Finding Aids: Home

Dr. J. Lee Owen collected Eudora Welty materials as a hobby. The collection contains articles related to Welty’s life and writings. Included are stories first published in large national journals like The Atlantic and The New Yorker. The collection also features some musings from Welty, and articles remembering her life and accomplishments.

The Ethel Rankin Papers were established anonymously to honor Ms. Rankin. These materials are an important source of information on the Tennessee Walking Horse and horsemanship in general, featuring photographs, magazine clippings, supply catalogs, and newspaper clippings.

The collection contains postage and revenue stamps, First Day Covers, cachets, envelopes, letters, postcards, auction and dealer catalogs, brochures, and ephemera pertaining to United States and worldwide postal history and the history of philately.

The Gilbert McWilliams Orr Papers include equestrian-related periodicals, pamphlets, and programs.

The collection contains United States naval staff memoranda, messages, and ephemera. It also contains correspondence, newsletters, and ephemera related to Clan Buchanan.

The Joan Hunt papers included multiple published articles on raising and caring for horses, horse life and culture, and advertisements for horse breeds from large magazine outlets. These papers also included judging forms for Dressage competitions in Middle Tennessee, and literature on Huntlea, a Tennessee preparatory school for horsemanship.

The Millers were strong horse enthusiasts and among the early advocates of the Walking Horse Owner's Association. They operated stables located in Lewisburg, home of the 1973 World Grand Championship of the Tennessee Walking Horse National Championship. After Mr. Miller’s death in 1984, the International Championship Walking Horse Show was dedicated in his honor.

The Mack Prichard Collection is the personal library and select papers of Tennessee’s first state naturalist. The collection contains books covering natural history and conservation of natural resources. It also contains a small collection of Mack’s personal papers and his extensive postcard collection which documents the flora, fauna, natural and tourist sites from almost all 50 US states and select countries worldwide.

The Margaret Lindsley Warden Papers cover a little over 200 years of Tennessee horse culture and prominent Nashville families. This collection includes research files, monographs, letters, photographs, and collected ephemera from Warden’s professional and personal careers.

This collection contains correspondence, wills, obituaries, and miscellaneous business and personal papers of David Wendel and his family. Materials date as early as 1814.

These documents are from the personal files of William J. McGill of Shelbyville, Tennessee, relating to research and correspondence about the bloodlines of foundational horses to the Tennessee Walking Horse. The papers include article drafts, research, and correspondence to various equine authorities, all regarding Tennessee Walkers

Alfred Leland Crabb was a was a professor of education at Western Kentucky University and Peabody College. His novels focus on Nashville, early Tennessee history, and Southern culture. The archival collection serves as a complement to the library’s holdings of Crabb’s fictional works. This collection contains correspondence relating to his accomplishments and death along with a selection of poetic Christmas cards that were sent to family and friends each year.

The Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection focuses on capturing and preserving the social, economic, and cultural heritage of the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages from colonial America to the present day, with an emphasis on Tennessee. It includes books, periodicals, pamphlets, government documents, ephemera, labels, advertising material, and cultural artifacts. The finding aid links to the various smaller collections contained within the wider collection. Materials in these collections can be accessed upon request.

The Steve Cates Folk Dance Collection focuses on the history of the International Folkloric Society, through organizational papers, publications, newspapers, scrapbooks, photos, and cultural artifacts. It is also interwoven with the history of the Kittrell 4-H Square Dancers, Rutherford County Square Dancers, and the Cripple Creek Cloggers. The finding aid describes paper materials that are available for research. Objects, memorabilia and cultural artifacts have not been processed yet and remain inaccessible at the moment.