Search

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.

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.

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.