Collection is open to researchers by appointment.
Gift, 2000.
Collection is arranged chronologically. The Wade Hall Collection of American Letters has been processed into discrete collections based on provenance.
Lewis R. Williams was a sales agent for the druggists Hazard & Hazard Co. and lived in Louisville, Kentucky. No other biographical information available.
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
2009ms132.0320: [identification of item], Wade Hall Collection of American Letters: Lewis R. Williams letters, 1884-1903, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.
The Lewis R. Williams letters (dated 1884-1903; 0.21 cubic feet; 7 folders) comprise letters to and from Williams that document his employment and sales for Hazard & Hazard Co., previously Caswell, Hazard & Co., along with his relationship with his brother John in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Kentucky. The majority of the letters come from managers within the Hazard & Hazard Company, mostly discussing payment to Williams, his sales of their goods, and termination of his contract. Williams appears to know the main correspondent personally and so some letters discuss their families, the birth and death of children, personal health, sickness and treatments, moving to new cities, running into the other's family members, and visiting each other. There are four additional letters sent from Williams to his brother John that discuss sending each other money, good/catalogues, their families, and their personal health.
The Lewis R. Williams 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.