WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – A historic Kansas police docket book with references to Wild West lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson is one legal step closer to being returned to Dodge City following a federal court ruling removing all claimants to it except the city.

The ledger details city court cases from 1878 to 1882, and the FBI has said it’s worth about $100,000. It was seized in May from a home in Ohio.

Many of Dodge City’s historical documents were stolen during the 1960s, when the television series, Gunsmoke, was most popular, said George Laughead, president of Dodge City’s historical society. Only two of Earp’s signatures remain in the city today, Laughead said.

The ledger would contain all of Earp’s cases and many of Masterson’s, he said.

“These dates cover the high points of the cattle drives, so an awful lot of our mythology occurred between 1878 and 1882 and it is going to be in here,” Laughead said.

Ownership of the ledger has been in limbo since the U.S. attorney’s office filed a forfeiture case in a legal maneuver to return the wayward book to the city. The federal government alleged it was the proceeds of interstate transportation of stolen goods.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot issued a partial default order Tuesday removing all potential claimants except Dodge City. No one else had claimed an interest in it. The government filed a motion Wednesday asking for a final forfeiture order, including a compromise settlement that would release the ledger to Dodge City.

FBI Special Agent Robin Smith said in an affidavit filed in the government’s case that city officials believe “persons unknown” stole the book sometime after 1950.

No criminal charges have been filed in the case, Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said Wednesday.

“There are a lots of historical documents that were taken from the court that we are still in process of trying to track down and gain possession, but none as important as this,” said Terry Malone, the attorney representing Dodge City.

“It gives it a kind of personal flavor – brings, I guess, history to life,” he said.

In his affidavit, Smith said the book was last documented in the city’s possession in the early 1950s. That’s when a writer used it while researching Dodge City’s past as a rollicking cattle town.

The author, Stanley Vestal, wrote a book on Dodge City history titled Queen of the Cowtowns Dodge City, The Wickedist Little City in America 1872-1886. The book contained several references to the police ledger.

Somehow, the ledger ended up in the possession of James Collins, of Blacklick, Ohio, outside Columbus. Smith said in his affidavit that Collins told FBI agents the ledger had been passed from his grandfather to his father to him.

Collins told agents he had been a pilot in the 1980s ferrying doctors between Wichita and Dodge City, but the family never lived in Dodge City, according to the affidavit.

Collins did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press left Wednesday at his home.

The ledger surfaced in 2007 after Collins agreed to turn it over to a Scottsdale, Ariz., dealer who sells cowboy collectibles to auction it on consignment. The dealer contacted an expert in old Western lore to authenticate the book and publicize it.

That’s when Laughead found a blog entry about the ledger and recognized it as missing city property, and alerted authorities. The antiques dealer ultimately returned the book to Collins rather than become entangled in a legal fight, according to the affidavit.

The ledger was seized from Collins’ home under a search warrant after he refused to allow agents to view it during an interview.

Dodge City filed a claim to the book in the forfeiture case, contending it owns the police docket, which it called an official record of the city.

Collins did not file a claim.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-09-30-09 1804EDT

LADYSMITH, Va. (AP) – The weathered cabin with the stone chimney regularly coughs up pieces of its past. A blue glass slave bead. A Civil War-era pipe. Kitchen utensils. A silver wedding band. Porcelain doorknobs.

Richard Moter carefully collects each offering, cataloging and dating the items as best he can.

Here’s a Navy button, dating to the 1870s, that he scraped from inside the chimney. And a bottle of cologne he pulled from under the front step, probably from the 1890s.

There’s a silk stocking from beneath the floorboards. And an eggbeater found in the wall. And a pewter cameo discovered near the cistern.

“There’s a lot of history here,” said Moter, 44, the caretaker of the cabin, which stands on his family’s Woodford property.

“A lot of these sites have been destroyed by loggers and landowners. I’m in here just trying to piece together the story.”

More than 150 years ago, the cabin housed slaves who toiled at the Poplar Grove plantation. After the Civil War, it was likely home to farm laborers.

Over the years, a series of residents patched up holes, modified doors, painted the beams and hung floral wallpaper, scraps of which still cling to the walls.

Sometime after 1936, when electricity came to rural Caroline County, someone screwed light bulbs into the cabin’s ceiling.

No one has lived in the two-story structure for probably 50 years, and its wood frame is weak and drafty.

But as a surviving example of slave housing, it offers history buffs like Moter – along with archaeological experts – a unique window into the past.

“This is a real survivor,” said Gary Stanton, a folklorist and historic-preservation professor at the University of Mary Washington who recently visited the cabin. “Usually this stuff’s plowed up and we never see it.”

Stanton and UMW colleague Carter Hudgins, a historian who also has training in historical archaeology, were invited by Moter to visit the cabin, along with a Free Lance-Star reporter.

Both professors have visited the remains of slave cabins throughout the area, working under a National Endowment for the Humanities grant secured by UMW Historic Preservation Chairman Doug Sanford and Dennis Pogue, associate director of restoration at Mount Vernon.

“It’s obviously gone through a lot of changes, but the carcass of the earliest part is still here,” said Hudgins, running a hand along a plank on the cabin’s second floor.

They plan to return to the property to measure the house and take more photographs, entering the information into a database that tracks the architecture of slave housing across decades and regions.

Using historical records, old fire insurance policies and evidence from existing buildings, the research team has collected descriptions of about 900 slave quarters in Virginia _ most of which are no longer standing, Sanford said.

“The good news is there are a lot more out there than we originally thought,” he said. “The bad news is a lot of them are not in great shape. People do not have the money to preserve them or restore them. Time is of the essence.”

Moter said he worries that his cabin may be on borrowed time.

Another on the property burned down in the 1950s, and what’s to say a strong wind won’t come along and finish the job time has already begun?

Until then, he painstakingly gathers all the treasures the cabin is willing to give up, hoping they’ll help him piece together the stories of those who once lived there.

Moter, a descendant of the Pratt family, grew up in the Westmont neighborhood of Fredericksburg.

He estimates his family owns about 10 historic properties in the area, including the old farm where he lives.

He built more than a few leaf forts on those properties as a youngster. But it wasn’t until adulthood, he said, that he came to appreciate the history socked away in those fields and forests.

Exploring them gave him direction, he said.

Before that, he traveled a bit out west, did some odd jobs, played his guitar, “made some mistakes, fixed some mistakes.”

His late great-uncle Beverley Crump Pratt, a local historian and attorney, inspired him to delve into the area’s past, said Moter, who has been at it faithfully for about a decade.

He reads a lot, particularly firsthand accounts of early life in these parts and the oral histories of former slaves, gathered during the 1930s under the Federal Writers Project.

As an amateur archaeologist, he sticks primarily to his family’s land, places like Camden, Auburn and Cedar Creek.

Sometimes he has used a metal detector, other times a shovel. Often, he has relied on historical maps and his own two hands.

He has uncovered farm tools, jewelry, pottery and horseshoes.

At the cabin behind his home, he has found old picture frames, doll parts and a button made of bone dating to the 1860s. Nearby, he dug up two poker chips and several marbles that may go as far back as the Colonial era.

“It’s like a giant pachinko machine,” Hudgins said of the cabin. “Stuff is just falling out.”

Moter said he has sold one or two items over the years to make ends meet. But he has no plans to sell any more.

He’d like to see the items displayed, possibly in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open on the National Mall in 2015.

His work in and around the cabin has given him a much greater understanding of what life must have been like for slaves, Moter said. He hopes his collection can ultimately do the same for others.

“I’ve had quite a few emotional moments while doing it,” he said. “It’s a very serious, heavy thing, not to be taken lightly at all. You’re looking into people’s lives and you’re looking back into times when people suffered. I’m kind of here to clear the air of all the karma.”

___

Information from: The Free Lance-Star,
http://www.fredericksburg.com/

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-29-09 2029EDT

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) – Virginia Tech has acquired a collection of sheet music, memoirs and other memorabilia related to The Carter Family, Johnny Cash and other musicians of the Carter and Cash families.

Virginia Tech said Tuesday that the collection is available for research in the Special Collections department of Newman Library.

The material includes a collection of Carter Family sheet music with a biography written in 1980 by Johnny Cash.

Other items include Maybelle Carter’s hunting and fishing license, programs from performances and festivals, photographs, and newspaper and magazine articles.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-29-09 0902EDT

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – The Titanic exhibit being set up at the Louisville Science Center may be the most significant attraction ever to be displayed at the West Main Street museum, said Joanna Haas, the center’s executive director.
Haas declined to say how much the center had to pay to get “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” scheduled to run Oct. 3 to Feb. 15. But, she said “it was a negotiation that required a lot of work” and took almost a year to wrap up. She wouldn’t speculate on whether the center would make a profit, but she predicted about 50,000 people will see it during its local run.

Every deal, Haas said, poses “risks and opportunities, and we’re hoping the exhibit elevates the prominence” of the Louisville center and “puts us on the radar screen of more folks. It is a big deal for us, and a great thing for the region. I can’t underscore that enough.”

Haas said Louisville is one of the first cities to land a scaled-down version of the Titanic exhibit that has been specifically developed for midsize markets.

Seven touring versions of the Titanic exhibit have been developed by Premier Exhibitions Inc. of Atlanta. They have been viewed by more than 22 million people worldwide since 1994. Besides the one being set up in Louisville, Titanic exhibits are currently being shown in Rochester, N.Y.; New York City; St. Paul, Minn.; Las Vegas; Montreal; and Lisbon, Portugal.

Becky Parker, a curator for the Titanic exhibit at the science center, said the 150 artifacts to go on display in Louisville were trucked in from Atlanta. Most of the items had been recently exhibited at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.

A Premier subsidiary, RMS Titanic Inc., is the only entity permitted under a federal court ruling to recover objects from the wreck of the ill-fated ocean liner.

Parker said the company’s representatives have made seven expeditions to the wreck and recovered more than 5,500 artifacts. She said her company is the caretaker of the items, not the owner. The ownership of the wreck is uncertain and has never been settled by a court ruling.

The Titanic sank in April 1912 about 250 miles northeast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. It broke in half when it sank after striking an iceberg and the two halves lie about a mile apart about 21/2 miles down on the ocean floor. Parker said the vessel will never be raised.

The last survivor of the sinking, Millvina Dean, died this year. She was nine months old when the ship sank.

The exhibit will be divided into seven galleries. The first shows how the ship was designed, including early photographs. Subsequent galleries focus on the launch, the passengers, the third-class accommodations and the iceberg. A sixth gallery explores how the wreckage was discovered in 1985 and the last is a memorial gallery that lists each passenger.

When they enter the exhibit, visitors will be given a boarding pass with the name of one of the 2,228 passengers on the maiden voyage of the ship that many considered to be unsinkable. In the last gallery visitors can check the passenger list to see if the passenger named on the boarding pass survived the sinking.

The exhibit features a large replica of an iceberg, developed with the help of refrigeration equipment that allows layers of ice to build up on metal sheets.

Among the 150 items on display will be a wrench, a porthole, British and American coins, floor tiles, furniture, china, fuses, a toothpaste container, a sauce pan, bathtub fixtures, perfume vials, cooking pots, dishes and personal items.
Six items in the exhibit were recently conserved and have never been on display before, Parker said. They are a gold braided chain, two postcards, a marriage certificate, a metal hairpin and a small gold-plated cosmetic canister.

Throughout its run at the science center, the basic adult admission, usually $12, will be $18. Tours of the exhibit will be self-guided, but audio tours are available for an additional $5.
___

Information from: The Courier-Journal,
http://www.courier-journal.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-09-25-09 1411EDT