rooted in the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment. Enacted in 1870, it established that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of race. Yet African Americans, particularly those residing in southern states, continued to face significant obstacles to voting. These included bureaucratic restrictions, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as intimidation and physical violence.

Little was done at the federal level to enforce Reconstruction Era laws, including the Fifteenth Amendment, until the mid-twentieth century. Even after the passage of civil rights bills, however, discriminatory practices depressed voter registration rates for African Americans living in the South. When civil rights activists, including recently deceased Congressman John Lewis, organized a voting rights campaign in Alabama in 1965, it culminated in violence on March 7 when Alabama state police brutally attacked peaceful marchers in Selma. The event galvanized an outpouring of support for a bill protecting the right to vote for all Americans. 

The President addressed a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, calling on them to pass a voting rights bill. He opened his speech explaining that he spoke “for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.”

The Administration sent a proposed bill to Congress two days later, and though it had strong bipartisan support, Congress spent several months debating various aspects of the legislation. Traditionally, most powers to register voters and protect the right to vote have fallen to state and local governments. Congress needed to decide whether the Federal Government should shift this balance of power. Members spent several months debating various aspects of the legislation, including poll taxes and automatic triggers. Though they were banned in federal elections, many states levied poll taxes as a prerequisite to voter registration.  Another aspect of the bill automatically “triggered” certain actions, such as outlawing literacy tests and requiring states or counties where discriminatory practices were in place to seek federal “preclearance” before establishing new voting laws.

In the Senate, a 24-day filibuster of the bill ensued. Southern senators believed the bill was unconstitutional and punitive to the South. Democrats and Republicans signed a petition for a cloture motion, and four days later, the Senate approved debate-limiting cloture, ending the filibuster. This was only the second time in its history, and the second time in two years, that the Senate had stopped debate in order to vote on a civil rights bill.

In the House, Republicans proposed a substitute bill, known as the Ford-McCulloch bill, which removed the automatic triggers. Civil rights leaders expressed strong opposition to the Ford-McCulloch bill. On July 9, 1965, the House rejected the substitute bill and passed one with automatic triggers and a ban on poll taxes in state and local elections.

After a conference committee resolved the differences, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, finally fulfilling the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment.  It was tremendously successful. The disparity between white and black voting registration rates dropped from nearly 30 percentage points in the early 1960s to just 8 percentage points a decade later.

Congress has reauthorized the Act multiple times, most recently in 2006.  In 2013, however, the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court invalidated the “coverage formula,” which determined the states and localities required to seek preclearance for changes in voting rules that could affect minorities. Following the ruling, several states began implementing photo ID laws.

For the Dignity of Man and the Destiny of Democracy: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a digital version of an exhibit that was on display in the WVU Downtown Campus Library’s Rockefeller Gallery. Materials in the exhibit come from the Arch A. Moore Jr. congressional papers, WVRHC; the WVRHC newspaper collection; and the Center for Legislative Archives, NARA, featured in the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress’ The Great Society Congress exhibit.

Blog post by Jessica Kambara, LTAII/Rare Book Room assistant, WVRHC.

During my sophomore year of college, I attended a class led by the curator of WVU’s rare book room, Stewart Plein, on Shakespeare’s Folios. Upon entering the rare book room, I thought I’d like to work there. The Rare Book room had a clean yet cozy atmosphere, and exuded an aura of history and prestige. Halfway through the class, after getting to leaf through the large folio pages of a book hundreds of years old, I was sure I wanted to work there. By the end, I had gotten a job. All it took was asking if there were any work opportunities available, and Stewart set me up with a capstone project and took me under her wing as her assistant.

The first position I ever took in the Rare Book room was effectively that of an intern; however, I was working for course credit and so had to treat it like a capstone project. My objectives were to educate myself on Rare Book room handling and terminology; to compile a portfolio of my inventory work; to create a display; and to present what I had learned. The work itself was quite straightforward. I had to sort through boxes of donated books, create an inventory, and do additional research to determine the historical and monetary value of the book. Stewart was there to guide me through the process, and often steered me if I was stumped. My most important task was to determine the value of a book—essentially data analysis.

Book value is determined by a number of factors: condition, rarity, edition, age, author, decoration, monetary value, historical significance, and educational potential. Often value was obvious—a rare, highly decorative book by a significant author in good condition was very valuable. However, there were gems within the seemingly insignificant. I took an interest in books produced during war, particularly World War II. I looked for patterns and shifts in patterns. For example, cheaply produced children’s book series are a dime a dozen—sometimes literally—but if you look at the quality and narrative structures you will find cultural shifts. Take the Buddy Series, a string of children’s books that ran for 16 years. For the most part, the majority of the series has little value; however, there is much to be learned from the editions published around World War II. Paper quality dips significantly during the war, an effect of wartime rationing; furthermore, the typical narratives of light-hearted adventures designed to teach good morals shift to tales of can collecting for the war effort and reporting your suspicious neighbor in Buddy and the Victory Club. This gives a better understanding of American wartime mentality, and how it manifested in children’s media. After all, the children taught to report their neighbors by the book, Buddy and the Victory Club, in 1943, were the same ones who grew up to partake in the paranoia of the Cold War and the second Red Scare.

A book’s value can be found not only in its content and material, but also in how it recontextualizes historical periods. You can deduce a lot from what was the cultural norm by examining popular books. It is important to factor in that authors popular during their time might not have survived the modern day. Take Gene Stratton Porter—an author who still has her following, but is not nearly as recognizable as American authors like Jack London or F. Scott Fitzgerald despite being their peer. There is much to praise Gene Stratton-Porter for; she was a conservation activist, a successful American businesswoman, and a bestselling author. At the same time, there is also much to be learned from the startlingly normalized racism against people of Japanese origins in her book Her Father’s Daughter published in 1921. The casualness of how Stratton-Porter’s characters, who are meant to be likable and relatable, discriminate against Japanese people is completely normal. To many, the Japanese Concentration camps of 1942-1946, seem like an unbelievable failure of American morality. However, when contextualized with the reading material that the previous generation grew up with, the camps seem more like an inevitable product of long-standing xenophobia (in addition to being an unbelievable failure of American morality).

Often, historical importance can be found not just in narrative content or material—sometimes it can be in the publishers’ catalogue, which are often found at the end of the story at the back of the book. An otherwise insignificant book can tell you a lot if it also includes the publishers’ catalogue of available books. Compile enough book catalogues, and you can track shifts in advertisements that reflect cultural changes. For example, prior to World War I and II, book catalogues advertised children books as a gender-neutral category—both boys and girls could enjoy books such as The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.  However, as war took over media, book advertisements split into boy books and girl books. Book about war were in high demand, but seen as too violent for girls, and so they were specifically advertised to boys. True to Newton’s third law, girl books went in an opposite direction and focused on things like light-hearted countryside adventures.

By the end of my semester capstone, I had compiled a detailed twenty-page portfolio of my key finds. After learning to read books in a new way and finalizing my portfolio, I then had to transform that information into a real-world tool for education. This is commonly done via displays. As part of my capstone, I set up a library exhibit on war influenced books which was displayed in the WVU library. For my final capstone requirement, I gave a public presentation on what I had learned and the significance of my project and wrote a paper on my overall work.

After I had completed my course credit, I continued to work for Stewart into my junior year as a work-study student. My tasks shifted from an educational approach to a work approach, and in a way was much more simplified while also more complicated. I was no longer expected to produce a gradable project, but I also had to do more diverse work.

My first assignment taught me the importance of organization and job creation—as poor organization had created a summer job for me. A series of unfortunate developments had left important microfilms mixed in a sea of hundreds of other microfilms (please note, this organizational job was not done by WVU staff, but by an outside source). This was the first and last time I worked with the WVU depository—or the depo. The depo is a storage site. It has a small office, and a large warehouse with a towering celling filled with high shelves full of boxes; the highest of which required an aerial platform to reach. It was similar to what you might expect in a factory warehouse, only with better temperature and humidity control. With the aid of depository staff to assist me with heavy lifting, I sorted through dozens and dozens of heavy boxes of newspaper film. Although tedious, there are lessons in blunders and this work certainty taught me the importance of organization, being conscientious of how your work can impact others, and instilled a greater appreciation for the behind the scenes work of acquiring research material.

After that assignment, my work took a return to form as I came back to the Rare Book room to compile inventories of collections—including my largest inventory of 311 Lewis and Clark related items. I also took on the occasional bit of side work, like boxing books or applying clear Brodart book cover sleeves, used to preserve dust jackets, or scanning book covers.

My next big project would be creating a Shakespeare Inventory of Rare Book room books and cross-referencing my inventory against the WVU library database to oversee updates and check for errors. Over the years, WVU’s Rare Book room has compiled one of the most impressive collections of Shakespeare’s work and related content, including an incredibly rare set of Shakespeare’s folios. The time had come when Stewart needed this impressive collection to be inventoried and I set about it. 

Each item added to the Rare Book room was naturally recorded in the WVU Library catalog database; however, shifting books and understandable cataloging mistakes can cause discrepancies. And so, to make sure our database was accurate and up to date, I began to cross-reference all the physical copies of the Shakespeare books in the Rare Book room against all the Shakespeare books in the database. At times, locating books was like being on an Easter egg hunt as things like size and value could result in atypical shelving.  When I was near the end of my inventorying, I experienced a valuable but painful lesson in backing up information. A mishap resulted in my inventory being deleted and I had to restart. In the end, I created a thirty-page inventory with 183 items.

For a nice change of pace, I also got to work with art and ventured into the libraries central storage area to make an inventory of a collection of donated artworks.

In the midst of working on another large inventory, I had to stop due to the minor issue of graduation, no longer qualifying as a work-study student. That is where I thought my work with WVU and Stewart would end, when I was again called upon to tackle another collection. This time I was hired as a temporary librarian assistant and tasked with organizing a vulnerable collection.

Many issues can be the unfortunate bane of a bookkeeper’s existence. Books are more sensitive than people think, and if humidity and temperature cannot be properly regulated, books may suffer, making them vulnerable to a variety of issues that can cause deterioration such as increased brittleness, mold, and insects, that can invade and spread rapidly between tightly wedged books. Certain precautions, such as masks and gloves, are a must as exposure can lead you to developing a lower tolerance to these issues in addition to other ailments.

In this case, a recently donated collection had problems. Some books were still good, and some were not. Book material is a big factor. I was working with older cloth bound books and leather—paperbacks and a lot of newer books were unaffected. I quickly went about organizing the collection, relocating fragile books to separate shelves and sorting them according to their level of vulnerability. 

Unfortunately, another type of bio-hazardous spread impacted my work halfway through sorting. Covid-19 resulted in WVU closing the libraries, and with that I began a life of remote work.

Remote work was a strange change of pace from my hands-on work. I could not inventory what I could not see, and so I took the opportunity to educate myself on book history, book care, and other topics that had long interested me. I edited audio files, wrote blog posts, and did beta work for Stewart. Now, at the close of my temp assignment, I’m completing my final task—writing a reflection.

I’m very grateful to all the WVU library staff who aided me in my work, and especially grateful to Stewart Plein for providing me with the opportunity to return again and again.

Blog post by Dr. Connie S. Evans, Ph.D., M.L.I.S., WVRHC AmeriCorps worker

As many people are aware, Dr. Emory Kemp was an esteemed expert in the fields of civil engineering, industrial archaeology, and the history of technology, so it will come as no surprise that he was also an avid collector of books on a wide variety of topics.  In his oral interviews with Dr. Barb Howe, he discussed at length how he developed his collection from a very young age, and how the volumes he accrued help shape his future interests and endeavors. 

Born in 1931, Dr. Kemp made the decision to be baptized into the Methodist faith at the age of ten and noted that this event sparked his curiosity to study “many things.”  As well, “the clouds of war were gathering…in Europe” in 1941, and Dr. Kemp became intrigued by the British Royal Navy and its ships, and, consequently, the general history of Britain. This interest led him to purchase his first book (which he retained throughout his life): H.M.S. His Majestie’s Ships and Their Forebears by Cecil King, which he ordered from the British Information Services in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

Dr. Kemp had already been following the fortunes of the war in Europe since 1939, and developed an interest in how the hostilities had evolved from the time of the German Weimar Republic and the rise of Adolf Hitler. He was also intrigued by the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to head off the conflict at the Munich Conference with his famous “Peace in Our Time” speech.  From this interest sprang a desire to become more familiar with British history in general, and Dr. Kemp began collecting books in this genre as he was able to do so.   

A precocious learner who had skipped a grade in primary school, Dr. Kemp entered a five-year program at University of Illinois Laboratory High School (otherwise known as Uni High) under the auspices of the University of Illinois in 1943 at the age of eleven; he went on to graduate from the school in 1948.  While there, he became part of the school’s War Discussion Group which met once a week, and recalled that he “gave a couple of lectures on [his] understanding of the war itself,” no doubt as an outgrowth of his voracious reading on the subject. However, as Dr. Kemp self-deprecatingly noted, the lectures were never recorded so he was unable to quote from them. 

As a young man, Dr. Kemp did not have a great deal of money at his disposal to purchase the books he wanted, and routinely devoted his weekly allowance and the sums he earned from babysitting his younger brother to their acquisition.  His wish to buy more books for his collection led him to take a summer job at the Dick Burwash Farm near Champaign, Illinois, where he was hired to de-tassel corn.   

The process of de-tasseling corn was aimed at increasing the production of hybrid corn, and it required stripping the tassels from corn by hand, in alternate rows, to prevent self-pollination.  Dr. Kemp recalled that the work was difficult, as it was hot in the fields and the corn itself caused rashes on exposed skin.  Both boys and girls were hired for the work, and paid equally, although, as Dr. Kemp ruefully noted, the girls were allowed to work from a platform attached to a tractor, while the boys walked the fields.   

Dr. Kemp observed that he was never “very much interested in clothes or toys,” so he “haunted bookstores,” and purchased a variety of tomes with his summer earnings, many of which eventually found their way into the collection that he donated to the West Virginia and Regional History Center at the West Virginia University Libraries in October, 2016.   

While a student at Uni High, Dr. Kemp met faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who proved to be instrumental in the expansion of his book collection.  Arthur Davis, an engineering professor, gave Dr. Kemp a number of books on the history of World War I; Dr. Davis, teasing Dr. Kemp, told him that, “I hope we never have war with Germany, because you’ll be incarcerated.”  Christmas presents from Dr. Davis were often in the form of more books for Dr. Kemp’s collection.  Indeed, his wife, Fern, gave Dr. Kemp one of his favorite books as a Christmas present: the annual edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships by Francis E. McMurtrie, which was a detailed listing of all of the British Navy’s military ships then on the line. 

As a student at Uni High, Dr. Kemp was also afforded the use of a University of Illinois library card.  Dr. Kemp stated that he “haunted” the university library, and “made very good use” of his library card, at a time when the free run of its stacks was very much an exceptional privilege.  He was also able to avail himself of its Interlibrary Loan service in order to get access to materials not held in the library. Today, a corridor of the library contains a collection of bronze plaques that laud outstanding graduates of the university, and Dr. Kemp proudly noted that his name can be found among that group. 

Through his interest in the war, and the Royal Navy in particular, Dr. Kemp drew inspiration from the drawings in Jane’s Fighting Ships to expand on an earlier hobby of constructing small-scale models from scratch; one of those was of the HMS King George V.  His process was to make drawings, from which he then made the models, with an emphasis on the ships’ armaments.  His collection eventually included military ships from the Royal Canadian Navy as well. Indeed, Dr. Kemp gleefully recalled that, on a recent visit to Canada, he had been able to ride in a British Army artillery tractor, and had promptly pulled out a model that he had made as a boy to “refurbish” upon his return home.

Dr. Kemp’s interest in the British Royal Navy led him to explore its origins and development from Elizabethan times forward, as he believed that the Navy, as an instrument of state, had its beginnings in the late sixteenth century.  His research revealed that the government began to build its own ships after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, when James II was forced to abdicate in favor of his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange. Dr. Kemp said that he began to get very interested in the details and strategy of the Royal Navy as the British Empire expanded; he was also subsequently drawn into Irish history by James II’s attempt there to regain his throne.   

Dr. Kemp also read widely about the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland due to his friendship with Fred McAdams, whose father had marched with the Orange Order (the Protestants).  This group formed the basis of the Ulster Division (later the Ulster Volunteer Force), which would go on to fight in the First World War at the Battle of the Somme; Dr. Kemp noted that his research revealed that the division was almost wiped out in this one battle, thus decimating their geographic region at home.  As a result, Dr. Kemp’s research in this subject came to shape some of his views of war and military engagement. 

Moving on from history, Dr. Kemp also acquired a large collection of engineering and mathematics books, many of them in the area of the history of technology and, more narrowly, the development of the steam engine.  He learned a great deal of technical information from Henry L. Dickenson’s A Short History of the Steam Engine, which is part of his donated collection.  Dr. Kemp also read widely in the areas of thermodynamics, the manufacturing of textiles, British engineers working on harbors, and the British railway system.  Dr. Kemp remarked that several of the textbooks he had used when he was a student at the University of Illinois were donated to the university, but that he retained five shelves of books on twentieth-century engineering. Dr. Kemp’s engineering and technology interests meant that he also acquired a number of books on mathematics, and he said that he has passed on several of these volumes to his grandson, Dr. Paul Anderson, also a civil engineer.   

While Dr. Kemp was serving in the army during the Korean Conflict, he was assigned to the Engineering Research and Development Lab in Virginia.  He began to take courses at George Washington University, where a class in differential equations with Dr. James Henry Taylor sparked a new interest—and a new area for book collecting—for him. Dr. Kemp playfully recalled that he had told a WVU provost that an educated person must have “a familiarity with calculus.” 

When Dr. Kemp received a Fulbright Fellowship to study in England in 1953, he shipped some of his books to England, but managed to acquire a significant number of volumes while he was there, thanks to a book allotment that was part of the scholarship grant.  He was particularly partial to two bookstores in London: one that was in the South Kensington Underground station, and the other, more famous one, Foyle’s, in Charing Cross Road.  Dr. Kemp said that the books he purchased at that time were inexpensive, and that he developed a relationship with the bookseller, who put him in contact with publishing houses so he could buy books at a discount.  Through the bookseller, he was able to purchase the seven-volume set of The Royal Navy: A History – From Earliest Times to 1900.  Dr. Kemp emphasized that establishing a good working relationship with a bookseller is one of the keys to the development of a good book collection. 

When the time came for his return to the United States, Dr. Kemp was faced with the somewhat herculean task of getting his books back home.  He had taken a job at Ove Arup and Partners, one of the leading engineering firms in London, and was part of a team working on the Sydney Opera House. One of his friends in London, Felix Winkler, a refugee from Czechoslovakia, had shipped all of his belongings to London in big wooden crates he had made at a sawmill.  Dr. Kemp took the empty crates and rebuilt them to accommodate his book collection and other belongings; he then shipped them to Chicago via Liverpool, where the emptied crates stood for “many years” in the parking lot of the complex in which he and his wife had their first apartment.  Dr. Kemp recalled that they were eventually broken up for firewood, but stated, “I regret not keeping those things.”    

Among Dr. Kemp’s favorite volumes was the series of The Cambridge Modern History of Britain, planned by Lord John Dalberg-Acton, 1^st Baron Acton. Dr. Kemp admired Acton’s abilities as a historian, but admitted he had not read any of Acton’s other works; however, he said that he had read this series cover to cover several times, and that the essays in the volumes were written by “really good people.”  Dr. Kemp regarded Acton as a “minor hero” since Acton planned the series and solicited the authors.

 One of Dr. Kemp’s goals as a professor and as an engineer was to create a contextual work for the history of technology—“real background material for engineers” as he put it—which then did not exist.  He also hoped that this area of history would be incorporated into general history survey classes but did not achieve that goal. However, as Dr. Kemp pointed out, history of technology classes are now in the engineering curriculum at WVU, but only as part of the general education requirements. Many of his books on historic structures that date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were used as part of the effort to incorporate this class into the curriculum.  They were also used by Dr. Kemp when he worked on the restoration of the Wheeling Custom House, also known as the West Virginia Independence Hall. 

Upon the retirement of Roland P. Davis, Dean of the College of Engineering at WVU, Dr. Kemp acquired some of his published works, as Dean Davis was a noted bridge engineer, and had been an instrumental part of creating the West Virginia State Road Commission in 1919. While many of Dean Davis’ works are in the WVU Library, it only holds two volumes from his personal collection of engineering books; Dr. Kemp has one, as well.  It was the practice of the Department of Engineering that, upon the retirement of a faculty member, the books they left behind were put into a big box in the hallway and anyone could choose ones that they wanted—Dr. Kemp said that was how he acquired the works of Dean Davis.  Dr. Kemp felt that modern engineers had no use for dated works, but he believed they still had a great deal of value. 

The history of religion and theology forms the last section of Dr. Kemp’s collection.  Although he donated many of his books in 2016, the donation did not include these volumes, since he was a certified lay speaker in the United Methodist Church and used these books for reference in writing sermons. The donation of his collection to the library, Dr. Kemp felt, was “painful,” as it was almost like “giving yourself away.”  While he continued to use many of his remaining books for reference, he regretfully acknowledged that there probably wouldn’t be very many people interested in the books in his donated collection.   

Sadly, Dr. Kemp passed away on January 20, 2020, but his recollections as recorded in this oral history will continue to remain a valuable resource for all of us.  The books Kemp donated , as well as the oral histories, are part of his collection of papers at the WVRHC.

Blog post by Abbi Smithmyer, Graduate Student Assistant, WVRHC.

My name is Abbi Smithmyer and this May I will graduate with a master’s degree in Nineteenth Century United States History with a minor field in Public History from West Virginia University. This past year, while pursuing my degree, I had the privilege to work as a Graduate Assistant at the West Virginia and Regional History Center Archives. As a historian in training, working at an archive has been an interesting and rewarding experience. Throughout my assistantship, I worked on the congressional archives of former United States Congressman and West Virginia Governor, Arch A. Moore Jr.

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Blog post by Maggie Beck, Graduate Student Assistant, WVRHC.

Hello! My name is Maggie Beck and I am a graduate assistant working on processing the massive Senator John D. Rockefeller IV collection. As a dual-degree student working on a Master’s in Social Work and Public Administration, Senator Rockefeller’s work is particularly interesting for me as he worked on many pieces of healthcare legislation.

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Blog post by Jessica Kambara, LTAII/Rare Book Room assistant, WVRHC.

Historical events are not only recorded in the content of books. All parts of a book contain information, from the cover design to the paper to the damage sustained over time.  Book characteristics vary widely depending on the region and time period they were produced; things like war, national affluence, religious movements, and literacy rates all affect book making. Bibliography or bibliology is the study of books and a wide field of study, as such, it cannot be mastered in one day. However, this guide will break down some simple ways to tell the age of a book and serve as a basic introduction to the history of books.

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By Nathan Kosmicki, WVRHC Graduate Assistant

The Bloch family are some of the most influential and noteworthy members of the Wheeling community. Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company was one of the largest employers in the city and produced one of the most widely used brands of chewing tobacco: Mail Pouch. Samuel and Aaron Bloch founded the company in 1880 and came to employ over 500 people by 1900. Samuel and Aaron were both noted philanthropists in the Wheeling area, contributing to charities and donating land for the creation of public parks. Samuel Bloch also served on the board of Ohio Valley General Hospital and contributed greatly to their pediatric department. Jesse Bloch, Samuel’s son, became a state senator and cast the deciding vote for West Virginia’s ratification of the 19th Amendment. Elmhurst, the former home of Samuel, his wife Bertha and their children, now functions as Elmhurst: The House of Friendship. Donated in 1940 by Samuel and Bertha’s children, Mr. Jesse A. Bloch, Mr. Harold S. Bloch, Mrs. Edouard Ziegler, and Mrs. Steven Hirsch, it was donated in memory of Bertha Bloch who served on the board of the House of Friendship when it was titled “The Home for Aged Women.” In addition to this, Samuel and Bertha’s children erected a nurses home for Ohio Valley General Hospital and named it after Samuel S. Bloch.

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By Lydia Strickling, WVRHC Graduate Assistant

My name is Lydia Strickling and I am a second year student in WVU’s Public History program. I’ve been a graduate assistant with the West Virginia and Regional History Center for the entirety of my time at WVU. During my assistantship, I’ve worked with the papers of former West Virginia Congressman and Governor, Arch A. Moore, Jr., whose political career spanned from the mid 1950s to 1989. My work with the Moore Papers has included processing collections related to both Moore’s Congressional and Gubernatorial service. This involves making sure the collection is stored in appropriate folders and boxes and that it is well-organized to aid future researchers. Other tasks I’ve completed include digitizing documents in the Moore Papers and writing scope and content notes to describe subsections of this collection. I’ve also written text for an upcoming exhibit that will be in the Downtown Library.

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By McKayla Herron, WVRHC Graduate Assistant

For one of my classes this semester I have been working on a large project to survey ten buildings in Morgantown’s Greenmont neighborhood. This project entails describing these buildings’ architectural characteristics, researching their previous owners, and writing a history of this section of the neighborhood, which will eventually be submitted to the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. 

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By Nathan Kosmicki, WVRHC Graduate Assistant

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of both Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage. These two events are indicative of ambitious efforts and tumultuous times for the United States. These events and anxieties were felt even in Morgantown. One group in Morgantown had a strong advocacy for both causes, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU was a national organization founded on the principles of the abstention and ultimate prohibition of alcohol and women’s suffrage. The group started in a small town outside of Cincinnati in 1873 and grew to full national recognition by 1919 and the ratification of the 18th Amendment. A local chapter of the WCTU was established in Morgantown in 1884 at the Methodist Episcopal Church later called Phillips Hall. Elizabeth J. Moore was elected president and vice presidents from each parish in Morgantown were elected.

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