Furnifold McLendel Simmons (1854-1940) was a U.S. Senator and political leader from North Carolina. Collection contains correspondence (most nearly complete for the 1920s) of Simmons during a large part of his public life. The bulk of the collection deals with such routine political matters as recommendations for appointments, requests for political literature, suggestions for procedure in political campaigns, and special legislation for World War I veterans. Other items relate to reform politics and the orthodox Southern position during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, the Underwood-Simmons tariff, Wilsonian reforms, the financing of World War I, the Southern defection from Alfred E. Smith (1928), and the technique of machine politics. Correspondents include Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.

Collection contains correspondence (most nearly complete for the 1920s) of Simmons during a large part of his public life. The bulk of the collection deals with such routine political matters as recommendations for appointments, requests for political literature, suggestions for procedure in political campaigns, and special legislation for World War I veterans. Other items relate to reform politics and the orthodox Southern position during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, the Underwood-Simmons tariff, Wilsonian reforms, the financing of World War I, the Southern defection from Alfred E. Smith (1928), and the technique of machine politics. Correspondents include Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.

Addition contains primarily correspondence and clippings relating to the senatorial career of Simmons, especially his opposition to Al Smith in 1928 and his electoral defeat in 1930. Two of the letters are in regard to suffrage in North Carolina. Also includes a large number of obituaries (1940).

The papers of tobacco industrialist and philanthropist James Augustus Thomas (1862-1940) primarily concern his commercial and diplomatic dealings in East Asia, and the opening of the tobacco market in China and other countries in the early 20th century. Materials include many boxes of correspondence, print and ephemeral materials, and photographs. Correspondents include Herbert Hoover, Robert Lansing, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Sun Yat-sen. Includes materials relating to U.S.-China foreign and economic relations; the marketing of U.S. cigarettes in Asia; the British-American Tobacco Company; domestic policies and financial development in China; political events in East Asia and Europe; and philanthropy in China, including Thomas' efforts to bring Chinese students to Duke University. There are also some personal letters and three audiocassettes of an oral interview with Dorothy Read Thomas, Thomas's widow, with a typed transcript; interview topics include her life in China and St. Petersburg, Russia in the 1920s.

The papers of James Augustus Thomas comprise many folders of correspondence, printed material, and other papers (chiefly 1914-1940), related to his commercial and diplomatic dealings in East Asia and the opening of the tobacco market in China and other countries. Correspondents include Herbert Hoover, Robert Lansing, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Sun Yat-sen. There are also some personal letters.

The materials document U.S.-China foreign and economic relations; the marketing of U.S. cigarettes in Asia; the British-American Tobacco Company; U.S.-Chinese trade; domestic policies and financial development in China; political events in East Asia and Europe; American foreign policy in East Asia (1920s-1930s); and philanthropy in China, including Thomas' efforts to bring Chinese students to Duke University and other North Carolina institutions.

Printed materials in the collection include reports, economic summaries, essays, conference programs, memos, and ephemera such as admission cards, tickets, and pamphlets. Some materials relate to the World's Fair in New York, and a visit by a Chinese delegation to New York in 1915, illustrated with photographs.

Additions to the collection include three letters pertaining or written to son, Jimmy, by his parents, gelatin silver photographs and a few negatives, and three audiocassettes of an oral interview (by Duke Professor Emeritus Richard Watson) with Dorothy Read Thomas, widow of James A. Thomas, which include a typed transcript. Interview topics include her life in China and Petrograd (now St. Petersburg, Russia) where she taught school briefly; and the social life and customs in Bejing and Shanghai after she married Thomas in 1922.

There are also negative microfilm reels of the series "China Through Western Eyes: Part 3, The Papers of J.A. Thomas c.1905-1923." Positive reels have been sent to the microfilm department.

The Williams Papers span the period 1836 to 1947 with the bulk dating from 1904 to 1942. The collection contains the following series: Diaries and Reminiscences; Correspondence; Subject Files; Legal Papers; Financial Papers; Writings and Speeches; Miscellaneous; Clippings; Printed Material; and Pictures. Correspondence comprises the majority of the collection and particularly focuses on Williams's professional career during the period from 1910 to 1925 when he was editor of the Tucson Citizen and the Boston Evening Transcript. While the collection documents aspects of Williams's personal and professional life from his college days through the early 1940s, the last twenty years of his life are not included. There is as well very little information about the Teapot Dome Affair in the correspondence, which occurred during the period covered by the collection.

Williams wrote, spoke, and accumulated material about a variety of topics and concerns which are represented in different parts of the collection. Among the most prominent are Aviation and the Presidential Elections of 1916, 1920, and 1924 which are found in the Correspondence, Subject Files, Writings and Speeches, Clippings, Printed Material and Pictures Series; Military preparedness before the entry of the United States into World War I in the Correspondence, Subject Files, Writings and Speeches, and Pictures Series; Arizona's efforts to achieve statehood in the Correspondence, Legal Papers, and Writings and Speeches Series; Massachusetts politics in the Diaries and Reminiscences, Correspondence, Writings and Speeches, Clippings, and Printed Material Series; and Peace and disarmament in the Correspondence, Subject Files, Clippings and Printed Material Series. Prominent politicians such as Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover are represented in the Correspondence, Writings and Speeches, and Clippings Series. The collection would be of interest to researchers studying the League of Nations, the Republican Party during the first quarter of the 20th century, and the political and social climate in Greenville, S.C..

The Correspondence Series illustrates that as a leading spokesman for the Republican Party, Williams corresponded with many public figures concerning the topics above. After moving to Tucson, Williams became involved in Arizona's efforts to become a state. He represented the positions taken by President Taft and expressed these viewpoints in numerous editorials related to political matters. Many letters criticize Woodrow Wilson and Josephus Daniels for their policies relating to military preparedness and foreign relations. Of particular note are Williams's strong opposition to the League of Nations and his correspondence in the collection with leading opponents of the League, including Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), William Edgar Borah, Hiram Warren Johnson, and Frank Bosworth Brandegee.

Also included in the Correspondence Series is extensive family correspondence containing material about the social life and political affairs in Greenville, S.C., where Williams's father was mayor, and about his mother's family, the McBees of Lincolnton, N.C. Numerous letters were written by his uncles, Silas McBee, a noted Episcopal clergyman and editor in New York; William Ephraim Mikell, Dean of the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania; and William Alexander Guerry, an Episcopal bishop in South Carolina. There are also letters from cousins, Mary Vardrine McBee, who founded Ashley Hall, a school for girls in Charleston, South Carolina, and Alexander Guerry, who served in various positions at the University of Chatanooga and at The University of the South. Other correspondents in the series include William Howard Taft, Leonard Wood, Nicholas Murray Butler, Albert J. Beveridge, Calvin Coolidge, Frank H. Hitchcock, Charles Nagel, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Wingate Weeks.

Related collections include the Vardry Alexander McBee Papers at Duke University, the Silas McBee and the McBee Family collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the James Thomas Williams (1845-1936) Papers at the University of South Carolina, and an interview with Williams in the Biographical Oral History Collection at Columbia University.

R.C. Maxwell Company of Trenton, N.J., was one of the earliest enduring outdoor advertising companies, founded in 1894 by Robert Chester Maxwell (1873-1955) and continued to operate primarily in the New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania area until the company was sold in 2000. The R.C. Maxwell Company Records span the years 1891-2001 and include photographs and negatives, videocassettes, ledgers and account books, scrapbooks, correspondence and legal papers relating to the company's operations in outdoor advertising. Photographs and negatives in several formats (film, glass negatives, polaroid prints) document billboard designs for a variety of advertisers as well as depicting billboard and electric sign structures and their location relative to the surrounding environment. Urban locations include Times Square in New York and the Atlantic City, N.J., Boardwalk, where a number of photographs also document the Miss America beauty pageant parade and other parades in which the R.C. Maxwell Company participated. A few photographs document billboard construction and erection; there are also photographs of the Maxwell family and of Maxwell company staff and employees. Scrapbooks contain images of billboards and wall paintings produced by the Maxwell company as well as by David L. Clark, a High Point, N.C. artist and sign painter who was R.C. Maxwell's guardian. Other scrapbooks document primarily Coca-Cola signs of the early 20th century, as well as World War I support efforts including the U.S. Food Administration (under the direction of Herbert Hoover), the U.S. Fuel Administration, and Liberty Bond campaigns. Companies represented in the collection include the Boardwalk Advertising Signs Co., C&B Electric Signs Co., Trenton Advertising Co., and Trenton Poster Advertising Co. Acquired as part of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

The R.C. Maxwell Company Records span the years 1891-2001 and include photographs and negatives, videocassettes, ledgers and account books, scrapbooks, correspondence and legal papers relating to the company's operations in outdoor advertising. Photographs and negatives in several formats (film, glass negatives, polaroid prints) document billboard designs for a variety of advertisers as well as depicting billboard and electric sign structures and their location relative to the surrounding environment. Urban locations include Times Square in New York and the Atlantic City, N.J., Boardwalk, where a number of photographs also document the Miss America beauty pageant parade and other parades in which the R.C. Maxwell Company participated. A few photographs document billboard construction and erection; there are also photographs of the Maxwell family and of Maxwell company staff and employees. Scrapbooks contain images of billboards and wall paintings produced by the Maxwell company as well as by David L. Clark, a High Point, N.C. artist and sign painter who was R.C. Maxwell's guardian. Other scrapbooks document primarily Coca-Cola signs of the early 20th century, as well as World War I support efforts including the U.S. Food Administration (under the direction of Herbert Hoover), the U.S. Fuel Administration, and Liberty Bond campaigns. Companies represented in the collection include the Boardwalk Advertising Signs Co., C&B Electric Signs Co., Trenton Advertising Co., and Trenton Poster Advertising Co.

Approximately 15,000 photographs, dating up to around 1952, have been described in the searchable ROAD Database (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions). The numbered and indexed black-and-white photographs and negatives (along with a limited number of glass negatives) include images of billboard and electric spectacular executions (illuminated billboards); road shots showing the approach views to billboard structures; images of Maxwell advertising structures; and images of urban and rural billboard displays in various states, primarily Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including a number of images of Times Square in New York and the Atlantic City, N.J. boardwalk. Because the majority of photographs show the billboards in their surroundings, the images provide a snapshot of the people and buildings near the billboard.