The Edward James Parrish Papers include business and personal correspondence (chiefly 1900-1921) of Parrish and of his wife, Rosa Bryan Parrish. There are also various bills, a notebook on tobacco trade in China and Japan (1894-1900), letter books (1900-1904), photographic collections, several postcard albums, and a scrapbook created by Lily Parrish.
The papers also include Rosa Parrish's reminiscences and impressions of her life in Japan, as well as her writings on the status of women. There are also materials relating to Kichibei Murai's family and to Murai Brothers Company in Japan, close partners and friends of the Parrish family.
Photographic formats include glass plate negatives, loose prints, photo postcards, and over 20 albums. Two of the photograph albums date from the late 19th century and were owned by Kichibei Murai; they contain photographs of his residences and of banks, mines, oil fields, farms and tobacco factories in which he had an interest. Also included are black-and-white late 19th and early 20th century loose albumen and early gelatin silver prints of family members.
The photograph albums document the Parrish family's travels in Japan, China, and Niagara Falls, and include personal snapshots taken at these locations as well as in their home of Durham, N.C.; there are also many commercial souvenir photographs from Japan. The latter take the form of large finely handtinted albumen prints of Japanese scenery, landscapes, cultural sites and temples, clothing, entertainment, and transportation, housed in high-quality souvenir photograph albums; many of these feature highly decorated lacquer inlay covers, elaborate bindings. Most include captions. The studio of Kusakabe Kimbei, a noted photographer, created many of the prints and albums, and the work of other notable studios have also been identified.
Edward J. Parrish (1846-1920) and Rosa Bryan Parrish (1852-1927) were residents of Durham, North Carolina, and traveled to Japan and China in connection with Parrish's work as a representative for American Tobacco and the British-American Tobacco Company. During his successful operations in Japan establishing a tobacco market, Parrish had conferred upon him by the Emperor of Japan the "Third Order of Honor," and was decorated with the "Medal of Sacred Treasure."
Edward James Parrish was born in 1846 in the tiny community of Round Hill, in what was then Orange County, N.C. (now northern Durham County), son of D.C. Parrish. He attended Trinity College, and served for a short time in Company "K," 4th N.C. Cavalry, in the last year of the Civil War.
He married Rosa Bryan of Chatham County in 1870 and moved to the small post-Civil War railroad depot named Durham around 1871 to establish a grocery and confectionery store. He then became a tobacco auctioneer, and built the first brick tobacco warehouse in Durham in 1879 (later destroyed by fire). The Parrish family's primary home in Durham before moving to Japan in 1898 was a large Second Empire structure on Main and Dillard; upon his early retirement around 1904, he remodeled "Lochmoor," originally a farmhouse on North Roxboro Road (both residences were later demolished). Their only daughter, Lily, married Professor R. L. Flowers, of Trinity College.
Source: Ancestry.com; NCpedia; Durham-Orange-Wake County NcArchives Biographies, USGenWeb. A 1916 biography of Parrish, reproduced on the USGenWeb site, incorrectly states his birthplace as "Pound Hill."
