This blog post was written by Collection Services Archivist Amanda Fisher. Welcome to American Archives Month! Yes, October is traditionally the month for putting archives in the spotlight. As such, we want to try to answer some of your questions! Let’s start with the basics and move to more specific questions. What is an archive?…
This blog post was written by Processing Archivist Thomas DeShong. October is American Archives Month, a time set apart each year when we celebrate the roles archives play in the United States. But why does the nation honor such a profession? What makes archives so important? Naturally, as someone who has devoted nearly seven years…
This blog was written by Graduate Assistant Scott Anderson, who is working with the Clark Thompson papers. In the fall of 2015, the Poage Library acquired the papers of Clark Wallace Thompson III, a former eleven-term Representative of Texas, from the Baylor University Texas Collection, making Thompson the thirteenth legislator to join our collections! Clark…
This blog post was written by Amanda Fisher, Poage Library project archivist. Have you ever considered that a music education degree could lead to an exciting agricultural diplomacy career in some of Europe’s finest cities? It sounds crazy, but that is exactly how Edmund L. Nichols’ life unfolded. Hailing from Throckmorton, Texas, Nichols grew to…
This blog post was written by Alex Hampton and Hannah Engstrom, museum studies graduate students. Baylor University has been impressively represented by its students since its conception. Baylor graduates have made astounding contributions to a variety of fields from medicine to music. At the W. R. Poage Legislative Library we house the papers of several…
For our final week of American Archives Month, we took a look at the papers of Sam B. Hall. When long-time Congressman Wright Patman died in 1976, Sam B. Hall, Jr. was chosen in a special election represent Texas’s First District. He held this seat in the House of Representatives until 1984 and was re-elected…
This post was researched and written by Jacob Hiserman, one of our BCPM @ Poage Library graduate student assistants, who uncovered these documents while processing our Alan Steelman collection. Imagine a twenty-two-year old freshman Congressman in one of the House of Representatives’s iconic wooden chairs listening to a speech on an appropriations bill. Could an…
In the 1970s, America underwent a period of political turmoil. After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, our military had become embroiled in an open-ended conflict on Vietnamese soil that was heavily protested at home and abroad, leading to civil unrest and anti-American sentiment. Bridges were being built across the racial divide between black…
We have mixed feelings about October 31st here at the Baylor Collections of Political Materials; it means our Treats & Treasures series goes back into hibernation until next fall, but also that we’ve got our pick of fun, spooky treats (and tricks!) on campus. How are we supposed to negotiate the despair of American Archives…
For this week’s installment of Treats & Treasures, we’re discussing a vibrant Waco landmark: the Brazos River. The Brazos originates in northwest Texas and eastern New Mexico and flows for 820 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Since before Stephen F. Austin’s 1821 arrival, Mexican and Indian settlers have been manipulating the river for their…