Remembering Mother

The long-standing tradition of Mother's Day goes longer back than perhaps many of us realize - riding a somewhat difficult road before it was established as a national holiday in the US (among other countries) by President Woodrow Wilson, in 1914.

Back in the Civil War, and during Reconstruction, Julia Ward Howe led an anti-war movement focusing on honoring mothers, even composing a "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1872. However, the contemporary holiday is founded in a movement by West Virginia's Anna Jarvis, who continued her mother's efforts.

The first successful efforts came in 1908, through national promotion. After 4 years of success, Jarvis declared a stable "date" of the "second Sunday in May" for Mother's Day (Note: the punctuation is VERY important - possessive of the singular!). She initially intended the holiday to be commercial. But, ultimately, resented its overcommercialization - even being thrown in jail, 1948, for protesting the very day she founded!

White flowers are worn, or given, to honor mothers. Most notably carnations.
Apparently, according to these articles from the Bourbon News & Mountain Advocate, it doesn't REALLY matter; the flowers can be snowdrops, as long as they are white. (Personally, I remember giving my mother marigolds potted in detergent covers, when I was in elementary school. But what do I know?)

Of course, it didn't take long to call out for a day honoring the family patriarch!

(Sidebar: A movement had already begun in Washington at the time of this publication - Hartford Herald, 22 May 1912. However, Father's Day also saw trials & tribulations - including failed presidential recommendations & suggested "dates," before President Nixon proclaimed it a national holiday in 1972.)

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

It goes without saying that Santa Claus, AKA Old St. Nick is a Christmas icon. But what does he look like? Does anybody REALLY know? Everybody has their personalized image embedded from childhood, whether from a storybook, TV shows, Christmas cards, songs, and so on; and it varies from culture to culture, and region to region. There even seem to be some general characteristics that bridge this iconic imagery. But has it changed over the past century? We'll let you judge by presenting St. Nicholas, depicted in Kentucky newspapers from 100 years ago. Which one, if any, is your Santa Claus?

Commercial Branding - Then & Now

In previous blogs, I've integrated ads from enduring brands you may recognize, including Kodak, Coca-Cola, Arbuckle's coffee, and I.W. Harper Bourbon. These companies all had foundations tracing back to the 19th century, yet still exist in some form. Today's blog is going to focus on a few familiar brands that have lasted through the years, how they got their start, and their ever-evolving story in contemporary America.

Food offers probably the most recognizable brands in our lives, whether we realize it or not. It may simply be a jingle stuck in our head or a canister sitting on our shelves, we know it when we see (or hear) it! It's often incredible to think how long these simple staples in our lives have been around. Taking a walk down the cereal aisle can easily be a walk through history! Grape-Nuts, for example, came out of the home of breakfast cereals: Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1897. C.W. Post (ironically, a patient of Dr. Kellogg's, but a later competitor) was inspired to develop his first breakfast cereal after visiting Dr. Kellogg. Though not as popular as it used to be, and it has traded hands through the years, it still retains it's advertising campaign as a health food, full of nutrients, as per this 1906 ad.


Of course, back then (in the alleged "good ol' days"), not everything was pre-made & pre-packaged. These conveniences were still in their infancy! People still baked, cooked, and grew their own food (or at least some people did). Fortunately, this tradition has not died out. Hence, neither has some items that facilitate these activities. The 1907 Royal Baking Powder ad above features not only what made them famous (not the lighthouse! Their formula, silly!), but also recognition of the recent Pure Food & Drug Law that regulated manufactured food & medicine in the US. Though competition was great for this company, which traced back to 1873 (a little further if you count the pre-investor years), Royal Baking Powder survived because they followed a unique formula in a European tradition - one that excluded aluminum (purportedly linked to diseases, such as Alzheimer's). Today, Kraft Foods owns the product & the brand.

Self-sufficiency was perhaps more prominent at the turn of the century than today, but it nevertheless endures, at least to some extent. Whether a professional farmer or a hobbyist gardner, the seeds come from somewhere; and "somewhere" may include the store or a mail order catalog. Perhaps one of the better-known mail-order seed companies was founded originally as W. Atlee Burpee & Co. in 1878 Philadelphia, PA, as it is called in this 1908 ad. Later, it changed to the contemporary name of "Burpee's" (there are also ads under this name in the KY-NDNP database). The company experienced many other changes after David Burpee, founder W. Atlee's son, took over after his father's death in 1915. He focused more on flowers. Over the years, the company changed hands many times, but the family still generally stayed involved - until 1993. Jonathan Burpee, W. Atlee's grandson, was the last family member to work for the company, as he was fired by owner George Ball. Nevertheless, the recognizable name remains!


Along the "do-it-yourself" trend, sewing has always been a basic skill. Although, in some places & cases today, it seems restricted to Home Economics class, whereas it was nearly essential to some social classes (though mainly marketed to women) in the Victorian era. However, somebody had to invent those convenient & lightweight patterns. Occasionally, they might be made from (or come on) seed or potato sacks, but these were heavy duty, and only available for one general size. According to legend, one night in 1863, after creating a pattern and sewing an outfit for her son, Ellen Butterick went to her husband, Massachusetts tailor Ebenezer Butterick, and commented on how much easier it would be if she had multiple sizes for a pattern. Inspired, he revolutionized clothes-making for housewives everywhere with graded sizes in a single pattern! Even moreso, he realized stiff cardboard made for difficult shipping. Hence, the familiar tissue paper patterns were born! Butterick patterns specialized in mens & boys clothing, expanding to womens in 1866. The name and method became synonomous with clothing patterns then, as per this 1903 ad, & still is today!


As you probably noticed, Butterick's ad also advertises a "Home and Fashion Magazine." This was one method of advertising patterns, as well as providing them. In fact, McCall's Magazine - considered of the "7 sisters" (the main women's magazines of the time) - began as a vehicle strictly for patterns in 1873 under the name The Queen, and continued, under various names, for many years filling about 20% of its pages with patterns. You can see one of its alternate names, and its "claim to fame" in the 1909 ad above. Scottish immigrant James McCall began the brand in 1870, the magazine in 1873, and left it to his widow upon his 1884 death. The editor she hired brought in articles on housekeeping. It wasn't until a later editor came on board in 1893, that the magazine expanded topics even further, and took on the name McCall's (though initially a lengthier title, it was ultimately abbreviated to the familiar "brand" sometime after 1897). Though it changed many editorial & ownerhsip hands, in 2000, celebrity & talk show host Rosie O'Donnell bought the magazine. She changed the title to Rosie, only to end the publication of this long-running publication in 2005.

Okay, so, technically, I ended with a brand that no longer exists. Seriously, though, tell me any of you have NOT heard of McCall's? Okay then... This is, by the way, no means an exhaustive or comprehensive list. I have a few other examples of enduring brands that I've run across in our database, but, for the sake of length, maybe there'll be a Part II!

What brands do you know of that have a foundation "way back when, in the good ol' days?" Wanna know what the ads looked like? How the brands have changed? How they started? Let me know! Help me build a Part II of "Commerical Branding - Then & Now!"

Happy Birthday, Henry Hardin Cherry!

Without Henry Hardin Cherry, Kentucky would quite possibly be without one of its quickest growing, most well-known universities today - Western Kentucky University, in Bowling Green. WKU has fostered a number of talents, from 1950s musical group the Hilltoppers to filmmaker John Carpenter; sports mascot Big Red to contemporary rap group Nappy Roots. Of course, there is a long tradition of education, as well, beginning more than 25 years before Cherry took his role as president in 1906, but he arguably began the process of establishing and molding WKU into the college we know today.

Henry Hardin Cherry was born to Warren County farmers, on November 16, 1864. He actually received little to no formal education until entering Bowling Green's Southern Normal School (what WKU was essentially known as then, established in 1875) in January 1886. Six years later, he and his brother, Thomas Crittenden Cherry bought the school, while he was faculty there, in an attempt to save it. By 1899, enrollment exploded, thanks to Henry, and he bought out his brother's share, developing it into the Southern Normal School and Bowling Green Business University.

The REAL turning point came seven years down the road, in 1906. Cherry played an integral role in state legislation to establish normal (teaching) schools in Eastern and Western parts of the state. Along with others, success came with two schools - one in Richmond and one in Bowling Green. This was noted throughout the state, as was his naming as president of Bowling Green's school in June of that year. The specifics of the site bids are laid out in these clippings from page 4 of the May 10, 1906 Hopkinsville Kentuckian:



There were apparently a few issues with providing deeds for the proposed land in Bowling Green. Nevertheless, Cherry fought for the school. Classes began in the private school in January 1907, and the name - "Southern Normal School" - changed to Western Kentucky State Normal School (Hartford Herald, 1 August 1906, p. 1). By 1911, it moved to its current location (on top of a hill, overlooking Bowling Green; hence the school sports team - "Hilltoppers"), bought from another college in 1909. It has absorbed assorted lands, and even another college throughout the years. These are all memorialized through buildings on, and colleges within the university (e.g. Potter, Ogden).

Cherry, himself, is remembered in WKU's landmark building - Cherry Hall, which has the campus belltower. The building was completed in 1937, and dedicated in November of that year, a few months after Cherry died - the only thing that ended his more than 30-year tenure as president. He had seen the college through its first bachelors and masters degrees (1924; 1931) numerous name changes (though it would not be known as WKU until 1966) and various social challenges, including women's suffrage (of which he proved himself a considerable ally) and the Great Depression.

Probably most importantly, Cherry championed the success of the students, encouraging them to become all that they could. He even endowed WKU with a motto it still uses and holds true to, to this day: "The Spirit Makes the Master."

How Do You Draw the Lines?

As a Commonwealth, Kentucky has continually struggled to establish its geographic boundaries with foreign and domestic entities alike. This began before its birth in 1792, when the original Kentuckians argued with Virginia and the US for statehood. Once established, physical battles, political treaties, and even conspiracies ensued between the US and foreign countries, including Spain and France, to attain and maintain the Kentucky lands and rivers surrounding the state. Of course, the always underlying domestic disputes continued before, during, and after the dust settled with foreign entities.

Again, before Kentucky's official birth as a state, land companies fought over the state, as the Transylvania Company - with Daniel Boone's (who's birthday is this weekend) assistance - illegally bought much of the contemporary commonwealth from the Cherokee. Virginia happily took this land. The Jackson Purchase, conducted by Isaac Shelby and Andrew Jackson on October 19, 1818, completed the rest of the state we know and love today. However, during the Civil War, our status as a border state and the debate of control over the rivers surrounding us caused constant turmoil - to the point of martial law in Kentucky!

However, consistently ongoing is where to draw the lines between our Commonwealth and the surrounding states of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Issues over this have gone all the way to the US Supreme Court, and included bridge-building companies, land ownership, hunting licenses, and, recently, even a rock! Perhaps it has something to do with the inadequate surveying techniques of our forefathers, such as Dr. Thomas Walker, using natural landmarks and other land lots. While he marked the TN-KY border in 1779, it did not include the Jackson Purchase (for obvious reasons). Even once concluded with the 1819 Munsell Line, there were continuous disputes - one man even argued for his KY farm (and won!), so an otherwise relatively straight line has a noticeably discretionary "bump" south into TN. Or so the story goes.

Perhaps it has something to do with the erosion of these natural landmarks. We are after all surrounded by rivers, significantly demarcating KY boundaries. Ownership of an island in the Mississippi between Missouri and KY still causes problems! But the larger problem is where to draw the line in an ever-moving, ever-eroding river? For some reason, pretty much every time someone has brought up this problem to a court, it was during the October sessions. In 1792, it was determined the low-water mark on the northern bank of the Ohio River was the border of Kentucky. After erosion, this mark essentially moved, so the question arose: is it that original low-water mark, or does Kentucky have a floating boundary, so to speak? Such is the ongoing debate with Indiana - or was until 1978.

On October 15, 1978, the Supreme Court decided the original low-water mark (e.g. the 1792 one, which also determines the border with Ohio) was the KY-IN border; a final decision over almost 2 centuries of assorted court cases and disputes between the states. They also determined that the two states should decide "amicably" how to mark it on their own.

To read a better description of the original, 1792 low-water mark of the Ohio River, which determines the KY-IN border in this announcement from the October 9, 1912 edition of the Hartford Herald. It also discusses one of the many court cases brought up about where the boundary lies - in this case, in-state vs. out-of-state duck hunting on the Ohio: which license do you need?

I think this low-water mark, and erosion is the reason you don't see the sign welcoming you to Kentucky until you are a good ways over a bridge. Maybe it's even why the sign occasionally disappears, and shows back up; perhaps in a different place, further back to account for our "floating" boundary. What do you think? Any theories/ideas/opinions about where KY's boundary should be?