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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.

Tobacco manufacturer, resident of Durham, North Carolina, and Tokyo, Japan. The papers of Edward James Parrish primarily consist of business and personal papers, correspondence (chiefly 1900-1921), and photographic collections of Parrish and of his wife, Rosa Bryan Parrish. Items include a notebook on tobacco trade in China and Japan (1894-1900), letter books (1900-1904), and a scrapbook created by their only daughter Lily Parrish. Turn-of-the-century photograph albums relate to the Parrishes time in Japan (circa 1899-1905) and form a large series of their own. Two were assembled by Kichibei Murai of the Murai Brothers, a Tokyo cigarette manufacturing company of which Parrish was the first vice-president; 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 seven fine souvenir albums with large hand-tinted albumen prints from noted Japanese studios, including that of Kusakabe Kimbei. There are also personal photograph and postcard albums of the Parrish's travels in Japan, Korea, and China, and Mrs. Parrish's reminiscences and impressions of her life in Japan. Loose family photographs and portraits dating from about 1890 to 1920 round out the collection.

Lawyer and U.S. Representative from North Carolina. Correspondence, legal documents, and other papers (chiefly 1850-1870 and 1912-1937) of John Humphrey Small; of his father-in-law, Col. Rufus W. Wharton, lawyer and planter; and of Col. David M. Carter, lawyer, planter, businessman, and court official, of Fairfield, N.C. Small's papers form the bulk of the collection and concern his North Carolina agricultural interests, his legal practice, his activities in Congress, river and harbor improvements, the Intracoastal Waterway, patronage, Southern financial conditions, U.S. and North Carolina politics, World War I labor problems, and the 1929 Depression. The papers before 1850 are mainly deeds, family papers, and legal documents. Wharton's and Carter's papers relate largely to the legal profession and to their agricultural interests.

Lithography company founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in about 1847. The Strobridge Lithographing Company Advertisements span the years 1910 through 1954, documenting much of the company's printed poster advertising work from that era. All images are black and white. The core of the collection, the Image Files Series, consists of around 1000 8x10 photographs ("A" images) of advertising designs, and a similar number of smaller printed cards (approx. 5x7 to 5x8, "B" images) of outdoor advertisement designs. The images are accompanied by three different Access Files to be used to browse the collection. These files are in the form of image photocopies ( "job tickets" ) and catalog cards. Most images are of poster (billboard or transit card) designs, but there are also some photographs of tabletop display advertising, window cards and other point-of-purchase displays. The collection documents advertising during a time when transportation was changing in America, and the automobile was gaining in popularity. Billboards began to replace smaller posters, accommodating a more mobile public. It was then that Strobridge turned from its emphasis on circus and theater posters (not represented in the collection) to billboard ads for mass-produced products. Many different products are featured, but perhaps the two most prominent and well-represented campaigns are those for Camel cigarettes and Palmolive soaps. The images form a valuable reference collection of advertising designs, relevant for researchers from a variety of disciplines including commercial artwork, advertising history and design, and popular culture. The collection documents outdoor advertising design during the first part of the twentieth century for what were mostly national brands. Numerous examples are from the era of hand-drawn and painted designs, often signed by artists including Norman Rockwell, Howard Scott, and Dr. Seuss (see his designs for the product Flit). Rarely, an artist is listed on the back of the image. Later designs from the 1940s and 1950s include photographic images, often peppered with celebrity likenesses including John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, and Charlton Heston. Many of the celebrity advertisements promoted tobacco products. Some designs are clearly war-era, such as advertisements depicting a 1943 female factory worker, or one from Schlitz (1942) mentioning war bonds.

The collection consists of approximately 9,000 film feet (about 5.5 hours across 13 reels) of 16mm home movies, shot from the 1930s to the 1970s by Mary Dowdell Ashley. The footage consists primarily of Ashley's family and community life in Montgomery, Alabama and the Gulf Coast area.

Burr Lamberton Robbins was president of the General Outdoor Advertising Company (GOA). The Burr L. Robbins Papers span the years 1936-1975, and chiefly consist of three scrapbooks containing photographs, clippings, periodicals, memorabilia, and promotional materials. The majority of clippings are from advertising industry publications and Chicago newspapers. The loose materials section also includes administrative records. The collection primarily documents Robbins' career in outdoor advertising with the General Outdoor Advertising Company (GOA), and his involvement with professional advertising organizations, particularly the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA). Professional and outdoor advertising themes in the scrapbooks include Robbins' career advancement; his public speaking engagements on the role of advertising agencies in America; professional meetings and conferences; the history of GOA; outdoor advertising history; tension between citizens' groups and outdoor advertisers over billboard zoning; and legal decisions. The scrapbooks also touch on topics of personal interest to Robbins, including news about the Delevan Lake Improvement Association; Robbinswood Farm sheep; and family events. Photographs in the scrapbooks are primarily of professional meetings or conferences, or publicity events. Loose materials include items that were once part of the scrapbooks, and separate items. This section includes a notebook of 1942 photographs and papers about the 13th National Contest and Exhibit of Outdoor Advertising Art. Photographs of the three prizewinning posters, created by John DeLooy, Andrew Loomis, and Albert Staehle, are included in this notebook. Also in this section is a spiral-bound GOA publication, Image with Words, that documents a 1963 Chevrolet electric outdoor advertising campaign.

William Alexander Smith was a textile manufacturer and businessman of Ansonville, North Carolina. Collection includes correspondence, account books, business records, and other papers, relating to Smith's career as a merchant, cotton textile manufacturer, farmer, and investor. Includes material relating to the family's agricultural, mercantile, and milling enterprises during the antebellum period, with references to Smith's interests in education, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Civil War, and the United Confederate Veterans, and to automobile manufacture, banking, commercial finance, cosmetics, furniture, insurance, lumbering, patent medicine, personal loans, self-propelled railway passenger cars, real estate development, tobacco processing, and the mining of gold in Alaska and Montana, copper in Arizona, and mica in North Carolina. Correspondents include Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire, Francis Johnstone Murdoch, and George Stephens.

Edwin L. and Terry A. Murray, brothers residing in Durham, N.C., have been collectors of comic books and other pulp culture for forty years. The Murray Fanzine Collection contains approximately 1150 comic book, science fiction and fantasy fanzines, collected by Edwin and Terry Murray, representing fandom in these genres from the early 1950s to 2019, as well as advertisements for fandom gatherings and conventions. The collection is organized into one series that is loosely separated into two sections: the first, and larger, consists of comic book fanzines ranging from the beginning of comic book fandom in the early 1960s to the retrospective volumes published in the early 2000s. The fanzines include reviews, advertisements and commentary, as well as biographical information on a variety of artists and writers, including Carl Barks, R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Steven King, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Though an assortment of superhero and comic strip characters published by DC, Dell and Marvel Comics, among others, are cited, one character in particular, Donald Duck, recieves more attention than the others. The second section consists of a sampling of science fiction and fantasy fanzines (including fantasy fiction) ranging from 1952 to the early 1980s, including information on artists and writers such as Vaughn Bode and Harlon Ellison. Most of the fanzines in the collection were printed independent of large scale publishing techniques, utilizing ditto, mimeograph, hectograph and, later, photocopy, on paper of varying degrees of quality. There are also three additional accessions (2010-0107, 2019-0078, 2019-0103), which have been minimally processed.

Collection contains business and financial papers, chiefly of Washington Duke. Business and financial papers relate to the tobacco and textile industries and include some early financial records of W. Duke, Sons and Company. Other financial records pertain to Duke's generosity to relatives and to educational institutions such as Trinity College (now Duke University). Personal papers consist of correspondence, the Duke family genealogy, photographs, and memorabilia from the dedication of the Duke Homestead.