Search Collection Guides

Papers (1830 – 2010, undated) [Bulk: 1940-1970] documenting the life of Robert Lee Humber, Jr., who was born 30 May 1898 – and died 10 November 1970, in Greenville, North Carolina; after attending local schools he earned a BA from Wake Forest College, 1921; he then attended Oxford University in the United Kingdom as a Rhodes Scholar, 1921-1923; he then earned a MA from Harvard University in 1936; he moved to Paris, France, in 1926, where he married and served as an American Field Service fellow, 1926-1928, and subsequently earned a fortune as an international lawyer, art dealer, and businessman, 1930-1940, until the Fall of France, in 1940, when he, his wife, and their two sons, John and Marcel, fled the German invasion - his infant daughter Eileen died during their escape - and he returned to North Carolina, where he purchased a farm on Davis Island, established a legal career, and devoted himself to public service and to a wide range of philanthropic causes, as an educator, civic, cultural, political and religious leader; beginning in 1940, he became well-known nationally and internationally for establishing and leading the World Federation movement as a way to promote lasting world peace through international law; statewide for persuading the General Assembly and the Kress Foundation of New York to fund and establish the North Carolina Museum which opened in 1956; also as an art collector and patron of local and regional volunteer organizations; as a Democratic state senator from Pitt County, 1958-1964; as an educator who led the effort to create Pitt Technical Institute (later Pitt Community College); as a leader in the Southern Baptist denomination becoming a member of the Board of Trustees of Wake Forest College and other Baptist institutions; and as an attorney and business leader and developer; additionally, the collection includes historical files documenting the history of the World Federation in the United States, compiled by his son, John Leslie Humber.

This collection (1791-1960) documents the horse and mule business, farm operations, land transactions, saw mill operation, and other business enterprises of Edward Cyrus Winslow (b. 1886) of Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N.C. Included in the collection are correspondence, financial and legal records such as account books, ledgers, bills and receipts, contracts with other mule dealers, promissory notes, agricultural liens and chattel mortgages, deeds, and lease and rental agreements. Also included are superior court records, blueprints of farm tracts and dairy equipment, printed material, business and family photographs, and a small quantity of family correspondence.

The Nathaniel Pettit Joy Collection (1913-1919 [Bulk: 1918-1919], undated) consists primarily of letters he and his wife Mary received from two New Jersey soldiers and two New Jersey sailors written to Nathaniel Pettit Joy and his wife Mary of Groveville, New Jersey. The soldiers, Raymond "Bud" Danley and William "Bill" Inman were privates in the Headquarters Company of the 309th Infantry Infantry, 78th Division of the American Expeditionary Force; they wrote from England, France and Fort Dix (New Jersey); the sailors were A. C. Griffiths sailor aboard the battleship USS ARIZONA in 1918-1919; and Cousin Edwin, who served aboard the USS SIBONEY, a hospital ship, 1918-1919; the collection also includes several miscellaneous items, including French postcards, photographs of unidentified soldiers and sailors, and a letter written from a Cpl. Walter P. Rogers, who was a guard at a Russian prisoner of war camp in Chemnitz, Germany early in 1919.

Papers (1892-1940, 1960-1964, 1972, 1988) consisting of correspondence, pamphlets, photographs, clippings, newspapers and a book pertaining to the life of Rev. David Wells Herring, a Baptist missionary in China. The book titled Papa Wore No Halo was written about Herring by his daughter Susan Herring Jefferies Taynton.

Papers (1777-2022) relating to John Baxton Flowers III academic career, family history and Scottish genealogy (Flowers, Kennedy, and Thompson families of Wayne County, NC), historic preservation, horticulture and garden history. Included are correspondence, financial and legal papers, academic records, newspaper clippings, photographs, typescripts, genealogical material, publications, certificates, house plans, watercolor drawings, and newsletters.

Papers (1890-1974) consisting of correspondence, reports, pamphlets, speeches, conference records, minutes, publications, newspapers, agenda, photographs, and tapes related to the career of John A. Lang, Jr. He served as president of the National Student Federation of America (1933-1935), Assistant Director of Education Programs, Civilian Conservation Corps (1935-1938), director of the N.C. National Youth Administration (1938-1942), and administrative assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force (1964-1971) among other positions.

Papers (1941-1968) including correspondence, orders, briefings, speeches, printed material, photographs and miscellaneous items.

Papers (1819-1872) of Thomas Sparrow (1819-1884), a Washington, N.C., lawyer until the outbreak of the Civil War. He was commissioned a captain in the Confederate Army in 1861 and served at Fort Hatteras until he was taken prisoner by Union forces in August of that year. After the war he returned to Washington and represented Beaufort County in the North Carolina General Assembly in 1870 and 1881. Papers include correspondence, military papers, prisoner of war diary kept at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, articles, essays, speeches, accounts, clippings, genealogical notes, and Sparrow family Bible records. Also included are letters (1858-1881) written by Thomas Sparrow's son George Attmore Sparrow (1845-1922) to him describing life in Okaw/Arcola, Illinois, at Hillsborough Military Academy, in military service as a Confederate soldier, and in his post-war life as a farmer and lawyer and later as a Presbyterian minister.

Rep. Howard Chapin Papers (1947-2000) primarily pertaining to his nine terms in the North Carolina General Assembly from Washington, NC, 1974-1992, including personal correspondence, clippings, materials relating to his service on committees, and artifacts he received relating to the bicentennials of Washington, NC and the United States, 1975-76.

Papers (2/23/1862 - 12/26/1868) consisting of a pocket notebook belonging to James H. Mills, Sergeant of Company I, 44th Regiment North Carolina Troops, the "Eastern Tigers," a unit recruited in Pitt County, including orders, inventories, muster and supplies lists related to the Civil War and a few post-war account records.

Papers (1975-1978) [bulk 1977-1978] relating to McNeill Smith's campaign for the U. S. Senate in the 1978 North Carolina Democratic Primary Election, including brochures, campaign statements, press releases and newspaper articles.

This collection contains three letters (1933, 1940) written by Methodist Episcopal missionary Helen G. Moore who was stationed at Nagasaki, Japan, a Christmas card containing photographs of two unidentified Japanese children, and Japanese stamps. The letters were written as she traveled through Seoul, Korea, and Peking, China, in 1933, and from Nagasaki in 1940 when she described a recent visit to Shanghai, China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Papers (1929-1974) of Rear Admiral Wilson Durward Leggett, Jr., U.S. Naval Academy graduate of 1920 and Tarboro, North Carolina, native, including correspondence, photographs and photograph album, newspaper clippings, an order book, newsletters, journals, scrapbook, etc., documenting his Naval career and work with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Science and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

Original and typescript copy of "A Nurse's Education", notes by Mattie Shackleford while at Norfolk Protestant Hospital.

Photocopied selections from the "Transactions … Medical Society of the State of North Carolina" and a photograph of the annual meeting of the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina. Photocopies include information on the Pitt County Medical Society (PCMS).