New Additions to Our Collections

Although this group of objects may look like a simple rock collection, it is a cache of chipped stone bifaces from Kearny County, Kansas (a cache typically is a store of resources hidden until the owner can retrieve it, and bifaces are artifacts with flakes removed from both faces).

The five pieces on the left are basalt, a black stone found in streambeds and on hilltops in western Kansas. The three specimens at far right are quartzite, a rock that is embedded in sandstone in Kearny County and in gravel deposits in Morton County. One biface (top row, third from right) is light gray chert, and the one below it is Smoky Hill jasper, a colorful stone found in Gove, Graham, Phillips, Sheridan, and Trego counties and traded far beyond that.

Thanks go to John B. Bork of Lawrence for donating these items from his father’s collection.
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The Library and Archives recently implemented an online William Clark Papers database, centering on Clark's tenure as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in St. Louis. The collection includes field notes and plats of Indian lands, treaties and other agreements between the U.S. and various tribes, and other records of the Missouri, Central, and St. Louis Superintendencies of Indian Affairs. It also includes records of the Missouri Fur Co. of which Clark served as a director.

In addition to Brigadier General of Militia and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Louisiana Territory, Clark was governor of the newly created Missouri Territory, and surveyor general for Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. He died on Sept. 1, 1838 in St. Louis--an explorer, diplomat, advocate, businessman, collector and family man.

Volunteer Don Manley entered each page, either from a typed transcript or handwritten original, volume after volume, into the database. Researchers may utilize the database online or access the collection in the Research Room at the Center for Historical Research.

Return to index at top of page.

The Kansas State Board of Health's campaign to improve the lives of Kansans took many forms. This sign is one example of how the agency cleverly marketed its message.

The Board of Health maintained a lending library of silent and sound films with subjects ranging from tuberculosis to child care. Although primarily used by health officials and schools, the films also were shown at Kansas fairs where hot and tired audiences happily answered the Board's call to "come in and learn while you rest." This sign advertised the films shown at the Kansas Free Fair in Topeka in the 1930s, when sound movies or "talkies" were coming into popularity.

A 2003 acquisition at the Kansas Museum of History, the sign was donated by John Shockley of Topeka who rescued it from a building being demolished on the old fair grounds.

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