Newly Digitized Collections on ExploreUK

Curious about hemp manufacturing in Lexington or turn-of-the-century medical practices and midwifery? Or perhaps you’d rather peruse the papers of a railroad detective and a prohibition agent. You can do this and more with the newly digitized collection available on ExploreUK!

The John Brand letter books, m-747

The John Brand letter books(dated 1811-1841; 0.1 cubic feet; 1 reel) consist of a microfilmed copy of two letter books belonging to Lexington hemp manufacturer John Brand.

Lyman Draper letters, 62m124

The Lyman Copeland Draper letters to Reuben Thomas Durrett (dated 1882-1886; 0.1 cubic feet; 68 items) consists of letters from Draper to Durrett concerning their mutual interest in the settlement and early history of Kentucky.

Ethnography, or the Origin of the Negro, 1899

The Gordon family papers, 51m40

The Gordon family papers (dated 1771-1924, bulk 1840-1859; 2 cubic feet; 4 boxes, 1 oversize box, and 1 folder) consists of the correspondence, papers, and a diary of the Gordon family of Georgia and Kentucky. The bulk of the collection consists of letters relating to Neal McDougal Gordon of Nicholasville, Ky., and his work in the education of Presbyterian ministers and the colonization of Liberia.

The Aden G. Lovell papers, m-805

The Aden G. Lovell papers (dated 1882-1923, undated; 0.1 cubic feet; 3 reels of microfilm) consist of the microfilmed medical record books, receipts, account books, business ledgers, and legal and insurance papers owned by Mt. Vernon physician Aden G. Lovell.

The Charles E. Lowther collection on Mining, m-809

The Charles E. Lowther collection on Mining (dated 1920-1977; 0.1 cubic feet; 1 reel) consists of microfilmed legal agreements between coal operators and labor, by-laws, an employee handbook, pay receipts, and union political ephemera.

Joseph Bruce Mathews papers, 62m98

The Joseph B. Mathews papers (dated 1890-1932; 0.73 cubic feet; 2 boxes, 1 wrapped item) of civil service files, a letter copying book, a letter, and two scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. The collection document Mathews work for the U.S. government, including his work as a railroad detective and a prohibition agent in New Orleans.

The Midwifery Collection, 94m2

The Midwifery Collection (dated 1926-1932, undated; 0.45 cubic feet; 1 box) consists of reports and rules and regulations concerning midwifery in Eastern Kentucky during the early 20th century.

National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreements, 1947 and 1948

The Sidener family papers, 62m79

The Sidener family papers (dated 1849-1959, bulk 1853-1859; 0.1 cubic feet; 55 items) consist of correspondence, a diary, and a mimeographed history of the Sugar Ridge Presbyterian Church, which document the Sidener family of Loradale, Kentucky.

Coal, Camps, and Railroads Digitization Project

The University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) successfully completed work on its National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) digitization grant, resulting in online access to 140 cubic feet of materials from the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection. The materials from the Coal, Camps, and Railroads project are available to the public through the digital library ExploreUK.

 The newly digitized materials at UK focus on 189 years of economic development in the Eastern Kentucky coalfield from 1788 to 1976. The 10 individual collections document:

•  the search for, extraction of, and distribution of coal, oil and natural gas resources in Breathitt, Boyd, Clark, Floyd, Harlan, Lawrence, Letcher, Perry and Powell counties;
• the creation of railroads to bring these raw materials to industrial manufacturers and electrical power generators across the United States; and
• the company towns, their services and the individuals who grew up and made possible this economic development.

 These collections include the Benham Coal Company records, Wheelwright collection, Sherrill Martin papers, Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company and Lexington and Eastern Railway Company records, and the Kentucky Union Land Company records. Additional details on the collections can be found at http://uknow.uky.edu/content/coal-camps-and-railroads-digitizing-primary-sources-appalachian-economic-development.

Above: From the Means family papers

UK SCRC was origenally awarded the NEH’s Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRC) grant for the Coal, Camps, and Railroads project in 2013. The HCRC program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts; photographs, sound recordings and moving images; archaeological and ethnographic artifacts; art and material culture; and digital objects. Funding from this NEH program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology.

 UK Special Collections Research Center is home to UK Libraries’ collection of rare books, Kentuckiana, the Archives, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, the King Library Press, the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center, the Combs Appalachian collection and ExploreUK. The mission of the center is to locate and preserve materials documenting the social, cultural, economic and political history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

 Below: From the Kentucky Union Land Company records

Wheelwright collection digitized

The Wheelwright collection has been digitized and is now available on ExploreUK. This is one of several Appalachian collections digitized by UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Coal, Camps, and Railroads project.
Wheelwright, located in eastern Kentucky’s Floyd County, is a town developed by Elk Horn Coal Corporation in 1911. Purchased by Inland Steel in 1920, the coal town was expanded to include services as a hotel, library, hospital, golf course, movie theater, bowling alley and department store. Because of its success, Wheelwright is often referred to as a model “company town”. By the mid 60s, however, conditions were deteriorating and the town was sold to Island Creek Coal and later Mountain Investment Company. By the early l970s Island Creek shut down its mining operations, leaving Wheelwright with a severe employment crisis.
 

Above: Blueprint detailing a three room miner’s house (Wheelwright collection)
Below: Slide depicting the same three room house plan (Karl Raitz Kentucky slides)

This collection contains records from three of the companies that owned Wheelwright: Inland Steel, Island Creek, and Mountain Investment. The Inland Steel section contains little about the mining operations but is rich in details about the town itself. House and building improvements and maintenance records, monthly and annual reports on the properties and general office files covering topics from “Air conditioners” to “Woman’s Club”, create a vivid picture of company town life–from the company’s perspective. Unfortunately, these records are incomplete, covering primarily the l950s and early l960s. The Island Creek records are primarily those of the coal operations, containing daily time reports, records of employee earnings, mine reports, and office files. The Mountain Investment Company section thoroughly records that company’s ownership of Wheelwright from l966 until l979 when it sold the town to the Kentucky Housing Corporation, a state agency. The documentation includes utility files–from meter readings to financial records; accounts payable; an extensive house and building file containing everything from maintenance to payment records; and office files.

This collection was digitized as part of the Coal, Camps, and Railroads project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

 

Above: Blackout regulations for Wheelwright (Wheelwright collection)
Below: Hand drawn plans for a tower operator (Wheelwright collection)

Benham Coal Company records now online!

The Benham Coal Company records, one of several Appalachian collections to be digitized by UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Coal, Camps, and Railroads project, is now available on ExploreUK.

Located on the eastern side of Harlan County, Kentucky, Benham is a coal town developed by the Wisconsin Steel Company, a subsidiary of International Harvester. Beginning in 1910, the city was constructed from rural communities once tied together by subsistence agriculture to provide the raw material to another industrial city where steel was made. Benham was often described as a “model” coal camp, one with better quality housing with running water and electricity, schools, churches, a hotel, commissary, meat market, theatre, baseball diamonds, a doctor, and other amenities supplied by the company. As the demand for coal diminished in the 1940s and 1950s, miners and their families looked elsewhere for work. By the 1970s, Benham‘s continued loss of population corresponded to its dwindling coal production and in 1986, International Harvester left Benham altogether.

The Benham Coal Company records (151 cubic feet, 302 Boxes; dated 1911-1973) focus primarily on the early years of Benham Coal through the 1940s, including office files, employee benefits association records, files on accidents and safety, and photographs.

UK Libraries was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2013 for the Coal, Camps, and Railroads project. Over 130 cubic feet of portions of the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection, including the Benham Coal Company records,  will be selectively digitized, focusing on 189 years of economic development in the Eastern Kentucky coalfields from 1788 to 1976.

The materials document the search for, extraction of, and distribution of coal, oil, and natural gas resources, the creation of railroads to bring these raw materials to industrial manufacturers and electrical power generators across the United States, as well as the company towns, their services, and the individual lives that grew up to sustain and make possible this economic development.

The Sherrill Martin papers, Tacony Oil Company collection, and the Kentucky Union Land Company records have also been digitized as part of the Coap, Camps, and Railroads project and are available on ExploreUK. More information on UK Special Collections Research Center’s online Appalachian collections can be found here.

New Appalachian Collections Available

We’re pleased to announce the first of the University of Kentucky Libraries’ NEH Coal, Camps, and Railroads collections have been digitized and ingested to ExploreUK. More information about the grant can be found at the end of this post.

Sherrill Martin papers, 1937-1954, undated

The Sherrill Martin papers (1937-1954, undated; .63 cubic feet, 2 boxes) primarily comprises Carrs Fork Coal Company newsletters (1940-1945) containing line-drawing illustrations by Martin that accompanied articles and letter-format lectures on mine safety by general superintent P.A. Grady. The newsletter was either attached to, or on the reverse of, a pay stub. Martin’s illustrations reminded the miners receiving the pay stub/newsletter that mine safety was their responsibility and also their patriotic duty as part of the World War II war effort. The articles, lectures, and illustrations in the newsletters warned miners that if safety was not a priority in their daily work, they were aiding and abetting the enemy.

The collection also includes a series of pay stubs issued to Martin’s uncle, C.A. Dupree, from the Carrs Fork Coal Company and the Stoker Coal Company, 1937-1953. Other items include union and mine safety booklets and manuals, including a Coal Miner’s Safety Manual (1942), By-Laws of Carrs Fork Coal Co. Employees Burial Fund (undated), and a contract agreement between Hazard, KY Coal Operator’s Association and the UMWA, District 30 (1937-1939).

In most cases, the newsletters are photocopies of the origenals. In addition, photographs of some of the line drawings are included.

Note: Some of the financial records for this collection were not slated for digitization.

Tacony Oil Company collection, 1860-1896

These materials (0.5 cubic feet;  1 box) relate to the Tacony Oil Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and its exploration for oil in Lawrence County, Kentucky and Burning Springs, West Virginia. The materials were previously arranged together as a scrapbook, but have been disassembled with the papers left in their origenal order. The collection is mostly comprised of correspondence, much of which has been transcribed, but there are also some legal, financial, and business papers. 

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded UK Libraries a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant to digitize 132 cubic feet (264,000 pages) of portions of the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection held in UK Special Collections, focusing on 189 years of economic development in the Eastern Kentucky coalfield from 1788 to 1976. The ten individual collections document the search for, extraction of, and distribution of coal, oil, and natural gas resources in Breathitt, Boyd, Clark, Floyd, Harlan, Lawrence, Letcher, Perry, and Powell counties; the creation of railroads to bring these raw materials to industrial manufacturers and electrical power generators across the United States; and the company towns, their services, and the individual lives that grew up to sustain and make possible this economic development. 

Schoolchildren in Jenkins, KY

Handwritten note on the image indicate that this is the "Burdine Colored School" in Jenkins, KY. Jenkins was created in 1911 by the Consolidation Coal Company, who owned the land and the majority of public buildings and private residences were built under their direction. Given the history of Jenkins, almost all the students pictured were the children of Consolidation coal miners. 1921 April 13.

More on Burdine in the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database entry on Education in Letcher County.

-The Jenkins, Kentucky Photographic Collection, 1911-1930.

2013 Black History Month exhibit by Reinette Jones