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Born in Union, Maine, John Emory Bryant (1836-1900) was an abolitionist, teacher, Union officer with the 8th Maine Volunteers, agent of the Freedmen's Bureau, newspaper editor and publisher, lawyer, and Republican politician in Georgia. The collection includes letters, journals, scrapbooks, writings, speeches, and printed materials related to the lives of John Emory Bryant (JEB), his wife Emma Spaulding Bryant, their daughter Emma Alice Zeller and her husband Julius Zeller and their descendants, and William Anderson Pledger who was a Republican contemporary of JEB. The bulk of the collection falls into four main divisions: the early years in Maine (1851-1860), during the American-Civil War (1861-1865), during Reconstruction in Georgia, and the later years in New York (1888-1900). Some of the materials are not original and are copies or typescripts. Of note are materials regarding Georgian Republican politics; conditions for Radical Republicans and African-Americans during Reconstruction, including correspondence with Henry McNeal Turner; historical views about the differences between the North and the South; Ku Klux Klan activity in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama; and a particularly passionate exchange between Emma Spaulding Bryant and her husband regarding her visits to a doctor about "uterine difficulties" (these 10 letters from Emma Bryant have been digitized and are available online).

Duncan McLaurin was a farmer, teacher, lawyer, and state legislator of Richmond County, North Carolina. Correspondence, bills, receipts, legal and other papers, and printed matter (1822-1872), of McLaurin and members of his family. McLaurin's papers (mainly 1822-1850) relate to economic conditions in North Carolina, South Carolina, and the U.S. in general; the development of infrastructure and education in North and South Carolina; the Civil War; politics in North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia; and national politics, including presidential elections from 1832 to 1848. Civil War topics include camp life, economic conditions, food supplies, the hope for foreign intervention, morale, conscription and desertion, the blockade of Southern ports, the battles of Murfreesboro (Tennessee), Jackson (Mississippi), Port Royal Harbor (South Carolina), Hanover Court House (Virginia), and the siege of Vicksburg (Mississippi). A large amount of correspondence from relatives in Mississippi (circa 1830-1867) concerns frontier conditions, slavery, politics, agricultural and labor problems, sectionalism and nationalism in Mississippi, Reconstruction conditions, and family affairs. There are many references to slavery, particularly in Mississippi: the sale of slaves, runaway slaves, a lynching of an African American in 1839, the fear of slave insurrections in 1856 and 1860; and the abolition movement. Includes an atlas with a list of slaves circa 1864 written on the flyleaf.

The Ground Observer Corps (GOC) was a civil defense organization run by the U.S. Air Force that enlisted volunteers to watch for and report aircraft movements. The Ground Observer Corps records include materials related to the operation of the Ground Observer Corps in the Durham area from 1952-1959. The collection includes assorted memoranda, correspondence, newsletters, forms, and recruiting materials, as well as manuals, logbooks, maps, posters, brochures, and promotional materials.

Family originally from Connecticut; later settled in Petersburg, Virginia. Correspondence, journals, memorandum books, sermons, an autograph album (1822), and other papers of Abner Johnson Leavenworth and of his son, Frederick P. Leavenworth. Sermons comprise about half of the manuscript collection. Includes pre-Civil War letters from theological students in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York; a tuition ledger for the Van Buren, Arkansas Female Seminary (1860-1862); and genealogical information on the Leavenworth family. Correspondents include Calvin Colton, Harrison Gray, Otis Dwight, Jeremiah Evarts, Samuel Lee, Benjamin Palmer, and Noah Porter.

Jones was a lawyer, collector, Confederate soldier and historian from Savannah, GA. Collection includes correspondence, journals, commonplace books, lecture notes, scrapbooks, autograph albums and other papers. The material ranges in date from 1757-1926.

This collection contains materials of the Alpha Phi chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity at Duke University from 1976 to 1985. The Alpha Phi chapter was established at Duke University in 1901 and remained active until 1970. In 1978, it was reactivated. Types of materials include correspondence, chapter evaluations, pledge rosters, scrapbooks, and printed materials pertaining to the Alpha Phi chapter from 1976 to 1985. Major subjects include student life at Duke University, re-establishment of a fraternity, accounting, initiation, community service activities, social activities, general governance, leadership, and public relations.

Planter and merchant families of New Bern (Craven County), North Carolina. Business and personal correspondence of four generations of the Biddle and Simpson families of New Bern, N.C. Most notable are the papers of John Simpson (1728-1788), locally a prominent Revolutionary figure; his son, Samuel; and his great-grandson, Samuel Simpson Biddle (1811-1872). Topics include financial affairs, including deeds, property in Boston, and the shipment of goods; activities of the Baptist Church in the New Bern area; agricultural and business interests; education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and children's education in the 19th century. Many letters were written during the Civil War and revolve around the activities of S.S. Biddle, Jr. and James W. Biddle, containing brief descriptions of campaigns, troop movements, traitors, fortifications in South Carolina, camp life, and epidemics. The collection also has 12 volumes of plantation and personal accounts, bills, and receipts, loose deeds and notes, as well as information from the estates of Samuel Simpson and William Biddle.

Correspondence, reports, speeches, drafts of bills, notes, newsletters, printed material, clippings, and other papers, relating to Henderson's service as representative from the 3rd Congressional district of North Carolina, including material relating to his work on the Post Office, Civil Service, and Public Works committees, and to civil rights, minimum wage, federal aid to education, the Vietnam Conflict, anti-poverty programs, foreign aid, tobacco, Watergate, the energy crisis of the early 1970s, and local affairs and projects in eastern North Carolina.

The Evaporated Milk Association, organized by manufacturers in 1923, issued free publications promoting the use of evaporated milk throughout the United States. This collection consists of publications with recipes, scientific studies, and stories encouraging the consumption of canned evaporated milk. These pamphlets and booklets were donated to Duke University Libraries in the 1930s by the Evaporated Milk Association. Collection also includes engineering documents about the design of evaporated milk facilities.

Correspondence of Peter Eltinge, an officer in the 156th New York Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, relating to his service in the Dept. of the Gulf (1863-1864), Maryland and Virginia (1864), and Georgia and the Carolinas (1865), participation in the occupation of Georgia; and operation of a grocery store in Memphis, Tenn., and speculation in cotton after the war. Topics include politics, temperance, economic conditions, Black soldiers in the Union Army, and Black agricultural laborers during Reconstruction. Also, naval records and other papers of George P. Lord of Camden, Del., brother-in-law of Peter Eltinge, chiefly relating to his duty as a navel officer on ironclads of the Mississippi Squadron (1861-1865), including the U.S.S. Chillicothe, U.S.S. Ozark, and U.S.S. Osage. Topics include the Red River Expedition of 1864 and the regulation of commerce on the Mississippi River.

Papers of militia officer and customs collector Joseph Jones of Petersburg, Va., and of his children and grandchildren, including business, personal, and military correspondence, deeds, Virginia militia records, general orders, Treasury Dept. circulars, lists of licensed vessels, letters regarding western lands, and papers relating to the port of Petersburg, Va. Correspondents include John Adams, William H. Crawford, Albert Gallatin, Richard Bland Lee, James Madison, Timothy Pickering, John Randolph, and John Tyler.

Basil Lee Whitener (1915-1989) was a U.S. Representative from Gastonia, N.C. Collection includes correspondence between Whitener and his constituents, other congressmen, and government officials, legislative materials, drafts of bills, financial papers, speeches, invitations, printed material, clippings, photographs, and other papers, chiefly from congressional files (1957-1968), relating to issues of national importance during the 1960s, including the Vietnam War, crime legislation, gun control, riots, civil rights legislation, foreign aid, social security, and the Taft-Hartley Act. Correspondents include Sam Ervin, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, and Strom Thurmond.

Planter, of Charleston, S.C. Correspondence and other papers of Grimball, of his family, and of the VanderHorst family. The bulk of the material is for 1840-1900 and pertains to the life of a planter during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Correspondence concerns life in the Confederate services, wartime depredations in South Carolina, the Confederate migration to Mexico and life and politics in that country after 1865, and life and economic conditions in the South during Reconstruction.

Army officer, of Caldwell Co., N.C. Correspondence, diary, legal documents, account books, mercantile records, surveying records, and other papers (chiefly 1838-1880) of Lenoir, of his father, William Lenoir, and of his children. The early papers concern horse breeding, legal matters, deism in North Carolina (1790s), and the international situation (1790s). Thomas Lenoir's papers make up the majority of the collection and relate to the settlement of his father's estate, activities of his brother in Tennessee and his sons at the University of North Carolina, and antebellum agriculture in North Carolina. Postwar letters pertain mainly to politics, agriculture, cattle diseases, family matters, student life at the University of North Carolina and at Davis Military School, Winston (now Winston-Salem), N.C., North Carolina militia, and Civil War reminiscences. Correspondents include W. J. Bingham, Calvin J. Cowles, Charles F. Deems, S. F. Patterson, Lewis Williams.

Recorded earlier as the Benson Family Papers. Includes materials from the related families of Elias Benson, physician, of Marion Co., Alabama, and John Ford Thompson, officer of the Alabama Militia. The families emigrated from Greenvilee and Spartanburg counties, S.C., to Alabama in the early 1800s. Personal correspondence and business papers of the Benson, Thompson, and Moore families who migrated from Greenville County and Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to Alabama. Correspondence between the groups in South Carolina and Alabama is concerned for the most part with family matters. However, political events are occasionally discussed, and a number of letters, 1836-1840, deal with the Alabama militia. The collection includes letters reflecting conditions in Alabama during the Civil War; several items on medical education at the University of Louisiana (Tulane University), 1866-1868; and records of the Marion (Alabama) Grange, No. 95, 1873-1876.

Public official, Indian agent, and Territorial Governor of Utah (1857-1861). Family and political correspondence, mainly of the 1850s, with material on Mormon history, including the "Mormon War," and on frontier and pioneer life. Includes journals, scrapbooks, letter books, and proceedings pertaining to councils and negotiations with the Blackfoot Indians and other tribes (1855). Letters of Cumming's wife, Elizabeth Wells Randall Cumming, describe incidents on her trip to Utah with her husband when he was named governor with frontier conditions and Indian troubles. Cumming's official letter books contain correspondence to James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, Howell Cobb, John B. Floyd, Albert S. Johnston, Brigham Young, and others. Additional correspondents include W.W. Bibb, J.S. Black, William Medill, B.F. Perry, Franklin Pierce, Alexander Stephens, and G.M. Troup. Includes papers of William Clay Cumming, a brother, pertaining to his studies at Princeton University (1805) and at Litchfield Law School; his accounts of opposition to Federalism in New England; his experiences in the War of 1812; travels in the Mississippi Valley and the South; and a few comments on Brazil and Uruguay (1816). The collection also contains papers from Thomas Cumming.

W. Bryan Bolich (1896-1977) served as a Professor of Law at Duke University from 1927 to 1966. Papers contain family memorabilia, general correspondence, photographs, an oral history, diaries, course notes, writings, drafts of statutes revisions, and clippings. Major subjects include family work at Southern Railway in Forsyth County, N.C., Duke Law School curriculum development and reorganization, Law Day, the Rhodes Scholarship, Trinity College Class of 1917 alumni activities, Law School Alumni Association, North Carolina House of Representatives, and property and alien rights laws authored with the North Carolina General Statute Commission.

The collection includes papers and volumes created by John McIntosh Kell (1823-1900) of the U.S. Navy and his family. Family correspondence includes letters from John McIntosh Kell's period of service in the U.S. Navy, family and buisness papers from the Kell, Nathan Campbell Munroe, and Tabitha Easter (Napier) Munroe families discussing Georgia policitcs and other local events. Volumes in the collection include logs of the U.S. frigate Savannah, the U.S.S. Falmouth, and Shark. There is also an unpublished manuscript by Kell's wife and scrapbooks she maintained. Includes family legal papers, genealogical materials, writings, and miscellaneous papers.

The non-profit agency International Monitor Institute (IMI) operated between 1993 and 2003, primarily to assist international war-crimes tribunals by collecting, indexing and organizing visual evidence of violations of international human rights law. The International Monitor Institute Records, Burma Videotapes span the dates 1992-2002, and comprise audiovisual materials related to IMI's documentation of contemporary conflicts and human rights violations in Burma (Myanmar). These audiovisual records largely document the activities, interviews, speeches, press conferences and ceremonies of political figures, especially Aung San Suu Kyi, and document the activities of political and military institutions such figures represent, including the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Records also include extensive network and independent story packages of Burma and footage of human rights conflicts. Topics and footage cover life in Burma under military regime, refugees and refugee camps (especially Karen refugees), political prisoners, survivor stories, forced labor, Japan's role in the refugee situation, and Los Angeles protests against the SLORC and Unocal. These records include copies of approximately 268 video cassettes. The video and audio material is indexed by an extensive database developed by IMI which includes keywords, air dates, segment producer, and segment title. Acquired as part of the Human Rights Archive. Further organizational material on Burma can be found in the International Monitor Institute Records, also at the Rubenstein Library.