Collection is open to researchers by appointment.
Gift, 2000.
Collection is arranged by subject. The Wade Hall Collection of American Letters has been processed into discrete collections based on provenance.
Jennie Lee Carter (1890-1981) was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky to Theodore A. Carter (1845-1898) and Eliza Jane
American Letters collector Wade Hall (1934-2015) was a native of Union Springs, Alabama. Starting in 1962, he lived in Louisville, where he taught English and chaired the English and Humanities/Arts programs at Kentucky Southern College and Bellarmine University. He also taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida. He held degrees from Troy State University (B.S.), the University of Alabama (M.A.), and the University of Illinois (Ph.D.). He served for two years in the U.S. Army in the mid-fifties. Dr. Hall was the author of books, monographs, articles, plays, and reviews relating to Kentucky, Alabama, and Southern history and literature. His most recent books include
2009ms132.0287: [identification of item], Wade Hall Collection of American Letters: Jennie Lee Carter letters, 1886-1929, undated, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.
The Jennie Lee Carter letters (dated 1886-1929, undated; 0.15 cubic feet; 5 folders) comprise letters that document the life of Jennie Lee Carter and her family in Kentucky and the mid-west in the early twentieth century. The letters are primarily sent to Jennie Carter and Jennie Lee Carter, with Jennie Carter's sister Margaret Lamb writing to her, and Jennie Carter writing to her daughter Jennie Lee Carter. There are additional letters to both Jennie and Jennie Lee from relatives along with a few letters to siblings of Jennie Lee Carter. The letters to Jennie Carter discuss visiting family, her niece's move to Kansas, daily life at home, the weather, and personal health. The letters from Margaret to Jennie discuss the death of their mother, the weather, work on the farm, gifts sent to each other, the death of Margaret's husband, and her efforts to get a widow's pension. The letters to Jennie Lee from her siblings and friends discuss visiting each other, personal health, their mother, and the weather. In the letters between Jennie and Jennie Lee, they discuss Jennie visiting her sister Margaret's farm in Scott City, Kansas, managing the dairy cattle herd, selling dairy products, and the weather on the plains – namely the constant wind and lack of rain.
The Jennie Lee Carter letters are part of the Wade Hall Collection of American letters, which includes correspondence and diaries from all over North America covering the time period of the Civil to Korean Wars. The materials were collected by Wade Hall and document everyday men and women.
The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.