Search Collection Guides

This collection (1924-2000) contains material related to the marketing of products produced by the Empire Brush Company of Greenville, North Carolina. Included are catalogues, price lists, marketing programs, advertising stickers and product wrappings, and original materials used in planographic printing of product wrappings. Although Empire Brush moved its manufacturing facility to Greenville Industrial Park in 1964, the collection also contains items relating to its pre-1964 years and some to Rubbermaid which bought Empire Brush out in 1994.

A collection (ca. 1885-1918, undated) of 55 cartes de visite and cabinet cards mounted on cardboard, a scrapbook containing 11 snapshots, a manuscript, and printed materials belonging to John Miller Faison, a North Carolina physician, Democratic Party leader, and Congressman from the N.C. Third District between 1911 and 1915.

Records (May 1940-November 1945) include mainly correspondence between Thomas William Linder of Raleigh, North Carolina, and his girlfriend (later wife) Evelyn Doris Hill of Cayce, South Carolina. Mr. Linder worked for the railroad and later in life was an engineer with Amtrak. The letters from April 1942 through August 1945 document his service in the U.S. Army with the 816th Engineer Aviation Battalion during World War II. He was promoted to corporal in September 1942. Other items include two photographs, holiday cards, a pay stub and a poem.

Collection includes papers related to the personal life and non-university activities of East Carolina University History Professor Lawrence Fay Brewster (ECU professor from 1945 to 1969) for whom the Lawrence F. Brewster Classroom Building on campus was named in 1974. Included are materials (1857-1945) related to his parents and ancestors, Brewster's early life and education through earning his Ph.D., his teaching job at Cranleigh School for Boys in St. Petersburg, Florida, and his work with the Works Progress Administration as Research Editor for the Historical Records Survey of North Carolina. The vast majority (1960-1991) of the collection concerns his work as historiographer for the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina and writing his "History of the Protestant Episcopal, The Diocese of East Carolina."

The collection contains the papers of Lavinia "Venie" Roberts (1833-1923), a native of New Bern, North Carolina who wrote an unpublished memoir of her experience during the Civil War. In addition to the memoir, the collection includes material documenting the history of New Bern, the life of wealthy white Southerners during the Antebellum and Reconstruction periods, the lives of those enslaved from the point of view of their enslavers, the efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in New Bern, and genealogical material related to the Cole and Roberts family.

Video interview with Admiral William M. A. Greene (1920-2007) on his time as a student at East Carolina Teachers College and his involvement with East Carolina University as an alumnus. Greene discusses student life, his experience as a member of the football team, teachers he had, friends he made, and values instilled by East Carolina.

Papers, certificates, photos, and artifacts of Dr. Edwin Wall Monroe. This collection contains a great deal of information regarding the development of the East Carolina School of Medicine, including planning, politics, legislation, advertisement, construction, partnerships, details of the personnel involved, groundbreakings and other ceremonies, departments, additional buildings, and community services.

Collection (1837-1985, undated) including photocopies of correspondence, deeds, receipts, statements, ledgers, bills of lading, license, reports, bulletins, genealogical, retail merchandising, letters etc.

U.S. Navy papers (1943-1945), primarily for the USS Chilton, USS Lyon, and USS Calvert, including training materials, rosters, communiques, debarkation instructions, morning orders, landing plans, plans of the day, and ship's newsletters.

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.

Papers of James Dickey (1950-1994) documenting the life and literary career of the noted Atlanta, Georgia-born American poet, novelist and essayist, including correspondence, manuscripts, photographic prints, proofs of published works, reviews of published materials, printed material, loose manuscript items transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection and oversized materials, by or about James Dickey, Louis Untermeyer, and others.

Papers of Thomas McAfee (1969) documenting the life and literary career of the noted Haleyville, Alabama-born American poet, short story writer, associate editor of the Missouri Review, and educator at the University of Missouri-Columbia, 1953-1982; consisting of an unpaged, bound, paperback, proof of his novel Rover Youngblood: An American Fable (1969).

Papers (1861-1863) including correspondence, tintype, a Bible, a comb, and two rings.