ON4CSL Correspondence Unit

Description

In November 1933 Kraus, operating as W8JK, made ham radio contact with ON4CSL in the Belgian Congo, a station operated by Carroll Stegall, an American missionary who had lived in the Congo for 20 years. Kraus began regular contact with Stegall, and their on-air conversations became conduits for news that bypassed the multiple months needed for paper mail. In 1936, Kraus helped Dr. George Westcott set up his own station at his clinic in the Congo, ON4CGW. Kraus maintained regular contact with both Stegall and Westcott, and soon their transmissions served as a means for many missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and their extended families in the U.S. to transmit both routine and emergency news in a timely way, and allowed Westcott to arrange medical consultations with doctors in Ann Arbor. Kraus, Stegall, and Westcott continued in contact until the fall of 1939, when the Belgian government ordered all amateur stations shut down because of the war in Europe. This unit includes correspondence between Kraus and missionary families in the U.S. and with the Executive Committee of Foreign Missions about the messages going to and from the Congo, as well as Kraus' notes about his transmissions. See also correspondence with Ray F. Cleveland, Carroll Stegall, and George Westcott in the general correspondence series. This unit includes correspondence and transcriptions of transmissions for the period November 1933 through November 1939.

Creator

Papers of John Daniel Kraus

Type

Text

Start Date

1933

End Date

1939

Notes

This material has been filed under the letter O in the General Correspondence alphabetical sequence.

Series

General Correspondence Series

Size of Item

1 folder

Citation

Papers of John Daniel Kraus, “ON4CSL Correspondence Unit,” NRAO/AUI Archives, accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/30795.