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by Jonathan Jeffrey | April 26, 2019 · 3:41 pm

The only sounds: pages turning softly.
This is the quietness
of bottomland where you can hear only the young corn
growing, where a little breeze stirs the blades
and then breathes in again.

I mark my place.
I listen like a farmer in the rows.

“A House of Readers” from The Mountains Have Come Closer (1980)

Raised on a 70-acre farm in Buncombe County, North Carolina, Jim Wayne Miller was no stranger to the secrets of the Appalachian foothills. Miller’s poetry, inspired by the works of writers such as Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Donald Davidson, Randall Stewart, and Emil Lerperger, ultimately reflects his intimate connection to the cultural landscape of the South.

In the spring of 1982, WKU folk studies student Mary Kate Brennan interviewed Miller about “what he considers to be the central theme of his poetry, the development of his poetic art…the death of Appalachian culture, and the urgent need for the people of Appalachia to regain, or retain, pride in their cultural heritage.” Brennan’s interview, less than an hour long, is ambitious in its scope and grapples with the complex intersections between folklore, identity, language, art, and politics. In this interview, Miller also reveals his inspiration for the creation of three recurring figures throughout his poetry—the Brier, the Intellectual, and the Redneck—and how each character represents various aspects of the southern experience. In doing so, Miller addresses his turn towards “culturally aware” poetry, when he suggests that

people [in the Appalachian region] have been badgered into feeling that their society and their traditional life was in many ways inadequate, and oftentimes they’ve been only too glad to abandon traditional ways of life because they’ve been shamed out of them in various ways. But there’s a wonderful steadiness and independent mindedness that’s reasserting itself in the region.

At the time of Brennan’sinterview, Miller had already been working as a full time faculty member in theDepartment of Modern Languages and InterculturalStudies at WKU for more than a decade, and his reputation as adistinguished professor and poet earned him several notable awards. Hiscollaborative partnerships with the Poet in the Schools Program in Virginia,Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky, and Appalachian Studies programs inuniversities across the central Appalachian region served as a testament to hiscommitment both to public folklore endeavors and engagement within the academy.

Upuntil his death in 1996, Miller continued to write and publish collections ofpoetry, along with novels, essays, anthologies, and articles in which anundercurrent of folklore flowed freely. Speaking to the necessity of creativevernacular expression, Miller tells Brennan that “folklore is always such anintegral part of peoples’ lives. You don’t go and find people sitting on theporch breaking beans and spouting one piece of proverbial wisdom after another!It’s all mixed up in life.”

Collections of Jim Wayne Miller’s poetry are available in the Helm-Cravens library stacks and in the non-circulating Special Collections stacks located in the Kentucky Building.

For more information on Jim Wayne Miller, the Appalachian region, poetry, and folklore, visit TopSCHOLAR or browse through KenCat, a searchable database featuring manuscripts, photographs, and other non-book objects housed in the Department of Library Special Collections!

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by Jonathan Jeffrey | April 16, 2019 · 12:05 pm

Dr. Walker Rutledge, WKU Professor of English, annually brings his English 300 class to the Kentucky Building for an introduction to manuscript collections held by Library Special Collections. Afterwards, the students select a collection to read and then write a summary related to it. The following is Cameron Fontes’ paper. He chose to write about the Mansard Hotel register from the collection (SC 1236). To see the finding aid for this collection click here.

Unlike the many impersonal, chain-owned hotels of today, the Mansard Hotel in Bowling Green, KY, encapsulated all the best parts of its community. It was a locally-owned, well-kept institution where local leaders and travelers alike commingled amidst luxurious, yet affordable, furnishings and convenient eateries. When guests arrived at The Mansard, either for just a meal or for an overnight stay, they recorded the details of their visit on the tall, lined pages of the hotel register in grand, gorgeous script. Although it is now yellowed and musty with age, he Mansard Hotel register kept from 16 August 1907 to 7 October 1907, provides an intimate and detailed portrait of the bustling environment of a small-town hotel in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Located behind what was then the local opera house, the Mansard stood near the corner of Main and Center Streets in downtown Bowling Green. At check-in, one of the register columns guests were required to fill out if they were staying overnight was the “Room” column, in which they were to write their room number as well as the number of pieces of luggage they brought with them. Although the number of pieces each guest brought with them is nothing especially noteworthy, one interesting observation that can be made upon reading the record of each guest’s luggage is that for the most part, guests only used trunks rather than suitcases, which are probably the most common type of luggage in use today. On 7 September 1907, a guest who signed as “E. Jenkins” from Buffalo, New York, brought with them one trunk and stayed in room seven.

Buffalo was only one of a plethora of places from which guests at the Mansard traveled. Each guest wrote their place of origin in the register column marked “Residence,” their responses ranging from various towns within Kentucky, such as Golden Pond and Louisville, to St. Louis, Missouri, Evansville, Indiana, and many cities besides. If a guest were visiting simply to take in a meal at the hotel restaurant, they wrote “City” to indicate that they were a resident of Bowling Green. One especially fascinating entry in this column on 24 September 1907, is that of Ed H. Foster, who signed that he was from “Coffeetown,” a small town in Pennsylvania located, funnily enough, about five miles from the town of Hershey.

It is evident which guests in the register were only visiting for a meal by whether or not they write a room number in the “Room” column next to their response in the “Time” column. Obviously, if there was a room number in this column, that was the room in which the guest who signed on that line stayed. If there was no room number, however, one has only to look at the guest’s response in the “Time” column to see for which meal they made a trip to the Mansard. Each guest signed either a “B,” “D,” “S,” or “R”. Most likely, the first three letters indicated the meal at which each guest dined or the closest meal to which each guest checked in for their stay, “B” being for “Breakfast,” “D” for “Dinner,” and “S” for “Supper.” “R” would likely have stood for “Resident,” seeing as how the demographic of permanent residents of hotels was much more common in 1907 than today.

One very famous Bowling Green resident who visited the Mansard for breakfast om 2 September 1907, was none other than Henry Hardin Cherry. Western Kentucky University’s first president, Cherry signed his name in big, beautiful cursive along with the name of his beloved hometown, making sure to proudly write out “Bowling Green, KY,” instead of simply “City,” as so many others had done. That he would have been well-respected and well-known at the time is likely. Having just become the president of what was then “Western Kentucky State Normal School” the year before, he would have already been considered a bastion of higher education in the community.

Other notable guests at the Mansard during this time included C.W. McElroy, a state representative for Bowling Green, on 21 August 1907, for supper, along with a couple of other individuals with prominent Bowling Green names including R.B. Potter from Woodburn, Kentucky, on 9 September 1907, and N.J.M McCormick from Indianapolis, Indiana, on 10 September 1907, who may have both been in town visiting family.

Sadly, the Mansard Hotel burned down on 5 July 1969. To stay in a hotel as charming as the Mansard may seem impossible today, but by perusing its old register one can start to gain a sense of its local charm and grandeur. cked

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by Lynn Niedermeier | April 4, 2019 · 8:34 am

Students,

Exams and end-of-year assignments looming? Roommates getting on your nerves? Out of money?Ready for a change of scenery?

Then pity Sarah Boyd, attending boarding school inFlemingsburg, Kentucky. For Sarah, itwas a matter of hanging on until the Christmas holiday, when she could escapehome to Bath County. Without telephones,Facebook, FaceTime and all the modern tools we have to bridge distance, Sarahwas at her wit’s end, despite receiving some unusual care packages fromhome. Here are some excerpts from herletters to her mother in the fall of 1865:

I am very mutch heart (hurt) to think that no one at home cares any thing about me I am hear and can not hear from home I (have) writen t(w)o leters this is thre(e) and have received no answer.

The first thing in themorning I have my bible class next my arithmetic and then recess and then Ph(y)siology and (w)riting then we have noon and then the first thing is Gramer (grammar) and then . . . science and then young ladiesreader.

I am not dissatisfied with Mr. Turner (the schoolmaster) for him and Mrs. Turner is as good to me as they can be but there is some hateful girls at this Boardinghouse.

Mary Bats and Em Franklin quarled at me they are the hateful girls . . . (Em) has been trying to run over me ever since I have been here and I have took as much of her as I am a going to . . . Ma I wish you would make me some bit(t)ers and send me. (G)et me some whisky and put some sasparela (sarsaparilla) in it. . . . Mrs. Turner is very kind to me but we do not have very good victiles (victuals).

Dear Ma I receivedyour leter and was glad to hear from you . . . I am so glad you sent me thatwhisky for I kneed it.

I wish you would sendme some money as I kneed some very bad to get stamps and I want to have my photographstaken to bring home . . . Ma that whisky has done me a great deal of good andthere is not any of the girls knows I have it.

Ma I want you to have something good to eatfor me . . . I am growing impatient about going home.

Poor Sarah. We canonly hope that this lonesome and stressed 13-year-old (that’s right, 13) found her way back to the bosom ofher family.

A finding aid for Sarah’s letters can be accessed by clicking here. For more collections housed in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections about Kentucky schools and their students through the generations, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by Lynn Niedermeier | March 27, 2019 · 8:49 am

As we know, there’s a lot more to the pardon process than simple justice. We’ve previously blogged about two Civil War-era pardon requests from Bowling Green and Burkesville, but here’s another 19^th-century Kentucky pardon story, plus a new detail about its history found in a letter in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

Born in Vermont in 1817, Delia Ann Webster moved to Lexington, Kentucky in 1843 to establish a school for young women. Educated herself in the abolitionist atmosphere of Oberlin College, she become a thorn in the side of local slaveholders, who rightly suspected her of participation in the Underground Railroad. Arrested after helping a family of African Americans escape to freedom in Ohio, Webster was tried and convicted of the crime of assisting fugitive slaves. In December, 1844 she received a two-year prison sentence, the first woman to receive such punishment.

Nevertheless, the trial jury petitioned Governor WilliamOwsley to pardon Webster because of her sex.At first, Webster would not accept clemency and demanded a newtrial. By the time she warmed to apardon, public opinion had turned against her and she was carted off to prisonin January, 1845.

But on February 24, Webster was suddenly released, the beneficiaryof a “Free and Full” pardon. During thenegotiations, which had continued after she entered prison, one of the stipulationswas that Webster leave Kentucky forever.But in her later account of her ordeal, she attributed her release tolittle more than “a friendly feeling” on the part of Governor Owsley and insistedthat she had refused to accept the condition of permanent exile from the state.“I could not think of pledging myself never to return,” she wrote.

Or could she? In the papersof Governor Owsley’s grandson Robert Rodes, a Bowling Green, Kentucky lawyerand state legislator, we find a handful of his correspondence. Included is a letter dated February 19, 1845,five days before Webster’s release from prison.Engrossed with the colorized countenance of Henry Clay, it reads:

Gov. of the State of Ky.
His Excellency William Owsley

I am sorry if I gaveyou an impression that I was not exceedingly anxious for a pardon. It is entirely erroneous. And if you will send me a Pardon or Respite,I will pledge you my word to leave your State never to return.

Delia A. Webster

In any event, Webster did not honor her pledge. After a few years at home in Vermont, she bought a farm in Trimble County, Kentucky and resumed her activities with the Underground Railroad until driven off by angry locals.

There’s way more to the story of Delia Webster—for example, the scandalous letters sent to her by the lovesick warden of the prison where she had resided in her own private cottage. “They are quite amorous,” wrote Robert Rodes to his wife after they were published in the newspaper. “You must criticise them and give me some strictures in my communications to my love.” But Delia Webster’s contrite letter to Governor Owsley, part of the Rodes Collection in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, shows that there may be more to her notorious pardon than previously understood.

Search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat for more about our collections.

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by Nancy Richey | March 18, 2019 · 10:24 am

Just like a difficult birth, Kentucky faced painful hurdlesin enacting a law for the registration of vital statistics. The value of recording such facts was noted asearly as 1821 by Kentucky’s General Assembly which required registration forall children between the ages of four and eighteen. This occurred 15 years earlier than the civilinauguration in England. It was notuntil 1852, however that the state passed a law for all births, deaths andmarriages and the production of an annual statistical report. In 1859, the Office of Registrar of VitalStatistics was also created. But, withthe advent of the Civil War, all registration efforts ceased until 1873. A recently acquired broadside for LibrarySpecial Collections, highlights Kentucky physicians’ call for vital statisticsregistration. The flyer is addressed tothe State Medical Society offering an argument in favor of starting thisimportant task again. The report of theRegistration Committee to the State Medical Society is laced with clear judgmentson the apathy of the profession and the “reckless-vandal legislation of 1862”which repealed the law. The committeenotes that most doctors have “acted in a very puerile manner,” and “have workedperpetually on the plan of ‘how not to do it’!”

A political climate, very familiar to us today is showcased bycertain physicians who tried to deal with the government, but returned, “souredand full of spleen toward the obtuse and obstinate General Assembly.” The doctors also condemned themselves fortheir low-key approach to the problem noting it was but a growling effort notworthy of such a cause.

The flyer calls for renewed efforts by the 2,414 practicing physicians“whose business and duty [is] it to instruct the people and move and guide the legislature.” A call was issued for the physicians to grabevery signature of “all who are in office, all who have been in office; all whoever wanted an office and as many of those who never wanted an office as youcan get.”! In essence, every person inthe state should be approached. Why Godhimself must have approved of such labors, as it is noted that “an unbrokenchain of genealogy [existed] from Adam to Christ.” A little hyperbole in the flyer went a longway and proved successful as the law was passed. Sadly, however, no central office was createdto enforce, safeguard or compile the statistics.

It would not be until 1910, when the State Board of Health was successful in passing the present law that vital statistics registration was successfully implemented. Birth and death registration was enacted statewide on 1 January 1911, and mostly adhered to by 1920. The blank death certificate shows how valuable the information obtained can be for many types of research.

The Baird Fund, established by former DLSC faculty member Nancy Disher Baird, funded acquisition of this document. “The Baird Fund has been an invaluable tool in helping us grow the collection,” said Jonathan Jeffrey, DLSC Department Head. “We appreciate Nancy’s generosity and her foresight.”

See this wonderful flyer and other materials related tomedical history in our holdings, visit TopSCHOLARor browse through KenCat,our searchable database featuring manuscripts, photographs, and other non-bookobjects housed in the Department of Library Special Collections.

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by Jonathan Jeffrey | March 13, 2019 · 1:37 pm

Sarah Moore, Scottsville, Kentucky, recently donated aletter written by Nancy Elam Moore, a distant relative and a leader at theShaker village at South Union, Kentucky.A photocopy of the letter has been housed in the Manuscripts unit ofLibrary Special Collections for many years.The letter, written to Nancy’s brother James Moore on 4^thAugust 1837, discusses her father Jesse’s estate, particularly a piece ofproperty located in Warren County, Ohio, the site of Union Village, anotherShaker community. She advised herbrother to proceed with caution and to not do anything until he had “fullyinvestigated the case.” Seems that aJohn Wallace, signing himself as the Power of Attorney for Jesse W. Moore, hadsold a 112-acre farm belonging to Moore to a Mr. John St. John for $440. This was undisputed. However, no documentation existed provingthat that said John Wallace had been empowered as Moore’s agent. Nancy advises her brother to go to Russellville,where he could “examine our Father’s will.It might shed some light on the subject.” James’ will is indeed recorded in LoganCounty, and it gives 5/8^ths of the estate to the Shaker community atSouth Union (Will Book A, p. 588-589). Althoughthe letter’s subject matter is only tangentially related to the Shakers, itdoes provide insight into communications maintained between Shaker members andtheir families “in the world.”

The photocopy, which was retained, has an added note fromHarold Moore dated 28 November 1983 in which he explains how he received thecopy while attending the funeral of William Simpson Moore. Seems Harold shared Jesse’s will and otherbiographical information with William’s oldest son, William Benjamin Moore, atthe funeral. At that time, Williamprovided Harold with a copy of the 1837 letter to keep with his records. Harold’s note unscrambles the genealogy: “This ‘gem’ is a letter from Eldress NancyMoore of Shakertown fame to her brother, James, who was my paternal greatgrandfather. Bennie’s [William Benjamin]great grandfather and my grandfather were brothers.” Their father was the Jamesto whom this letter [was] written.”Sarah Moore, the donor of the letter, was William Benjamin Moore’sdaughter, and she notes that he went by Benjamin or Ben and only family membersever referred to him as “Bennie.”

Eldress Nancy Elam Moore was born on 1 September 1807 in Warren County, Kentucky, and was brought to the Shaker village at South Union in Logan County when she was four years old. She served in numerous ministerial roles, including being appointed as an assistant to Eldress Betsy Smith in 1849. She made several visits to colonies in Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts. Nancy was appointed an Eldress of the Church in 1864. Eldress Nancy died at South Union on 5 December 1889. One of the treasures of the Manuscripts unit of Library Special Collections is Moore’s journal which describes life in the South Union Shaker village during the Civil War, 1861-1863. It outlines visits and exploitation suffered by the Shaker community from both Confederate and Union forces. (MSS 405)

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by Lynn Niedermeier | March 6, 2019 · 2:00 pm

Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths are straight, the trees regular, the sun shaded; . . . she has only to walk demurely from cradle to grave and no one will touch a hair of her head. But on the other side all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course. – Virginia Woolf

How can one not wonder about the history of a woman named Sunshine? And yet the conventions of 19^th-century femininity made it hard to know women, even one with a name like that.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky to Bavarian immigrants, SunshineFriedman was the baby of her family. In1878, when Sunshine was six, the Friedmans moved to Paducah, where her olderbrother Joseph had convinced his father to join him in his vinegarmanufacturing business.

As she grew up, Sunshine filled her high school autograph book with the scribbles of affectionate friends and relatives, including this one:

Sunshine Friedman is your name
Single is your station
Happy will be the man who
makes the alteration.

And by any standard, “Sunny” made a good marriage. In 1892, she wed Max B. Nahm of Bowling Green, a Princeton law graduate and clothier who would become a wealthy bank executive and a leader in the movement to establish Mammoth Cave as a national park.

From the commodious Nahm home on College Street, Sunshinereigned. By one account, she was “anactive volunteer in numerous community organizations, a whiz of a bridgeplayer, and the epitome of a dignified, Victorian lady.” But those Victorian values were painfully testedby Sunshine’s only child, Emanie, born in 1893.

For better or worse, it was Emanie (far more open about her personal history than her mother’s generation) who tells us most of what we know about Sunshine. Clever, tomboyish in her youth, unconventional, and given to creative pursuits like writing and art, Emanie complained that her mother tried to suffocate her aspirations, warning her that men don’t like that sort of thing. Her parents took her to the New York theater every year, she remembered, but no other visual arts were on the agenda. The Nahm house was filled with books, but again, no pictures of any consequence. Her mother “wanted to tell me what to do,” Emanie groused, in stream-of-consciousness notes left in her papers. Though intimidated by this maternal presence, Emanie apparently reproduced it in her relationship with her own daughter.

And yet the women seem to have remained on good terms. Emanie left for New York, married, divorced, and enjoyed success as a writer and artist. Sunny traveled and took cruises with Emanie and her granddaughter, but by the 1930s heart disease was threatening to cut her life short. When Sunny died at 63, her friend Martha Potter watched rather uncomfortably as Emanie distributed her mother’s possessions. Martha received “her purple, velvet-jacket evening gown and a black coat suit with fox fur shoulders.” Seven months later, after lunching with Max (who outlived Sunshine by 20 years), Martha could only say, “We do miss Sunny very much.”

For more about the Nahm family in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, click on the links or search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by Jonathan Jeffrey | February 28, 2019 · 11:19 am

On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln placed pen topaper and wrote the following executive order,

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

As an authoritative wartime measure, the Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom to more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans who remained under control by the Confederate government in ten southern states—not including the “border states” and those already under Union occupation.

While the proclamation, which was contingent upon a Union victory, may have ignited a firestorm of criticism from white southern sympathizers and praise from anti-abolitionists, its implementation was slow to take root, especially in Texas.

Seceding from the United States onFebruary 1, 1861, Texas became the fourth state admitted into the Confederacy. Throughoutthe course of the Civil War, slaveholders from eastern states, notably Arkansasand Louisiana, routinely brought slaves to Texas in order to avoidemancipation, which significantly increased the number of slaves across thestate. When the Emancipation Proclamation was made official in 1863, however,it took nearly two and a half years before the order was enforced. While theoriesabound in order to explain this severe lag—ranging from murder to deliberatemiscommunication—history itself is quite clear.

On June 19, 1865, Union Army GeneralGordon Granger and his troops landed on the beaches of Galveston Island anddeclared Texas under federal occupation. Granger read Lincoln’s executive order,thereby liberating the nearly 250,000 slaves living in Texas. “Juneteenth,”then, has come to be recognized as the “traditional end of slavery in Texas.” Theday has become established as a state-recognized holiday, while other statesmay observe Juneteenth in other forms of ceremonial remembrance. Theunderpinnings of Juneteenth rest on the celebration of Black pride, solidarity,and cultural heritage.

Akin to Juneteenth festivities, the 8th ofAugust is another emancipation-related holiday observed by African Americancommunities in both western Kentucky and Tennessee. While the reasons forcelebrating August 8th remain unclear, the lasting impact it has had on theregion is decidedly obvious. Every year, the city of Paducah, Kentucky hostsits 8th of August Homecoming Emancipation Celebration. The Homecoming seeks tohonor exceptional members of the African American community, both past andpresent, through memorial services, picnics, music performances, and church assemblies.

WKU’s Manuscripts andFolklife Archives contains a collection (FA 635) ofmaterials gathered together from Paducah’s 2008 8th of August HomecomingEmancipation Celebration titled “A Journey by Faith.” In his programintroduction, Robert Coleman, President of the W.C. Young Community CenterBoard of Directors, writes,

“America’s struggle, rise, and triumph from slavery to equal rights for all is a living testament to the power of deep, personal faith for Americans of all colors. That deep well of faith from the darkest days of slavery sets the African American experience of religion apart.”

The program itself includes articles describingthe accomplishments of distinguished members of the Black community,advertisem*nts for local businesses and churches, and a schedule of the weekend’sevents. The collection also contains photographs of the celebration, vendorinformation, business cards, and two interviews with James Dawson, a member ofthe First Liberty Missionary Baptist Church, that were recorded on digital videocassettetapes.

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by Lynn Niedermeier | February 21, 2019 · 8:31 am

Although he had retired in 1892, Civil War veteran andWarren County, Kentucky native Captain Richard Vance took great interest in allaspects of his country’s prosecution of the Spanish-American War. Among the topics covered in his personal scrapbooks,letters and essays was the plight of American soldiers who had volunteered forthe war only to be met with disease, poor camp conditions, and substandard foodand medical treatment.

For African-American soldiers, Vance realized that theconditions were far worse. He notedthat, in spite of their outstanding gallantry, African-American troops couldnot escape the racism of their white counterparts; in particular they “continuedto be despised objects in the estimation of southern volunteers.” Vance cited an example in which “certainVirginia gentlemen (volunteers) refused to receive their pay because it wasoffered to them by a Negro paymaster.”He had heard stories of “disorders” in some African-American regiments,but dismissed them as no worse than those in other volunteerorganizations. His own long militaryexperience had taught him “that the ‘white-washing’ process is invariably usedin such cases.”

Vance included clippings in his scrapbook to illustrate hispoints. During the fierce battle aroundSantiago, Cuba, read one report, African-American soldiers not only “foughtlike devils” but came to the aid of the wounded, and when wounded themselves showed“more nerve” under the surgeon’s knife “than many of their fellow soldiers oflighter hue.” When the men returnedhome, Louisville, Kentucky offered cheers for the 10^th Cavalry—“TheColored Heroes of San Juan Hill”—but as the troop trains passed throughRichmond, Texas and Meridian, Mississippi, they were targeted with gunfire. When Charles Mason Mitchell, a veteran ofTheodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, attempted to pay tribute to the bravery ofhis African-American comrades during a lecture in Richmond, Virginia, he wasbooed off the stage. “Is there a remedyfor these evils?” asked Vance.“Yes. Unquestionably. Will it ever be applied? That remains to be seen.”

Click here for a finding aid to the Richard Vance Collection, and here for a gallery of primary resources in the Department of Library Special Collections relating to the Spanish-American War. For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by Jonathan Jeffrey | February 15, 2019 · 9:12 am

In 1957 Sid & Florence Jobs wrote a prospective visitor to their Camp Paradise on Kentucky Lake that he should call long distance and make reservations, because their eight cottages were in high demand. They told the potential guest that his boxer dog was welcome “if there is no danger of him with the children on the premises.” The Jobs also send along a promotional postcard and literature along with several photographs as a way to tempt this vacationer to the place they considered Paradise, three miles from the nearest store or restaurant in Calloway County.

Camp Paradise, created in 1944 and nestled next to Kentucky Lake, stayed open for business from April 1^st to December 1^st each year. It lured some families for lake vacations, but its chief attraction was fishing on Kentucky Lake’s 160,000 acres. Promotional literature explained: “Day-in and day-out fishing in Kentucky Lake is considered the best among the manmade lakes in this part of the country by many fishermen…Almost all species of fresh water game and rough fish are represented here. Just to mention a few among the game fish are Crappie, Large Mount Bass, Small Mouth Bass, Striped Bass, Walleye Pike, Channel Cat, and Blue Gill. You can cast, troll, or stillfish anytime during our 12 month season and be reasonably sure of catching some of these fish.”

By way of accommodations, the Jobs could offer five one-bedroom cottages and three two-bedroom cottages, which were frame buildings clad in shingle tile siding and constructed on cinderblock foundations. The interiors boasted knotty pine paneling, celotex block ceilings and tile floors. Amenities included: tile showers, modern kitchens equipped with refrigerator and gas range, cookware, china, cutlery, linens, electric heating, hot water, and fans. Towels were not included. Guests were encourage to bring any necessary electrical appliances “to make your stay more enjoyable.” Every cottage had an outdoor barbecue pit, picnic table and lawn chairs. The one-bedroom cottages rented for $6 per night or $36 for a week and two-bedrooms rented for $9 per night or $54 per week. At the camp’s dock you could rent a boat for $2 per day or $12 a week, but you had to pay $4 extra per day for a 5 horsepower motor to go with it. Life preservers were thrown in free of charge.

Fishing, swimming, boating and hiking were encouraged inthis isolated spot on Kentucky Lake. TheJobs assured their guests: “We will tryto make your stay most enjoyable.”

The information for this blog post was culled from a small collection of items recently acquired by the Manuscripts unit of Library Special Collections. We were excited to learn the camp still exists but is known today as America’s Paradise Resort boasting eleven cottages, five condominiums and a full-scale marina. Modern owners still consider this Paradise. Their website encourages guests to “relax and take in the amazing sunsets for the family and discover why so many refer to our resorts as a ‘little slice of heaven.’” To see the finding aid to our small collection, click here.

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Tagged as Calloway County, Camp Paradise, Kentucky Lake, Recreation, Tourism

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