World’s Fastest Typist
Source: University Archives UA55-01-8226
Staff Person: Arthur Carlson
Description:
This picture from the University Archives features Cortez W. Peters, Sr who held the world record as the World’s Fastest Typist (UA55-01-8226). Born in Maryland, Peters achieved a then world record 141 words per minute in 1925. With the advent of improved typing technology, Peters eventually peaked at 180 words per minute perfectly, a record that would stand until his son, Cortez W. Peters, Jr. surpassed his father. A favorite guest of television variety show hosts, he also aided the Allied war effort during WWII by acquiring and donating typewriters for use by the Federal government. A decade later, Peters opened with his son the first black-owned typing schools, the Cortez Peters Business Schools, featuring offices in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. The schools served over 45,000 students. He visited East Carolina to meet with business students during summer school sessions that allowed blacks to attend classes before the formal desegregation of East Carolina. Peters passed in 1964 at the age of 57 in Washington, DC.
Posted by carlsonar under University Archives, photographs and Tags: African-American History, Business Education, East Carolina College, East Carolina University
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Farewell to China
Source: James N. Joyner Papers (#429), East Carolina Manuscript Collection
Staff Person: Lynette Lundin
Description:
James Noah Joyner was born in 1888. He attended the University of North Carolina, and was later employed by the British-American Tobacco Company (B.A.T.) in China from 1912 to 1935. He worked and traveled the whole time he was in China. He maintained close ties with his family in North Carolina and later managed the family farm. He became the division manager before coming home to North Carolina and died at the age of 83.
These photographs are of a farewell group in Nanking, China, (B.A.T.) managers, fellow employees and James Joyner before he returns to North Carolina.
Posted by Lynette Lundin under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, photographs and Tags: business, China, tobacco industry
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Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, ca. 1876
Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ca. 1876
Source: Elihu A. White Papers, #14.11.a (P-14/6)
Staff Person: Jonathan Dembo
Description: This photograph of Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia dates from the 1870s. It’s name derives from the fact that it was originally built in 1770-1773 to serve as a meeting hall for the Carpenters’ Companies of the City and County of Philadelphia, the nation’s oldest surviving trade guild. The handwritten caption on the verso of the photograph reads: “Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. Birthplace of Liberty. Built 1770. The Hall where the first Continental Congress was held Sept. 5 1774″. Located on Chestnut Street it is only a few blocks away from the Pennsylvania State House, better known as Independence Hall. The First Continental Congress, met in Carpenter’s Hall, in September and October of 1774 because the State House was being used by the Colonial Assembly at the time. It was during its sessions, here, that the Congress banned the further importation of slaves and to end the slave trade between the colonies. The Hall later served as a hospital for wounded and sick soldiers, both British and American during the Revolution. Designed by architect Robert Smith (1722-1777), the building is a two-story Georgian style brick structure. It is one of the few building extant in the 1770s that continues to be used for its original purpose. Over the years, Carpenter’s Hall has housed a wide variety of organizations, including Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society and his Library Company of Philadelphia. It also served as home to both the First and Second Banks of the United States. While open to the public and operated in cooperation with the National Park Service, the building is still in private hands and remains the meeting place for the Carpenter’s Company and other labor organizations. It looks today much as it did in the 1870s and 1770s. Elihu A. White (1824-1900) probably acquired the photograph on a visit to Philadelphia during the 1870s or 1880s. White was a Quaker farmer and business leader from Belvidere, North Carolina. He was also heavily involved in social reform, education, and Republican political activities. He served in a variety of local offices and was a member of the Reconstruction era State Senate 1868-1870. He served as a collector of Internal Revenue during the Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison administrations, 1879-1893. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina in the 1890s. Throughout his life White was active in a variety of local, state, and national Temperance and Prohibition organizations, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was led the campaign to prohibit the sale of alcohol in the United States.
Posted by Jonathan Dembo under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, Format, photographs, postcards and Tags: American Philosophical Society, American Revolution, Belivdere, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Buildings, Carpenter's Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, Carpenter's Hall, Chestnut Street, Collector of Internal Revenue, Elihu A. White, First Bank of the United States, First Continental Congress, Library Company of Philadelphia, North Carolina, North Carolina State Senate, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall), Philadelphia, prohibition, Quakers, Reconstruction Era, Republican Party, Robert Smith (1722-1777), Rutherford B. Hayes, Second Bank of the United States, Temperance, United States National Park Service, University of North Carolina Board of Trustees, Women's Christian Temperance Union
Comments: 1
Concrete River Steamers of World War I, ca. 1921
Source: John B. Green Collection #380.2.b
Staff Person: Jonathan Dembo
Description: Seen in the photograph above are four, unnamed, concrete-hulled river steamers at the Newport Shipping Corporation shipyard, in New Bern, North Carolina. They are obviously incomplete and unnamed. Built to solve the desperate shortage of steel for shipping during World War I, they were just one of the many innovations, from flame-throwers to tanks to aerial warfare, inspired by the “War to End All Wars”. During the first World War, steel had become so scarce that the U. S. Shipping Corporation which controlled all American shipping during the war, recommended that President Woodrow Wilson approve the construction of 24 such concrete ships. Of the 24, only 12 were built, at a total cost of $50 million. The Newport Shipbuilding Corporation of New Bern, NC was one of the companies selected to build the ships. Not one of the ships was finished in time to contribute to the war effort and were launched only in 1921, just when a huge surplus of now-unneeded shipping was beginning to flood the market. By the time the ships were completed, the war was already long over and the nation was still mired in a deep postwar recession. Just what happened to the ships built in New Bern is a matter of some conjecture. Most of the others sank or were converted to other purposes such as breakwaters, hotels, and fishing piers. It is unclear what happened to some of them. Please contact the author if you know the present location of any of the New Bern built concrete ships.
Posted by Jonathan Dembo under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, Format, photographs and Tags: boats, Concrete ships, maritime history, New Bern, Newport Shipbuilding Corporation (New Bern NC), North Carolina, Shipbuilding, ships, Shipyards, Steamers, transportation, U. S. Shipping Corporation, Woodrow WIlson, World War I
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College View Neighborhood in the 1950s
Source: Daily Reflector Negative Collection, Manuscript Collection #741
Staff Person: Maury York
Description: A family works together in 1957 to maintain the appearance of the yard of their home in the College View neighborhood.
Posted by Maury York under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, negatives (photographic), photographs and Tags: Greenville
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Russian Phrase Book
4 April 2012
Source: Special Collections Reference Collection PG2689 .U56 1943
Staff Person: Ralph Scott
Description: This restricted World War II publication by the War Department “contains the Russian words and expressions you are most likely to need.” It was designed for use by Allied service personnel serving in the Soviet Union. The book contains such useful phrases as “Help”, “I am lost”, “I am poisoned”, “He was bitten by a snake” as well as “The U.S. Government will pay you” translated into Russian. One section on communications contains the phrases “reverse the charges” and “Will you speak to anybody at that number?” Designed as handy little helps for service personnel the book was designed to be shown to the person speaking Russian, and no doubt came in handy when “in-country.” While the publication was restricted, it could be shared with “persons of undoubted loyalty and discretion.” This Army Technical Manual as well as a number of others were given to Joyner Library by Professor Larry Babits of the History Department.
Posted by Ralph Scott under Special Collections Reference, books, cultural artifacts, military records and Tags: Russian
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Photograph of Confederate veterans and daughter
Taft Family Papers #784, East Carolina Manuscript Collection
Source:
Staff Person: Dale Sauter
Description:
Today’s staff pick features an undated photograph (left to right) of Major Orren Randolph Smith, his daughter Jessica and John T. B. Hoover. Smith and Hoover were both Confederate veterans who fought in the Civil War. On the back of the photograph a statement is written that Smith created the “Stars and Bars” (the first official flag of the Confederacy), and that his daughter verified this in the 1940s. However, it is also believed that Nicola Marschall (a Prussian artist), inspired by the Austrian flag, first designed the Confederate flag. There became much conflict between the descendants of the two individuals regarding who was the first to design the flag. Nevertheless, Smith’s tombstone in Henderson, North Carolina bears the inscription “designer of the Stars and Bars”.
Posted by Dale Sauter under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, photographs and Tags: Civil War, Confederate States of America, early American history, Social Life
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Tobacco Advertising in China
Source: James N. Joyner Papers (Manuscript Collection #429)
Staff Person: Lynette Lundin
Description:
James N. Joyner (1888-1972), attended the University of North Carolina and graduated in 1910. He was employed by the British-American Tobacco Company (B.A.T.) in China from 1912 to 1935, returned to North Carolina to manage the family farm at LaGrange, and died at the age of 83. His papers reveal many aspects of the operations of the B.A.T. Company and the social life during the 1920′s and 1930′s.
This is a photograph of a group of people advertising tobacco products during his time in China.
Posted by Lynette Lundin under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, advertisements, photographs and Tags: advertising, agriculture, China, tobacco industry
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Silver Frosted Trees
Source: Wilbur Kenneth Bragg Collection, #1100.1.c
Description: Image of trees covered with frost taken around Christmastime, 1944 near an American Army camp named Camp Pinetree located in High Wycombe, England. This image was taken by Sgt. Wilbur Kenneth Bragg, a photographer in the 942nd Engineer Aviation Topographic Battalion, 8th U. S. Air Force who was stationed in England from Nov. 1942 to March 1946. The image is part of The Wilber Kenneth Bragg Collection, a collection that contains a number of photographs taken by Sgt. Bragg of wartime activities and places throughout Europe.
Posted by Nanette Hardison under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, photographs and Tags: Europe, World War II
Comments: 1
American Forces Occupy Veracruz, Mexico, 21 April 1914
USS PRAIRIE (AD-5) at the Battle of Veracruz, Mexico, 21 April 1914.
Source: John B. Green Collection #380.1.a
Staff Person: Jonathan Dembo
Description: This early combat photograph taken by an American sailor shows the first of approximately 2,300 sailors and marines from the South Atlantic Fleet and the 2nd Advanced Base Regiment landing at Veracruz, Mexico in the predawn hours of 21 April 1914. Two other marine regiments eventually arrived to support the attack. The American goal was to take possession of the port and to prevent a shipment of weapons from reaching Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta. The weapons were due to arrive that morning from Germany. The crisis had begun several weeks previously when the Mexican government had arrested 9 American sailors for entering an off-limit area in Tampico, Tamaulipas. American President Woodrow Wilson, who had earlier helped Huerta seize power, broke with him over the incident and had shifted his support to Huerta’s rival Venustiano Carranza. The caption on the photograph indicates that this particular group of Americans was from the troopship USS PRAIRIE (AD-5). The PRAIRIE, originally the Morgan Steamship Line passenger ship SS EL SOL, had been built in 1890 by William Cramp and Sons, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The United States Navy purchased her on 6 April 1898 from the Southern Pacific Company, and commissioned her as the auxiliary cruiser USS PRAIRIE. The Navy later converted her to a training ship and by 1914 she was serving as a troop transport. The initial landings went smoothly but by afternoon of the 21st sharp fighting had broken out and losses mounted on both sides. Supported by heavy fire from the ships of the Atlantic Fleet, however, the Americans quickly silenced the outnumbered and outgunned Mexicans. American losses were 22 killed and 70 wounded out of a total force of 2,300 sailors and marines; the Mexicans were almost totally annihilated. The Mexicans lost between 150 and 170 killed and between 195 and 250 wounded from a force that amounted to only about 200 soldiers. An unknown number of Mexicans civilians spontaneously volunteered to defend the town and also became casualties. The American occupation of Veracruz continued until 23 November 1914, when a coalition of South American countries – Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (the ABC Powers) — negotiated an end to the dispute. After the occupation ended, the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, the well-known publisher of the Raleigh News and Observer and a future Ambassador to Mexico, ordered that 56 Congressional Medals of Honor be awarded to Americans who served in the action, the most Congressional Medals of Honor ever to be awarded in a single battle. Ironically, the weapons the Americans had been sent to prevent the Germans from landing, were originally from the Remington Arms Company, an American firm.
Posted by Jonathan Dembo under East Carolina Manuscript Collection, Format, military records, photographs, postcards and Tags: 1st Advanced Base Regiment, 2nd Advanced Base Regiment, Argentina, Brazil, Carranza, Chile, Congressional Medal of Honor, Daniels, Huerta, Josephus, mexico, Morgan Steamship Line, Newspapers, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Publishers, Raleigh News & Observer, Southern Pacific Company, SS EL SOL, Tamaulipas, Tampico, U. S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, USS PRAIRIE (AD-5), Venustiano, Veracruz, Victoriano, William Cramp and Sons
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