About the Collage

collage

About the Collage

The Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits collage (located at the top of each page of this web site) was created in 2001 by Laurie Godwin , Director of East Carolina University ’s University Multimedia Center .

The elements of the collage include:

1. Picture of Dr. Pattie Simmons Dowell, digitized from a photo printed in the East Carolina University campus publication The Fountainhead in 1969. Dr. Dowell was the first student to enroll in 1909 and graduate in 1911 from East Carolina Teachers Training School, the founding name of East Carolina University. After graduating from ECTTS, she received a doctorate from New York University, and came back to teach at East Carolina. Dr. Dowell’s picture is on the left side of the collage. The Fountainhead article in which this picture appeared can be read in the 1st Graduation category of the ECU Centennial Exhibit ( ../ecucent/ ).

2. Greenville artist and historian Roger Kammerer’s rendering of the original cupola on ECU’s "Old" Austin building. This rendering is used with Mr. Kammerer’s permission. The 75,200 gross square foot Austin Building was built 1908/09 and the bid for the cost of construction was $32,538. The architects were Hook & Rogers of Charlotte, NC and H.W. Simpson of New Bern, NC. Austin was one of the four original buildings of the East Carolina Teachers Training School. "Old" Austin housed classrooms, an auditorium, a library, meeting rooms, and administrative offices. The building was named for Herbert E. Austin (1866-1929), a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who taught at ECTTS as a professor of Science and Geography from 1909 to 1929 and was the school's acting dean. The building was razed in 1968. A "new" Austin Building was built on campus in 1964.

3. The flowering top of a Butterfly Weed plant specimen. This wild milkweed is a principal food source for Monarch Butterflies and is a common roadside weed in North Carolina. This dried specimen was collected about 300 years ago by John Lawson. In 2001, Joyner Library obtained images of over one hundred plants collected by Lawson in 1710-11, including an image of the Butterfly Weed from which this flowering top has been cropped. Some of the images include notes handwritten by Lawson showing date and location of collection. You can view the this collection of plant specimens in the Naturalist category of the John Lawson digital history exhibit ( ../lawson/ ). These specimens are part of The Sloane Herbarium, which identifies the page containing this Butterfly Weed specimen as HS145 p62. Permission to use this image was provided to Joyner Library at East Carolina University by the Picture Library ( http://www.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/ ) of The Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom.

4. A photo of the Imperial Tobacco Company’s Leaf Packing Factory in Farmville, from the 1922 booklet The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain and Ireland), Limited. The booklet was published in Bristol, England. A copy of this booklet is available in Joyner Library’s North Carolina Collection. This image is in the Records/Photos category of the Pitt County Digital Tobacco History Exhibit ( ../tobacco ) under the item name Leaf Packing Factories of the Imperial Tobacco Co. in America: Farmville.

5. A drawing of a tobacco plant, ‘Nicotiana Tobaccum,’ executed in 1764 by Ms. Nicholas Jose Rapun and published as a frontispiece in George Arents, Jr.’s 1937 book Tobacco - Its History Illustrated…, Volume One 1507-1615 . The book, published in New York by the Rosenbach Company, is in the Rare Book Collection at ECU’s Joyner Library. This drawing is used by permission from the New York Public Library ( http://www.nypl.org ), the copyright holder of this work. A tobacco flower from Ms. Rapun’s drawing is used as a halo behind Dr. Dowell’s head on the upper left of the collage, while flowering plants are used as elements to the right of center in the collage.

6. A drawing of the steamer Bertie and a blowup of the name on the steamer’s sidewheel, taken from a broadside advertising a June 16, 1874 excursion to the Wesleyan Female College commencement in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. This broadside is part of the Askew Family Papers in the East Carolina Manuscript Collection at ECU’s Joyner Library. The full image of the broadside is in the Navigation category of the Steamers Exhibit ( ../steamers/ ).

Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits

ECU Archives | Manuscripts and Rare Books | North Carolina Collection

Joyner Library | East Carolina University

Page Updated 2 January 2003