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John Allen Sharpe, Jr. was a Duke alumnus who served as editor of the ROBESONIAN newspaper from 1947-1982. Collection includes correspondence, clippings, and photographs, along with business records for S. A. Edmund & Co.

John Armstrong Chaloner was a celebrity and writer known for coining the catchphrase “Who’s looney now?” in the aftermath of psychiatric experiments and own legal troubles regarding his sanity. Great-grandson of John Jacob Astor; from Cobham (Albemarle County), Virginia. Collection includes business and personal correspondence, legal papers, writings and drafts by Chaloner, printed materials primarily composed of newspaper clippings, and some personal financial documents and photographs. The letters, almost half of the collection, are concerned with Chaloner’s attempts to have himself declared sane after a four-year involuntary internment in Bloomingdale Asylum at White Plains, New York.

3 letters (ALS) and an engraved portrait of Armstrong. One letter details dinner at the Shakespeare Inn.

John A. Stewman served as an engineer with the Duke Construction Company from 1928-1932. The collection includes photographs, drawings, and specs. The material ranges in date from about 1926-1932.

The John Avery Boys' Club was founded in Durham, North Carolina, in 1939. Collection comprises organizational records, primarily budget documents, but also including some letters, board meeting minutes, meeting agendas, and memoranda, dating 1939-1946. There is one letter dated 1971, regarding redevelopment of the organization's property.

Merchant and British Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Business and personal correspondence of the Backhouse family, principally of John Backhouse. Material for the 18th and early 19th centuries reflects the family's mercantile operations, including efforts to collect pre-Revolutionary debts in America. Other papers relate to Backhouse's career as Commissioner and Receiver General of the Excise Office and Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, his service as private secretary to George Canning, his service with the diplomatic corps, his art collection, and his mercantile associates in Amsterdam and Hamburg. Other subjects include the Board of Control under Canning, and the British consulates at Canton and Amoy. Family correspondence contains numerous references to the Foreign Office and to relations with Circassia, France, Greece, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Letters and diaries of Backhouse's son, George, and his wife include references to the slave trade and describe their life in Havana while he was commissary judge there. There are also thirteen Cabinet circulars (1835-1837) from the British Foreign Office and marked for return to either Backhouse or Strangways. These abstracts of intelligence were based on confidential reports received from the British ambassadors in Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Constantinople, and Petersburg, and relate chiefly to French, Russian, and Spanish politics.

Letter (ALS). Writes to London bookseller, Mr. Bell, in regard to "this" book, probably his "Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints."

Manuscript "Observations on cholera", by Bell and dedicated to Chelius, is accompanied by letter (ALS). Letter was orignally tipped into manuscript.

John Benjamin Harris is Professor Emeritus of Management and Marketing at Virginia State University. He pioneered governmental and commercial awareness of African American advertising markets and, in the 1970s, became the Director of the Virginia State Office of Minority Business Enterprise and Special Assistant to the Governor for Minority Enterprise. The John Benjamin Harris Papers span the years 1955-1991 and include scholarly articles, corporate reports and proposals, product labels, 16mm film reels, and audio tapes. Materials represent Harris' academic and professional work at New York University and Virginia State University as well as his work for the Virginia State Office of Minority Business Enterprise. Topics touched on in the collection include minority business enterprises; minority markets and minorities (especially African Americans) as consumers; and African American mass media. In addition, the collection reflects Harris' work for the advertising industry with employers including Cunningham & Walsh, Inc., the Leo Burnett Company, Inc., and the Ted Bates Company. Brands represented include Alka-Seltzer (Miles Laboratories), Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Cleveland Electric, Eastman Kodak, Pillsbury, and Schlitz.