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This collection consists of 48 deeds (1801-1907), legal documents and notes related to land ownership in Pitt County, North Carolina, in the area that became Ayden. The documents pertain mainly to the Harris, McGlohon/McLawhorn, and Cannon families, especially William Henry Harris, the founder of Ayden. Also included are a blueprint plat of Ayden (June 21, 1890) and copies of 2 clippings (1991-1992) about the founding of Ayden. Additional items which have been placed in the East Carolina University Archives are a 1915 yearbook for East Carolina Teachers Training School (now ECU), a 1915 folded card for the Junior-Senior Reception at ECTTS, and a calling card all belonging to ECTTS student Katherine (Kate or Katie) Eugenia Sawyer. This collection is donated by the family of John William Sawyer.

Records (1910-1956) including correspondence, financial records, minutes, legal papers, estate records, World War I and II, pamphlets, and miscellaneous.

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

Papers (1845-1937) of Pasquotank County, N.C. farming and mercantile family, including correspondence, legal papers, financial records, account books, ledgers, a map, cost of advertisements, business cards, etc. Also glass negatives of Hollowell family members, house exterior, room interiors, logging scenes, beach scenes, Nags Head hotel, and an 1899 classroom cadaver dissection scene.

Papers (1942-1962) of U.S. Navy enlisted man, who retired as Chief Aviation Boatswain's Mate (E-7) pertaining to his service aboard the USS INTREPID, USS BONHOMME RICHARD, USS BOXER, USS TICONDEROGA, USS PINE ISLAND, USS FORRESTAL, and various shore installations, including 3 8 mm film strips (ca. 550 feet) of flight operations aboard the USS BOXER, 1952, clippings, printed materials, manuscript materials, and photographic prints.

Collection (1852-2014) includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, printed materials, and other items compiled by retired East Carolina University English professor emeritus Dr. Ralph Hardee Rives (1930-2016) relating primarily to the Hardee - Rives and related families of North Carolina and the United Kingdom, the history of Eastern North Carolina (especially Halifax County and the town of Enfield), the United Methodist Church in Eastern North Carolina, state and local and national politics, and his charitable and philanthropic interests. The earliest original documents cover the period from 1852 through the Civil War and World War I.

Papers (ca. 1890-2008, undated) of Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, a member of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1906, including correspondence, orders, diaries, memoirs, photographic prints and negatives, certificates and commissions, legal papers, printed forms, ephemera, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, maps, museum objects, broadsides and posters and publications related to his education, family and personal life, in Tacoma, Washington, Moscow, Idaho, and Washington, D.C.; his naval career; his life in retirement, 1946-1958; and also including genealogical and historical essays compiled by his son, Commander Robert Lee Ghormley, Jr. (U.S. Navy ret.). Vice Admiral Ghormley served in China, Nicaragua, World War I, and in Haiti. Between the world wars he had several appointments and also served as commander of the destroyer USS Sands and the battleship USS Nevada. During World War II, he saw service as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Special Naval Observer in Europe, August 1940-April 1942; as Commander, South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force, and the battle for Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands, April-October 1942; as Commander of the Fourteenth Naval District and the Hawaiian Sea Frontier, 1943-1944; and as Commander of United States Naval Forces in Europe, 1944-1945.

Papers (1705-1983, undated) including correspondence, diaries, genealogical records, legal and financial records, club records, photographs, clippings, surveys, and miscellaneous.

Collection includes a detailed appraisal (November 5, 1946) of the Greenville Tobacco Company, Inc., in Greenville, North Carolina, by General Valuations Company, Inc., Appraisers and Engineers of New York.

Papers (1872-1874, 1879, 1885) including correspondence, clippings, letters, crates de visite of Dall, and miscellaneous.

Collection includes 25 World War II era U.S. Ration Books issued to a Greene County, North Carolina, family and to a familly in Long Beach, California. Also included are a Fuel Oil Ration Book, 3 Mileage Ration Books and an A Gas Ration sticker. These ration books document the experience of necessities being rationed during the war, and the physical description and familial connections of the people to whom the ration books were issued. Also included are unused V Mail Stationery, and 12 pin-ups which could be mailed to U.S. soldiers during the war. An additional 18 images document an Army Day parade held in Gorizia, Italy, on April 6, 1946. This group consists primarily of photographic prints depicting military vehicles and personnel in procession, including scenes of an engineers wrecker truck, spectators lining the route of march, a two and one half ton truck transporting a tractor on a trailer, a Brockway truck, an M 24 tank of the 752d Tank Battalion, armored cars, a 105 mm howitzer with a detailed view of its recoilless mechanism, a 57 mm antitank gun, elements of the 105th Field Artillery, and the S P Shore Patrol Band.

Lemuel Showell Blades, III, (1933-2011) began his career as a lawyer and then went on to become the president of the Norfolk Telephone Company while serving on a number of committees in Elizabeth City, and New Bern, North Carolina. This collection spans from 1711-2011 and includes newspaper clippings, photographs, genealogical charts, letters, oral histories, books, videos, and career files. The strength of this collection is the genealogical overview of the several generations linking to the Blades family.

Papers (1863, 1946-1967) including correspondence, speeches, news releases, pamphlets, etc. relating to a local leader in the Ku Klux Klan in Eastern North Carolina.

This collection contains a logbook (1891-1929) kept by William Hadlock Gooding (b. June 1, 1856, d. September 7, 1936), the purser for the barkentine Olive Thurlow. During this time, Olive Thurlow, which operated out of Philadelphia, travelled to New York, Boston, Savannah, Washington, Port Royal, Barbadoes, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. Other entries in the logbook refer to the settling of accounts in Boston by Gooding for his time with the bark Grace Deering (1901-1902); and accounts (1906-1909, 1925-1929) related to his life in Yarmouth, Cumberland County, Maine.