History Burgoo

Exploring the KJHS Archives (conclusion)

While exploring the KJHS archives I have come across every sort of document, photograph, and artifact but there is one last untapped resource I had yet to explore: oral history.

During the last few weeks of my internship, I had the pleasure of interviewing a past KJHS member, Sarah “Suzie” (Orrahood) Hall who, in 1971, was the second female president of KYHA (Kentucky Young Historians Association - it wasn’t known as the Kentucky Junior Historical Society until 1976). Sarah was very active during high school in her Owensboro KYHA chapter, organizing projects to clean up local cemeteries and entering projects into the essay contest at the state convention.

Campaigning for state office was always one of Sarah’s favorite activities in KYHA. She campaigned very hard in high school to be elected state historian, then state secretary, until finally she became state president in 1971 in the twelfth grade.  Sarah’s campaign slogan was “A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.” Becoming president was one of Sarah’s fondest memories, and one of her greatest achievements.

After leaving KYHA, Sarah continued to be active in the organization by mentoring women that also wanted to become state president. Sarah continued her interest in the past by majoring in history at Western Kentucky University and eventually practicing law. Sarah said that she became a lawyer because the campaigning in KYHA inspired her to pursue that profession. In the 90’s Sarah would return to the Kentucky Historical Society to provide legal council.

I asked Sarah why she thought it is important for today’s students to participate in KJHS. Her answer helped to put me to put history into a better perspective. “History is cyclical,” and “only with an understanding of global events in history can children understand what is going on in the nation.” Sarah is a substitute history teacher in Lexington and she is worried that current students might not be able to connect the past events of history with the present.

Sarah is currently organizing a walking tour of an African-American cemetery in Lexington and an outreach program for young African-American school children to visit historic sites. Programs such as this give children a chance to view history in their community.

Interviews help to prove that history isn’t simply just an event—it’s an ongoing process involving the entire community. While interviewing Sarah I remembered a book I read in graduate school called Presence of the Past by Roy Rosenweig. In the book, Rosenweig explains that there are two types of history; History (national and global events that effect us all, that are recorded) and history (events that shape all of our lives, though on a much more local or mundane aspect of life, that aren’t necessarily recorded). For me the connection came when I realized that everything we do is history. The events, documents and organizations that we create as a society may not make the history books, but they are just as important because they shape the lives of future generations of people in our community. Organizations such as KJHS and the Kentucky Historical Society, though created years ago, still continue to influence members of the community through their actions.  

In the case with Sarah Hall, her passion for history still influences the community today. It is this passion that will continue to serve the community, and also inspire other children to pursue their interest in history.

--Derrick Ranostaj

 

Images:

1.) KYHS chapter outside building in Hodgenville, ca. 1963.

2.) 1974 Harrodsburg High School Yearbook of KYHS chapter.

Oral History Based Radio Series on Displaced LBL Region

KHS Collection. 1987ph08.77. J.B. Bruce homestead, Eddyville, Ky. Described as: "This old log house is one of the few dwellings entirely within the 55, 000 acre forest preserve of Hillman Land in the 'In Between the Rivers' section of Lyon County." circa 1920. 

I recently heard from author, journalist and oral historian, Constance Alexander (also a member of the Kentucky Oral History Commission, might I add) about the rebroadcast of a radio program based on a western Kentucky oral history series from the late 1990s.

If you are interested to see

a) how oral history can be turned into a meaningful and interesting media broadcast,

b) unique culture and history from the Land Between the Lakes Region of the state or

c) a good way to spend a few hours over the upcoming work week,

then this is something you are going to want to check out.

The original series Connecting People & Place, aired on Murray’s public radio station WKMS-FM, is a documentary radio project celebrating the rich cultural heritage of Between the Rivers in west Kentucky and Tennessee.

Each hour of the rebroadcast combines two of the half-hour segments originally developed by Alexander in 1997-98 as a cooperative project between WKMS and Land Between The Lakes Association with funding from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Oral History Commission. As a part of this oral history project, Alexander conducted more than 60 interviews focusing on the displacement of people who formerly lived in the Between the Rivers region. Between the Rivers is an area of land comprised of roughly 170,000 acres located in parts of Lyon and Trigg Counties of western KY and Stewart County of TN. In 1963, President Kennedy created Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area, eventually displacing hundreds of families living in the Between the regions area. The interviews cover family, community, historical personal narratives along with regional folklore of a place that only exist in the shared memory of a dislocated physical community.

I recommend listening to some of the radio pieces and seeing if the stories being broadcast ring familiar with your own family and community history? If so, maybe it is time to document your own stories – oral history is an easy way to get that started. (Find out how)

The re-broadcast kicks off a celebration of our region’s history in conjunction with Journey Stories, a traveling exhibition form the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street program. With support from the Kentucky Humanities Council, Journey Stories will be on view at Murray State University’s Wrather Museum from January 28 to March 10, 2012. WKMS is seeking personal journey stories from its listeners to broadcast while the exhibition is on view. (CONSIDER PARTICIPTING!) Contact msu.wkms@murraystate.edu by the end of October to participate and receive a keepsake recording as well.

Does anyone have their own memory of this region of the state? Feel free to share comments.

 

--sarah milligan

 

 

On the Byway Again

 

 
 
Crazy is a word I woke up to this morning at 5:00 A.M. Crazy as in “I must be crazy to do this” or to quote Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, “this just might be crazy enough to work.”  Anyway, my “crazy” challenge is to do one of my infamous road trips where I extend a conference trip into a family vacation.  Such as driving to New York City for a National Association for State Arts Agency (the other NASAA) and finishing the trip with a family drive through upstate New York and Niagara Falls. My family has taken these kind of trips with me so often that my kids think it is the only way to do a vacation.  They work for me.  There is the fun of exploring and the exquisite joy you feel of finally delivering your paper at a conference, allowing you to be mentally free to enjoy the rest of your trip. 

My self-imposed challenge this summer is to deliver a paper at the National Scenic Byways Conference in Minnesota by first driving there with my wife on National Scenic Byways and at the same time blogging about it.  It doesn’t sound too hard; I have my presentation about our driving tour More the Music: A Heritage Driving Tour of Kentucky’s Route 23 all ready (two copies of the power point stowed away in my luggage), and I have my routes pretty well mapped out to include a part of Indiana’s “Historic Pathways” out of Louisville on Highway 150 through Paoli and French Lick to finish at the George Rogers’ Clark National Historic Park in Vincennes.  From here we will cross Illinois to pick up a portion of the Great River Road along the Mississippi River from somewhere around historic Nauvoo, snaking all the way north to my final destination in Minneapolis. I am just not too sure about the writing part of the project.  I have told myself if it works I will do it and if it doesn’t I will just quit and enjoy the scenery of these National Scenic Highways. 

I have been recently inspired to write about a trip like this by reading Blue Highways: A Journey Into America by William Least Heat Moon.  In the book, the author drives an old van across the United States, going from Columbia, Missouri through Kentucky, he visits Shelbyville and Frankfort, before he continues out to South Carolina, takes a left and basically circles the whole county.  He travels only on Blue Highways, a name he coined for back roads (older maps showed main routes as red and back roads as blue). He had great adventures on his trip often springing from his interest in a strange sounding town or his efforts to live in the moment. 

In my mind National Scenic Byways are some of our best blue highways.  Their website describes it as  “a grass-roots collaborative effort established to help recognize, preserve and enhance selected roads throughout the United States.” Besides the ones that are deemed National, each state also designates other scenic byways. In Kentucky we have six National Scenic Byways and 16 state designated byways.  The National Byways include a 60-mile portion of the Great River Road, the Red River Gorge Scenic Highway, the Woodlands Trace Byway in Land between the Lakes, the Lincoln Heritage Scenic Highway, the Wilderness Road Heritage Highway, and my favorite, the Country Music Highway. 

Although I have traveled them all, The County Music Highway is my favorite because we at the Kentucky Folklife Program spent so much time and energy working with the local communities a few years back to document the traditional cultures found there and to produce our driving tour: More than Music: A Heritage Driving Tour of Kentucky’s Route 23.  This book and four cd collection, written by Judy Sizemore and narrated by Ricky Skaggs, guides you along the route with stories and oral histories based on fieldwork by young folklorists out of the graduate program at WKU. The tour is sold at venues along Highway 23 and is available through our office. 

It is also the subject of my talk at the National Scenic Byways next week.  I am hoping this trip will help me enjoy other roads as much as I have the Country Music Highway. I hope that I can share some of what I find with you as I try to blog this crazy trip.

-Bob Gates

Learning "Thorough Research" from Elizabeth Shown Mills

Last Saturday I got to represent KHS at the annual seminar of the Kentucky Genealogical Society.  I was extremely excited because the speaker this year was Elizabeth Shown Mills, who is known as a leader in the field of genealogy.

If I could use only two words to sum up Ms. Mills’ presentation, those words would be “thorough research.”  So often people think of genealogy as a family chart, listing birth, marriage, and death dates, and linking one generation to the next.  Ms. Mills was quick to point out that “genealogy is not the gathering of names – it is the study of people, people who led lives beyond their birth, marriage and death.”  Since our ancestors lives consisted of more than just birth, marriage, and death, we need to look at other records, maybe records we don’t often think of as being “genealogical records,” in order to piece together the events of their lives.

Also, just as you and I live in connection with other people (friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family), so did our ancestors.  Mills suggests familiarizing yourself with neighbors (looking at 15-20 households listed before and after your ancestors in the census), family members (who may also be neighbors), and fellow church-members.  She calls these relationships a person’s “FAN club” (Friends, Acquaintances, Neighbors).

Going back to the “thorough research” idea, one of the things Ms. Mills emphasized is the use of original records.  Several of the cases studies she used in her presentation started with people only looking at abstracts and indexes and never going to the original record.  Okay, we all know that handwriting is a pain to read, especially when it’s on microfilm, but there is no way to be certain that you have all the possible information unless you have seen the record yourself.  Even if the record contains information that you may consider “extraneous,” make note of that information because you never know when it may become useful.  Perhaps that extraneous information will connect to the next record you find!

I’ll admit, as I listened to Ms. Mills, I couldn’t help thinking, “This sounds exhausting!!”  (Maybe that’s where the phrase “exhaustive research” comes from.)  However, her case studies proved again and again that if you research thoroughly, if you go to the original records and pull out every bit of information you can find, the answers can be found.  They may not be in black and white on a single record the way we would like, but you can make inferences and connections and discover ways through and around the “brick walls” in your genealogy.

Thanks to the Kentucky Genealogical Society for bringing Ms. Mills to Frankfort and putting on a great seminar!

-Jennifer Howard

PS...If you attended the seminar, please use the comments section below to add your thoughts on Ms. Mills’ presentation and what you found most useful.

 

Images:

1) Elizabeth Shown Mills

2) Portion of the will of J. Nelson of Madison County, Kentucky. Full document and transcript available on the KHS Digital Collections.

 

Exploring the KJHS Archives, pt. 4



In April 2012, the Kentucky Junior Historical Society (KJHS) will convene its 50^th Annual Convention at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History. While we are celebrating KJHS’s 50^th anniversary on this occasion, the quest to create a program that would connect Kentucky’s youth with their history began a little more than 50 years ago when the Kentucky Historical Society (KHS) published a magazine in 1957 called The Junior Historian. Simultaneously, the governor of Kentucky, A.B. “Happy” Chandler, wrote letters to history and English teachers in order to promote interest in forming Junior Historical Society chapters at their schools. Governor Bert T. Combs continued Chandler’s work by helping to pass legislation that created the Kentucky Young Historians Association (KYHA).

In 1961, the first issue of Kentucky Heritage was published. This magazine published the work of KYHA members featuring the projects they created in their chapters. During the early years, KYHA had 720 members and 28 clubs in the state of Kentucky.

The first state convention occurred in 1963, and was held at Franklin County High school in Frankfort. A bit of trivia about KYHA during this time:

·         Membership was open to any student in primary or secondary school in Kentucky.

·         Dues were $0.50 for club members and $1.00 for individual members.

·         The first president was Bill Zarrett, from Bryan Station High School in Lexington.

During this early period, one of the most important achievements was creating the organization’s first constitution. Officers were to be elected at each convention. At this time the state officers included: President, First Vice-President, Second Vice-President, Secretary and Historian.

This constitution did not allow Junior High and Elementary district representatives as state officers. The next constitution was later amended to solve this issue. Not everyone could vote: only members in the first 11 grades of school could vote.  

Kentucky Young Historians would meet yearly at State conventions. These conventions were to be held annually at a place approved by the Executive Committees of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Young Historians Association. In 1962, a new competition was announced for KYHA members to enter: the essay contest. Ribbons were given out for the winners. Starting in 1964, KYHA members were admitted to state historical sites and museums. By 1966, KYHA membership had grown to 5,016 students and 110 clubs.

 
During the 1970’s, the organization continued to grow. In 1976, during the nation’s bicentennial, the Kentucky Young Historical Association changed its name to the Kentucky Junior Historical. KJHS began to sponsor summer programs for its members in the mid 1970’s. One of these programs was  weekend camps at the Wickliffe Mounds, where students learned how to dig for artifacts at an actual archeological site.

The 70’s also saw KJHS form relationships with other state junior historical societies such as the Indiana Junior Historical Society and the Tar Heel Junior Historical Association from North Carolina. The IJHS and the KJHS met frequently during the 1970’s to exchange ideas and form friendships.

During the 1980’s, the state convention flourished with many new events available to students. These included: art, photography, research, scrapbook, video, exhibits, crafts, speeches, performances, and the ever popular History Bowl. By 1987, KJHS consisted of 3,700 students and 175 clubs. 1987 also saw KJHS celebrate its 25^th anniversary and Frankfort was chosen as the site for the state convention.

In the 1990’s, KJHS had several exciting new opportunities. Kentucky celebrated its bicentennial in 1992, and KJHS members participated with local programs and activities. In 1997 KJHS members were introduced to the National History Day program to increase opportunities for competition beyond the state level. At this time KJHS and National History Day were both separate entities. During the 2009-2010 school years KHD and KJHS were combined in order to adhere to National History Day project standards.

KJHS has grown since its creation nearly 50 years ago. While many of the functions of KJHS have changed over the years, its main role hasn’t changed: to provide new ways to help connect K-12 students to Kentucky’s rich history. What’s past is prologue for KJHS. The next 50 years will continue to be very productive and rewarding for KJHS members.

Would you like to help sponsor a KJHS chapter or join? Please contact Tim Talbott at 502-564-1792 ext. 4428, or Tim.Talbott@ky.gov.

-Derrick Ranostaj

Images:

Image 1: Kentucky Young Historians Association chapter certificate.

Image2: Campaign card for the office of second vice president of 1965 KYHA convention.

Image 3: Picture of KJHS chapter, unknown location, ca. 1990.

Image 4: KJHS members at the Wickliffe mounds ca. 1970.