Join us for Out of the Margins: a virtual roundtable of library workers and their published books on June 25 at noon via Zoom. Panelists will include Martin Dunlap, Eva Mays, James Shaver, and Beth Toren.
Over a century ago this week Mary Harris Jones, more commonly known as Mother Jones, gathered with miners in Star City to rally support for the miners’ union. Held on a Sunday morning, newspapers at the time reported that as many as 600 people attended with 400 of the miners voicing their desire to join the union after the event. Mother Jones was certainly a divisive figure in the labor movement of the early 1900’s, but she was able to draw a crowd to her with, as The Morgantown Post put it, “profanely eloquent” speaking skills.
As the WVRHC prepares for the annual West Virginia Day event this Friday, I’d like to take a minute to contextualize the Mother Jones’ involvement with the miners in 1918, just three years before the Mine Wars came to a militant halt on Blair Mountain. Looking at Mother Jones’ history, unionization in the West Virginia coalfields was not the only labor movement she rallied behind, but it was perhaps one of her most passionate campaigns. By 1918, she was a well-respected activist among miners, and the Star City meeting was organized by UMWA president, C. Frank Kenney, one of the union’s most influential leaders. However, it wasn’t just Keeney who was familiar with Mother Jones but also a number of notable pro-union West Virginians including William Blizzard, Fred Mooney, Sid Hatfield, among others.
Her activism and rallies previously led to her 1913 arrest following her support during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in 1912 and the subsequent martial law order. Her support of and popularity with the miners would eventually wane. In 1921 prior to the Battle of Blair Mountain, Jones attempted to deter the armed miners as they prepared to march by claiming to have a telegram straight from President Warren himself that promised an end to violence if the miners backed down. However, Jones was unable to present the telegram when asked, which broke her trust with the miners and caused her to leave West Virginia.
In this photo, we can see Mother Jones sitting alongside Sid Hatfield, police chief of Matewan during the Matewan Massacre and whose death fueled the March on Logan and Battle of Blair Mountain.
Regardless, Mother Jones remains an important figure of discussion in the early 20th century West Virginia coalfields. As a reminder, please join us at 10 AM on Friday June 18th for our West Virginia Day event, The Road to Blair Mountain: Commemorating the West Virginia Mine Wars. The program will feature presentations by William Hal Gorby, Assistant Teaching Professor of History at WVU, and Charles B. Keeney, Assistant Professor of History at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, founding member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, and author of The Road to Blair Mountain. Please check our website for more information, and please register for the event.
For additional reading, I used the following books available through WVU Libraries and the WVRHC in my research for this post:
Miners gather for a meal during a strike, circa 1920. Photo from the West Virginia and Regional History Center.
West Virginia University Libraries and the West Virginia and Regional History Center will celebrate West Virginia Day with “The Road to Blair Mountain: Commemorating the West Virginia Mine Wars.” There will be a program and an exhibit focusing on the West Virginia mine wars, a series of strikes and battles between 1912 and 1921 that pitted pro-union miners against the coal companies. Most notable among these events was the Battle of Blair Mountain, which marks its 100th anniversary this year.
Plan to join us June 18 from 10-11:30 a.m. for the virtual program, which will feature presentations by William Hal Gorby, assistant teaching professor of history in WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and consultant for the PBS American Experience documentary “The Mine Wars,” and Charles B. Keeney, assistant professor of history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, founding member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, and author of “The Road to Blair Mountain.”
Blog post by Rachael Barbara Nicholas, WV National Digital Newspaper Project grant assistant, WVRHC
The Martinsburg Independent, formerly the Martinsburg Weekly Independent, could proudly claim in 1900 that it was the oldest newspaper in Berkeley County. The first editorial partnership, the Independent Printing Co., published the Weekly Independent and its successor from 1873 to 1879. They knew “that an independent, courageous newspaper, one that should be the reflex of no single man’s mind, that should be free from party trammels, and which would express its honest judgment without fear or favor, was needed in Berkeley County.” The eight sheets that comprised the Martinsburg Independent contained local news, national news, poems and stories, and advertisements. The editors printed material critical of both parties, including their preferred party, the Republicans. In the waning days of Reconstruction, they published a special dispatch denouncing Republicans “for the wrongs which they have, since 1865, heaped upon the Southern white people.” The dispatch seemed to verify the Independent’s position as a paper “Unawed by Influence, and Unbribed by Gain.” The Independent did not hesitate to share its opinions, even when that meant crossing party lines.
However, independence was never synonymous with neutrality. Throughout its publishing history, the Martinsburg Independent engaged with politics. It became especially bold under John Nelson Wisner, a prominent attorney, and his co-editor, W. T. Logan, to whom control of the Independent passed in 1879. The advent of the Progressive Era brought with it new topics that editors could not wait to address: labor unions, prohibition, and women’s suffrage. Wisner took a special interest in women’s suffrage, although the articles he chose for publication were generally negative. One contributor, quoted on March 27, 1886, praised the formative influence women had on great men as mothers. He feared the future would lack George Washingtons, John Wesleys, and Garfields because “woman certainly [could not] attend properly to her duties at home, and, at the same time, mix in politics.” This notion of Republican motherhood, an eighteenth-century ideology, found proponents amongst men and women. Advocates of Republican motherhood and the Cult of Domesticity praised the civilizing influence of women in the Independent. “In the age of chivalry it was the beauty of woman that wrestled successfully against barbarism,” one wrote. Only “she softened the rude manners of the warrior… and thus civilized those whose hearts could be touched by no other human power.” The author therefore concluded that women should not rule or participate in government. “Let her fill the sphere appointed her by nature,” he advised, and there “she will be a true sovereign.”
A poem published on March 5, 1881, linking motherhood and womanhood.
Independence did not preclude Wisner from encouraging policies that were associated with a particular party. At the height of the Progressive Era, Wisner championed the gold standard, a policy the Independent shared with its Republican neighbor, the Martinsburg Herald. On the subject of free silver, Wisner said he would be for it if he could “get any of it free” before asking, sarcastically, if “the free silverites [would] first arrange to dump a car load into our coffers.” He continued to defend the gold standard even when the Democratic Statesman accused him of breathing “the sweetest, loftiest praises” of President Cleveland, a Democrat. “We simply stood upon the financial policy of the Republican Party, and the President happened to be a gold man,” Wisner retorted. “This is as far as we went.” For all intents and purposes, Wisner was a Republican. He led the party in Martinsburg, and other newspaper editors referred to him accordingly.
The turn of the century dawned on a potentially bright future for America but not the Martinsburg Independent. Wisner was struggling to obtain payments from subscribers in 1899, lamenting “[that] the new dress for the Independent, recently promised, has been delayed for want of funds.” He pleaded with his readers for more money and apparently received enough to continue printing for most of 1900—but not all of it. The Shepherdstown Register reported in December that Wisner had discontinued the Independent, as did the Spirit of Jefferson. Wisner retired his printing press and died three years later at the age of fifty-eight.
The Independent Printing Co., “Volume 2, No. 1,” The Martinsburg Weekly Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, April 4, 1874.
The Independent Printing Co., National Republican Ticket, The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, October 28, 1876. The editors printed a copy of the National Republican ticket in 1876; they did not print the Democratic ticket for Samuel Tilden.
Independent Printing Co., “The Republicans’ Scheme,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, February 24, 1877.
Independent Printing Co., Header, The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, May 12, 1877. This was the paper’s official slogan.
J. Nelson Wisner and W. T. Logan, “Business Change,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, January 4, 1879. Logan left the partnership in 1884 because of poor health. See W. T. Logan, “To the Public,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, August 23, 1884.
E.E.U., “Woman Suffrage,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, March 27, 1886.
L. D-W. G., “Female Sovereignty,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, March 27, 1886.
J. Nelson Wisner, The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, February 8, 1896.
J. Nelson Wisner, The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, January 16, 1897.
George W. Haines, The Spirit of Jefferson, Charles Town, West Virginia, December 11, 1900; Unknown author, “John N. Wisner Dead,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, February 20, 1903.
J. Nelson Wisner, “The New Dress,” The Martinsburg Independent, Martinsburg, West Virginia, December 16, 1899.
H. L. Snyder, The Shepherdstown Register, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, December 13, 1900; Haines, The Spirit of Jefferson, December 11, 1900.
Unknown author, “John N. Wisner Dead,” February 20, 1903.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the seventh post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
A Date with a Dish slices through fallacies and vegetables alike. Freda de Knight writes like she’s chatting on the phone with a girlfriend, whisking readers away on interviews with America’s Black chefs. As I’ve said in earlier posts, the angle found within a cookbook is unfiltered and raw in comparison to accounts written by dominant groups, or those unaffected by Black America’s challenges.
Struggle isn’t an ingredient, but a tangible influence on the composition of a recipe. Freda emphasized “food that stretches” for times of financial hardship. All-in-one recipes like “Mama Scott’s Inexpensive Dinner” document ways that people adapted and problem-solved.
“When sugar was scarce and pennies low, maple syrup and even molasses made delightful eating, added to apples which were topped with a crunchy, flaky crust.”
How to “budget slash” and reuse ham:
Freda agreed with the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” She understood the needs of her readers and published a tool to help them save money. What a boss!
Brad Hart, a 14-year employee of WVU facilities and preventative maintenance, started collecting KISS memorabilia in 1995 after seeing the tribute band, Strutter, at The Nyabinghi Dance Hall (currently 123 Pleasant Street). This turned out to be great timing, as the four original members kicked off a reunion tour in 1996, leading to the release of a whole new wave of KISS merchandise. To date, Hart has over 600 items in his collection, ranging from vintage to new. He rarely purchases items online, enjoying the “thrill of the hunt” at antique malls, thrift shops, flea markets, etc. Hart is a musician himself, having just wrapped up a 34-year career of playing bass guitar in several popular bands in the Morgantown area.
Wes Utt, who has worked in the WVU preventative maintenance shop for 14 years, began collecting and dealing in antiques more than 30 years ago. His main passion is selling and trading at toy and antique shows and flea markets where he’s met some of his closest friends. His earliest pieces date back to the early 1900s. This exhibit was organized by WVU Art in the Libraries.
“The West Virginia Feminist Activist Collection brings together the records of people and institutions that worked to advance women’s rights. The materials hold the stories of challenges and change for women in West Virginia. The archive will be useful for scholars, teachers, and anyone interested in women’s history,” WVRHC Assistant Director Lori Hostuttler said.
The grants – $19,998 from the Humanities Council and $12,601 from the WVU Humanities Center – will enable their team to conduct outreach, collect papers and oral histories, and hold educational programs across the state to educate West Virginians about archival practices and women’s history.
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
Long awaited reports on UFO’s, or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), as the military defines them, may soon become a reality as early as June 1st, according to the story by Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) posted to NBC News yesterday, May 23. The American public has been taunted with tantalizing photographs, films and eye witness reports for decades. Now the military, who began to hint a couple of years ago, that yes, in fact, they were studying UFO’s and extraterrestrial intelligence, may finally reveal their evidence for alien crafts in American airspace.
I hope the reports start in Clarksburg.
Clarksburg, the county seat of Harrison County, is in the north-central part of the state on Hwy 79 about 45 minutes from Morgantown. Clarksburg has a great history. Named for General George Rogers Clark, remembered for fighting against the British and Native Americans during the Indian Wars and American Revolution. Earlier, mound builders in the Hopewell Culture established mounds near Clarksburg. Early settlers formed communities and erected log cabins as early as 1772 and in 1785, the Virginia General Assembly voted to authorize Clarksburg as a town.
None of that can hold a candle to one man, Braxton County native, Gray Barker, (1925 – 1984) an internationally recognized UFOlogist and his Saucerian Press. Yes, you read that right, Saucerian Books, located in Clarksburg, takes its name from flying saucers.
Barker, from the small town of Riffle, located about an hour outside Clarksburg, graduated from Glenville State College in 1947. He taught English for a while in Maryland after graduation. In 1952, while working as a theater booker in Clarksburg, he started collecting stories about the Flatwoods Monster. This unexplained presence has been described as a “man-like figure with a round, red face surrounded by a pointed, hood-like shape” wearing a green outfit with claw like hands.
Note the scale.
Intrigued by all things weird, Barker wrote an article about the Flatwoods monster and flying saucers and submitted it to FATE Magazine, a magazine devoted to paranormal phenomena. According to Wikipedia, FATE was co-founded in 1948 by Raymond A. Palmer (editor of Amazing Stories) and Curtis Fuller. Still in publication today, FATE is now the longest-running magazine devoted to the paranormal.
For Barker, that was fate indeed! His article, “The Monster and the Saucer,” was accepted and published in January 1953. From there, Barker began writing regularly about UFOs for the magazine Space Review, published by the International Flying Saucer Bureau. Later on, once his career as a sci-fi author was established, Barker founded his own press in Clarksburg, the Saucerian Press, to publish his bulletin, The Saucerian, and his books.
In his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, Gray Barker introduced the concept of the Men in Black to UFO folklore. Yes, Gray Barker invented the Men In Black! Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones can thank Gray Barker for their roles in this 1997 film!
Gray Barker’s book, The Silver Bridge, linked the collapse of the Silver bridge in Point Pleasant with the appearance of the Mothman, a winged being with large red eyes that had been seen in Point Pleasant prior to the bridge collapse.
The Silver Bridge was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge carries U.S. Route 35 over the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio.
Nearly two weeks before Christmas, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, killing 46 people. Two of the victims were never found. Investigation of the wreckage pointed to the failure of a single eyebar in the suspension chain. Investigations proved that the bridge was carrying much heavier loads than originally designed and was poorly maintained.
Many are familiar John Keel’s book, The Mothman Prophecies, which spawned the 2011 movie of the same name, starring Richard Gere. But Barker was got there first – his book preceded Keel’s book by five years.
Can’t wait until June 1st? There’s a couple of local places with collections of Gray Barker’s publications. The Gray Barker Room at the Waldomore, the Clarksburg-Harrison County Public Library holds a collection of Gray Barker’s writings, as well as files of correspondence between Barker and notable figures in the UFO field from the 1950s to the early 1980s such as George Adamski, Howard Menger, James Moseley, and others. The room is a minor tourist stop for UFO enthusiasts.
Or stick closer to home and make an appointment to see Barker’s books published by his Saucerian Press at the West Virginia and Regional History Center. We’ll be happy to share with you!
In the meantime, I wonder if the History Channel is planning to renew the cancelled Project Blue Book? The time is right!
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the sixth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
Each recipe is a date! The author, Freda de Knight, introduces recipes with tidbits of history or personal advice. In the modern cookbook world, I get overwhelmed quickly. Each online recipe begins with paragraphs of extra tips on how exactly to roast this or marinate that, followed by bulleted lists of ingredients and instructions. A Date with a Dish slows down and eases you into the upcoming recipe, much like a girlfriend would sit me down to describe the guy she was setting me up with for a blind date.
A snippet of the preamble for “Smithfield Ham:”
Freda respects her contributors, radiating pride for Black chefs like Jimmy Daniels:
See what I mean?
More than a list of ingredients, the reader hears about Black Americans that invented the dish, festivities when it is served, and a vivid depiction of how to simmer, chop, or prepare for the main event.
Note that each “date” ends with an underlying message: Black cooks are diverse, skilled, and worthy of society’s praise and recognition.
West Virginia UniversityLibraries’ Teaching and Learning Committee has selected Adam Benjamin and Aerianna McClanahan as 2021 Robert F. Munn Undergraduate Library Scholars.
“All of us at WVU Libraries are thrilled to name Adam Benjamin and Aerianna McClanahan as Munn Scholars,” Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz said. “Adam and Aerianna navigated around limitations placed on them by COVID-19 restrictions to research their topics thoroughly and write impressive works of scholarship.”
Blog post by Jane LaBarbara,Assistant Curator, WVRHC.
Thanks to the National Digital Newspaper Program, the WVRHC has been able to make more newspapers available digitally through Chronicling America. Check out the full list of newspapers currently available for West Virginia, arranged by city. You can use these newspapers to do historical research, to search for the names of relatives or famous people, to marvel at the clever advertisements of yesteryear, and you can also use them to find fun recipes.
To celebrate the latest group of digitized newspapers going up online, I decided to look for a fun recipe to test, and I found one I loved in The McDowell Times issue from March 14, 1941. (You can take a look at the newspaper page in question to see this and other recipes.)
The recipes in this issue are in the “Household News” section by Eleanor Howe, and they’re all about diversifying sausage use. To be honest, I was hooked from the beginning of the column. The very clear gender roles of that time period practically jump off the page. The column starts with a homemaker [clearly a woman] who claims to get as much of an emotional boost from trying a new recipe as from buying a new hat. As the column continues, a small ad for a cookbook by the column author includes this sign of the times: “The best part of the adventure [in cooking], however, comes about when the recipe makes the man of the family look up and with both pride and appreciation in his voice pronounces the whole meal a tremendous success.”
It is worth noting that these recipes aren’t specific to Keystone, WV, the publishing location of The McDowell Times. The clue, for me, was the mailing address for the advertised cookbook, which was in Illinois. I did a quick search of Chronicling America’s newspapers and found that this same column ran in The Midland Journal, in Maryland, Carbon County News, in Montana, and The Frontier, out of Nebraska, all during a two-day period. It is delightful to have a database like Chronicling America available to bring together materials from so many institutions, to allow for this kind of cross-searching.
While the image of a wife as a queen of domesticity doesn’t resonate with me, the part about cooking as an adventure does. I am a beginner cook, and I’m always on the lookout for relatively quick and easy things that are appropriate for family dining or get-togethers with friends. When I saw the recipe and image for Porcupine Sausage Balls, I knew this would be it.
Porcupine Sausage Balls
2 tablespoons butter 1 small onion, chopped 1 green pepper, chopped 2 ½ cups canned tomatoes 1 tablespoon sugar 1 pound bulk pork sausage ¾ cup uncooked rice
Melt butter in frying pan and brown onion in it. Add chopped green pepper, tomatoes, sugar, and salt. Cook until green pepper is tender. Make the sausage into small balls and roll in the uncooked rice. Place in greased baking casserole and pour the tomato mixture over the sausage balls. Cover baking dish and bake 1 ½ hours in a moderate oven (350 degrees).
The recipe was relatively easy to prep and easy to follow. I did note partway through that salt does not appear on the ingredients list, so I just assumed that all I needed was a big pinch of it. I approached the rice with skepticism – I have been disappointed once before by rice that didn’t actually cook in a recipe, so I worried if this rice would cook properly. I chose a small casserole dish so that the tomato sauce mixture would cover the sausage balls completely, to give the rice a fighting chance. If you want to make this recipe, too, I suggest using a smaller amount of rice than what the recipe calls for, with more on standby. I probably only used a half cup of rice.
While they didn’t look quite like the adorable drawing in the recipe, the sausage balls were quite cute with the rice on them. With the sauce on top, it was ready to cook for what felt like a surprisingly long time.
The final result was delicious. It probably wasn’t intended as an afternoon snack, but that’s how we ate it. The rice [which DID cook, except for a few crunchy pieces on the bottom] doesn’t actually stick to the meatballs, so if you are expecting the presentation of the dish to reflect the name of it, you will be disappointed. However, the most important part is that this was so tasty. Everyone in my family enjoyed it, even the kids, who are pretty hit or miss at this age. I am surprised to say that I will be making it again. Tip: make sure to choose a sausage that has a flavor balance you like; for me, the sausage flavors really shined through. Alternatively, you could try this with ground beef or meat substitute, but I don’t know how that would affect the cooking time, if at all.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the fifth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
“It is a fallacy, long disproved, that Negro cooks, chefs, caterers and housewives can adapt themselves only to the standard Southern dishes, such as fried chicken, greens, corn pone, hot breads, and so forth.” The preface was probably quite inflammatory to prejudiced whites that came across it. To get a sense of the author’s courage, glance over the first page here:
The author, Freda de Knight, in her book, A Date With a Dish: A Cook Book of American Negro Recipes, acknowledges stereotypes. She knows that Black individuals had to improvise, cooking without measurement or modern equipment. How could they formally publish cookbooks when they couldn’t read or write?
Hannah Giorgis in Bon Appetit describes how Freda’s cookbook transformed the future of Black cooks. She recognized that “cultural archiving and culinary research are both pursuits for which few black people have received compensation.” It’s a great read for home chefs, history buffs, or anyone interested in how one woman stood for justice.
*It’s nearly impossible to find a print copy of Freda de Knight’s book, as numerous Amazon and Google searches proved. However, WVU students and staff can visit the Ebersole Collection on the 6th floor of the library to read our copy for free! Make an appointment. (They’re open during the COVID-19 pandemic by appointment.)
Stump, a faculty member and head of reference and access services with the George R. Farmer Jr. Law Library at WVU College of Law, researches environmental law, critical legal theory, law and social movements, and Appalachian and rural studies.
In “Remaking Appalachia,” his new book from WVU Press, Stump looks back more than a century to examine the creation of laws governing the rising power of coal and other industries, and chronicles their failure to protect Appalachia. In addition, Stump goes beyond law “reform” to explore true system change, a discussion undergirded by ecofeminism and ecosocialism.
Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC
Each year in April, libraries and archives take time to share information about one of our core activities: preservation. Caring for the collections materials under our stewardship is part of the mission of the West Virginia & Regional History Center, the WVU Libraries, and many other library and heritage institutions. Many of you have your own collections – records, letters, photographs, artifacts, videos, and more – that contain your personal history, the history of your family, your school, and your communities. The theme for Preservation Week 2021 is Preserving Community Archives and the goal is to provide resources and education to help you take care of your collections.
West Virginia takes pride in its sense of community and our history is often written by looking closely at groups with shared experiences. Coal camps, unions, sports teams, and homemaker’s clubs are just a scant few of the communities that have been explored to tell the story of the people of the state. Not all communities have been studied, nor their records collected. Black, ethnic, and LGBTQ communities in West Virginia are underrepresented in our histories and our archives. Community archives are a way for groups to collect and interpret their own history.
There are many things you and your community can do to preserve your historic records so they can be passed down to others in the future. The resources linked below offer guidance on many different kinds of materials. We can also offer some advice at the WVRHC. If you have a preservation question or want to start a community archive, send us an email. We’ll try to assist and provide answers or get you in touch with someone who can.
Caring for Your Treasures: Guides on architecture, books, glass & ceramics, documents & works of art on paper, furniture, home video, metal objects, paintings, photographs, textiles, and matting & framing from the American Institute for Conservation
Dear Donia: Ask preservation expert Donia Conn a question, and review the archive of her answers
Disaster Recovery: Disaster planning, salvage, and restoration resources
Preservation Leaflets: Handouts on numerous preservation issues from the Northeast Document Conservation Center
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
Shakespeare loved flowers and it is well known that he used them in his plays. Flowers conveyed meaning and symbolism in Shakespeare’s day. Each mention of a flower or tree would provide a clue to the readers of his plays. Let’s take a look at some of the flowers and plays where they are mentioned. I’m sure Shakespeare would be happy to celebrate his birthday with a bouquet of flowers!
All of the flower portraits you see here come from a set of books in the Rare Books collection, William Woodville’s Medical Botany. Published in 1832 in five volumes, each with beautiful images of flowers and other plants illustrated with hand colored plates.
‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.’
Romeo and Juliet
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not To get slips of them.’
The Winter’s Tale
‘The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack, To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, To strew him o’er and o’er!’
The Winter’s Tale
‘Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.’
Othello
Happy Birthday Shakespeare!
If you’d like to see Shakespeare’s works or Woodville’s Medical Botany, contact me, Stewart Plein, to schedule a visit to the Rare Book Room.
By Sally Brown, WVU Libraries Exhibits Coordinator
Curating the Art in the Libraries’ large, multi-disciplinary exhibitions since 2018’s WATER, has proved an enormous and exciting part of my role as Exhibits Coordinator. Through WATER (2018-19) and Appalachian Futures (2019-20), I developed these large exhibitions with upwards of 50 diverse contributors, two committees, a designer, several sponsoring partners and of course, the signing off of Dean Karen Diaz for these displays going up in the Downtown Campus Library for the academic year.
This year’s exhibition, Undefeated: Canvas(s)ing the Politics Around Voter Suppression Since Women’s Suffrage, in conjunction with the Suffrage Centennial and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was complex in its multidisciplinary, and controversial in its political nature. The complexity was compounded by the pandemic not only logistically for exhibition display, but also as it heightened the unfolding story of contemporary voter suppression with myriad new voting considerations throughout the presidential election. Thankfully, the various contributors and partners allowed for multiple perspectives for this exhibition and its related programming and we were able to engage participation from WVU and broader communities.
Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator for Archives and Manuscripts, WVRHC
A recent gift to the History Center includes negatives featuring Mountaineer Field in the 1920s, among other material. Shot by local photographer Scott Gibson, they afford a glimpse of the stadium and field in their earliest days. Before discussing them, however, a review of some of the history of WVU football and the stadium will help to contextualize and enhance our appreciation of these photographs.
Today the Mountaineers are a popular team, having achieved much success in recent times under coach Nehlen and in the years following. They were also a big deal in the 1920s. The 1922 team under coach Clarence Spears were unbeaten, the first and only WVU football team to achieve such a record. The Mountaineers then made their first appearance in a bowl game against Gonzaga in the East-West Bowl, while also stopping in Hollywood to have their picture taken with child star Jackie Coogan. A Charlie Chaplin discovery, Coogan posed front and center with the team. The resulting autographed photo is in the collection of the History Center.
Mountaineer Football Team with Coogan (front, center); 1922. (from the West Virginia History OnView collection, no. 040447, West Virginia and Regional History Center)
The success of the Mountaineer team gained the positive attention of the administration of West Virginia University, who then initiated the construction of the first iteration of Mountaineer Field, which was completed in time for the 1924 season.
Construction of the Stadium at Mountaineer Field; 31 July 1924. (from the West Virginia History OnView collection, no. 019396, West Virginia and Regional History Center)
Some of the subject matter in the negatives just recently acquired from the studio of Scott Gibson include the stadium not long after its completion. Apart from mostly Monticola yearbooks and a few scrapbooks, the 1920s at West Virginia University are not as well documented by photography as in later years, so the acquisition of these images is a welcome addition to our collections. We will feature three of them here.
One of the images shows what appears to be a football game in progress, or perhaps a practice session, we don’t know since identification is lacking. Although the number of spectators is low in this photo, we do know that the Mountaineers could draw crowds of up to 10 to 20 thousand in that era, based on newspaper reports.
Football in progress at Mountaineer Field; ca. 1926. (from the West Virginia History OnView collection, Scott Gibson collection, West Virginia and Regional History Center)
The other two photos to be featured here show what appear to be college aged students posing among the stadium benches. They could be young family members, perhaps with friends, of the photographer Scott Gibson. We don’t know. We do know, however, that the negatives for these photos date from ca. 1926, since they are clearly related to other negatives in the collection documenting a 1926 parade in Morgantown. The cloche hats, a virtual fashion necessity of the 1920s and early 30s, clinch this analysis. These images show a casual and candid side of WVU students that’s missing from photos typically seen in Monticola yearbooks.
Students posing at Mountaineer Field; ca. 1926. (Scott Gibson collection, West Virginia and Regional History Center)Students posing at Mountaineer Field; ca. 1926. (Scott Gibson collection, West Virginia and Regional History Center)
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a nearly $60,000 grant to West Virginia University Libraries to create the first-ever online portal bringing together congressional archives from repositories throughout the United States.
“Congressional archives document the democratic process and the evolution of Congress as an institution,” said Danielle Emerling, project director and curator of congressional and political collections in the West Virginia & Regional History Center. “However, the value of the archives goes beyond the study of the branch itself. They illustrate multiple narratives related to the country’s social, cultural, and political development.”
Blog post by Angela Spatafore, Program Assistant, WVRHC
I love cicadas. In fact, you can probably say it is an obsession at this point. If you visit my house or take a ride in my car, you will undoubtedly be reminded of this obsession by the cicada taxidermy on my bedroom walls to the plush cicada on my dashboard to the various art pieces I’ve collected. So naturally when I was hired at the West Virginia & Regional History Center, one of my first questions was what the Center had about cicadas in its collections. In the spirit of Brood X’s emergence later this year, let’s look at some of what I could find.
Here is a photo I took of the emerging Brood V cicadas in Fairmont, 2016. If you look closely in the bottom right and left corners, you can see two full grown cicadas sporting their signature black and orange coloring. The milky, freshly emerged cicadas will eventually dry to black. The entire process takes about ninety minutes!
With six broods of periodical cicadas covering almost the entire state, West Virginia certainly has its fair share of history with the cicadas. Every seventeen years like clockwork once the ground warms to 64° F eight inches underground, the cicadas begin to emerge, and given their predictability, newspapers publish articles warning and educating those within range of the incoming invasions.
One of my favorite newspaper articles comes from the Ceredo Advance in May 1911. In the article, the author, John E. Watkins, describes the oncoming emergence of not just one but two broods, one of the 17-year broods and one of the 13-year broods. He remarks on how he and everyone living in his time would never witness both broods emerge simultaneously again. While this emergence occurred mostly in New Jersey, it was interesting to see how the news made its way to West Virginia. After all, there’s nothing like a cicada to get you to brood about your mortality.
Growing up, no one I knew called them cicadas. Until my obsession took over and I began pouring through book after book, I, like everyone I knew, called them locusts. After paging through newspapers from as far back as 1834 to today, apparently the term “locust” never quite went out of style. Nearly every article includes some statement explaining the difference between a locust and a cicada to the reader, but why the confusion in the first place?
Apparently the massive scale of a cicada emergence was reminiscent of the biblical swarms of locust to the settlers who witnessed the event. This anecdote was included in The Periodical Cicada of West Virginia by the entomologist William E. Rumsey, a publication I found interesting not only for its scientific content but also its discussion of regional folklore related to the insect, and while I was unable to find any photographs of past invasions in my search of the Center’s OnView collection, I was able to find a photograph of Rumsey. While obviously not a cicada himself, it was nice to put a face to the man whose words I read as I put together this post.
With that said, love them or hate them, cicadas are a part of West Virginia history, and for those of you with ties to the Eastern Panhandle or any of other fourteen states covered by Brood X, be prepared. The cicadas are coming.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the fourth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
Freda de Knight authored the next featured cookbook, A Date with a Dish, but it would be better described as a midnight phone conversation with a friend who knows more than you.
She published this guide in 1948, but her culinary journey began at age 5 when she, like many girls at the time, helped her mother pack lunch for her siblings and prepare family meals.
Freda didn’t hide from challenges facing Black cooks. This was the first cookbook I read that outright rejected the status quo, calling for “a non-regional cook book that would contain recipes, menus, and cooking hints from and by Negros all over America.” Here, there are hundreds of those recipes with anecdotes from the cooks themselves. I have no choice other than sharing one recipe by a West Virginia resident and baker, Ruth Jackson!
I tried to find more information about Ruth, like her bakery’s name, city of residence, or even a photo. I had no success, although a more intensive search might work out. Either way, her memory lives on in A Date with a Dish.
When I think of West Virginia in the 1940’s, I never thought I’d hear about it from the perspective of a Black, female baker. It is truly awesome that Freda takes a moment to celebrate other women of color, whose recipes and ideas were generally shut off from popular cookbooks or publications. Wouldn’t it be great if they read about female entrepreneurs like Ruth Jackson in West Virginia history classes? The recipe is there, tucked away on a shelf in the West Virginia & Regional History Center. If you take away anything from this blog, don’t be afraid to fill a void in a story you care about.
