Kentucky
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Oral History Center at the University of Louisville has long sought to aid in the documentation of the history of Louisville's African American community. This effort was bolstered in the 1970s by funding from the Kentucky Oral History Commission, which supported a number of the interviews included in this first online offering. The African American Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted as part of projects designed to document particular aspects of Louisville's history and/or important local institutions, such as the Red Cross (Community) Hospital and the Louisville Municipal College, as well as projects that sought to document African American life more generally. Most of the interviews were conducted in the late 1970s.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection Bookplates, also known as ex libris , are labels pasted to the inside front cover of a book indicating ownership. Although some bookplates are simply text, others, with their ornate images, ornamentation, and calligraphy, are valued examples of design. Artists often employed engraving techniques such as wood cuts and copper or steel plates to create their prints. The Ainslie Hewett Bookplate Collection features 104 bookplates designed by Louisville native (George) Ainslie Hewett between 1909 and 1951. The bookplates were created for notable Louisville residents, as well as for clients across the United States. Ainslie Hewett was especially drawn to the Gothic style, the influence of which can be found in many of his designs.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the The André Jeunet Collection About the Collection This digital collection consists of 210 images of French soldier André Jeunet (1896-1979), fellow soldiers, and civilians during World War I. Most of the photographs were taken by Jeunet while he was serving in northeastern France (1915-1917) and the Balkans (1917-1918). André Jeunet was born in Bourg-la-Reine, a suburb south of Paris, on September 20, 1896. He was drafted into the French army when he was eighteen years old and served as a Simple Soldat from March 1915 to April 1919.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection Arthur Younger Ford was born in 1861 in Parkville, Missouri and raised in Owensboro, Kentucky. He graduated from Brown University in 1884 and served as the chairman of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees (1914-1921) and first full-time president of the University of Louisville (from 1921 until his death in 1926). Among Ford's accomplishments as president were acquiring Belknap Campus and securing the Louisville City Hospital as a teaching clinic for the Medical Department.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection This collection contains 210 selected digital images and 3 digital videos from an archived community collection devoted to documenting one of the worst floods in Louisville's history. On the morning of August 4, 2009, record-breaking rains fell in central Louisville and surrounding counties between 7 am and 10 am EDT, with reported hourly rainfall rates as high as 8.83 inches. The Louisville Free Public Library's main branch and the University of Louisville's Belknap and Health Sciences campuses were particularly hard hit by the deluge.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection In 1903 James Caufield and Frank W. Shook founded the eponymous photography studio in Louisville, Kentucky. Will Bowers later joined the firm as a partner and chief photographer. Few aspects of life in Louisville escaped the lens of Caufield & Shook, whose company motto was "We photograph ANYTHING, day or night." The collection includes work for Louisville architects, builders, banks and financial houses, wholesale and retail merchants, advertisers, government agencies, public utilities, and private individuals. In 1924 Caufield and Shook became the official photographer of the Kentucky Derby. The firm was sold to Richard N. Duncan and Ned Tanselle in 1960 and went out of business in 1978.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Claude C. Matlack Collection documents the formative years of a mountain settlement school in Oneida, Kentucky, and provides a poignant look at life in the Cumberland Mountains of Clay County between 1903 and 1916. The collection also includes pictures taken in the photographer's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, plus a few scenes from Indiana and Colorado. Claude C. Matlack (1878-1944) was an amateur photographer, working as an engineer for his family's plumbing and lighting business, when he happened to meet a trustee of Oneida Baptist Institute on a train in Eastern Kentucky.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Music Library houses the largest academic collection of music in the State of Kentucky. Founded in 1947, the library’s mission has been to provide materials in support of the curriculum of the School of Music and the research of its faculty. In recent years, coverage has been extended to accommodate the growth of music-related study throughout the University. Total holdings exceed 120,000 volumes, including more than 30,000 books, 51,000 musical scores, and 33,000 sound recordings. Special collections include the Traipsin’ Woman (Jean Thomas) Collection , the Isidore Philipp Archive and Memorial Library , and the Hattie Bishop Speed Collection.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Furnas Family Album (circa 1887 -1910) Collection consists of 365 images, most of which were captured with a 4 x 5 camera. The collection provides a unique, sentimental, and sometimes humorous view into the lives of members and friends of the Furnas family of Louisville, Kentucky, in the early 1900s. In addition to photographs of the family at their home and in rural Marion County, Indiana, it features scenes of Louisville (including local parks, buildings, monuments, and steamboats on the Ohio River) and travels west (to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri and as far as Spokane, Washington). Walton Furnas co-owned Furnas & Maddox Photographic and Stereoscopic Supplies in Louisville, Kentucky.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS Biography Orlando Metcalfe Poe was born on the family farm in Navarre, Ohio on March 7, 1832. He attended several public schools and two years in Canton Academy in Canton, Ohio before ultimately attaining his dream – attending the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Poe excelled particularly in mathematics and graduated sixth in his class of 1856. After graduation, Poe sought to put his engineering skills to work for the military. He moved to Detroit to join the Topographical Engineers. Wartime duties for topographical engineers included surveying positions of the army and its enemy, sketching routes of the enemy and preparing maps of battlefields. In peacetime, they surveyed and charted the nation’s rivers and lakes.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection John P. Morton and Company was a publishing firm based in Louisville, Kentucky for much of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. John Price Morton (1807-1889) started out working as a clerk in a bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1825 William W. Worsley hired him to manage his Main Street shop, the Louisville Book Store. The company published a daily newspaper, The Focus , which merged with the Louisville Journal into the Journal and Focus , a precursor to the Courier-Journal ; the weekly Louisville Medical News ; and Home and School , a monthly journal of popular education. In 1838 Morton and Henry A.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection This digital collection celebrates the work of photographer Kate Seston Matthews (1870-1956). Born in New Albany, Indiana, Matthews spent most of her life in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, where she began taking photographs in the 1880s. Matthews relied almost exclusively on her own community and acquaintances as subjects -- a favor she returned by reproducing and signing her photographs for friends and family.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS by Tom Owen Historic maps attract inquiry on several levels. For some, they are works of art with color coding and linear preciseness. Early maps also reveal the limits of the known that the cartographer faced and the terrible limits on the information gathering techniques that were available to them. Indeed, maps are always a study in "looking through a glass darkly." Historic maps are a delightful testimony to the archetypal human need to know. As we look upon this collection of Kentucky maps we marvel at the intense curiosity about a single place - sometimes the tiniest place - that the map maker chose to record.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Kornhauser Health Sciences Library History Collections house a valuable body of historical manuscripts documenting the evolution of medical training and health care practices in Kentucky during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the history of medical and health sciences schools in Louisville and the surrounding region. It is made up of several collections held by the library. Materials include class photographs and related images associated with the Louisville General Hospital School of Nursing, University of Louisville School of Dentistry, and University of Louisville School of Medicine, as well as early medical school catalogs listing students for each session.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Law Library The Law Library is a major regional resource for legal information, serving the university community, the practicing bar, and the general public. Its primary mission is to support the curriculum and the research needs of the faculty and the students of the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. However, as part of an historic and distinguished law school whose roots reach deeply into Kentucky legal history, the Law Library has over the years accumulated rich collections of materials of national and state legal publications, many of which date back to the foundation of the American republic. In addition, through the efforts of Louisville native Louis D.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Louisville Herald-Post newspaper was created when James Buckner Brown (1872-1940) purchased the Louisville Herald and Louisville Post in January 1925 and merged them into a single newspaper. Brown, a Louisville banker and politician, sought to operate the Herald-Post as an alternative to the Louisville Times and Louisville Courier-Journal, which were both owned by the Bingham family. The Herald-Post went bankrupt in 1936. The newspaper's photo morgue was then donated to the Louisville Free Public Library where it was used extensively as a research collection before being accessioned by the University of Louisville Photographic Archives in 1994.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Howard Steamboat Museum Collection About the Collection The Howard Steamboat Museum in Jeffersonville, Indiana, is dedicated to preserving the history of Howard Shipyards and three generations of the Howard family that owned and operated the largest inland shipbuilding site in America for over 100 years (1834-1942). The museum also fosters appreciation of the development of steamboats and inland river commerce during the same period. The museum’s photograph collection, which is housed in the University of Louisville Photographic Archives, consists primarily of images captured by Captain James E. Howard (1875-1956) between 1888 and 1934.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection This digital collection includes eighteen illuminated manuscript leaves which were acquired by the University of Louisville Libraries in 2006 with funding from the Pzena Foundation. Dating from 1150 through 1867, these leaves represent Western European and Islamic cultures. Lesson plans mapping to Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) Core Content goals for the 7th grade Arts & Humanities curriculum supplement the online presentation.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection This digital collection will assemble images relating to Louisville, Kentucky, and environs from various small collections in the University of Louisville Libraries' special collections and archives. The following collections are currently featured in this digital collection, which will be periodically updated with additional images: A. W. (Albert Wheaton) Terhune Collection , ULPA 1987.70 Insurance agent and amateur photographer Albert Wheaton Terhune was born March 12, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey. The oldest of four children, he lost his mother to tuberculosis in 1877, and, in his late teens, contracted the disease and spent a year in a sanatorium in Colorado Springs.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection Known as The Traipsin' Woman, Jean Thomas (1881-1982) traveled the mountains of eastern Kentucky taking snapshot photographs of the mountain way of life, writing, and promoting mountain folkways. She was particularly interested in the music, crafts, and language patterns of the area. Included in the digital collection are 1,077 photographs of and by Jean Thomas during her travels throughout the eastern Kentucky mountains and the staging of the annual American Folk Song Festival. The images document musical instruments, quilts, baskets, and other crafts, and scenes with community and family groups, and date from Jean's childhood (ca.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Leonard Brecher Tobacco and Chewing Gum Card Collection contains 154 digital images of baseball cards from the early 20th century. Tobacco, candy, and chewing gum companies printed trade cards or advertising cards to include with their products. Cards in this digital collection come from the American Tobacco Company, American Caramel Company, Colgan Gum Company (of Louisville, Kentucky), John H. Dockman & Sons, and the Standard Caramel Company, and primarily date between 1909 and 1911. Received by the University of Louisville Art Library in 1969 as a donation from Leonard Brecher, the collection contains 356 baseball cards and 86 cards with bird images. Of these, 154 of the baseball cards are included in the digital collection.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection Macauley's Theatre opened on October 13, 1873 at 329 W. Walnut (now Muhammad Ali) Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was owned and operated by Bernard (Barney) Macauley, who, along with his wife, Rachel Johnson Macauley, also performed in the theater's resident stock company. His younger brother, "Colonel" John T. Macauley (1846-1915), managed the box offices of theaters in Cincinnati and Indianapolis before settling in Louisville with his wife, Annie Amelia Kirlin Macauley, and their two daughters, Rachel and Mary Margaret. John took over management of the theater in September 1879, and bought it from his brother when Bernard fell into financial difficulties.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Newton Owen Postcard Collection represents nearly a century in the life and travels of an extended Kentucky family. The earliest cards date to the late 19th century, and while the bulk of the collection dates to the period 1900-1940, there are postcards dating to the 1980s as well. It consists of 781 cards, including travel postcards and greeting cards of many different kinds. The Newton Owen Postcard Collection consists of postcards collected by the Bayne, Foell, and Owen families. The Bayne family, consisting of Samuel and Fannie Bayne and their children, Josephine (born 1899), Samuel Junior (born 1901), and Sarah (born 1903).
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Romano L. Mazzoli Oral History Collection documents the life and political career of Congressman Romano (Ron) Mazzoli, an Italian-American native of Louisville, Kentucky who represented Kentucky's Third Congressional District for 24 years (1971-1995). The 66 hours of interviews complement and move beyond the congressman's papers (also housed at the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center), including documentation of the workings of his local and Washington offices, interactions with constituents and colleagues, and his role on the national stage, as well as reminiscences by family, friends, and Mazzoli himself.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection The Royal Photo Company Collection contains 14,817 photographic negatives from the Royal Photo Company taken between 1937 and 1973 in and around Louisville, Kentucky. Most of the negatives are 8 x 10-inch safety negatives. Also included are approximately 180 photographic prints given to Aaron Chase by the Royal Photo Company. These prints are "before" and "after" images from the 1960s of buildings undergoing exterior renovations by the Louisville Perma Stone Company. Louis Bramson established the Royal Photo View Company in Louisville in 1904, but many of the glass negatives were apparently sold when the company moved to a new second-floor location on West Jefferson Street in 1937.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About Stereographs A stereograph, also known as a stereogram or stereo view, is a double photograph that appears three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope. Scientist Charles Wheatstone invented a reflecting stereoscope in 1838 as a laboratory instrument. Some photographers did use this instrument to exhibit photographs, but it was not until the development of the lenticular stereoscope in 1850 by Sir William Brewster that stereographs became popular. They reached their height of popularity between 1870 and 1890 but continued to be created until as late as 1940. The term "stereograph" is said to have originated with Oliver Wendell Holmes who, in addition to being an author, poet, physician, and lecturer, invented a hand stereoscope in 1859.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection Since 2002 the University Libraries have been building a collection of color digital copies of theses and dissertations authored here at the University of Louisville. This effort is in keeping with an international trend of institutions migrating to electronic theses and dissertations (known as ETDs) in order to provide free worldwide access to these titles and to enable graduate students to include digital media in their works. Both the University of Louisville's Graduate School and J.B. Speed School of Engineering incorporated the utilization of digital technologies into their thesis and dissertation guidelines. In July 2006 the Speed School's guidelines were amended so that only an electronic copy will be submitted to the Ekstrom Library.
This collection contains images relating to the University of Louisville and its history. It includes the "building book," an online encyclopedia of current and historical campus structures as well as images of faculty, administrators and students and campus activities and events.
The UofL Images collection includes photographs taken by a variety of staff photographers and student photojournalists. Two photographers are particularly well represented in this collection: Norris Mode and Steve Gruebbel.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS About the Collection University of Louisville students produced their first yearbook, The Colonel , in 1909. The Colonel apparently ceased publication after the 1912 edition, leaving a gap in the documentation of student life until 1922, when its successor, The Kentucky Cardinal , began monthly publication during the school year, with the June edition serving as a de facto yearbook. By 1924, the school year-end annual edition of The Kentucky Cardinal had been renamed The Thoroughbred , a title which lasted until 1972, despite a somewhat sporadic publishing record (no issues were produced in 1932, 1934-1938, 1943, 1945-1946, and 1970-1971).
The Digital Library of Appalachia provides online access to archival and historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region. The contents of the DLA are drawn from special collections of Appalachian College Association member libraries.
