Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929) was a tobacco manufacturer, industrialist, and philanthropist of Durham, NC and New York, NY and a trustee and major benefactor of Trinity College (later Duke University). He was the son of Washington Duke, older brother of James B. Duke, husband of Sarah Pearson Angier Duke, and father of Angier Buchanan Duke and Mary Duke Biddle. The materials in this collection document the business, financial, philanthropic, and personal interests of Benjamin N. Duke and his family, especially Duke's involvement in the tobacco, textile, banking, and hydroelectric industries in North Carolina and New York and the Duke family's financial support of a variety of institutions, including educational institutions for African Americans and women, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and individual churches, orphanages, hospitals, and community organizations. The Richard B. Arrington series and Alexander H. Sands, Jr., series document the personal and financial interests of Benjamin N. Duke's private secretaries in New York, NY.

The papers of Benjamin Newton Duke have been collected from various sources over time and span the years 1834 to 1969, although the bulk of the material dates from 1890 to 1929. The materials in the collection document the business, financial, philanthropic, and personal interests of Benjamin N. Duke and his family in Durham, NC and New York, NY, especially Duke's involvement in the tobacco, textile, banking, and hydroelectric industries and the Duke family's financial support of a variety of institutions, including educational institutions for African Americans and women, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and individual churches, orphanages, hospitals, and community organizations. Types of material in the collection include correspondence, financial statements and ledgers, bills and receipts, architectural blueprints and drawings, land plats, deeds, photographs, photograph albums, scrapbooks, and a diary.

Family members represented include Sarah P. Duke, Angier Buchanan Duke, Mary Duke Biddle, Washington Duke, James B. Duke, Brodie L. Duke, Lida Duke Angier, and Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr. Other individuals represented include Julian S. Carr, William A. Erwin, John C. Kilgo, William P. Few, Daniel Lindsay Russell, James E. Shepard, and George W. Watts.

The Richard B. Arrington series and Alexander H. Sands, Jr. series document the personal and financial interests of Benjamin N. Duke's private secretaries in New York, NY.

Collection contains personal, professional and family correspondence of three generations of the Brodnax family, centering around John G. Brodnax. Pre-Civil War letters refer to the sale of slaves; wartime correspondence reflects the fear of the advancing Union forces. Postwar papers include Brodnax's appointment as assistant surgeon general of a North Carolina hospital at Petersburg, Va., overseeing the discharge of disabled Confederate soldiers, and his oath of allegiance to the United States. Also includes letters to his wife during her summer visits with relatives. Many papers concern Mrs. Brodnax's activities in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy; others relate to attendance of family members at various North Carolina and Virginia schools and colleges. There are also letters from Germany and Europe in the 1870s and 1880s and Mexico in 1910.

This collection contains family correspondence of three generations of the Brodnax family centering chiefly around John G. Brodnax (1829-1907), a Confederate surgeon and practicing physician.

Letters from 1857 to 1867, generally from Lynchburg, Virginia, refer to the sale of slaves and, during the war years, are concerned with the question of fleeing or remaining to face the advancing Federals. Included also are Brodnax's appointment as assistant surgeon general of the North Carolina Hospital at Petersburg, Virginia, and his oath of allegiance to the United States. Other items pertaining to Dr. Brodnax are letters to his wife, beginning in 1881, while she visited her relatives in summer, a speech against railroad taxation in 1879, a group of petitions in 1877 requesting that Brodnax be made superintendent of the North Carolina State Insane Asylum, and an undated article on optical surgery. Included also is genealogical material as well as other materials connected with the activities of Brodnax's wife in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

A number of letters were written from schools and colleges attended by members of the family, including Salem Female Academy, Salem, North Carolina, and St. Mary's College, Raleigh, North Carolina, during 1912; N. I. Smith's School in Leaksville during 1879 and 1880; Bingham School in Orange County during 1883; Bingham School in Asheville, and Old Point Comfort College, Virginia, after 1909.

Also included in the collectoon are letters from Mrs. Barr, an aunt of Mrs. Brodnax, and her children from 1877 to 1884 while traveling in Europe and studying music in Germany. There are letters from Mary (Brodnax) Glenn and her family while in Mexico, where her husband worked for a railroad company, a mining firm, and as secretary to the American consul general; letters of this period are filled with references to conditions in Mexico, especially concerning political upheavals around 1910. Included also are papers relative to the settlement of the estate of John Brodnax, Jr., after 1909, and a group of sermons delivered by James Kerr Burch, a Presbyterian minister and father-in-law of Dr. John G. Brodnax.

Collection comprised of 9 boxes of company records and 5 ledgers of organizational material of the Dismal Swamp Land Company, a shingle production company in existence between 1763-1879. Letter books, receipts spanning the entirety of the company's existence, and legal documents make up the bulk of the collection.

The Dismal Swamp Land Company records consist of company records spanning the 17th-19th centuries, with the bulk falling in the mid-to-late 19th century. The majority of records consist of financial documentation, including receipts for the purchase of equipment by the Company and numerous receipts for customers detailing quantities and prices of shingles purchased. Monthly ledgers and an account book are also present. The records include legal documents surrounding surveys of the Dismal Swamp, indentures, wills, and several powers of attorney for shareholder meetings. Incoming correspondence intended for the Company's presidents, mainly from employees and shareholders, makes up the majority of the Correspondence series.

The William Massie family owned several plantations in Virginia in the 18th and 19th centuries, and owned several hundred enslaved people during this time. This collection contains the papers and records of several members and generations of the Massie family, based at the Pharsalia plantation in Nelson County, Virginia. Family members represented include Thomas Massie; his children, including Thomas Massie Jr. and William Massie; William Massie's widow, Maria Massie, who inherited Pharsalia; as well as several grandchildren, including Martha, Hope, Florence, and Bland Massie. The bulk of the material in the collection dates from William Massie's ownership and management of Pharsalia, including the purchases and labor of dozens of enslaved men, women, and children in the mid-1800s. The collection also includes detailed agricultural and financial accounts, weather logs, land surveys and plots, a plantation ledger, and family and business correspondence.

This collection contains correspondence, plantation records, deeds, inventory, surveyor's plats, architectural drawings, weather memoranda, crop memoranda, and other papers, received or created by the Massie family. The bulk of the material dates from William Massie's ownership of Pharsalia plantation, and his plantation volumes document the production and agricultural trade of crops and products such as wheat, hemp, flour, bacon, oats, corn, tobacco, rye, apples, whiskey, and wool. These volumes are thorough, with near-daily entries about the weather, different stages of planting and reaping, and the production or yields of different crops, including his orchards, pigs, and horses. Many papers in the collection consist of business letters and financial logs about prices, crop yields, and local commerce. There are also occasional family and personal correspondence, with ongoing conversations about estate planning and divisions (particularly between William and Thomas Massie) as well as health news and reports on different childrens' education. Scattered throughout the collection are records documenting the Massie's reliance on slave labor, including many bills of sale for enslaved men, women, and children, as well as transactional correspondence about the hiring and use of enslaved laborers for field work, harvesting, couriering, quarry work, canal work, wagon driving, weaving, and other skilled trades. Also included in the collection is a commonplace book belonging to Thomas Massie, Sr., with notes about his crops as well as different copies of contracts and agreements he made for management of his plantation. There is an inventory and appraisal of the household and estate held by William Massie at his death in 1862. There are some drawings and maps of different lands, including plans for farming, as well as some architectural drawings of additions to Pharsalia from the mid-1800s. The collection contains some Civil War era materials, including documents relating to Maria Massie's management of the plantation following William's death, and the impressment of different horses, goods, and enslaved people into laboring on Confederate fortifications during the war. There is a deposition by Thomas Massie detailing his Continental Army service (1833); letters surrounding the Massie's hiring of a female teacher for their children in the 1840s; business correspondence between Massie and agents or contacts in Richmond, Staunton, and Lynchburg over different prices and quality of products; postwar correspondence about servant wages; and a detailed description of the Chicago fire (1871).

Collection contains the records of the firm of Terrasson Brothers, established in Philadelphia by Antoine and Barthelemy Terrasson as a branch of their father's firm, John Terrasson and Company, headquartered in Paris and Lyons, France. Early business letters reflect the trade of the firm in grain, the furnishings of supplies to the French and American armies, and the purchase of tobacco at various places throughout the South. The letters contain information on the American Revolution, especially on naval operations, and on post-Revolutionary business conditions. Papers after 1800 concern the family of Mark Prager, members of which apparently married into the Terrasson family. Prager was owner of a trading firm in Holland. These papers contain information on Prager's trading activities until 1820, and on the family of Harriet Prager of Philadelphia. The later letters contain references to family affairs, slavery, politics and sectionalism. Approximately 100 Civil War letters describe conditions in the North.

The Robert A. Hill Collection covers the period of 1800 to 2014 and documents Hill's research, writing, and publications about Marcus Garvey's life and work and the founding of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), as well as Hill's many other projects. Items in the collection include research material assembled by Hill, writings by and about Garvey, manuscripts, correspondence, printed material, clippings, microfilm, photographs, video and sound recordings, and objects. Series 1-4 contain the production papers of the Marcus Garvey Papers Project: American Volumes (AM), African Volumes (AF), Caribbean Volumes (CA), and Project Administration (PA). Hill's other projects and writings are included in Series 5-6 as Other Works by Robert A. Hill (OW) and Hill Personal (HP). The remaining Series 7-10 consists of Microfilm (MF), Primary Sources (PS), Research (RE), and the unprocessed Jamaica (J). The collection was acquired by the John Hope Franklin Research Center in 2015.

The major emphasis of the Hill Collection is The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, a series of publications that Hill edited for over thirty years that compile more than 30,000 documents highlighting the influence and accomplishments of Garvey and the UNIA. The process of compiling the twelve volumes is reflected in Hill's collection of research materials from manuscripts, photocopies of microfilm and original sources, newspaper clippings, annotated printed materials, photographs, scholar's correspondence, FBI records, and annotated drafts from U.S. and international archives, universities, and libraries. The bulk of the research materials are reproductions. Original materials can be found in the Primary Sources (PS) series.

The Other Works series contains Hill's personal papers, university-related materials and correspondence, general research, presentations, and other writings. These documents include Hill's historical editions such as Marcus Garvey's The Black Man: A Monthly Magazine of Negro Thought and Opinion; Cyril V. Briggs' The Crusader; George S. Schuyler's Black Empire and Ethiopian Stories; and The FBI's RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States during World War II.

Richard Harvey Wright (1894-1980) was a businessman of Durham, N.C., and founder of Wright Machinery Company. Wright Machinery merged with Sperry Rand Corporation on 29 March 1957. Collection dates from 1870-1980 and comprises correspondence, 1870-1941; legal papers; printed matter; business papers; financial papers; and clippings relating to Wright's business interests, particularly the Wright Machinery Company of Durham, N.C., manufacturer of packaging for tobacco products and various other kinds of commodities. There is much information on the economic history of Durham and the development of the tobacco industry. Volumes in the collection include financial records and letterpress books for business correspondence. Later additions comprise business correspondence; financial ledgers and statements; machinery licensing, leasing, and loan agreements; and legal documents of the Wright Machinery Company. Also includes one framed oil portrait of Wright, signed "Freeman. 1922."

Collection (232,267 items; dated 1870-1980) comprises extensive files of correspondence dating from 1873-1941; legal papers; printed matter; many business and financial papers; and clippings relating to Wright's business interests, particularly the Wright Machinery Company of Durham, N.C., manufacturer of packaging for tobacco products and various other kinds of commodities. There is much information on the economic history of Durham and the development of the tobacco industry. Volumes in the collection include financial records and many letterpress books for business correspondence.

Additions (4-27-79) (2002-086) comprise business correspondence; machinery licensing, leasing, and loan agreements; and legal documents (2101 items, dated 1941-1967) of the Wright Machinery Company. Also includes one framed oil portrait of Wright, signed "Freeman. 1922."

Addition (2005-108) (65 items, 1.1 lin. ft.; dated 1877-1905) comprises one letter book; one financial ledger; a judgment appeal; general contractor reports and statements; rental statements; and checks.

Two accessions (97-087 and 97-105) containing chiefly print materials from Wright Machinery Company, including company newsletters, were separated from the Wright Papers and placed in the Wright Machinery Company Records collection.

Addition (2021-0025. 1.1 lin. ft.; dated 1835-1878) contains account and day books from Tally Ho and Durham, North Carolina. There is also a volume of "The Methodist Protestant" newspaper and "Gram's unrivaled family atlas of the world".

Included in this collection are records, 1779-1809, of a mercantile business run by Stephen Fowler, Fairfield, Connecticut, and after 1805 of Trenton, Jones Co., North Carolina, which engaged in trade between New York and North Carolina. Stephen's son Joseph about 1820 engaged in the export of lumber, naval stores, tobacco, grain, and blackeyed peas from North Carolina to Bermuda; and later in coastal trade from New Bern to New York. There is also correspondence relating to his duties as U.S. deputy marshal, Pamlico District, N.C., 1831-1860. Family correspondence predominates between 1840 and 1860. For the Civil War years there are many letters from Joseph S. Fowler, Jr., written largely from the Confederate Commissary Office, Kinston, N.C. The collection also includes two Yale university diplomas; a ledger of Joseph S. Fowler, (1817-1834), 1836, 1866, 1 vol.; financial and legal papers, 1800-1860; the logbook of Absalom Fulford kept on the Neuse River lightship, 1845-1849, recording weather and the passage of ships; and business letters to DeWitt C. Fowler and Brother, Bay River (N.C.) general store and liquor merchants.

The Fowler family papers collection Includes records, 1779-1809, of a mercantile business run by Stephen Fowler, Fairfield, Connecticut, and after 1805 of Trenton, Jones County, North Carolina, which engaged in trade between New York and North Carolina. Stephen's son Joseph, about 1820, engaged in export of lumber, naval stores, tobacco, grain, and blackeyed peas from North Carolina to Bermuda; and later in coastal trade from New Bern to New York. There is also correspondence relating to his duties as U.S. deputy marshal, Pamlico District, North Carolina, 1831-1860. Family correspondence predominates between 1840 and 1860. For the Civil War years there are many letters from Joseph S. Fowler, Jr., written largely from the Confederate Commissary Office, Kinston, North Carolina.

The collection also includes diplomas; a ledger of Joseph S. Fowler, (1817-1834), 1836, 1866, 1 vol.; financial and legal papers, 1800-1860; broadsides concerning state policies; the logbook of Absalom Fulford kept on the Neuse River lightship, 1845-1849, recording weather and the passage of ships; certificates for jurors, U.S. District Court, New Bern, 1839-1858; business letters addressed to DeWitt C. Fowler and Brother at Bay River, 1860-1868, a general store and liquor dealer; and a few items relating to North Carolina schools. Among correspondents in the collection are Silvester Brown, Benjamin Q. Tucker, Absalom Fulford, and Wesley Jones.

.Admittance, matriculation, and "Order of Lecture" cards are from a number of medical students from 1811-1880 in the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson Medical College, Long Island College Hospital (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Harvard University Medical School, Philadelphia School of Anatomy, New Hampshire Medical Institution, Berkshire Medical Institution, and St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London, England). They contain the autographs of the most eminent professors of the day: i.e., Samuel Gross, Franklin Bache, Benjamin Rush, Austin Flint, Samuel Jackson, S. Weir Mitchell, J. K. Mitchell, Charles D. and James A Meigs, John Barclay Biddle, et al. The St. Bartholomew's Hospital card is signed by Ludford Harvey, John P. Vicent, and John Abernethy, the latter (1764-1831) being an eminent English surgeon and founder of the Medical School of St Bartholomew's. The "Order of Lecture" cards from Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania list curricula, faculty and their residences, schedules of lectures and texts.Admittance cards, 1850-1853, are for courses at the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. They include two matriculation cards for William D. Watson of Chatham County, N. C., dated Nov., 1850, and Oct., 1852, and an examination card Oct., 1852-1853, which is signed by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell as professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Physiology. Dr. Watson returned to Chatham County after his graduation. His house was destroyed during the Civil War. The portion of his medical library saved and stored in a neighboring attic eventually was placed in the historical Collection of the library of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

.Admittance, matriculation, and "Order of Lecture" cards are from a number of medical students from 1811-1880 in the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson Medical College, Long Island College Hospital (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Harvard University Medical School, Philadelphia School of Anatomy, New Hampshire Medical Institution, Berkshire Medical Institution, and St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London, England). They contain the autographs of the most eminent professors of the day: i.e., Samuel Gross, Franklin Bache, Benjamin Rush, Austin Flint, Samuel Jackson, S. Weir Mitchell, J. K. Mitchell, Charles D. and James A Meigs, John Barclay Biddle, et al. The St. Bartholomew's Hospital card is signed by Ludford Harvey, John P. Vicent, and John Abernethy, the latter (1764-1831) being an eminent English surgeon and founder of the Medical School of St Bartholomew's. The "Order of Lecture" cards from Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania list curricula, faculty and their residences, schedules of lectures and texts.

Admittance cards, 1850-1853, are for courses at the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. They include two matriculation cards for William D. Watson of Chatham County, N. C., dated Nov., 1850, and Oct., 1852, and an examination card Oct., 1852-1853, which is signed by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell as professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Physiology. Dr. Watson returned to Chatham County after his graduation. His house was destroyed during the Civil War. The portion of his medical library saved and stored in a neighboring attic eventually was placed in the historical Collection of the library of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Cotton firm from Wilmington, N.C., that for a short period was probably the largest cotton exporting house in the United States. Collection includes account books, ledgers, journals, cashbooks, purchase and sales journals, inventories, other subsidiary books, and some office files and correspondence. Goods were purchased from the Carolinas, Georgia, Texas, and other states and processed in the firm's compress facilities and sold to Great Britain, France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe.

The collection consists of an extensive, but incomplete, set of account books, remnants of the office file and James Sprunt's correspondence (personal as well as business letters and papers), and pictures. Among the account books there are long series of ledgers, journals, cashbooks, purchase books, and stock inventories that document the company's operations between the 1870s and 1950s. The ledgers date between 1889 and 1952, and there are private ledgers for 1907 through 1931. The volume of minutes covers 1919-1930, but there are a few others among the offices files along with financial statements, 1885-1915, important legal documents of the partnership and corporation, and assorted other papers.

Correspondence and other papers of James Sprunt and the company date between 1884 and 1952, but they are numerous only for 1904, 1906, 1909-1910, and 1919-1921. The letters date mostly to 1904-1910, and 1919-1921, and are largely files of James Sprunt, reflecting his activities in business and interests in secular and theological education, the Presbyterian church in the U.S., and North Carolina history. Notable correspondents and subjects are Alexander Sprunt (1815-1884), Alexander Sprunt (1852-1937), Alexander Sprunt (b. 1898), James Sprunt (1847-1924), Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison, Francis Herman Packer, John Miller Wells, John Campbell White, Edward Jenner Wood, The Laymen's Missionary Movement, and the Presbyterian mission at Kiangyin, China. Account books, minutes, and correspondence are available also for a number of domestic and foreign subsidaries and branch offices, but these are often quite fragmentary. More than thirty pictures, mostly photographs, illustrate the firm's staff, workers, physical plant, and employees as well as other scenes.

Also included are some papers representing various domestic and foreign subsidiaries and branch offices, especially Champion Compress and Warehouse Company, the Wilmington Compress and Warehouse Company, Alexander Sprunt & Son (of Delaware, a holding company), and the company's offices in New York City and Le Havre, France.

Information about the company's history can be found in: James Sprunt's letters of Nov. 6, 1908; Apr. 9, 1909; Jun. 7 and Oct. 22, 1919; an article in Wilmington's Morning Star from Feb. 11, 1921; and Dictionary of American Biography.