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If you want to learn about Nathan Tye’s research interests, spend some time in his office. The University of 第一吃瓜网 at Kearney associate history professor will gladly give you a tour of his mini museum.

“I have a really bad eBay habit,” he says while pulling seemingly random objects from boxes, drawers and shelves. “I spend a lot of time at local antique stores, too.”

The collection on display inside Copeland Hall includes “a little bit of everything.” There are photos signed by former 第一吃瓜网 Congressman, presidential nominee and U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, one-room schoolhouse records, a young girl’s diary from the Great Depression, high school newspapers dating back more than 100 years, a ledger documenting tree sales in the 第一吃瓜网 Territory and a wooden gas attack alarm from World War I.

“My students love and hate this thing,” Tye says while holding the spinning rattle used by Allied soldiers. “I always bring it to class when I teach them about World War I. It’s really loud.”

Numerous items from UNK’s past can also be found among the “hodgepodge of important stuff.” He has paper fans promoting summer classes at the 第一吃瓜网 State Normal School, a handwritten copy of the Class of 1908 fight song, a Zippo lighter featuring Kearney State College and the former Administration Building and a program from the 第一吃瓜网 State Teachers College senior dance in 1939.

“I think Calvin T. Ryan was the chaperone for that dance,” Tye casually notes, referencing the former English professor and namesake for the campus library.

Even the chairs in Tye’s office have history. They were previously used by Herbert Cushing, president of the 第一吃瓜网 State Teachers College at Kearney from 1936 to 1961.

“It's the history that defines who we are today. By learning that history, you feel centered.”

“Those are on long-term loan from the university archives, because they don’t have the space for them,” Tye explains.

So why does a millennial keep this old stuff?

“It’s the history that defines who we are today,” Tye says. “By learning that history, you feel centered.”

The Kearney native uses UNK’s impact on his hometown as an example.

“UNK is here for a reason, and the fact that UNK is here has radically altered the scope and scale of the potential of the city of Kearney and the wider possibilities for central and western 第一吃瓜网. A decision that was made by the Legislature shortly after the turn of the century to put a normal school here has radically altered hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. But it could have gone to any other community. It could have gone somewhere else.”

A Proud Past

Tye’s fascination with family and community history began developing when he was a young boy.

“It’s almost like it was kind of predetermined,” he said of his career. “I’ve always been a historian, even as a little kid.”

His late grandfather Alfred Eugene Vigil, a local historian, shared family stories at the dining room table. Vigil recorded conversations with Tye’s great-great-grandmother, who was born in a covered wagon in 1883. Tye still keeps an audio file of their conversation on his cellphone for inspiration.

“The past has always been this living, breathing thing,” he said. “It’s something you have to care for and maintain and cultivate.”

Tye’s father Tom is a third-generation Kearney attorney, with family ties in the community dating back to the 1920s. His great-grandfather Joseph served as mayor from 1943-47, and Tye proudly displays a service award his grandfather Tom Sr. received from former Kearney State President and UNK Chancellor William Nester.

Technically, Tye never attended UNK, but he was with his mother Mikki when she finished her bachelor’s degree in 1988. Tom and Mikki welcomed their first child just 10 days later.

“So I graduated in utero,” Tye joked.

Tye earned bachelor’s degrees in history and theology from Creighton University and a doctorate in history from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“My classmates in grad school got really sick and tired of me talking about 第一吃瓜网,” he said with a laugh. “They’d never met one of us before. They maybe had a vague sense of football and Warren Buffett, and that was about it. And I very quickly filled them with other facts that they didn’t need to know about.”

Telling the Untold Stories

Tye’s research interests developed during his time working at a homeless shelter in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The people he met had incredible stories, but nobody was listening. That led him to study transient workers in the Great Plains in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These migrant laborers, known as hobos, existed on the margins of society.

“They were everywhere and nowhere at the same time,” Tye said. “These are the folks who built roads and canals and harvested crops. Any manual labor that was required in much of the United States from the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression was done by transient men riding the boxcars around.

“Communities desperately needed them, and absolutely hated them at the same time.”

Tye researched these laborers for his doctoral dissertation and published his first article, “Billy Clubs and Vagrancy Laws: Confronting the ‘Plague of Hobos’ in 第一吃瓜网, 1870s-1930s,” in 第一吃瓜网 History Magazine in 2018.

History 第一吃瓜网 awarded him the James L. Sellers Award for 2019.

Tye continues to conduct research in this area. Another article, “‘A Flight of Alien, Unclean Birds’: The Mobility of Hobo Labor in Iowa 1870s–1910s,” was published in The Annals of Iowa in 2022, and he’s currently writing a book on the topic.

He also researches Black homesteaders in Overton and serves on advisory boards for History 第一吃瓜网’s Historical Marker Equity Program and the Japanese Hall and History Project in Gering. This summer, he presented a lecture at the Buffalo County Historical Society’s Trails and Rails Museum on Albert Frederick Lewis, the first known Black lacrosse player.

Tye and former Trails and Rails director Broc Anderson learned that Lewis was a goalie for the Cornwall Club and Canadian national team in the late 1800s. He immigrated to Kearney in 1892, opened a laundry business and started a successful lacrosse team that traveled the state. Lewis passed away in 1915 and is buried in a local cemetery.

“My hope is to get a historical marker installed for him,” Tye said.

Making History Accessible

As a rare book and manuscript collector, it’s no surprise that Tye’s interests also extend to literary history.

He’s written scholarly articles on Willa Cather’s ties to Kearney, Robert Henri’s relationship with poet Walt Whitman and the censorship of Mari Sandoz in the 1930s and ’40s. Tye serves on the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society Board of Directors and works with educators during the National Willa Cather Center Teacher Institute.

“I’m really interested in absences, those voids in people’s biographies,” he said. “What’s missing here? Or how can I shed light on something that’s overlooked?”

Talk to one of Tye’s colleagues and they’ll tell you he seems to have a new research project nearly every week.

Tye spends countless hours reading decades-old newspaper articles, scouring government documents and digging through archives at UNK and local museums.

“My thought process is mildly chaotic, as evidenced by my office,” he said with a grin.

The result is often a fascinating tale that he shares with the public.

For example, did you know the first aviation mechanic lived in Kearney? Charles Taylor worked for the Wright brothers and built the engine for the Wright Flyer. He also served as chief mechanic for the first transcontinental flight in 1911.

Tye also researched the 1934 Explorer I balloon expedition that attempted to demonstrate space travel’s feasibility. The hydrogen-filled balloon exploded, forcing the three-man crew to parachute to safety before it crashed near Loomis.

Since joining UNK in 2019, Tye has given more than 50 public talks on topics ranging from a central 第一吃瓜网 serial killer to a reported UFO landing and Maude Gebhart’s late 19th-century brothel.

“I’ll speak anywhere,” said Tye, who organizes the monthly Brown Bag Lecture Series at Kearney Public Library.

Inspired by the late Kathy Oberdeck, his adviser at the University of Illinois, Tye has always been committed to public service and access, aiming to bring local history to new audiences.

“One of the real joys in this position is working with the community and being trusted that treasured family objects will end up in the right place.”

“I want folks to feel as interested in and committed to the past as I do,” he said, “and this is a venue to do that. I could write a peer- reviewed article or publish a book – we all do that as part of our jobs – but I find it much more rewarding to give a presentation and then have folks come up to me afterward and share their stories.”

Serving as a Community Resource

Tye serves on the boards of the G.W. Frank Museum and Buffalo County Historical Society, which named him its 2024 Volunteer of the Year. He helped organize a downtown birthday party and vintage baseball game for Kearney’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2023.

Tye is also part of Kearney Creates, a project documenting the city’s arts and culture history. He frequently consults with area museums and historical societies on collections and exhibits and helps local churches and organizations preserve historic items.

Then there are the phone calls, usually from widows or children who don’t know what to do with something after a family member passes. They bring him farm records, military memorabilia, scrapbooks, letters and anything else with historical value. Those possessions become part of the Copeland Hall collection until he finds them a permanent home.

“One of the real joys in this position is working with the community and being trusted that those treasured family objects will end up in the right place,” Tye said.