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The Picture File was created and maintained beginning in the 1950s by the Duke University Manuscript Department staff and its institutional successors as a vertical file of pictorial works separated from manuscript collections as well as acquired individually. The collection is large and diverse, with images dating from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Engravings feature prominently, with photographs a close second. The predominant genre is portraits of political and military leaders, authors, artists, physicians, scientists, and others. Members of the Duke family and others from Durham, N.C. are also present. In the Socialist Party Series there are numerous images of leader Eugene Debs. Topics range widely, with a focus on American history, including the Revolutionary and Civil Wars; history and culture of the southern U.S.; and U.S. and European politics. A significant number of individuals in the People Series are African Americans, ranging from individual studio portraits to groups of individuals and racist caricatures and cartoons; a smaller number are of Native Americans.

The United States Political Ephemera Collection contains campaign materials on both the national and state levels between the years 1856-2008. Materials are mostly related to the Democratic and Republican parties, but include materials from the American Labor party, Greenback party, League of Women Voters, Libertarian party, National Prohibitionist party, and Socialist party, as well as non-partisan materials. Materials include campaign pamphlets, flyers, form letters, newsletters, press releases, booklets, handouts, newspapers, posters, bumper stickers, and buttons.

Seventeen United States and British government-produced films on 15 reels, dealing with World War II and dating 1943 to 1946, primarily including films made explicitly to sell war bonds, as well as documentaries, training films, and anti-Japanese and anti-German propaganda.

Collection comprises 176 commercially-produced stereograph cards dating from 1898-1905, depicting scenes from the Philippine Islands during the Philippine-American War, with a few taken in the U.S. of the embarkation and return of troops. Almost all are in black-and-white, with a few in color. The large majority convey the preparations, armed conflicts, and aftermath of the war, with scenes of battlegrounds including Angeles, Luzon, Malabon, Pasay, Pasig,Taquig, Tarlac, and San Pedro Macati. Other war-related images feature military personnel, officers, troop movements, encampments, hospitals, ruins, dead soldiers, allied native troops, prisons and prisoners. In addition, there are two groups, Places and People, which feature views of ordinary citizens and their dwellings, and places such as markets, bridges, railway stations, rivers, and buildings in Dagupan, Manila, Malabon, Pasay, Pasig, and San Pedro Macati. Almost all the stereographs bear captions, dates, and the names of the publishers, chiefly Underwood & Underwood (New York), C.H. Graves (Philadelphia), Keystone View Company (Pa.), and George W. Griffith (Griffith & Griffith, Philadelphia). Some have the names of individuals, possibly the photographers.

The Pilot Mills Company was a cotton textile mill based in Raleigh, North Carolina and founded in 1892. Files in the collection include correspondence (1892-1918), legal records (1892-1922), financial records (1890-1971), plans and blueprints (1890-1971), printed material (1906), and other records relating to the mill's construction and equipping, its ownership, and its financial operations. Persons represented include co-founder William Holt Williamson.

This collection contains 33 sketch maps of locations in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. It includes a number of B. P. Baker Co. plats for a tract of land in Gates County, N.C.; plans of subdivisions and improvements in Savannah by Percy Sugden; a map of Durham, N.C., in 1867 by Lewis Blount; a map of Mississippi representing Choctaw and Chickasaw territories and missionary stations by Sarah Coffin; and a detailed plat of the Bennett & Wallace Lands in West Virginia. Maps signed by Robert Jayne, W. F. Brown, John Tebeau, and Ravenel Gignilliet are present.

Collection comprises correspondence, legal papers, business records, bills and receipts, photographs, writings, recipes, clippings, and other items relating to the life and career of businessman M.C. (Marshall Clayton) Stoner, of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and three generations of the Brewer and Stoner families from Pennsylvania and Maryland. Includes many speeches by George W. Brewer, a lawyer and senator in the Pennsylvania legislature, 1857-1859, and M.C. Stoner's father-in-law. Much of the correspondence and other items relate to coal mining and specifically to M.C. Stoner's Rocky Ridge Mining Company. There are also letters written to Stoner's daughter, Louise, chiefly from male friends.

Petition addressed "To his Excellency--The President of the Confederate States of America" from the citizens of Cripple Creek, Wythe County, Va. requesting the exemption of Dr. C.C. Campbell, the family physician for the area, to be exempted, detailed, and left in the area.

The United States Army, also referred to as the Northern, Union, or Federal army, fought against the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. This collection was assembled by Rubenstein Library out of miscellaneous and disparate archival and manuscript collections, including: U.S. Army units and regimental records, inventories, and orders; as assorted letters and correspondence from various Army soldiers and officers; maps, letterheads, and blank forms, all created or produced during the Civil War era. Many materials relate to troop movements; inventories of supplies, equipment, troops, and food; enlistment, pay, and service histories of various members of the U.S. Army; activities of particular regiments; action or battles against the Confederacy; examples of personal letters to and from soldiers' family members; reports and summaries of war conditions in Southern territories (poverty and hunger in Southern towns, destruction and seizure of property, and the difficult circumstances facing newly-freed Black populations); and other assorted bureaucratic and administrative Army records.

.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.