Carolina comments |
Previous | 42 of 54 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large
Extra Large
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
|
This page
All
|
The Old Kentucky Home Rededicated in Gala Celebration Nearly six years after suffering severe damage at the hands of a still unidentified arsonist, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville reopened on May 28, brighter and truer to the original. The four-day celebration featured the performance of an early Wolfe play, an authors’ evening with six prominent southern writers, and a living history program titled “A Day in May 1916.” Despite inclement weather, approximately 350 people attended the rededication ceremony on Friday morning, May 28. Longtime site manager Steve Hill, who oversaw the painstaking restoration process, welcomed visitors to the memorial. Jeffrey J. Crow, deputy secretary, and Lisbeth C. Evans, secretary of the Depart-ment of Cultural Resources (DCR), deliv-ered brief remarks [see following page for Dr. Crow’s comments]. Kay P. Williams, director of the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties, introduced the guest speakers, who included Charles Worley, mayor of Asheville, authors Gail Godwin and Orson Scott Card, and Maggi Vaughn, poet laureate of Tennessee. Hill concluded the ceremony with a few poignant, heartfelt remarks, then cut the ribbon. Throughout the weekend, a steady crowd Carolina Comments VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3 JULY 2004 Published Quarterly by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History Visitors line up to tour the restored Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse during the reopening ceremonies at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial on May 28. (All images by the Office of Archives and History unless otherwise indicated.) 7 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S A Message from the Deputy Secretary [The following remarks were delivered by Jeffrey J. Crow at the reopening ceremonies of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial on May 28.] Robert M. Calhoon, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, once remarked that the three greatest books ever written about North Carolina were John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), Guion Griffis Johnson’s Antebellum North Carolina: A Social History (1937), and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929). All three remain in print. All three are considered classics. John Lawson’s early description of the Carolina colony contained such original material and such astute observations that other eighteenth-century authors shamelessly plagiarized it. Guion Griffis Johnson’s massive account of antebellum North Carolina remains unsurpassed. A veritable portable archive, historians still rely on it. No one has ever dared plagiarize Thomas Wolfe, but we still depend on his evoca-tive prose to transport us to Altamont and Pulpit Hill in the early twentieth century. Look Homeward, Angel chronicled a time and place in which family and community became so entwined that one can hardly imagine a different setting for the family’s sprawling and turbulent life. Wolfe captured the precise moment when Asheville made the transition from mountain hamlet to resort boom town. It was not a change he embraced. The “Dixieland” boardinghouse came to symbolize his alter ego Eugene Gant’s disaffection and the family’s disruption. Eugene felt he lived “with two roofs and no home.” Eugene deplored the “money-hunger” and “the mounting lust for ownership” that he saw in his mother. But Eugene could not escape his mother’s fierce business acumen and ambition. “Spruce up, boy! Spruce up!” she told him. “Throw your shoulders back. Make folks think you’re somebody.” To drum up business, she gave him a pocketful of printed cards bearing the inscription: SPEND YOUR SUMMERS AT DIXIELAND In Beautiful Altamont, America’s Switzerland. Rates Reasonable—Both Transient and Tourist. Apply Julia E. Gant, Prop. While we may not be transients and tourists, we are historic preservationists who can appreciate the glorious restoration of the Old Kentucky Home. As the state his-toric preservation officer, I want to salute the many people who lovingly restored this structure and its furnishings. Unlike the “big cheaply constructed frame house . . . painted a dirty yellow” in Look Homeward, Angel, this state historic site and National Historic Landmark deserves our praise and admiration. Were Thomas Wolfe to visit today, I believe we could say unapologetically, “Welcome home, Tom!” toured the rambling, twenty-nine-room-boardinghouse, once again painted the warm yellow that was familiar to the young Wolfe, rather than the austere white that Asheville residents have known in recent years. On Friday evening, a moderated conversation between six well-known southern writers was presented at the Asheville Community Center. Novelists Gail Godwin, Orson Scott Card, and Sharyn McCrumb joined poets Fred Chappell, Michael McFee, and Maggi Vaughn in a wide-ranging discussion of their works and the influ-ences that colored them. The authors were available on Friday and Saturday afternoons for book signing sessions. On Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon, Wolfe’s rarely produced 1923 play, Welcome to Our City, was staged at the YMI Cultural Center. Set in the thinly fictionalized “Altamont,” subsequently made famous in Look Homeward, Angel, the play satirically condemns the greedy developers of the booming resort town who scheme to buy up the property of an African American community and repopulate the neighborhood with fancy homes for wealthy whites. The performance of the riveting social commentary was directed by Bernie Hauserman. Following each show, the director, members of the cast, Wolfe schol-ars, and leaders of the African American community of Asheville joined in a panel discussion about the play and its author. The reopening festivities concluded on May 31 with guided trolley tours of Thomas Wolfe’s Asheville. Dick Lankford Named State Archivist and Records Administrator Effective May 1, Jesse R. “Dick” Lankford Jr. was named state archivist and records administrator of North Carolina. He had been the acting state archivist since the retire-ment of Catherine J. Morris at the end of March. Lankford served for many years as assistant state archivist and head of the Archival Services Branch. Since the reorganization of the Archives and Records Section in 2000, he had been head of the Special Collections Branch. He holds a master of arts degree from Western Carolina University, and a master of public affairs degree from North Carolina State University. Lankford is the seventh North Carolina state archivist. He has worked with the agency for thirty-three years and has participated in many major initiatives and projects. “I am honored by this selection,” Lankford remarked. “We have a great opportunity to continue serving North Carolina at the high standards that have characterized our program over the decades. We have some great professionals on staff. I look forward to working with them and with the citizens of our state to ensure the preservation of North Carolina’s docu-mentary history.” David Brook, director of the Division of Historical Resources, commented: “We are fortunate to have had such an excellent candi-date in our midst. His familiarity with our programs and processes will assure a seamless transition into his new role.” V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 5 Site manager Steve Hill displays a new plaque for the Old Kentucky Home, fully restored from a devastating fire in 1998. Jesse R. “Dick” Lankford Jr., the seventh state archivist of North Carolina. Peter Sandbeck to Lead State Historic Preservation Office Peter B. Sandbeck, project administrator of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has been named deputy state historic preservation officer and administrator of the State His-toric Preservation Office, succeeding David Brook. Sandbeck joined the former Archaeol-ogy and Historic Preservation Section as a historic sites specialist I in September 1977 and spent sixteen years with the Division of Archives and History before separating in Febru-ary 1994. He has twenty-nine years of experience and solid accomplishments in the field of historic preservation. He will assume his new position on July 19. Valuable Civil War Letter Recovered As a result of the diligence of officials in the Office of Archives and History and the cooperation of an Alamance County auctioneer, another invaluable historical document has been returned to the people of North Carolina. A letter from Jefferson Davis to North Carolina governor John W. Ellis, dated May 23, 1861, appeared in an online auction catalogue of Historical Collectible Auctions of Graham in early March. Jeffrey J. Crow, dep-uty secretary of DCR, appealed to the state Attorney General’s Office to file a petition for a preliminary injunction to halt the sale. On March 9, superior court judge J. B. Allen Jr. granted the request, forbidding the auction house to sell, remove, or destroy the letter. A week later, the court issued an order to seize the document. The “owner” of the letter, an anonymous collector from Philadelphia, had purchased it at auction from Sotheby’s in 1982. He con-signed it to Historical Collectible Auctions with an asking price of $20,000 to $25,000. After viewing the circumstantial evidence supporting the state’s claim to the document, he and Rob-ert J. Raynor, president of the auction house, were convinced of the propriety of the claim and agreed to return the letter to possession of the state. Consistent with the practice of the day, the original letter had been copied into the governor’s letterbook, as was clearly indicated by an endorsement on the back of the document (“Letter Book Page 425”). The letterbook, along with three Fibredex boxes of letters to Governor Ellis, is housed in the State Archives. Raynor remarked: “It was clear to me that the Jefferson Davis letter was at one point part of that collection.” State officials never contended that the letter had been stolen from the Archives, merely that it belonged to the people of the state as a public document. “I think one of the most important aspects is the continuing precedent for returning public records to the State Archives,” commented Crow. A representative of the Attorney General’s Office received the letter from the court in Alamance County on May 17. Three days later, on the 143d anniversary of the state’s secession, Crow presented it to the spring meeting of the North Carolina Historical Commission. It will be permanently stored in the archives vault collection, along with other invaluable documents, including the Carolina Charter of 1663 and John Adams’s 7 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S This 1861 letter from Jefferson Davis to John W. Ellis was seized by Alamance County Superior Court but voluntarily returned by its “owner” to possession of the state. “Thoughts on Government.” State Archivist Dick Lankford described the letter as “a most welcome addition to our records. It has both evidential and intrinsic value and adds greatly to our holdings available for research in this critical period in our state’s history.” The letter was written just three days after North Carolina seceded from the Union. Davis was responding to a telegram of the previous day from Ellis, in which the governor requested the president’s intervention in convincing Virginia to send to North Carolina machinery for making small arms. Davis replied from Montgomery, Alabama, first capital of the Confederate States: “I will endeavor to obtain the requisite machinery. I have writ-ten to Gov. [John] Letcher on the subject and desired him to communicate with you. Hoping soon to give the matter personal attention.” The next day, the Virginia Council of State approved the loan to North Carolina of as much of the rifle-making machinery as could be spared from the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, where it was exposed to recapture by Federal forces. North Carolina dispatched machinists to Harpers Ferry to expedite the dis-mantling and packing of the machinery, which arrived at the state arsenal in Fayetteville during mid-June 1861. DCR Agencies to Create Virtual World War I Collection The North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina State Library, and the North Carolina Museum of History have been awarded a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant through the NC ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project in order to create a World War I virtual collection. Specifically, the selected resources are printed books and documents, letters, diaries, photographs, clips from audio interviews, and artifacts such as uniforms and weapons from the U.S. Army Thirtieth and Eighty-first Divi-sions, in which a large number of North Carolinians served. This project will unite these varied resources in cohesive and searchable formats that will be useful to schoolchildren as well as to scholars of the World War I period. It will also test the unification of different types of metadata—Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Extensible Mark-up Language (XML)—into a single search process. The State Library will serve as the lead agent in overseeing the implementation of the grant. Library staff will digitize printed materials from its collection; design, construct, and solicit feedback on the front end of the project website; update cataloging records to include digital copies and related images; and create and distribute publicity materials. State Archives staff will digitize images of diaries, letters, maps, personal and military papers, unit rosters, and photographs; hire a temporary half-time archivist to produce digi-tal images of these original materials; select and convert to digital format selected audio clips of oral histories given by soldiers; add images and finding aids to the Manuscript and Archives Reference System (MARS) and in EAD format; and ensure that all images and metadata meet archival standards. They will also bring the different types of metadata into a single search process. North Carolina Museum of History staff will photograph and present to the public for the first time digital images of many items in its World War I collection. The images of and historical data about each artifact related to the Thirtieth and Eighty-first Divisions will be presented to the public through the Web interface component of the Re:Discovery database. This database allows the import and export of bibliographic data using the MARC electronic interchange format, as well as the export of collection data in SGML/XML format in support of EAD. In addition, the museum’s historian will write historical background information for the project website. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 7 Some examples of the variety of items to be digitized include a letter by North Carolina native and army nurse Laura Doub, in which she mentions helping to sew some of the army’s first shoulder sleeve insignia onto uniforms of the Eighty-first Division; the “War Diary” of the Thirtieth (“Old Hickory”) Division’s 120th Infantry Regiment; portions of interviews with soldiers who served in the Eighty-first (“Stonewall” or, later, “Wildcat”) Division, a unit that was engaged in attacks on German positions up to the last hour of the war; tactical maps showing the French town of Bellicourt and the surrounding area where so many Tar Heels fell in the successful, though costly, battle to break the vaunted Hindenburg line; and military maps, engineering diagrams, orders, and other documents associated with the vital work of the 105th Engineer Regiment of the Thirtieth Division. This project will have broad appeal because it will include information on North Carolinians from all across the state and will present a variety of material of interest to many audiences. All three institutions consistently receive a wide range of questions per-taining to military history. As the centennial of World War I approaches, interest in this war is certain to increase. New Highway Historical Markers Approved At meetings on December 12, 2003, and May 7, 2004, the members of the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee approved the following new markers: PORT OF BATH, Beaufort County; MONTREAT COLLEGE, Buncombe County; WRECK OF THE METROPOLIS, Currituck County; WADSWORTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, Guilford County; JACQUES AND JULIANA BUSBEE, Moore County; HAROLD D. COOLEY, Nash County; ST. JOHN’S LODGE, New Hanover County; W. O. SAUNDERS, Pasquotank County; JAMES AND ROSE AGGREY, Rowan County; THOMAS’S LEGION, Swain County; “TINY” BROADWICK, Vance County; and FREEDMEN’S CONVENTION, FANNIE E. S. HECK, and LEONARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, Wake County. Secretary of DCR Lisbeth C. Evans has appointed Daniel S. Pierce of the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Rorin M. Platt of Campbell University to five-year terms on the Marker Advisory Committee. Freddie Parker of North Carolina Central University was elected committee chairman at the May 2004 meeting. An ambitious effort to compile Global Positioning System (GPS) data for the 1,465 state highway historical markers across North Carolina has been initiated jointly by the Departments of Transportation (DOT) and Cultural Resources. The two agencies have cosponsored the marker program since 1935. The respective secretaries of the depart-ments, Lyndo Tippett and Lisbeth Evans, endorsed the project that will entail the work of two interns over the course of two summers. DCR purchased the mapping grade GPS unit, a laptop computer, and a digital camera for use with the project, while DOT is funding the salaries and travel expenses of the interns. GPS technology permits the precise mapping of specific sites based on radio navigation and a world-wide system of satellites and ground stations. Once the GPS coordinates have been gathered, the data will be 7 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Interns Charles Givens (left) and Patrick Wade (right) will help compile mapping data about state highway historical markers this summer. shared widely on a revamped website. A secondary objective of the project is to document the physical condition and maintenance needs of each sign. Employed for the summer months of 2004 are Charles Givens of Raleigh, who will enroll at Appalachian State University in the fall, and Patrick Wade of Boone, a recent graduate of North Carolina State University (NCSU) with a degree in engineering. Wade will return to NCSU in the fall to pursue graduate study in engineering. The two interns are working closely with the Research Branch of the Office of Archives and History, the Geographic Information Systems office of DOT, and DOT field offices across the state. National History Day State Competition Held in Raleigh The state competition of National History Day in North Carolina was held at the Museum of History on Saturday, April 24. Two hundred and seventy-four students from twenty-four schools registered for the competition. More than sixty volunteer judges from public history and academic institutions reviewed the projects, provided constructive criti-cism, and selected the students who would represent the state at the national competition at College Park, Maryland, in June. Siemens Corporation, a national sponsor of the His-tory Day program, provided a number of volunteers and offered a special prize for the best projects relating to historical innovations. History Day students are required to choose a topic related to an annual theme. They conduct research using both primary and secondary sources, then use their findings to create projects in one of four categories: historical papers, exhibits, documentaries, or per-formances. The theme for this year was “Exploration, Encounter, Exchange in History.” The topics of projects chosen to advance to the national competition were as diverse as Walt Disney, the first poets to write in English, the Berlin Crisis, and the ways in which the conquering of Mount Everest affected the people and economy of Nepal. Forty-four students representing eleven schools from across North Carolina were chosen to advance. In addition to awards for first and second place in each category, a number of special prizes sponsored by groups and individuals across the state were awarded. National History Day in North Carolina is hosted by the Office of Archives and History with substantial assistance from the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies. McDougle Middle School Wins State History Bowl For the second consecutive year, the winner of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum–Alamance Battleground regional won the state history bowl championship. McDougle Middle School of Chapel Hill, coached by Cissy O’Neal and Louise Peters, defeated Dunn Middle School, representing the Bentonville Battlefield region, in the V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 9 Members and coaches of the McDougle Middle School championship history bowl team proudly display their trophy and a facsimile of the check awarded to the school by Wachovia Bank, one of the sponsors of the program. finals. Eight teams qualified for the final competition, held May 14 at the State Archives in Raleigh. The winning students received trophies and the school a check for $200 from Wachovia Bank; the runners-up earned $100 for their school. Jeffrey J. Crow, deputy secre-tary of DCR, Ron Octtavio of Wachovia Bank, and a representative of the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) presented the awards. The annual competition is sponsored by Wachovia Bank, the UDC, and the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties. Southeast Forsyth Middle School won the history bowl last year. Beaufort to Host Tall Ships in 2006 Beaufort has been named the host site for a fleet of tall ships during its American visit, July 1-5, 2006. Before coming to North Carolina, the Class A and Class B ships will par-ticipate in the fourth Americas’ Sail competition along the coast of South America. Win-ners in the various categories will be announced and trophies presented while the ships are at Beaufort. Minges Bottling Group will serve as founding sponsor of the event, which will be called Pepsi Americas’ Sail 2006. Beaufort was selected as the American host site because it is the home port of Horatio Sinbad, captain of the Meka II, winner of the 2002 Class B competition. David Nateman, director of the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, called the chance for visitors to board and tour the tall ships “a once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. He hopes that the preparations for the event will shepherd the necessary addition of new docks and decking at the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, and the development of parking facilities, public restrooms, boardwalks, and docks at the museum’s Gallants Channel property. Museum of History Associates Announce Second Major Pledge The North Carolina Museum of History Associates announced in March the receipt of the organization’s second major pledge within five months. The Branch Banking and Trust (BB&T) Charitable Foundation has guaranteed $100,000 to help establish a founda-tion to benefit the North Carolina Museum of History. The pledge, announced by associ-ates’ chairperson Lyl MacLean Clinard of High Point, was made to honor her father, Hector MacLean of Lumberton. MacLean is a longtime member of the associates and for-mer president of Southern National Bank, which merged with BB&T in 1995. Son of Governor Angus W. McLean, he served as state senator, mayor of Lumberton, and presi-dent of the Medical Foundation of North Carolina board of directors for twenty-two years. He was inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1996. Last November, the associates announced the initial pledge to the Museum of History Foundation, given in honor of Nancy Lyles by her husband and two daughters, all of High Point. Annual interest from the foundation will be used by the museum to support artifact acquisitions and other initiatives. North Caroliniana Society Awards Fellowships for 2004-2005 The North Caroliniana Society has awarded Archie K. Davis Fellowships to twelve scholars for 2004-2005. The recipients, their institutions, and research topics are: Catherine W. Bishir, Preservation North Carolina; biographical directory of North Carolina architects. Debra A. Blake, North Carolina Office of Archives and History; documentary edition of Rose Greenhow’s European diary, 1863-1864. 8 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Mark L. Bradley, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; civil-military relations in North Carolina, 1862-1877. William R. Burk, Biology Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; history of botany at the university. Stephen D. Feeley, Department of History, College of William and Mary; North Carolina’s Tuscarora Indians. Dixie Ray Haggard, Department of History, University of Kansas; North Carolina’s Cherokee Indians. John Thomas McGuire, College at Oneonta, SUNY; North Carolina’s Democratic women in the 1930s. Trina N. Seitz, Department of Sociology, Appalachian State University; the death pen-alty in North Carolina, 1909-2004. Michael Ray Smith, Department of Mass Communications, Campbell University; John McLean Harrington and his handwritten newspaper. Karen Smith Rotabi, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Howard W. Odum and the UNC Social Welfare School. Thomas J. Ward Jr., Department of History, Rockhurst University; black lawyers in North Carolina. Ryan Whirty, Department of Journalism, Indiana University; history of Princeville, North Carolina. The North Caroliniana Society has awarded more than 225 Archie K. Davis Fellow-ships since the inception of the program in 1987. Designed to encourage research in North Carolina history and culture, the program grants stipends to cover a portion of travel and subsistence expenses while fellows conduct research. The annual deadline for proposals is March 1. For further information visit the society’s website, www.ncsociety.org, or contact Dr. H. G. Jones, secretary of the society, at hgjones@email.unc.edu. The society presented a special award to Elizabeth Vann Moore of Edenton at the third Biennial Series for Preservation Studies program on April 24. The series, named in honor of Miss Moore, held a luncheon meeting at Albemarle Plantation in Hertford. The award recognized her lifelong crusade to preserve the history of the Albemarle region and her impeccable historical research. Guest speakers for the occasion were Paul S. D’Ambrosio of the New York State Historical Society, Peter B. Sandbeck of Colo-nial Williamsburg, andWillis P. Whichard and H. G. Jones of the North Caroliniana Society. The event was co-sponsored by the Perquimans County Restoration Association. The society’s prestigious North Caroliniana Book Award was pre-sented to Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern, coauthors of A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina, the third and final volume in their outstanding architectural survey of the state. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 1 William S. Powell, vice-president of the North Caro-liniana Society, presents sterling cups to Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern, winners of the North Caroliniana Book Award. North Carolina Arts Council Wins National Award The North Carolina Arts Council and its partners received an inaugural Preserve Amer-ica Presidential Award for heritage tourism, recognizing their work with the Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative program. President George W. Bush presented the award to executive director Mary B. Regan and folk life director H. Wayne Martin in a ceremony at the White House on May 3. The Preserve America prize was created to recognize demon-strated commitment to the protection and interpretation of the nation’s cultural and natu-ral heritage assets, to be presented during National Historic Preservation Week. Four themed, self-driving heritage trails that run through twenty-five western North Carolina counties are the essence of the Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative. They include the Blue Ridge Music Trail, the Cherokee Heritage Trail, the Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina, and the Farms, Gardens, and Countryside Trails of Western North Carolina. Each trail is explained by a guidebook, and the program hosts a website that explores the cultural heritage of the southern mountains. NC ECHO Uncovers Historical Treasures around the State North Carolinians have stories to tell. These stories are often related through the words of forgotten people, records of counties and towns, artifacts left behind, and the sites where they were left. Tape-recorded reminiscences of veterans, letters of farmers, photo-graphs of main streets long vanished, paintings by old masters, and diaries of young dream-ers— these items and more have been gathered and saved by concerned citizens and institutions for generations. In 1999, upon the urging of some of North Carolina’s leading caretakers of such collections, the State Library Commission formed a task force, the Access to Special Collections Working Group (ASCWG), to explore ways to provide better Internet access to the special collection material of North Carolina’s public libraries. The group developed the North Carolina ECHO project through the State Library to locate, survey, and assist not only special collections in libraries but also those in all types of cultural heritage institutions throughout the state. NC ECHO seeks to help all cultural institutions in North Carolina preserve and share the stories and histories located within their walls with the people of the state and the world. The project’s funding derives from a federal LSTA grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services administered through the State Library of North Carolina. The goals of the project are three-fold: 1) to gather information about individual public and private cultural institutions in the state for an inclusive web portal/directory, and a comprehensive statistical and anecdotal analysis of the needs and challenges faced by these institutions in today’s world; 2) to assist the special collections professionals in these institu-tions in learning the best practices for traditional methods of preservation, access, and digitization; and 3) to help these institutions, through a series of grant programs, to work collaboratively and to fund digitization projects aimed at sharing their collections and stories online. NC ECHO strives to be as inclusive as possible in identifying organizations for the project. It uses the following criteria for selection: Any cultural institution (library, archive, museum, historic site, or organization) which maintains a permanent, non-living collection of unique materials held for research and/or exhibit purposes and open for the use of the public will be surveyed. Denominational/associational collections will be surveyed, but individual church collections will not. Art museums will be surveyed, but 8 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S galleries will not. Zoos, arboreta, and parks will not be surveyed, unless as a part of their mission, they hold collections described above. Institutions meeting these criteria and included in the project directory are known as NC ECHO partner institutions. These include libraries, archives, art museums, history museums, science museums, historic house museums, historic sites, state and national parks, and more. NC ECHO’s grant programs encourage libraries to collaborate with non-library institutions on digitization projects to make their special collections holdings, exhibits, catalogs, indexes, and finding aids available online. A variety of workshops focus upon ways to put these materials on the Internet using methods that allow for maximum accessibility and searchability. Through the comprehensive directory, grant programs, and continuing education opportunities, NC ECHO hopes to help North Carolina’s cultural institutions preserve and share their individual, community, and collective state heritage. NC ECHO is presently over three-quarters of the way through its needs assessment survey and information-gathering site visits to cultural institutions across the state. Since February 2001, a project archivist and project librarian have visited seventy-seven of the one hundred counties and have identified over 850 cultural institu-tions. Fascinating and unbelievable collections and indi-vidual items have been discovered from Murphy to Manteo, and more will undoubtedly be found before the survey ends. Only a small portion of the interesting things located thus far includes a jar of canned possum from the 1940s (Belhaven Memorial Museum, Belhaven); the largest collection of historic barbed wire in the world (Taxidermy Hall of Fame of N.C. Creation Museum and Antique Tool Museum, Southern Pines); the original propeller from the Wright Brothers’ airplane and the sewing machine on which they sewed the cloth for the wings (Cape Hatteras National Seashore Headquarters on Roanoke Island); Richard Nixon’s Duke University Law School term paper on “Legal Ethics” (Duke University Archives, Durham); “Letter from the Dead”— the last words of a dying Confederate officer from North Carolina written on the battlefield of Gettysburg (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh); the original Siamese twins’ daybook—the journal of Cheng and Eng Bunker, who lived out their retirement in North Carolina (North Carolina Collection Gallery, UNC-Chapel Hill); and the site of the first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop (Old Salem/Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem). The NC ECHO staff urges the public and the readership of Carolina Comments to take a look at their website, www.ncecho.org, and to browse through the online directory of cultural repositories. Is there a museum or historic site in your hometown that NC ECHO seems to have missed? Contact the NC ECHO staff at their office in the State Library, 109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, NC, ncecho@library.dcr.state.nc.us, or (919) 807-7418, if you have any comments or suggestions. Project staff consists of project manager Peggy Schaeffer, project archivist Kim Cumber, metadata coordinator Kathy Wisser, and project assistant Lisa Coombes. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 3 Arthur Congleton, curator of the Belhaven Memorial Museum, holds a jar of canned possum from the 1940s, one of many unusual discoveries of NC ECHO staff during their site visits to cultural institutions around the state. Photo courtesy of Scott Reavis, NC ECHO project librarian. News from Historical Resources Archives and Records Section In an initiative that began with conversations with Information Technology Services (ITS) in the summer of 2003, the section has agreed to participate in a pilot project for the management of electronic records in the summer of 2004. In conjunction with ITS, other state agencies, and Documentum, a leading Enterprise Content Solution software pro-vider, the section will be testing projects involving the preservation of e-mail, digital asset management, and replacement of current records-scheduling databases and records man-agement tools. ITS is North Carolina’s statewide information technology agency that pro-vides enterprise software solutions to state agencies and offices. In October 2003, the Government Records Branch published on its website a new sec-tion of the “General Schedule for State Agency Records” devoted to information technol-ogy records. These are records normally maintained by information technology operations units of state agencies. An amended “General Schedule for State Agency Records,” published originally in 2000, was re-issued in January 2004. The Information Technology Branch has continued to revamp all of the section’s web pages. New pages for the Govern-ment Records Branch, including records retention and disposition schedules for many of the state and local government agencies, are available at: http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/records. The Outer Banks History Center (OBHC) has acquired an important collection of thousands of negatives taken by renowned local photographer Aycock Brown. Two anon-ymous benefactors purchased the treasure trove for the center from a Brown family mem-ber in memory of D. Victor Meekins and his long-standing association with, and admiration for, Aycock Brown. Aycock Brown (1904-1984) was born in the mountains of North Carolina near Blowing Rock. After graduating from high school, he worked a stint as a reporter for the Elizabeth City Independent before heading to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he picked up some journalism courses at Columbia University. In 1928 Brown got his first job extol-ling the virtues of the Carolina coast, promoting the Atlantic Beach area. For many years, Brown’s weekly column, Covering the Waterfront, ran in newspapers across the state. Brown came to Dare County in 1948 to serve as the publicist for The Lost Colony out-door drama. In 1952, he was named director of the newly created Dare County Tourist Bureau, a position he held until 1976. Brown photographed everyday life and landscapes, buildings and charter boat fishing hauls, and staged entertaining shots of swimsuit-clad beach beauties, which became his trademark. His name became synonymous with photog-raphy on the Outer Banks. Promotion of the region as a tourist destination to the nation, and even the world, can largely be credited to Brown. 8 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S This recent acquisition will be added to the large collection of Brown’s photographs and other materials already among the cen-ter’s holdings, including corre-spondence, papers, scrapbooks, and ten cubic feet of photographs that he took while working for the Tourist Bureau. Through a partnership with the First Flight Rotary Club and Icarus International, a time capsule will be sunk at the site of the Monument to a Century of Flight at the Aycock Brown Welcome Center, operated by the Dare County Tourist Bureau, in Kitty Hawk. The monument, designed by Nags Head artist and devoted Rotarian Glenn Eure, was dedicated in November 2003 as a prelude to the centennial of manned flight in December. The Icarus Monument to a Century of Flight is an enduring legacy to the history, beauty, and mystery of flying. The site is reflective, contemplative, educational, and a tangible reminder to future generations of the first one hundred years of flight. Icarus International spearheaded the monument project. Funds were raised by selling bricks throughout the Outer Banks and to aviation history enthusiasts worldwide. The First Flight Rotary Club took the lead in coordinating the time capsule project and raising the necessary funds. The Bank of Currituck emerged as the primary underwriter with a $15,000 donation. Materials to be encased in the time capsule will be representative of life in North Carolina’s Rotary District 7720 in the year 2003. All forty-six clubs in the district have been asked to contribute banners, mementos, photographs, books, community histories, and common everyday items that could be of interest one hundred years from now. Materials of a more national and international scope are also being collected for the project from the White House, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and other sources. The time capsule will be dedicated in the fall of 2004 as part of the observance of the 101st anniversary of the first flight and is to be opened in the bicentennial year, 2103. The Outer Banks V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 5 Right: Unidentified beach beauties on the North Carolina coast, one of Aycock Brown’s signature themes. Below: Brown captured coastal scenes, such as this stormy day on the ocean, to publicize the Outer Banks of North Carolina. History Center has agreed to serve as the collection site, where the donated materials will be professionally packaged and documented. The Friends of the Archives held its annual meeting on June 14. Following the election of officers and recognition of volunteers, Kevin Duffus, author of The Lost Light, gave a presentation on the mysterious disappearance of the Cape Hatteras Fresnel lens during the Civil War and his fascinating research that led to its rediscovery. The North Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) has hired Matthew T. Turi, a graduate of the library school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to administer a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant. The NHPRC funding will enable a statewide archival training initiative, “Archival Education for the Twenty-first Century,” an ongoing series of practical work-shops demonstrating basic archival principles and practices. Recent Accessions by the North Carolina State Archives During the months of March, April, and May 2004, the Archives and Records Section made 204 accession entries. The Archives accessioned original records from Avery, Catawba, Chatham, Cumberland, Gaston, Henderson, Iredell, Mecklenburg, Pitt, Sampson, Stanly, Stokes, Surry, Wake, Watauga, and Wilkes Counties. The Archives received security microfilm of records for Alamance, Alleghany, Anson, Ashe, Avery, Beaufort, Brunswick, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Camden, Carteret, Caswell, Catawba, Cleveland, Davie, Durham, Forsyth, Greene, Haywood, Henderson, Hertford, Johnston, Lenoir, Moore, Nash, New Hanover, Robeson, Rockingham, Rowan, Stanly, Stokes, Wake, and Watauga Counties; and for the municipalities of Emerald Isle, Garner, Gibson, and Waxhaw. The section accessioned records from the following state agencies: Department of Community Colleges, 45 reels and 22 fiche cards; Department of Cultural Resources, 5.1 cubic feet; Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 12 reels; Department of Revenue, 5 cubic feet; Department of Transportation, 15 reels; Governor’s Office, 13.25 cubic feet and 21 folders; and Secretary of State, 1 reel. The student/academic records for Palmer Memorial Institute (1925-1972) and Solid Computer Solutions were added to the Academic Records. Twenty cubic feet of Federa-tion of North Carolina Historical Societies material were added to the Organization Records. Other records accessioned included 3 Bible Records; 4 volumes (from Granville, New Hanover, and Wake Counties) added to the Cemetery Records; 55 audio and 23 videotaped interviews, and 1,101 other items, added to the Military Collection; and 8 photographs added to the Non-textual Materials Collection. Historical Publications Section More than four hundred years after the event, the Lost Col-ony and the mystery surrounding its disappearance continue to fascinate North Carolinians and others around the world. A new book from the Office of Archives and History provides fresh insights into old questions about the English colonies established on Roanoke Island in the 1580s. Edited by E. Thomson Shields Jr. and Charles R. Ewen, Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection (cover pictured right) contains sixteen essays presented at two conferences held on Roanoke Island in 1993 and 1998. The 8 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S diverse essays are written from an eclectic mix of historical, archaeological, literary, and folkloric viewpoints, by such notable authors as the late David Beers Quinn, William S. Powell, and Joyce Youings. They include information about the Lost Colony, John White, Ralph Lane, Virginia Dare, Simon Fernandez, and Manteo and Wanchese, two Native Americans who visited England in 1584 and 1585. E. Thomson Shields Jr. is a professor of English and director of the Roanoke Colonies Research Office at East Carolina University (ECU). He edits the Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter. Charles R. Ewen is a historical archaeologist in the Department of Anthropol-ogy at ECU. He directs the Southern Coastal Heritage Program, a consortium of scholars from several institutions with related research interests. The provocative, yet authoritative, essays in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies will set the standard for future research by Roanoke scholars. However, the 214-page paperback will appeal to any reader interested in the Lost Colony and other events associated with En-gland’s first attempts to settle North America. The handsome volume features on its cover a photograph of the Virginia Dare statue located in the Elizabethan Gardens at Manteo. Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection (214 pages, illustrated, index, paperbound) costs $15.70, which includes tax and shipping. Order from: Historical Publications Section (CC), Office of Archives and History, 4622 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4622. For credit card orders, call (919) 733-7442 or use the Historical Publications Section’s secure online shop at http://store.yahoo.com/nc-historical-publications. For the first time in many years, Volumes 1 and 2 of the best-selling North Carolina Civil War roster project are now available. Over the next twelve months, Volumes 3 through 13 of the popular series will also be reprinted. Acclaimed by two leading Civil War historians as a “magnificent achievement” and “the finest state roster ever published,” North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster will be, upon completion, a comprehensive listing of all North Carolinians who served for either section during the Civil War. To date, fifteen volumes in the projected eighteen-volume series have been published. However, because of the enormous popularity of the roster, only Volumes 14 and 15 are currently in print. In cooperation with book dealer and pub-lisher Tom Broadfoot of Wilmington, the Historical Publications Section is reprinting a limited number of the first thirteen volumes. The reprinted editions of Volumes 1 and 2 may be ordered now, and pre-publication orders for Volumes 3-13 are being accepted. It is projected that all thirteen volumes will be completed by May 2005. The volumes are printed on acid-free paper and have sewn cloth bindings and matching dust jackets. The reprint of Volume 1 (Artillery) sells for $63.85. Volume 2 (Cavalry) of the reprint series costs $74.55. First editions of Volume 14 (Fifty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, Sixtieth, and Sixty-first Regiments, Infantry) and Volume 15 (Sixty-second, Sixty-fourth, Sixty-sixth, Sixty-seventh, and Sixty-eighth Regiments, Infantry) sell for $47.80 each. Prices include tax and shipping. For further information and prices of the other volumes to be reprinted, write the address above or call (919) 733-7442. Pre-publication orders can be placed through the section’s secure online store, which also provides information about other Civil War titles published by the Office of Archives and History. During April and May, the section took advantage of numerous opportunities to sell books and distribute materials. On April 7 Donna Kelly, section administrator, spoke to the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society at Duke Homestead about the work of the section. She also sold shelf-worn books (primarily those of interest to genealogists) to the thirty-five members who attended. During the weekend of April 17-18, Ms. Kelly, Matthew Brown, Frances Kunstling, Kenny Simpson, and Susan Trimble manned a booth at the North Carolina Literary Festival, which was held at North Carolina State V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 7 University. Sales were not as brisk as anticipated because of concurrent events. Nevertheless, it provided good visibility for the section and many catalogs were distributed. On April 29 Mrs. Trimble and Ms. Kelly sold shelf-worn books during the inaugural DCR new employee orientation held in the Archives and History/State Library building. Tourism Day on May 11, held on Halifax Mall in Raleigh, provided yet another opportunity to dispense materials. Hundreds of governors’ books, as well as some of the older, out-of-date booklets, were distributed by Lang Baradell, Mrs. Kunstling, and Anne Miller. Bill Brown and Dennis Isenbarger assisted in setting up the booth. On May 26, during the State Employees’ Appreciation Day rally, also held on Halifax Mall, Bill Brown, Matthew Brown, Mike Coffey, Denise Craig, Dawne Howard, Mr. Isenbarger, Mrs. Kunstling, Jan-Michael Poff, and Mrs. Trimble sold many of the section’s most popular titles. Nearly six hundred dollars worth of sales were generated through these events. The section is fortunate to have two interns this summer. Dawne Howard and Jennifer Krause, both graduate students in the public history program at North Carolina State Uni-versity, began work in May. Ms. Krause is arranging and describing the reference photo-graphs on file in the section, and adding to a computerized master index to the prints. Many of these were used in publications over the years, but many were not, so this master index will help utilize some images from the last fifty years that have never been pub-lished. Ms. Howard is reading and transcribing eighteenth-century newspapers on micro-film. Some of her work will be published in a softcover title as part of the Colonial Records Project. Over the years, whenever people visit Historical Publications, some often make a com-ment like “I never knew you were here.” For that reason, a new sign now sits at the cor-ner of Lane and McDowell Streets in downtown Raleigh. After only two months, so many walk-in purchases have been made that the sign has already paid for itself by provid-ing better visibility for the office to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Office of State Archaeology Dr. Billy L. Oliver, manager of the Archaeological Research Center, helped to solve a thirteen-year-old cold case of a missing soldier in Fayetteville. The State Bureau of Inves-tigation and the Fayetteville Police Department called in Dr. Oliver and R. A. Crowson, a licensed geologist, to help them locate the skeletal remains of the soldier in the backyard of a Fayetteville residence. Using the latest technology, they discovered the remains, then directed the excavation of the burial site. As a result, murder charges were brought against another soldier, who was brought back from Iraq to stand trial. On May 14, Dr. Oliver and three other members of the interagency investigative team were presented testimonial plaques of appreciation by the Fayetteville Police Department. He has also been invited to help teach a course at the North Carolina Justice Academy in Salemburg on the discovery and recovery of human remains. 8 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Jan-Michael Poff and Frances Kunstling of the Historical Publications Section distribute governors’ books and other materials at the State Employees’ Appreciation Day rally in Raleigh. News from State Historic Sites and Properties North Carolina Transportation Museum The initial stages in the restoration of the massive Back Shop have been completed. The exterior of the building has been stabilized, the underside of the new roof sealed, windows and temporary doors installed, and hazardous materials abated, principally by the encapsu-lation of asbestos and lead paint. The 600 feet by 150 feet facility, which opened in 1905, was constructed by John P. Pettyjohn and Company of Lynchburg, Virginia, in less than a year. Even though 40 percent of the wall and roof areas are made of glass, the walls con-tain approximately 2.5 million bricks. The renovated Back Shop is projected for use as an immense exhibit area. One of the featured attractions of the Back Shop exhibits made a dramatic entry on April 16. The sixty-one-feet-long fuselage and sixteen-feet-wide center wing section of a DC-3 airplane were transported by trucks one hundred miles across the Piedmont. The airplane had been on display since 1979 at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham and was purchased by the Transportation Museum to be the centerpiece of the renovated Back Shop. John Bechtel, master mechanic at Spencer, supervised the disassembly and transport of the plane. The fuselage was carried on a Department of Transportation flatbed truck, while the wing section was hauled by Yarbrough Transfer Company of Winston- Salem. The vintage airplane will be renovated and reassembled in the Back Shop. The museum’s annual Rail Days Festival on May 1-2 fea-tured two recently acquired diesel locomotives, a living history trib-ute to Presidential campaign trains, and a number of special demonstrations. The seventy-nine- year-old Shay steam loco-motive was operated for the first time this year. It was joined by a rare Fairbanks-Morse engine, for-merly North Carolina Ports Authority locomotive No. 1860, and F40PH No. 307, previously in service with AMTRAK. Living history demonstrations included a blacksmith at work, a Railway Post Office car receiving mail on the fly, and the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang of Virginia showing how tracks were kept aligned by hand. Festival participants also visited V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 9 The DC-3 arrives safely in the restored Back Shop at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer. The plane was transported across the Piedmont from the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. with a hobo, browsed model train layouts, listened to railroad music by Ivy Creek Recordings, and dined on railroad chili and barbecue. Northeastern Historic Sites Section Spring rains could not dampen spirits at the annual Halifax Day celebration on April 12. Not only was this year the 228th anniversary of the Halifax Resolves, the first official call for American independence in 1776, but also the 50th anniversary of the Historical Halifax Restoration Association. The group was organized in June 1954 and staged its first Halifax Day ceremony the next April. A reception and birthday party for the association followed the customary festivities. Several chapters of the Sons of the American Revolution, whose national organization has recognized Halifax Day as an official annual event, participated in this year’s celebra-tion. The program featured the presentation of the year’s Halifax Resolves Awards. Andy Whitby of Weldon was recognized for his outstanding commitment to local historic pres-ervation activities, and Rocky Mount Mills was honored for the preservation of its mill village. After the awards presentation, an interpretive stone marker was dedicated at the site of the Free Church, the first house of worship in Halifax, built in 1793. Ken Johnson, a lay minister at Grace Episcopal Church of Weldon and a former employee at Historic Halifax State Historic Site, blessed the historical marker. The 1767 Chowan County courthouse, closed for renovation since 1996, will officially reopen to the public on October 8. Linda Jordan Eure, Historic Edenton site manager, and Judith W. Chilcoat, operations manager, are members of a committee planning events for opening day and the entire week of October 4-8. Contractors and county officials anticipated the restoration would be completed by June 30. In January, the final $200,000 of a total cost of $3,236,673 was received from the state’s repair and renovation fund. The colonial courthouse, a National Historic Landmark, is one of the finest Georgian-style public buildings in the South. Historic Edenton and Chowan County will jointly over-see general operations of the building, which will be open for tours and public programs, as well as the occasional court session. A large, fully paneled assembly room upstairs will also be available for private functions. Students from the Christian Fellowship Church School in Waukegan, Illinois, caused quite a sensation as they toured the his-toric district of Edenton with interpreter Deborah Sliva on April 30. The fourth- and 9 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S These elementary schoolchildren from Illinois visited Historic Edenton in Revolu-tionary War attire as part of a hands-on history lesson. fifth-grade students and their instructors, attired in authentic reproduction uniforms of the Continental army, were participating in their Spring Freedom Tour of national his-toric sites. As part of a hands-on learning approach, students agree to a one-year enlist-ment in the Continental army. They also research one of the Founding Fathers of the country. Joseph Hewes, an Edenton resident and one of the three North Carolinians who signed the Declaration of Independence, was the subject of research for a student in the program this year. Accordingly, the group traveled to Edenton to tour the his-toric buildings and to visit the Joseph Hewes monument, where the student delivered his Founding Father speech to classmates. Piedmont Historic Sites Section The annual African American Heritage Festival was held on June 12, featuring great food, vendors, and music. Performers included the Rahman Ensemble, Logie Meachum, the Capitol City 5, Dancers on the Move, and Different Drum. Among the highlights of the fes-tival were a special exhibit of African American collectibles from the personal collection of Effley Howell, sponsored by Thankful Heritage; a reading and book signing by Sedalia author Annette Dickens; displays by the African American Quilt Circle of Durham; hair wrapping by Robin Babatunde; childrens’ games and activities; and assorted crafts. The Boyd Toben Memorial Baseball Tournament, featuring teams from area Mustang and Bronco Leagues, was held on June 12-13 at the Bundrige Athletic Field. The festival was sponsored by Sam’s Club of Greensboro, McDonald’s of Stoney Creek, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Historical Foundation, the Boyd Toben Memorial Fund, and Louis Raiford. Of special interest at this year’s festival, memorial director Tracey Burns-Vann and her husband Andre Vann signed copies of their new book, Sedalia and the Palmer Memorial Insti-tute. A number in the Black America Series of Arcadia Press, the volume includes more than two hundred photographs provided by Sedalia families and Palmer Memorial Institute alumni, many of which have been hidden away in scrapbooks and not seen for decades. For more information about the book and its authors, visit the Arcadia Press website, www.arcadiapublishing.com. Roanoke Island Festival Park This summer special daily programs will be presented in the History Garden at 1:00 P.M. The programming is included in the cost of the general admission ticket. The daily sched-ule, running from June 6 to August 14, is as follows: Sundays – The Civil War on the Outer Banks Mondays – Delicate Ribbon of Sand: The Unique Environment of the Outer Banks Tuesdays – Daily Life in Elizabethan Times Wednesdays – “Pleased to Meet You”: Personalities of Roanoke Island Festival Park Thursdays – This Fabled Shore: Outer Banks History Fridays – Folklife and Culture on the Outer Banks Saturdays – The Roanoke Voyages These special summer offerings are in addition to the regular daily programs, which include musket (11:00 A.M.) and pike (4:00 P.M.) drills at the Settlement Site, and the setting (10:30 A.M.) and furling (5:00 P.M.) of sails, and the firing of the swivel gun (12:00 P.M.) on the Elizabeth II. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 1 For the seventh consecutive year, the park will host the “illuminations” Summer Per-forming Arts Series, presented by the North Carolina School of the Arts. The five-week arts festival features theatre, music and dance performances, and film screenings. Faculty, current students, and alumni of the School of the Arts, one of the leading arts conservato-ries in the nation, will perform throughout the festival. Evening theatre and musical per-formances are held outdoors on the park’s spacious lawn, where the mosquitoes are held at bay by pest repellant machines. Guests are invited to bring blankets, lawn chairs, and pic-nic baskets to enjoy the ninety-minute performances, which begin at 8:00 P.M. The After-noon Classics musical series will be held in the Art Gallery at 2:00 P.M., Tuesday through Friday, and include piano, classical guitar, chamber music, a brass quintet, and a saxophone quartet. Four film screenings of both School of the Arts student movies and Hollywood feature films will be presented in the Film Theatre on Saturday nights. A five-dollar dona-tion per person is requested at each performance. For a complete schedule of events, visit the “illuminations” website, at www.ncarts.edu/illuminations. Southeastern Historic Sites Section In November 2001, Mitch Bowman of the Virginia Civil War Trails Program visited Bentonville with a North Carolina road map and a concept to create a similar historic trails venture in the Tar Heel State, focusing on the final 1865 campaign. Since then a North Carolina Civil War Trails team has been meeting regularly at Bentonville, and the project is off to a great start. As of March 2004, there were sixty-nine sites funded in thirty-one localities. Completion of the first phase of the project is slated for March 2005, with the grand opening of the North Carolina Civil War Trails at Bentonville Battlefield. The Johnston County Convention and Visitors’ Bureau has graciously funded eight local interpretive panels. Donny Taylor, site manager at Bentonville Battlefield, has obtained permission to place trails signage on private property. Historic interpreter Becky Sawyer has researched and located key images for the panels, including the flag of the Twenty-sixth Illinois Veteran Volunteers. The eight panels will connect various sites of the Bentonville campaign, from the Union army’s advance from Averasboro to the end of the trail at Smithfield. Their locations and content will include: 1) Bentonville Battlefield: the Harper House and its role during the battle; 2) Village of Bentonville: Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower’s charge, the desolation of the village, and the use of private homes as field hospitals; 3) Hannah’s Creek: the skirmish between elements of Col. Robert F. Catterson’s Fed-eral brigade, including the Twenty-sixth Illinois, and Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry; 4) Confederate line of march: the Confederate advance and retreat along Devil’s Race-track Road; 5) Union line of march: the Union advance upon Smithfield after the consolidation of Northern armies in Goldsboro; 6) Hastings House: the headquarters of both Generals Bragg and Johnston before and after the Battle of Bentonville; 7) Johnston County courthouse: General Sherman’s headquarters during his occupation of Smithfield; 8) Stevens’s House/Mitchener Station: site of the last grand review of Confederate armies, and a reception for Governor Vance and other dignitaries from Raleigh. 9 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 brochures about the markers will be printed, and information will also be made available on the Civil War Trails website at www.civilwartraveler.com or www.civilwartrails.org. The next meeting of the trails team will be at Bentonville in September. On March 20-21, Bentonville Battlefield presented a living history program to com-memorate the 139th anniversary of the battle. More than one hundred volunteers and approximately twenty-eight hundred visitors attended the two-day event. This year’s pro-gram focused on a re-creation of Camp Vance, one of several Confederate camps of instruction in North Carolina. After being situated for nearly two decades in the Eastern Office in Greenville, the Education Branch of the Museum and Visitor Services Section relocated to the future site of the CSS Neuse/Civil War museum in downtown Kinston on April 1. With the state assuming ownership of the former East Group building on North Queen Street, it was deemed imperative to establish a presence in the facility. A second motivation for the move was the desire to return artifacts from the CSS Neuse to Kinston. Most of these have been in storage in Raleigh or Durham following extensive conservation treatment to repair damages from the floodwaters of Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The future museum facility has ample storage space and, for security and insurance purposes, it is essential to have an employee of the division in the building with the artifacts. Jann C. Brown, educa-tion specialist, can now be reached at (252) 526-9600. Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens The thirty-sixth annual decorative arts symposium, held March 21-23, attracted approximately seventy visitors. In keeping with the statewide focus upon North Carolina crafts during 2004-2005, this year’s theme was “‘A Choice and Very Splendid Assortment of Goods’: Craftsmanship in North Carolina.” As always, the symposium featured a panel of expert speakers, each of whom addressed a topic related to crafts and artisans in the Tar Heel State. The opening lecture was presented by Catherine W. Bishir, who retired from the State Historic Preservation Office at the end of 2001 and is now the senior architec-tural historian with Preservation North Carolina. She addressed the subject, “North Carolina Architecture: Tradition, Taste, and Region.” Both Matthew W. Hobbs, a gradu-ate student at Duke University, and Jane D. Lukas, coordinator of special programs at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), examined an aspect of furniture production in the state. Lawyer and collector William W. Ivey of Asheboro offered “An Artistic Study of North Carolina Schools of Long Rifles, 1780-1835.” Becky H. Minnix, a guide at MESDA, spoke on North Carolina bed covers, and Charles G. Zug III, director of the North Carolina Pottery Center at Seagrove, presented an overview of the state’s illustrious pottery tradition. Symposium attendees were also treated to tours of the palace, with particular emphasis upon its decorative arts, special presentations by site staff mem-bers, and social hours and a private dinner in historic New Bern homes. The annual Gardeners’ Weekend, held April 2-4 in conjunction with the New Bern Historic Homes, Gardens, and Arts Tour, featured an impressive array of heritage tulips in free tours of the Kellenberger Gardens. According to palace horticulturalist Lisa Wimpfheimer, heritage tulips are quite different from the popular hybrids available today. They are significantly shorter and smaller, with pointed petals and as many as seven blooms per stem. Bulb expert Carl Van Staalduinen shared gardening tips about tulips and other bulbs during the weekend. The palace again hosted an outdoor summer concert series, with four evenings offering a wide variety of music. Listeners relaxed on blankets with picnic dinners on the south V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 3 lawn overlooking the Trent River. The Second Marine Expeditionary Force Band returned for the opening performance on May 17, with its usual rousing rendition of patriotic and popular tunes. The Craven Community Concert Band entertained on May 30, followed by the North Carolina Symphony on June 7. The series concluded on July 5 with a performance by the 440th Army National Guard Band. USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial Special events marked the first and last days of May at the battleship memorial. The annual living history day on May 1 featured demonstrations of daily shipboard drills and inspections, special tours of living history areas, and exhibits in the visitor center highlight-ing the role of civilians, especially women, on the home front during World War II. A new crew of interpreters portrayed sailors and marines as they went about their daily routines aboard a wartime battleship. Areas available for tours included the ship’s guns on the main deck, the superstructure, featuring the bridge and combat information center, and living quarters and sickbay on the second deck. The traditional Memo-rial Day observance was celebrated on the after-noon of May 31. Again, the battleship and U.S. Cellular offered the VALOR (Veterans and Loved Ones Reconnect) Program, in which veter-ans could place free tele-phone calls to service buddies, family, and friends throughout the country. The battleship director, Capt. David R. Scheu, welcomed visitors aboard while an all-service color guard marched on the colors. As an enormous “Holiday Flag” was unfurled from the stern, the Second Marine Division Band performed the National Anthem. The Reverend John L. Gillespie, pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church of Wilmington, gave the invocation. After Captain Scheu had recognized each service branch, Brig. Gen. Vergel L. Lattimore, a native of Charlotte, delivered the in memoriam remarks. Brigadier General Lattimore is the Air National Guard assistant to the Air Force Chief of Chaplains at Bolling Air Force Base in the District of Columbia, and an ordained AME Zion minister. After the keynote address, Robert G. Greer, chairman of the New Hanover County Board of County Commissioners, and Spence H. Broadhurst, mayor of Wilmington, committed the memorial wreath to the waters of the Cape Fear. Rev. John L. Gillespie offered the benediction, the U.S. Marine Honor Guard delivered a twenty-one-gun salute, and buglers concluded the program with “Taps.” 9 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S The USS North Carolina decked out for the annual Memorial Day observance. News from State History Museums Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex To underwrite the cost of its summer camp for children, the museum received a $2,500 grant from the Cumberland County Foundation. In keeping with the two-year statewide Celebration of North Carolina Craft, the focus of this year’s weeklong Summer Kids Excellent Adventure was on Tar Heel craft traditions, artisans, and products. The free camp, held June 7-11, provided children ages nine to twelve hands-on opportunities to learn weaving, rope making, and candle making. North Carolina Maritime Museum (Beaufort) The sounds, creeks, rivers, and the ocean surrounding Beaufort are ideal for sailing, kayaking, and rowing. For the inexperienced or new boater, the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort offers programs and classes throughout the year. Long known for its highly successful Junior Sailing Program, the museum has for the past several years expanded its instruction to provide for adults. Adult Learn to Sail classes are conducted aboard a thirty-foot keelboat, and Traditional Boat Handling classes are held aboard sharpies or spritsails. These five-hour classes are available most Fridays and Saturdays throughout the summer and fall. Family sailing and individual lessons are offered under special arrangements through the Friends of the Museum. Learn to Kayak classes are held throughout the summer and fall and provide a level of comfort to those individuals who enjoy quietly exploring area creeks and rivers. Kayaking trips to the Rachel Carson Reserve and the basic classes include the observation of local wildlife with a natural science curator. The Beaufort Oars, established in 1991, use an adaptation of the six-oared Cornish gig. Members of the Oars currently row three V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 5 The Beaufort Oars practice their strokes in Gallants Channel. times a week out of the museum’s Gallants Channel annex. The museum has expanded the Beaufort Oars gig program to include sliding-seat rowing shells, starting with recre-ational singles. Anyone interested in rowing single shells can join the new sliding-seat pro-gram upon payment of the annual dues. If you have wanted to get out on the water, but didn’t know exactly how to start, con-tact the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, where boating opportunities abound. Call the museum weekdays at (252) 728-7317 for more information. The museum has published a revised new paperback edition of Traditional Work Boats of North Carolina, by Michael B. Alford, curator of maritime research at the museum until his retirement in 1996. First published in 1990, the volume quickly became the standard in the field and was soon out of print. Copies may be obtained from the Museum Store (Sharon.Resor@ncmail.net) for $7.95, plus shipping and handling. Alford’s research enabled the design of a building plan for the construction of a replica of a periauger, the workboat of eighteenth-century North Carolina (see Carolina Com-ments, January 2004). The thirty-foot log vessel, constructed by museum staff and volun-teers at the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, was christened on June 19. The periauger is scheduled for sea trials in July before setting out on August 15 on a three-week voyage from Beaufort to its home port of Hertford. It will visit six historic ports along the way. North Carolina Museum of History The museum staff has developed an exciting new educational tool by which teachers may earn continuing education credits from the comfort of home. Through a series of six online courses, educators can refresh their understanding of various aspects of North Carolina history and import creative ideas for use in the classroom. Participants in the online sessions can complete assignments at their own pace and exchange ideas with their peers by means of an electronic bulletin board. The self-directed courses include printable handouts, suggestions for utilizing primary sources, links to relevant websites, and tips for evaluating potential Internet sites. Teachers can earn up to forty contact hours, including technology credit, of continuing education. The first of the six-week courses, Legends of North Carolina, was offered in April and May. The second, Stories of the Civil War, began on June 1. Other topics to be covered include American Indians Past and Present, North Carolina at Home and in Battle during World War II, Women in North Carolina History, and the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina. Participants must submit a registration form and fee of $25 for each course. A printable registration form is available at http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/ProfDev.html. For more information, call (919) 715-0200, ext. 314, or e-mail beth.crist@ncmail.net. On April 22, Jean Fagan Yellin, distinguished professor of English emeritus, at Pace University, discussed the research of and read selections from her new biography, Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Dr. Yellin has devoted more than twenty years to the study of Jacobs. She edited a 1987 edition of the slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, in the process proving conclusively that Jacobs was the author behind the pseud-onymous Linda Brent. During the program, Dr. Yellin repeatedly acknowledged her indebtedness to George Stevenson Jr., now private collections archivist at the North Carolina State Archives, who was then head of reference services. He spent countless hours, after his normal workday, identifying people, places, and incidents mentioned in the slave narrative, using original records in the archives. Through his painstaking 9 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S research, Dr. Yellin was able to identify Harriet Jacobs as the author and Edenton as the setting for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. A reception and book signing followed the program, which was originally scheduled for February 26 but postponed as a result of inclement weather. Last August, spooks from around the world congregated in Raleigh for the inaugural international spy conference. The event was so well received, drawing worldwide media coverage, that a second conference has been scheduled for September 1-3. This year’s theme will be Spies, Lies, and Deception: From Pearl Harbor through the Age of Terror-ism, examining the interrelationships between terrorism, espionage, and the intelligence community. The panel of speakers scheduled to appear include recognized experts in the field. The keynote speaker, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, is the senior adviser on counterterrorism to the Chief of National Security in Iraq. His topic will be “The Continuing Threat of al-Qaeda and the Future of Terrorism.” Nigel West, who spoke at the inaugural confer-ence, returns to address “Countering Terrorism Using Counterintelligence Techniques: The British Experience in Northern Ireland.” Other scheduled speakers include Dennis Pluchinsky, diplomatic security analyst and university lecturer on international terrorism; Kim Cragin, regarded as the leading expert on suicide bombers; and Tom Kimmel, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, who will compare the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center. Dr. James Leutze, retired chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will again serve as chairman and moderator. The conference is jointly presented by Bernie Reeves, editor and publisher of Metro Magazine, the North Carolina Museum of History, and the Museum of History Associates. The registration fee is $300. Members of the Museum of History Associates, senior citi-zens, active or retired military or intelligence personnel, and educators or employees of institutions of higher education may register for $175. For registration information, access the conference website at www.raleighspyconference.com, or contact Vincent Cavallari at (919) 733-3076, or by e-mail at vcavallari@ncmuseumassoc.com. The Capital Area Visitor Center, currently located in the Andrews-London House at 301 North Blount Street in Raleigh, will soon be moved to the North Carolina Museum of History. The Andrews-London House is part of the Blount Street Historic District that will be turned over to the private sector for development. After the visitor center opera-tion has been physically relocated, the staff members will be transferred from the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties to the Division of State History Museums. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 7 9 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Upcoming Events June 26 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Sun, Sea, and Sailing: Photographs and Memorabilia of Morehead City Tourism in the late 1930s. Opening of exhibit of photographs from the Webb Library depicting the Morehead City waterfront, Fort Macon, Atlantic Beach, sailing races, fishing, and notable people and fashions of the thirties. Exhibit to run through August 19. July 10 North Carolina Museum of History. A Closer Look: Home Front to Battlefront. Visitors can touch as well as see reproduction artifacts that illuminate the daily lives of soldiers on the front lines and their families at home during the Civil War. 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. July 11 Historic Bath. Palmer-Marsh House Summer Music Series. American and British patriotic music is performed by vocalist and harpsichordist Lorraine Hale of East Carolina University and Donald Shiffler of North Carolina State University, who plays various colonial musical instruments. Seating is limited to thirty persons. Advance tickets are available at the visitor center. 2:00 P.M., free of charge but donations accepted. For more information, call (252) 923-3971 or e-mail bath@ncmail.net. Roanoke Island Festival Park. A Day in the Life. Opening reception for black-and-white photography show, exploring a typical day at the N.C. School of the Arts, as students study music, drama, and dance. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Show runs from July 6 through July 28. July 13 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Twentieth Anniversary Celebration. A variety of special programs commemorates the daylong celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Elizabeth II State Historic Site. The day will conclude with an orchestra performance by the N.C. School of the Arts “illuminations” series at 8:00 P.M. For additional information, call (252) 475-1500, or visit the website, www.roanokeisland.com. July 13, 15 Historic Bath. Past Times Day Camp. Children aged five to ten learn about correspondence methods of the past, writing with quill pens, and making paper. They end the two-day workshop by creating a collage of their own work. $10 fee. 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. July 13-16 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Summer Children's Performance Series: Faustwork Mask Theatre. Rob Faust mixes monologue, physical comedy, and theatre as he explores the artistic, cultural, and psychological uses of masks in a fast-paced solo performance. $5 admission at the door, free for general admission ticket holders. 10:30 A.M. in the Film Theatre. July 14 North Carolina Museum of History. History à la Carte: Ava Gardner. Billie Stevens, director of the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, provides glimpses into the public and private life of North Carolina's glamorous movie star. 12:10 to 1:00 P.M. July 16 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. North Carolina Music Day. Celebration of the music of mariners and coastal people features the museum’s own singer-songwriter Connie Mason and singer-storyteller John Golden. 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. July 22 North Carolina Museum of History. A Talk with North Carolina’s First Lady. Mary Easley, First Lady of North Carolina, discusses the changing role of a governor’s wife. 12:10 P.M. July 24 North Carolina Transportation Museum. Cub Scout Day. Scouts can earn credit for various merit badges. Pre-registration required. To register or for further information, contact Brian Moffitt at (704) 636-2889, ext. 257. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 9 Upcoming Events July 25 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Laura Long Concert. A member of the Lost Colony Choir, Laura Long has been performing at the park for many years. Free. 4:00 P.M. in the Film Theatre. August 1 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Paintings by John de la Vega. Opening reception for display of oil paintings, photographs, and sculptures by local artist. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Exhibit will run through August 27. The artist will present a lecture and slide show on August 12 at 7:00 P.M. August 7-8 House in the Horseshoe. Annual Battle Reenactment. Re-creation of the 1781 attack on the Alston House. Other attractions include cannon demonstrations, sutlers selling period goods, and a military encampment. Reenactment at 4:00 P.M., Saturday, and 2:00 P.M., Sunday. August 8 Historic Bath. Palmer-Marsh House Summer Music Series. Concert featuring eighteenth-century string music and singing, with historian and ethnomusicologist Simon Spalding. Seating is limited to thirty persons. Advance tickets are available at the visitor center. 2:00 P.M., free of charge but donations accepted. For more information, call (252) 923-3971 or e-mail bath@ncmail.net. North Carolina Museum of History. Summer Family Performance Series: Bett Padgett. Singer-songwriter Bett Padgett weaves captivating lyrics with evocative melodies to bring to life stories from North Carolina history. 3:00 to 4:00 P.M. Roanoke Island Festival Park. Lost Colony Choir Concert. Annual concert performed by the Lost Colony Choir. Free. 2:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. August 18 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Afternoons at Three: A Pirate’s Table. Presentation concerning the types of foods available to pirates and sailors on board early-eighteenth-century ships. Features samples of dishes and a display of relevant artifacts from the purported Queen Anne's Revenge. $5 admission. Reservations required. 3:00 P.M. August 21 Bentonville Battlefield. Living History Program and Artillery Demonstration. Reenactors demonstrate the firing of a three-inch ordnance rifle and small arms, perform close-order drills, and discuss Civil War uniforms and equipment. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Lured by Fishing. Opening of art exhibit featuring the works of Carol Lassiter of Chapel Hill. The collection includes oil paintings of fishing lures, oars, and seafood, steel cutouts of fish, and photographs from a 1930s fishing trip. The exhibit will run through October 17. North Carolina Museum of History. African American History Tour. Explore the lives and accomplishments of renowned African Americans from North Carolina. 1:30 to 2:30 P.M. August 28-29 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Native American Festival. Weekend festival includes demonstrations, storytellers, dancers, drummers, and food vendors. Saturday, 12:00 to 6:00 P.M., Sunday, 12:00 to 4:00 P.M. August 29 Mountain Gateway Museum. Sunday Afternoon Muse Program: The Dowden Sisters. Talented musicians perform traditional string music. 3:00 P.M. September 8 North Carolina Museum of History. History à la Carte: A Growing Community: Latinos in North Carolina. Marisol Jimenez, director of the Advocacy Initiative, El Pueblo discusses how Latinos are finding new lives and homes in North Carolina and the ways the state is working to meet the needs of this expanding community. 12:10 to 1:00 P.M. 1 0 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Upcoming Events September 11 Historic Bath. John Lawson Walking Tour. Bea Latham conducts a walking tour of Bath and describes the town as it was when John Lawson lived there. $2 fee. 10:00 to 11:30 A.M. Horne Creek Living Historical Farm. From Peel to Pie. Living history demonstrations include cider making, apple peeling contests, and fruit drying techniques. Southern heritage apples, apple butter, cider, and fried pies are available for sampling and purchase. Tours of the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard are also offered. 11:00 A.M to 4:00 P.M. September 12 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Textiles and Treasures of the Middle East. Opening reception for exhibit of art dealer Stan Atkins’s collection of carpets, weavings, and art from Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. Some items will be offered for sale. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Exhibit runs from September 2 to October 27. September 18 CSS Neuse/Governor Caswell Memorial. Revolutionary War Living History Program. Colonial era artillery demonstrations, musket drills, women’s fashions, and games highlight the program honoring Gov. Richard Caswell. 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Museum of the Albemarle. Sixteenth Annual Moth Boat Regatta and Day on the River. Join the museum staff and the Pasquotank River Yacht Club on the Elizabeth City waterfront for the annual regatta and family-oriented Day on the River program, featuring exhibits and activities that highlight the maritime heritage of the Albemarle region. 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. (regatta begins at 11:00 A.M.) James K. Polk Memorial. Rededication of Polk Memorial Monument. Living history program features rededication of the monument erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1904. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Reed Gold Mine. North Carolina Open Gold Panning Competition. Participants in junior and adult divisions test their speed panning skills, with prizes for the top three finishers. Fee for panners. Registration at 9:00 A.M., competition begins at 12:00 P.M. September 19 North Carolina Museum of History. Writer’s Block: When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance of the Confederate Home Front. Jacquelin Glass Campbell, assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut, discusses her new book that details the efforts of Confederate women of the Carolinas to defend their homes against invading Union troops. A book signing will follow the program. 3:00 to 4:00 P.M. September 25 Duke Homestead. Tobacco Harvest Festival and Mock Auction. Costumed interpreters demonstrate traditional tobacco harvesting, stringing, and curing. Visitors can hear the unique clamor of the only remaining tobacco auction in Durham. Music, refreshments, and historic games are also offered. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. North Carolina Museum of History. Fixin’ Grits: Talking and Tasting. Mary Ellen Gibson, director of women’s studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, introduces the quirky documentary, It’s Grits, and presents for tasting a variety of recipes using grits. 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. Register by September 10 at (919) 715-0200, ext. 299. September 26 Mountain Gateway Museum. Sunday Afternoon Muse Program: Medicine Moon. Chief Two Trees discusses healing practices of Native Americans, and John Paul McNeil and the Mooniacs provide musical entertainment. 3:00 P.M. Staff Notes Two new editors joined the staff of the Historical Publications Section on May 3. Dr. Michael W. Coffey was hired as an editor I in the Civil War Roster Branch. Denise Craig, who had been working in the section as an intern and temporary employee since July 2003, became a permanent part-time editor I in the General Publications and Periodicals Branch. In the Government Records Branch of the Archives and Records Section, Ron Leach has been named records management analyst supervisor and head of the State Agency and University Records Unit, effective June 1. Elizabeth Preston began work that day as a processing assistant IV in the Correspondence Unit of the Public Services Branch. In the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties, Beth Carter has been named site manager at Fort Dobbs. Ellen Payne has been hired as an historic interpreter II at Aycock Birthplace, and Lee Ann Johnson to a similar position at the North Carolina Transporta-tion Museum. At Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens, Rob Lindmar is a new horticul-tural technician/gardener, Nancy Hawley the communications and marketing manager, and Orlando Venters a new security guard. Dee Sage has resigned as administrative opera-tions/ human resources coordinator. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 1 Upcoming Events September 27-28 Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum. It’s About Time. Program for schoolchildren includes colonial games, nineteenth-century chores, blacksmithing, farming and wildlife exhibits, and demonstrations of historic rifles. 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Teachers should call (336) 449-4846 to register. September 30 Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex. Arsenal Roundtable. Join the discussion about the North Carolina Arsenal and the effects of national events upon life in Fayetteville, 1800-1865. 7:00 P.M. October 1-3 Thomas Wolfe Memorial. Thomas Wolfe Birthday Celebration. Special readings, tours, and lectures commemorate the 104th birthday of the novelist. October 2 North Carolina Museum of History. 2004 Symposium on Civil Rights. Health is a Civil Right!: Health Care Matters in North Carolina. Third in a series of annual conferences examining aspects of the Civil Rights movement within the context of contemporary issues. This year’s symposium explores the ways African Americans and Native Americans in North Carolina have approached health care over the years. A health fair in the museum lobby will follow the program. 8:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Free. Pre-registration by September 29 is required. Call (919) 715-0200, ext. 283, to register. October 4, 11, 18, 25 Historic Edenton. Colonial Living History Days. Includes demonstrations of colonial games, chores, and domestic skills. Children will be given hands-on opportunities in various activities. 9:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. Fee for supplies. Reservations required for groups. October 9 Bentonville Battlefield. Civilian Living History Program. Costumed interpreters perform nineteenth-century domestic chores, such as open-hearth cooking, sewing, knitting, and dyeing. Program includes discussions of the hardships Southern women endured to provide for their families during the Civil War. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. In the Division of State History Museums, Joseph Barricella joined the staff of the North Carolina Maritime Museum as a graphic artist in February. He produces two-dimensional design work to support exhibits and educational programs, and designs The Waterline, the museum’s newsletter. At the North Carolina Museum of History, Suzanne Mewborn is the new Tar Heel Junior Historian Association program coordinator, and Joel Rhodes has been hired as a museum specialist (audiovisual technician). Connie Mason, collections manager and historian at the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, has been named the winner of the 2004 Brown-Hudson Folklore Award by the North Carolina Folklore Society. Past recipients of the award, presented annually to “persons who have contributed in a special way to the appreciation of North Carolina folk life,” include Paul Green, Doc and Merle Watson, and Michael B. Alford, former curator of maritime research at the museum. Connie Mason is a singer, songwriter, and musician who has entertained audiences for years with her songs rooted in the history and folklore of the North Carolina coast. Obituaries Veteran DCR employees were saddened by the news that former secretary Patric G. Dorsey passed away in Ellerbe on April 29. Secretary Dorsey, the wife of Commander P. C. Dorsey, USN (Ret.), was named to the position by Gov. James G. Martin in January 1985 and served eight years at the department’s helm. Born in Oklahoma in 1924, Secretary Dorsey attended the Penn Hall School in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Wayne State University, the University of Southern Cali-fornia, and the University of Maryland, studying art history, languages, and architecture. As her husband was stationed in various parts of the world, Dorsey spent many years over-seas. In the Far East, the Dorseys were avid art collectors, and both were patrons of the Royal Thai Art Society. In 1964, the Dorseys established a permanent residence in New Bern, where they restored three historic homes, including the dwelling of former governor Benjamin Smith (1810-1811). Additionally, Mrs. Dorsey was a member of the Craven County North Carolina Symphony Association, the New Bern Preservation Foundation, the New Bern Historic Preservation Society, the Historic Raleigh Properties Commission, and numerous other preservation groups. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the National Advisory Council on Adult Education. As secretary of DCR, Dorsey brought a strong commitment to program enhancement. During her administration, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown State Historic Site was opened, and the first initiatives in computer technology were begun in earnest. Secretary Dorsey was known as North Carolina’s “cultural ambassador,” visiting over seventy-five of the state’s counties and giving nearly a thousand speeches during her tenure. She is survived by her husband and three sons and their families. * * * Frank L. Horton, cofounder of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) and the first director of restoration at Old Salem, died on February 21. A memorial service was held on April 16 in the auditorium of the visitor center at Old Salem. During his twenty-two years with Old Salem, Horton supervised the restoration of more than forty buildings and the removal of more than one hundred non-conforming 1 0 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S structures. With his mother, he founded MESDA in 1965 and became its fulltime direc-tor in 1972. In this position, he initiated an unparalleled field research program, inven-torying more than fifteen thousand pieces of early decorative arts in southern homes. Researchers at MESDA have continued his legacy with the compilation of a directory of artisans at work in the South before 1821, a listing that now exceeds seventy-five thousand names. Horton retired in 1988, but continued to serve the museum as director emeritus. Old Salem named its new museum complex in his honor in 1997, and the Frank L. Horton Museum Center is now home to MESDA, a children’s museum, and a toy museum. Call for Papers The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with the support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has announced a conference, “Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers in Retirement,” to be held March 3-4, 2005. In conjunction with the publication of the first volume in the documentary edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, the conference will bring together documentary editors, historians, and scholars to examine the Founding Fathers in their years of retirement. The meeting will be held at the Jefferson Library in Charlottesville, and out-of-town attendees are invited to stay on the campus of the Univer-sity of Virginia. Papers addressing the central topic and proposals for moderated panels are invited. Submissions should include a one-page prospectus for a twenty- to thirty-minute paper and a brief curriculum vitae. The deadline for submissions is August 1. Materials should be addressed to Retirement Conference, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello, P.O. Box 316, Charlottesville, VA 22902, or as e-mail attachments to ICJS@monticello.org. Colleges and Universities East Carolina University On October 23, the university will host a symposium, “Eastern North Carolina and Literary Inspiration: A Homecoming.” The symposium, organized by the J. Y. Joyner Library, the Department of English, and other units on campus, will honor Snow L. and B. W. C. Roberts of Durham. The Roberts recently donated to the library the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection, an assemblage of more than twelve hundred works of literature, 1734 to the present, each with a North Carolina setting. During the event, authors of juvenile and adult fiction with ties to eastern North Carolina will discuss the symposium theme and read from their works. Scheduled speakers include Sue Ellen Bridgers, Elizabeth McDavid Jones, Carole Boston Weatherford, Randall Kenan, Michael Parker, Bland Simpson, and the keynote speaker, Allan Gurganus. The library will demonstrate its new North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library, which includes titles from the Roberts Collection that were set in eastern North Carolina counties. For more information or to receive registration materials, contact Maurice C. York, at yorkm@mail.ecu.edu or at (252) 328-0252. University of North Carolina at Charlotte John David Smith, Graduate Alumni Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, has been named the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, effective July 1. Karen Cox has had a book and two articles relating to the United V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 3 Daughters of the Confederacy published during the past year. Her book, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, was pub-lished by the University Press of Florida. Her article, “The Rise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy,” appeared in Lives Full of Struggle and Triumph: Southern Women, Their Organizations, edited by John Salmond and Bruce Clayton, and also published by the Uni-versity Press of Florida. She also wrote “The Confederate Monument at Arlington: A Token of Reconciliation,” which was included in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscape of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson, and published by the University of Tennessee Press. University of North Carolina at Greensboro On September 17 and 18, the departments of history and English will host an interdis-ciplinary conference that will examine the various forces that shaped new cultural identi-ties around the “Atlantic rim” during and after the Age of Exploration. The conference, “Creating Identity and Empire in the Atlantic World, 1492-1888,” will feature papers by historians and literary scholars exploring the ways that new identity creations enabled the peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe to imagine and erect common bonds of civil society and, conversely, the bonds of subjugation and slavery. Featured speakers will include Ira Berlin of the University of Maryland, Barry Gaspar of Duke University, and Stephen J. Greenblatt of Harvard University. The conference will be held in the new Elliott University Center. For more information, visit the conference website at www.atlantic.uncg.edu. State, County, and Local Groups Cape Fear Museum The museum held several special events in May to commemorate Confederate History Month. On May 1, the museum hosted an exclusive showing of prints of Civil War battle scenes by Brian Kraus, artist and art teacher from Morehead City, and pewter miniatures of Civil War generals by Gary Gerber, a Morehead City craftsman. A new long-term exhibit that traces the evolution of the Cape Fear Museum from United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) relic room to premier regional museum of history and science was unveiled on May 7. The exhibit features objects from the original collection of Cape Fear Chapter No. 3 of the UDC. The accomplishments of the chapter and the history of the artifacts were discussed by Sue Miller. Dan Morrill, author of The Civil War in the Carolinas, gave a presentation about the research behind his book, copies of which he signed after the program. Caswell County Historical Association The association will entertain approximately two hundred history teachers from around the nation this summer as part of a new initiative to improve the teaching of American history. The North Carolina Museum of History and the Thomas Day Education Project have partnered to implement a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose educational initiative (Landmarks of American History Teacher Workshop) incor-porates historical individuals and places into the advanced training of teachers. This partic-ular grant focuses on Thomas Day and Elizabeth Keckly, and features historic sites in Milton, Yanceyville, and Hillsborough. Four groups of about fifty teachers each will 1 0 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S participate in weeklong workshops, and each group will spend a Saturday (June 19 and 26, and July 17 and 24) in Caswell County. The museum will provide volunteers to conduct tours and will serve supper for the teachers. Greensboro Historical Museum For three weeks this summer, the museum is hosting a traveling exhibit that commem-orates the centennial of Duke Power Company. The display features relics of company history and vintage household items of the early twentieth century. The exhibit will be on view from June 22 to July 16. In February, Fred Goss assumed the position of museum director, succeeding the retired Bill Moore. Goss was formerly assistant director of the Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita, Kansas, and chief executive officer of the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1998, he received the Kansas Museum Association Award for Excellence for Site Development. Lower Cape Fear Historical Society At the May meeting of the society, the winners of two of its prestigious annual awards were announced. The Clarendon Award, given to the year’s publication that best inter-prets the history of the Lower Cape Fear region, was presented to Alan D. Watson for his book, Wilmington, North Carolina to 1861. The Society Cup for meritorious contributions to the aims and works of the association was awarded to Paul Allaire, program director and overseer of the Latimer House restoration project. New Bern Historical Society The annual spring Historic Homes, Gardens, and Arts Tour, held April 2-3, was expanded this year to include four homes in the Riverside Historic District. Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens also joined the tour, offering a special value ticket for admittance to the palace, the kitchen, the gardens, the John Wright Stanly House, the Robert Hay House, and the George W. Dixon House. Several historic churches in the downtown area were also involved, providing music or meals for tour participants. The Phoenix Society for African American Research An exhibit reception honoring the life and career of Dr. Milton D. Quigless Sr. was held on May 21 at the Quigless Clinic/Hospital in Tarboro. The exhibit consists of a display of Dr. Quigless’s medical equipment, including an examination table, blood pressure gauge, scale, and his medical bag, along with certificates, diplomas, plaques, and other personal memorabilia. The clinic opened in November 1946 as a twenty-six-bed hospital and outpatient clinic. It served a substantial portion of eastern North Carolina for approximately sixty years. During Dr. Quigless’s years of practice, patients of all races sought out this general practitioner and surgeon, who was well-known for his treatment of allergies, asthma, arthritis, dermatitis, and weight control. He treated patients for their entire life span and continued to practice at the Quigless Clinic until his death in November 1997. The hosts for the event were the Quigless family and the Phoenix Society for African American Research. The historic exhibit was produced by the late Helen G. Quigless Jr., first president of the Phoenix Society. The clinic is available for viewing by appointment only. Call (252) 823-5104 or (252) 823-7879. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 5 Additions to the National Register of Historic Places (Administered by the State Historic Preservation Office) 1 0 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S The Amis-Bragg House in Jackson, Northampton County, is an excellent example of the Greek Revival style adapted to fit a town lot. The house was built around 1840 for Junius Amis by Thomas Bragg, well-known architect and father of the governor, Thomas Bragg Jr., who bought the residence in 1843 and lived there for twelve years. The J. C. Black House in Carthage, Moore County, was constructed in the Queen Anne style about 1893 and features a striking corner tower. Black was longtime county attorney for Moore County, first president of the Carthage Railroad, organizer and president of the Bank of Carthage, mayor of Carthage, and state senator. Yopps Meeting House, also known as Yopps Primitive Baptist Church, was built in 1890 on the site of an earlier multi-denominational worship center, shared—at different times—by Methodists, Presbyterians, Missionary Baptists, and Primitive Baptists. The church stands in rural Onslow County on the old post road from Sneads Ferry to Wilmington. Additions to the National Register of Historic Places (Administered by the State Historic Preservation Office) V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 7 Cedar Point was built in Elkin, Surry County, around 1840 by Richard Gwyn, founding father of the town. It is probably the oldest house in Elkin and remained in the Gwyn family until 1975. About 1870, the house was significantly updated by Richard’s son, Thomas Lenoir Gwyn, who added the classical porches and, probably, the front gable. The brick Neoclassical Revival George Sperling House stands tall among the simple frame dwellings of rural Cleveland County. It was constructed near Shelby in 1927 by Augustus Branton, whose skill as brick mason and master carpenter is evident throughout the house. The Edward F. Worst Craft Cabin is one of several structures on the campus of the Penland School of Crafts built in the twentieth-century Rustic Revival style. The Penland School Historic District in Mitchell County is significant for its role in the handicraft revival in southern Appalachia during the early 1900s. Carolina Comments (ISSN 0576-808X) Published quarterly by the Office of Archives and History North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Raleigh, North Carolina Jeffrey J. Crow, Editor in Chief Kenrick N. Simpson, Editor Historical Publications Section Office of Archives and History 4622 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4622 Telephone (919) 733-7442 Fax (919) 733-1439 www.ncpublications.com Presorted Standard U.S. Postage Paid Raleigh, NC Permit No. 187
Object Description
Description
Title | Carolina comments |
Date | 2004-07 |
Description | Volume 52, Number 3, (July 2004) |
Digital Characteristics-A | 13070 KB; 36 p. |
Digital Format |
application/pdf |
Pres Local File Path-M | \Preservation_content\StatePubs\pubs_borndigital\images_master\ |
Full Text | The Old Kentucky Home Rededicated in Gala Celebration Nearly six years after suffering severe damage at the hands of a still unidentified arsonist, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville reopened on May 28, brighter and truer to the original. The four-day celebration featured the performance of an early Wolfe play, an authors’ evening with six prominent southern writers, and a living history program titled “A Day in May 1916.” Despite inclement weather, approximately 350 people attended the rededication ceremony on Friday morning, May 28. Longtime site manager Steve Hill, who oversaw the painstaking restoration process, welcomed visitors to the memorial. Jeffrey J. Crow, deputy secretary, and Lisbeth C. Evans, secretary of the Depart-ment of Cultural Resources (DCR), deliv-ered brief remarks [see following page for Dr. Crow’s comments]. Kay P. Williams, director of the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties, introduced the guest speakers, who included Charles Worley, mayor of Asheville, authors Gail Godwin and Orson Scott Card, and Maggi Vaughn, poet laureate of Tennessee. Hill concluded the ceremony with a few poignant, heartfelt remarks, then cut the ribbon. Throughout the weekend, a steady crowd Carolina Comments VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3 JULY 2004 Published Quarterly by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History Visitors line up to tour the restored Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse during the reopening ceremonies at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial on May 28. (All images by the Office of Archives and History unless otherwise indicated.) 7 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S A Message from the Deputy Secretary [The following remarks were delivered by Jeffrey J. Crow at the reopening ceremonies of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial on May 28.] Robert M. Calhoon, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, once remarked that the three greatest books ever written about North Carolina were John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), Guion Griffis Johnson’s Antebellum North Carolina: A Social History (1937), and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929). All three remain in print. All three are considered classics. John Lawson’s early description of the Carolina colony contained such original material and such astute observations that other eighteenth-century authors shamelessly plagiarized it. Guion Griffis Johnson’s massive account of antebellum North Carolina remains unsurpassed. A veritable portable archive, historians still rely on it. No one has ever dared plagiarize Thomas Wolfe, but we still depend on his evoca-tive prose to transport us to Altamont and Pulpit Hill in the early twentieth century. Look Homeward, Angel chronicled a time and place in which family and community became so entwined that one can hardly imagine a different setting for the family’s sprawling and turbulent life. Wolfe captured the precise moment when Asheville made the transition from mountain hamlet to resort boom town. It was not a change he embraced. The “Dixieland” boardinghouse came to symbolize his alter ego Eugene Gant’s disaffection and the family’s disruption. Eugene felt he lived “with two roofs and no home.” Eugene deplored the “money-hunger” and “the mounting lust for ownership” that he saw in his mother. But Eugene could not escape his mother’s fierce business acumen and ambition. “Spruce up, boy! Spruce up!” she told him. “Throw your shoulders back. Make folks think you’re somebody.” To drum up business, she gave him a pocketful of printed cards bearing the inscription: SPEND YOUR SUMMERS AT DIXIELAND In Beautiful Altamont, America’s Switzerland. Rates Reasonable—Both Transient and Tourist. Apply Julia E. Gant, Prop. While we may not be transients and tourists, we are historic preservationists who can appreciate the glorious restoration of the Old Kentucky Home. As the state his-toric preservation officer, I want to salute the many people who lovingly restored this structure and its furnishings. Unlike the “big cheaply constructed frame house . . . painted a dirty yellow” in Look Homeward, Angel, this state historic site and National Historic Landmark deserves our praise and admiration. Were Thomas Wolfe to visit today, I believe we could say unapologetically, “Welcome home, Tom!” toured the rambling, twenty-nine-room-boardinghouse, once again painted the warm yellow that was familiar to the young Wolfe, rather than the austere white that Asheville residents have known in recent years. On Friday evening, a moderated conversation between six well-known southern writers was presented at the Asheville Community Center. Novelists Gail Godwin, Orson Scott Card, and Sharyn McCrumb joined poets Fred Chappell, Michael McFee, and Maggi Vaughn in a wide-ranging discussion of their works and the influ-ences that colored them. The authors were available on Friday and Saturday afternoons for book signing sessions. On Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon, Wolfe’s rarely produced 1923 play, Welcome to Our City, was staged at the YMI Cultural Center. Set in the thinly fictionalized “Altamont,” subsequently made famous in Look Homeward, Angel, the play satirically condemns the greedy developers of the booming resort town who scheme to buy up the property of an African American community and repopulate the neighborhood with fancy homes for wealthy whites. The performance of the riveting social commentary was directed by Bernie Hauserman. Following each show, the director, members of the cast, Wolfe schol-ars, and leaders of the African American community of Asheville joined in a panel discussion about the play and its author. The reopening festivities concluded on May 31 with guided trolley tours of Thomas Wolfe’s Asheville. Dick Lankford Named State Archivist and Records Administrator Effective May 1, Jesse R. “Dick” Lankford Jr. was named state archivist and records administrator of North Carolina. He had been the acting state archivist since the retire-ment of Catherine J. Morris at the end of March. Lankford served for many years as assistant state archivist and head of the Archival Services Branch. Since the reorganization of the Archives and Records Section in 2000, he had been head of the Special Collections Branch. He holds a master of arts degree from Western Carolina University, and a master of public affairs degree from North Carolina State University. Lankford is the seventh North Carolina state archivist. He has worked with the agency for thirty-three years and has participated in many major initiatives and projects. “I am honored by this selection,” Lankford remarked. “We have a great opportunity to continue serving North Carolina at the high standards that have characterized our program over the decades. We have some great professionals on staff. I look forward to working with them and with the citizens of our state to ensure the preservation of North Carolina’s docu-mentary history.” David Brook, director of the Division of Historical Resources, commented: “We are fortunate to have had such an excellent candi-date in our midst. His familiarity with our programs and processes will assure a seamless transition into his new role.” V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 5 Site manager Steve Hill displays a new plaque for the Old Kentucky Home, fully restored from a devastating fire in 1998. Jesse R. “Dick” Lankford Jr., the seventh state archivist of North Carolina. Peter Sandbeck to Lead State Historic Preservation Office Peter B. Sandbeck, project administrator of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has been named deputy state historic preservation officer and administrator of the State His-toric Preservation Office, succeeding David Brook. Sandbeck joined the former Archaeol-ogy and Historic Preservation Section as a historic sites specialist I in September 1977 and spent sixteen years with the Division of Archives and History before separating in Febru-ary 1994. He has twenty-nine years of experience and solid accomplishments in the field of historic preservation. He will assume his new position on July 19. Valuable Civil War Letter Recovered As a result of the diligence of officials in the Office of Archives and History and the cooperation of an Alamance County auctioneer, another invaluable historical document has been returned to the people of North Carolina. A letter from Jefferson Davis to North Carolina governor John W. Ellis, dated May 23, 1861, appeared in an online auction catalogue of Historical Collectible Auctions of Graham in early March. Jeffrey J. Crow, dep-uty secretary of DCR, appealed to the state Attorney General’s Office to file a petition for a preliminary injunction to halt the sale. On March 9, superior court judge J. B. Allen Jr. granted the request, forbidding the auction house to sell, remove, or destroy the letter. A week later, the court issued an order to seize the document. The “owner” of the letter, an anonymous collector from Philadelphia, had purchased it at auction from Sotheby’s in 1982. He con-signed it to Historical Collectible Auctions with an asking price of $20,000 to $25,000. After viewing the circumstantial evidence supporting the state’s claim to the document, he and Rob-ert J. Raynor, president of the auction house, were convinced of the propriety of the claim and agreed to return the letter to possession of the state. Consistent with the practice of the day, the original letter had been copied into the governor’s letterbook, as was clearly indicated by an endorsement on the back of the document (“Letter Book Page 425”). The letterbook, along with three Fibredex boxes of letters to Governor Ellis, is housed in the State Archives. Raynor remarked: “It was clear to me that the Jefferson Davis letter was at one point part of that collection.” State officials never contended that the letter had been stolen from the Archives, merely that it belonged to the people of the state as a public document. “I think one of the most important aspects is the continuing precedent for returning public records to the State Archives,” commented Crow. A representative of the Attorney General’s Office received the letter from the court in Alamance County on May 17. Three days later, on the 143d anniversary of the state’s secession, Crow presented it to the spring meeting of the North Carolina Historical Commission. It will be permanently stored in the archives vault collection, along with other invaluable documents, including the Carolina Charter of 1663 and John Adams’s 7 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S This 1861 letter from Jefferson Davis to John W. Ellis was seized by Alamance County Superior Court but voluntarily returned by its “owner” to possession of the state. “Thoughts on Government.” State Archivist Dick Lankford described the letter as “a most welcome addition to our records. It has both evidential and intrinsic value and adds greatly to our holdings available for research in this critical period in our state’s history.” The letter was written just three days after North Carolina seceded from the Union. Davis was responding to a telegram of the previous day from Ellis, in which the governor requested the president’s intervention in convincing Virginia to send to North Carolina machinery for making small arms. Davis replied from Montgomery, Alabama, first capital of the Confederate States: “I will endeavor to obtain the requisite machinery. I have writ-ten to Gov. [John] Letcher on the subject and desired him to communicate with you. Hoping soon to give the matter personal attention.” The next day, the Virginia Council of State approved the loan to North Carolina of as much of the rifle-making machinery as could be spared from the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, where it was exposed to recapture by Federal forces. North Carolina dispatched machinists to Harpers Ferry to expedite the dis-mantling and packing of the machinery, which arrived at the state arsenal in Fayetteville during mid-June 1861. DCR Agencies to Create Virtual World War I Collection The North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina State Library, and the North Carolina Museum of History have been awarded a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant through the NC ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project in order to create a World War I virtual collection. Specifically, the selected resources are printed books and documents, letters, diaries, photographs, clips from audio interviews, and artifacts such as uniforms and weapons from the U.S. Army Thirtieth and Eighty-first Divi-sions, in which a large number of North Carolinians served. This project will unite these varied resources in cohesive and searchable formats that will be useful to schoolchildren as well as to scholars of the World War I period. It will also test the unification of different types of metadata—Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Extensible Mark-up Language (XML)—into a single search process. The State Library will serve as the lead agent in overseeing the implementation of the grant. Library staff will digitize printed materials from its collection; design, construct, and solicit feedback on the front end of the project website; update cataloging records to include digital copies and related images; and create and distribute publicity materials. State Archives staff will digitize images of diaries, letters, maps, personal and military papers, unit rosters, and photographs; hire a temporary half-time archivist to produce digi-tal images of these original materials; select and convert to digital format selected audio clips of oral histories given by soldiers; add images and finding aids to the Manuscript and Archives Reference System (MARS) and in EAD format; and ensure that all images and metadata meet archival standards. They will also bring the different types of metadata into a single search process. North Carolina Museum of History staff will photograph and present to the public for the first time digital images of many items in its World War I collection. The images of and historical data about each artifact related to the Thirtieth and Eighty-first Divisions will be presented to the public through the Web interface component of the Re:Discovery database. This database allows the import and export of bibliographic data using the MARC electronic interchange format, as well as the export of collection data in SGML/XML format in support of EAD. In addition, the museum’s historian will write historical background information for the project website. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 7 Some examples of the variety of items to be digitized include a letter by North Carolina native and army nurse Laura Doub, in which she mentions helping to sew some of the army’s first shoulder sleeve insignia onto uniforms of the Eighty-first Division; the “War Diary” of the Thirtieth (“Old Hickory”) Division’s 120th Infantry Regiment; portions of interviews with soldiers who served in the Eighty-first (“Stonewall” or, later, “Wildcat”) Division, a unit that was engaged in attacks on German positions up to the last hour of the war; tactical maps showing the French town of Bellicourt and the surrounding area where so many Tar Heels fell in the successful, though costly, battle to break the vaunted Hindenburg line; and military maps, engineering diagrams, orders, and other documents associated with the vital work of the 105th Engineer Regiment of the Thirtieth Division. This project will have broad appeal because it will include information on North Carolinians from all across the state and will present a variety of material of interest to many audiences. All three institutions consistently receive a wide range of questions per-taining to military history. As the centennial of World War I approaches, interest in this war is certain to increase. New Highway Historical Markers Approved At meetings on December 12, 2003, and May 7, 2004, the members of the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee approved the following new markers: PORT OF BATH, Beaufort County; MONTREAT COLLEGE, Buncombe County; WRECK OF THE METROPOLIS, Currituck County; WADSWORTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, Guilford County; JACQUES AND JULIANA BUSBEE, Moore County; HAROLD D. COOLEY, Nash County; ST. JOHN’S LODGE, New Hanover County; W. O. SAUNDERS, Pasquotank County; JAMES AND ROSE AGGREY, Rowan County; THOMAS’S LEGION, Swain County; “TINY” BROADWICK, Vance County; and FREEDMEN’S CONVENTION, FANNIE E. S. HECK, and LEONARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, Wake County. Secretary of DCR Lisbeth C. Evans has appointed Daniel S. Pierce of the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Rorin M. Platt of Campbell University to five-year terms on the Marker Advisory Committee. Freddie Parker of North Carolina Central University was elected committee chairman at the May 2004 meeting. An ambitious effort to compile Global Positioning System (GPS) data for the 1,465 state highway historical markers across North Carolina has been initiated jointly by the Departments of Transportation (DOT) and Cultural Resources. The two agencies have cosponsored the marker program since 1935. The respective secretaries of the depart-ments, Lyndo Tippett and Lisbeth Evans, endorsed the project that will entail the work of two interns over the course of two summers. DCR purchased the mapping grade GPS unit, a laptop computer, and a digital camera for use with the project, while DOT is funding the salaries and travel expenses of the interns. GPS technology permits the precise mapping of specific sites based on radio navigation and a world-wide system of satellites and ground stations. Once the GPS coordinates have been gathered, the data will be 7 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Interns Charles Givens (left) and Patrick Wade (right) will help compile mapping data about state highway historical markers this summer. shared widely on a revamped website. A secondary objective of the project is to document the physical condition and maintenance needs of each sign. Employed for the summer months of 2004 are Charles Givens of Raleigh, who will enroll at Appalachian State University in the fall, and Patrick Wade of Boone, a recent graduate of North Carolina State University (NCSU) with a degree in engineering. Wade will return to NCSU in the fall to pursue graduate study in engineering. The two interns are working closely with the Research Branch of the Office of Archives and History, the Geographic Information Systems office of DOT, and DOT field offices across the state. National History Day State Competition Held in Raleigh The state competition of National History Day in North Carolina was held at the Museum of History on Saturday, April 24. Two hundred and seventy-four students from twenty-four schools registered for the competition. More than sixty volunteer judges from public history and academic institutions reviewed the projects, provided constructive criti-cism, and selected the students who would represent the state at the national competition at College Park, Maryland, in June. Siemens Corporation, a national sponsor of the His-tory Day program, provided a number of volunteers and offered a special prize for the best projects relating to historical innovations. History Day students are required to choose a topic related to an annual theme. They conduct research using both primary and secondary sources, then use their findings to create projects in one of four categories: historical papers, exhibits, documentaries, or per-formances. The theme for this year was “Exploration, Encounter, Exchange in History.” The topics of projects chosen to advance to the national competition were as diverse as Walt Disney, the first poets to write in English, the Berlin Crisis, and the ways in which the conquering of Mount Everest affected the people and economy of Nepal. Forty-four students representing eleven schools from across North Carolina were chosen to advance. In addition to awards for first and second place in each category, a number of special prizes sponsored by groups and individuals across the state were awarded. National History Day in North Carolina is hosted by the Office of Archives and History with substantial assistance from the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies. McDougle Middle School Wins State History Bowl For the second consecutive year, the winner of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum–Alamance Battleground regional won the state history bowl championship. McDougle Middle School of Chapel Hill, coached by Cissy O’Neal and Louise Peters, defeated Dunn Middle School, representing the Bentonville Battlefield region, in the V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 7 9 Members and coaches of the McDougle Middle School championship history bowl team proudly display their trophy and a facsimile of the check awarded to the school by Wachovia Bank, one of the sponsors of the program. finals. Eight teams qualified for the final competition, held May 14 at the State Archives in Raleigh. The winning students received trophies and the school a check for $200 from Wachovia Bank; the runners-up earned $100 for their school. Jeffrey J. Crow, deputy secre-tary of DCR, Ron Octtavio of Wachovia Bank, and a representative of the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) presented the awards. The annual competition is sponsored by Wachovia Bank, the UDC, and the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties. Southeast Forsyth Middle School won the history bowl last year. Beaufort to Host Tall Ships in 2006 Beaufort has been named the host site for a fleet of tall ships during its American visit, July 1-5, 2006. Before coming to North Carolina, the Class A and Class B ships will par-ticipate in the fourth Americas’ Sail competition along the coast of South America. Win-ners in the various categories will be announced and trophies presented while the ships are at Beaufort. Minges Bottling Group will serve as founding sponsor of the event, which will be called Pepsi Americas’ Sail 2006. Beaufort was selected as the American host site because it is the home port of Horatio Sinbad, captain of the Meka II, winner of the 2002 Class B competition. David Nateman, director of the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, called the chance for visitors to board and tour the tall ships “a once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. He hopes that the preparations for the event will shepherd the necessary addition of new docks and decking at the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, and the development of parking facilities, public restrooms, boardwalks, and docks at the museum’s Gallants Channel property. Museum of History Associates Announce Second Major Pledge The North Carolina Museum of History Associates announced in March the receipt of the organization’s second major pledge within five months. The Branch Banking and Trust (BB&T) Charitable Foundation has guaranteed $100,000 to help establish a founda-tion to benefit the North Carolina Museum of History. The pledge, announced by associ-ates’ chairperson Lyl MacLean Clinard of High Point, was made to honor her father, Hector MacLean of Lumberton. MacLean is a longtime member of the associates and for-mer president of Southern National Bank, which merged with BB&T in 1995. Son of Governor Angus W. McLean, he served as state senator, mayor of Lumberton, and presi-dent of the Medical Foundation of North Carolina board of directors for twenty-two years. He was inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1996. Last November, the associates announced the initial pledge to the Museum of History Foundation, given in honor of Nancy Lyles by her husband and two daughters, all of High Point. Annual interest from the foundation will be used by the museum to support artifact acquisitions and other initiatives. North Caroliniana Society Awards Fellowships for 2004-2005 The North Caroliniana Society has awarded Archie K. Davis Fellowships to twelve scholars for 2004-2005. The recipients, their institutions, and research topics are: Catherine W. Bishir, Preservation North Carolina; biographical directory of North Carolina architects. Debra A. Blake, North Carolina Office of Archives and History; documentary edition of Rose Greenhow’s European diary, 1863-1864. 8 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Mark L. Bradley, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; civil-military relations in North Carolina, 1862-1877. William R. Burk, Biology Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; history of botany at the university. Stephen D. Feeley, Department of History, College of William and Mary; North Carolina’s Tuscarora Indians. Dixie Ray Haggard, Department of History, University of Kansas; North Carolina’s Cherokee Indians. John Thomas McGuire, College at Oneonta, SUNY; North Carolina’s Democratic women in the 1930s. Trina N. Seitz, Department of Sociology, Appalachian State University; the death pen-alty in North Carolina, 1909-2004. Michael Ray Smith, Department of Mass Communications, Campbell University; John McLean Harrington and his handwritten newspaper. Karen Smith Rotabi, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Howard W. Odum and the UNC Social Welfare School. Thomas J. Ward Jr., Department of History, Rockhurst University; black lawyers in North Carolina. Ryan Whirty, Department of Journalism, Indiana University; history of Princeville, North Carolina. The North Caroliniana Society has awarded more than 225 Archie K. Davis Fellow-ships since the inception of the program in 1987. Designed to encourage research in North Carolina history and culture, the program grants stipends to cover a portion of travel and subsistence expenses while fellows conduct research. The annual deadline for proposals is March 1. For further information visit the society’s website, www.ncsociety.org, or contact Dr. H. G. Jones, secretary of the society, at hgjones@email.unc.edu. The society presented a special award to Elizabeth Vann Moore of Edenton at the third Biennial Series for Preservation Studies program on April 24. The series, named in honor of Miss Moore, held a luncheon meeting at Albemarle Plantation in Hertford. The award recognized her lifelong crusade to preserve the history of the Albemarle region and her impeccable historical research. Guest speakers for the occasion were Paul S. D’Ambrosio of the New York State Historical Society, Peter B. Sandbeck of Colo-nial Williamsburg, andWillis P. Whichard and H. G. Jones of the North Caroliniana Society. The event was co-sponsored by the Perquimans County Restoration Association. The society’s prestigious North Caroliniana Book Award was pre-sented to Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern, coauthors of A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina, the third and final volume in their outstanding architectural survey of the state. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 1 William S. Powell, vice-president of the North Caro-liniana Society, presents sterling cups to Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern, winners of the North Caroliniana Book Award. North Carolina Arts Council Wins National Award The North Carolina Arts Council and its partners received an inaugural Preserve Amer-ica Presidential Award for heritage tourism, recognizing their work with the Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative program. President George W. Bush presented the award to executive director Mary B. Regan and folk life director H. Wayne Martin in a ceremony at the White House on May 3. The Preserve America prize was created to recognize demon-strated commitment to the protection and interpretation of the nation’s cultural and natu-ral heritage assets, to be presented during National Historic Preservation Week. Four themed, self-driving heritage trails that run through twenty-five western North Carolina counties are the essence of the Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative. They include the Blue Ridge Music Trail, the Cherokee Heritage Trail, the Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina, and the Farms, Gardens, and Countryside Trails of Western North Carolina. Each trail is explained by a guidebook, and the program hosts a website that explores the cultural heritage of the southern mountains. NC ECHO Uncovers Historical Treasures around the State North Carolinians have stories to tell. These stories are often related through the words of forgotten people, records of counties and towns, artifacts left behind, and the sites where they were left. Tape-recorded reminiscences of veterans, letters of farmers, photo-graphs of main streets long vanished, paintings by old masters, and diaries of young dream-ers— these items and more have been gathered and saved by concerned citizens and institutions for generations. In 1999, upon the urging of some of North Carolina’s leading caretakers of such collections, the State Library Commission formed a task force, the Access to Special Collections Working Group (ASCWG), to explore ways to provide better Internet access to the special collection material of North Carolina’s public libraries. The group developed the North Carolina ECHO project through the State Library to locate, survey, and assist not only special collections in libraries but also those in all types of cultural heritage institutions throughout the state. NC ECHO seeks to help all cultural institutions in North Carolina preserve and share the stories and histories located within their walls with the people of the state and the world. The project’s funding derives from a federal LSTA grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services administered through the State Library of North Carolina. The goals of the project are three-fold: 1) to gather information about individual public and private cultural institutions in the state for an inclusive web portal/directory, and a comprehensive statistical and anecdotal analysis of the needs and challenges faced by these institutions in today’s world; 2) to assist the special collections professionals in these institu-tions in learning the best practices for traditional methods of preservation, access, and digitization; and 3) to help these institutions, through a series of grant programs, to work collaboratively and to fund digitization projects aimed at sharing their collections and stories online. NC ECHO strives to be as inclusive as possible in identifying organizations for the project. It uses the following criteria for selection: Any cultural institution (library, archive, museum, historic site, or organization) which maintains a permanent, non-living collection of unique materials held for research and/or exhibit purposes and open for the use of the public will be surveyed. Denominational/associational collections will be surveyed, but individual church collections will not. Art museums will be surveyed, but 8 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S galleries will not. Zoos, arboreta, and parks will not be surveyed, unless as a part of their mission, they hold collections described above. Institutions meeting these criteria and included in the project directory are known as NC ECHO partner institutions. These include libraries, archives, art museums, history museums, science museums, historic house museums, historic sites, state and national parks, and more. NC ECHO’s grant programs encourage libraries to collaborate with non-library institutions on digitization projects to make their special collections holdings, exhibits, catalogs, indexes, and finding aids available online. A variety of workshops focus upon ways to put these materials on the Internet using methods that allow for maximum accessibility and searchability. Through the comprehensive directory, grant programs, and continuing education opportunities, NC ECHO hopes to help North Carolina’s cultural institutions preserve and share their individual, community, and collective state heritage. NC ECHO is presently over three-quarters of the way through its needs assessment survey and information-gathering site visits to cultural institutions across the state. Since February 2001, a project archivist and project librarian have visited seventy-seven of the one hundred counties and have identified over 850 cultural institu-tions. Fascinating and unbelievable collections and indi-vidual items have been discovered from Murphy to Manteo, and more will undoubtedly be found before the survey ends. Only a small portion of the interesting things located thus far includes a jar of canned possum from the 1940s (Belhaven Memorial Museum, Belhaven); the largest collection of historic barbed wire in the world (Taxidermy Hall of Fame of N.C. Creation Museum and Antique Tool Museum, Southern Pines); the original propeller from the Wright Brothers’ airplane and the sewing machine on which they sewed the cloth for the wings (Cape Hatteras National Seashore Headquarters on Roanoke Island); Richard Nixon’s Duke University Law School term paper on “Legal Ethics” (Duke University Archives, Durham); “Letter from the Dead”— the last words of a dying Confederate officer from North Carolina written on the battlefield of Gettysburg (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh); the original Siamese twins’ daybook—the journal of Cheng and Eng Bunker, who lived out their retirement in North Carolina (North Carolina Collection Gallery, UNC-Chapel Hill); and the site of the first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop (Old Salem/Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem). The NC ECHO staff urges the public and the readership of Carolina Comments to take a look at their website, www.ncecho.org, and to browse through the online directory of cultural repositories. Is there a museum or historic site in your hometown that NC ECHO seems to have missed? Contact the NC ECHO staff at their office in the State Library, 109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, NC, ncecho@library.dcr.state.nc.us, or (919) 807-7418, if you have any comments or suggestions. Project staff consists of project manager Peggy Schaeffer, project archivist Kim Cumber, metadata coordinator Kathy Wisser, and project assistant Lisa Coombes. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 3 Arthur Congleton, curator of the Belhaven Memorial Museum, holds a jar of canned possum from the 1940s, one of many unusual discoveries of NC ECHO staff during their site visits to cultural institutions around the state. Photo courtesy of Scott Reavis, NC ECHO project librarian. News from Historical Resources Archives and Records Section In an initiative that began with conversations with Information Technology Services (ITS) in the summer of 2003, the section has agreed to participate in a pilot project for the management of electronic records in the summer of 2004. In conjunction with ITS, other state agencies, and Documentum, a leading Enterprise Content Solution software pro-vider, the section will be testing projects involving the preservation of e-mail, digital asset management, and replacement of current records-scheduling databases and records man-agement tools. ITS is North Carolina’s statewide information technology agency that pro-vides enterprise software solutions to state agencies and offices. In October 2003, the Government Records Branch published on its website a new sec-tion of the “General Schedule for State Agency Records” devoted to information technol-ogy records. These are records normally maintained by information technology operations units of state agencies. An amended “General Schedule for State Agency Records,” published originally in 2000, was re-issued in January 2004. The Information Technology Branch has continued to revamp all of the section’s web pages. New pages for the Govern-ment Records Branch, including records retention and disposition schedules for many of the state and local government agencies, are available at: http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/records. The Outer Banks History Center (OBHC) has acquired an important collection of thousands of negatives taken by renowned local photographer Aycock Brown. Two anon-ymous benefactors purchased the treasure trove for the center from a Brown family mem-ber in memory of D. Victor Meekins and his long-standing association with, and admiration for, Aycock Brown. Aycock Brown (1904-1984) was born in the mountains of North Carolina near Blowing Rock. After graduating from high school, he worked a stint as a reporter for the Elizabeth City Independent before heading to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he picked up some journalism courses at Columbia University. In 1928 Brown got his first job extol-ling the virtues of the Carolina coast, promoting the Atlantic Beach area. For many years, Brown’s weekly column, Covering the Waterfront, ran in newspapers across the state. Brown came to Dare County in 1948 to serve as the publicist for The Lost Colony out-door drama. In 1952, he was named director of the newly created Dare County Tourist Bureau, a position he held until 1976. Brown photographed everyday life and landscapes, buildings and charter boat fishing hauls, and staged entertaining shots of swimsuit-clad beach beauties, which became his trademark. His name became synonymous with photog-raphy on the Outer Banks. Promotion of the region as a tourist destination to the nation, and even the world, can largely be credited to Brown. 8 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S This recent acquisition will be added to the large collection of Brown’s photographs and other materials already among the cen-ter’s holdings, including corre-spondence, papers, scrapbooks, and ten cubic feet of photographs that he took while working for the Tourist Bureau. Through a partnership with the First Flight Rotary Club and Icarus International, a time capsule will be sunk at the site of the Monument to a Century of Flight at the Aycock Brown Welcome Center, operated by the Dare County Tourist Bureau, in Kitty Hawk. The monument, designed by Nags Head artist and devoted Rotarian Glenn Eure, was dedicated in November 2003 as a prelude to the centennial of manned flight in December. The Icarus Monument to a Century of Flight is an enduring legacy to the history, beauty, and mystery of flying. The site is reflective, contemplative, educational, and a tangible reminder to future generations of the first one hundred years of flight. Icarus International spearheaded the monument project. Funds were raised by selling bricks throughout the Outer Banks and to aviation history enthusiasts worldwide. The First Flight Rotary Club took the lead in coordinating the time capsule project and raising the necessary funds. The Bank of Currituck emerged as the primary underwriter with a $15,000 donation. Materials to be encased in the time capsule will be representative of life in North Carolina’s Rotary District 7720 in the year 2003. All forty-six clubs in the district have been asked to contribute banners, mementos, photographs, books, community histories, and common everyday items that could be of interest one hundred years from now. Materials of a more national and international scope are also being collected for the project from the White House, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and other sources. The time capsule will be dedicated in the fall of 2004 as part of the observance of the 101st anniversary of the first flight and is to be opened in the bicentennial year, 2103. The Outer Banks V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 5 Right: Unidentified beach beauties on the North Carolina coast, one of Aycock Brown’s signature themes. Below: Brown captured coastal scenes, such as this stormy day on the ocean, to publicize the Outer Banks of North Carolina. History Center has agreed to serve as the collection site, where the donated materials will be professionally packaged and documented. The Friends of the Archives held its annual meeting on June 14. Following the election of officers and recognition of volunteers, Kevin Duffus, author of The Lost Light, gave a presentation on the mysterious disappearance of the Cape Hatteras Fresnel lens during the Civil War and his fascinating research that led to its rediscovery. The North Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) has hired Matthew T. Turi, a graduate of the library school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to administer a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant. The NHPRC funding will enable a statewide archival training initiative, “Archival Education for the Twenty-first Century,” an ongoing series of practical work-shops demonstrating basic archival principles and practices. Recent Accessions by the North Carolina State Archives During the months of March, April, and May 2004, the Archives and Records Section made 204 accession entries. The Archives accessioned original records from Avery, Catawba, Chatham, Cumberland, Gaston, Henderson, Iredell, Mecklenburg, Pitt, Sampson, Stanly, Stokes, Surry, Wake, Watauga, and Wilkes Counties. The Archives received security microfilm of records for Alamance, Alleghany, Anson, Ashe, Avery, Beaufort, Brunswick, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Camden, Carteret, Caswell, Catawba, Cleveland, Davie, Durham, Forsyth, Greene, Haywood, Henderson, Hertford, Johnston, Lenoir, Moore, Nash, New Hanover, Robeson, Rockingham, Rowan, Stanly, Stokes, Wake, and Watauga Counties; and for the municipalities of Emerald Isle, Garner, Gibson, and Waxhaw. The section accessioned records from the following state agencies: Department of Community Colleges, 45 reels and 22 fiche cards; Department of Cultural Resources, 5.1 cubic feet; Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 12 reels; Department of Revenue, 5 cubic feet; Department of Transportation, 15 reels; Governor’s Office, 13.25 cubic feet and 21 folders; and Secretary of State, 1 reel. The student/academic records for Palmer Memorial Institute (1925-1972) and Solid Computer Solutions were added to the Academic Records. Twenty cubic feet of Federa-tion of North Carolina Historical Societies material were added to the Organization Records. Other records accessioned included 3 Bible Records; 4 volumes (from Granville, New Hanover, and Wake Counties) added to the Cemetery Records; 55 audio and 23 videotaped interviews, and 1,101 other items, added to the Military Collection; and 8 photographs added to the Non-textual Materials Collection. Historical Publications Section More than four hundred years after the event, the Lost Col-ony and the mystery surrounding its disappearance continue to fascinate North Carolinians and others around the world. A new book from the Office of Archives and History provides fresh insights into old questions about the English colonies established on Roanoke Island in the 1580s. Edited by E. Thomson Shields Jr. and Charles R. Ewen, Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection (cover pictured right) contains sixteen essays presented at two conferences held on Roanoke Island in 1993 and 1998. The 8 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S diverse essays are written from an eclectic mix of historical, archaeological, literary, and folkloric viewpoints, by such notable authors as the late David Beers Quinn, William S. Powell, and Joyce Youings. They include information about the Lost Colony, John White, Ralph Lane, Virginia Dare, Simon Fernandez, and Manteo and Wanchese, two Native Americans who visited England in 1584 and 1585. E. Thomson Shields Jr. is a professor of English and director of the Roanoke Colonies Research Office at East Carolina University (ECU). He edits the Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter. Charles R. Ewen is a historical archaeologist in the Department of Anthropol-ogy at ECU. He directs the Southern Coastal Heritage Program, a consortium of scholars from several institutions with related research interests. The provocative, yet authoritative, essays in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies will set the standard for future research by Roanoke scholars. However, the 214-page paperback will appeal to any reader interested in the Lost Colony and other events associated with En-gland’s first attempts to settle North America. The handsome volume features on its cover a photograph of the Virginia Dare statue located in the Elizabethan Gardens at Manteo. Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection (214 pages, illustrated, index, paperbound) costs $15.70, which includes tax and shipping. Order from: Historical Publications Section (CC), Office of Archives and History, 4622 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4622. For credit card orders, call (919) 733-7442 or use the Historical Publications Section’s secure online shop at http://store.yahoo.com/nc-historical-publications. For the first time in many years, Volumes 1 and 2 of the best-selling North Carolina Civil War roster project are now available. Over the next twelve months, Volumes 3 through 13 of the popular series will also be reprinted. Acclaimed by two leading Civil War historians as a “magnificent achievement” and “the finest state roster ever published,” North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster will be, upon completion, a comprehensive listing of all North Carolinians who served for either section during the Civil War. To date, fifteen volumes in the projected eighteen-volume series have been published. However, because of the enormous popularity of the roster, only Volumes 14 and 15 are currently in print. In cooperation with book dealer and pub-lisher Tom Broadfoot of Wilmington, the Historical Publications Section is reprinting a limited number of the first thirteen volumes. The reprinted editions of Volumes 1 and 2 may be ordered now, and pre-publication orders for Volumes 3-13 are being accepted. It is projected that all thirteen volumes will be completed by May 2005. The volumes are printed on acid-free paper and have sewn cloth bindings and matching dust jackets. The reprint of Volume 1 (Artillery) sells for $63.85. Volume 2 (Cavalry) of the reprint series costs $74.55. First editions of Volume 14 (Fifty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, Sixtieth, and Sixty-first Regiments, Infantry) and Volume 15 (Sixty-second, Sixty-fourth, Sixty-sixth, Sixty-seventh, and Sixty-eighth Regiments, Infantry) sell for $47.80 each. Prices include tax and shipping. For further information and prices of the other volumes to be reprinted, write the address above or call (919) 733-7442. Pre-publication orders can be placed through the section’s secure online store, which also provides information about other Civil War titles published by the Office of Archives and History. During April and May, the section took advantage of numerous opportunities to sell books and distribute materials. On April 7 Donna Kelly, section administrator, spoke to the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society at Duke Homestead about the work of the section. She also sold shelf-worn books (primarily those of interest to genealogists) to the thirty-five members who attended. During the weekend of April 17-18, Ms. Kelly, Matthew Brown, Frances Kunstling, Kenny Simpson, and Susan Trimble manned a booth at the North Carolina Literary Festival, which was held at North Carolina State V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 7 University. Sales were not as brisk as anticipated because of concurrent events. Nevertheless, it provided good visibility for the section and many catalogs were distributed. On April 29 Mrs. Trimble and Ms. Kelly sold shelf-worn books during the inaugural DCR new employee orientation held in the Archives and History/State Library building. Tourism Day on May 11, held on Halifax Mall in Raleigh, provided yet another opportunity to dispense materials. Hundreds of governors’ books, as well as some of the older, out-of-date booklets, were distributed by Lang Baradell, Mrs. Kunstling, and Anne Miller. Bill Brown and Dennis Isenbarger assisted in setting up the booth. On May 26, during the State Employees’ Appreciation Day rally, also held on Halifax Mall, Bill Brown, Matthew Brown, Mike Coffey, Denise Craig, Dawne Howard, Mr. Isenbarger, Mrs. Kunstling, Jan-Michael Poff, and Mrs. Trimble sold many of the section’s most popular titles. Nearly six hundred dollars worth of sales were generated through these events. The section is fortunate to have two interns this summer. Dawne Howard and Jennifer Krause, both graduate students in the public history program at North Carolina State Uni-versity, began work in May. Ms. Krause is arranging and describing the reference photo-graphs on file in the section, and adding to a computerized master index to the prints. Many of these were used in publications over the years, but many were not, so this master index will help utilize some images from the last fifty years that have never been pub-lished. Ms. Howard is reading and transcribing eighteenth-century newspapers on micro-film. Some of her work will be published in a softcover title as part of the Colonial Records Project. Over the years, whenever people visit Historical Publications, some often make a com-ment like “I never knew you were here.” For that reason, a new sign now sits at the cor-ner of Lane and McDowell Streets in downtown Raleigh. After only two months, so many walk-in purchases have been made that the sign has already paid for itself by provid-ing better visibility for the office to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Office of State Archaeology Dr. Billy L. Oliver, manager of the Archaeological Research Center, helped to solve a thirteen-year-old cold case of a missing soldier in Fayetteville. The State Bureau of Inves-tigation and the Fayetteville Police Department called in Dr. Oliver and R. A. Crowson, a licensed geologist, to help them locate the skeletal remains of the soldier in the backyard of a Fayetteville residence. Using the latest technology, they discovered the remains, then directed the excavation of the burial site. As a result, murder charges were brought against another soldier, who was brought back from Iraq to stand trial. On May 14, Dr. Oliver and three other members of the interagency investigative team were presented testimonial plaques of appreciation by the Fayetteville Police Department. He has also been invited to help teach a course at the North Carolina Justice Academy in Salemburg on the discovery and recovery of human remains. 8 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Jan-Michael Poff and Frances Kunstling of the Historical Publications Section distribute governors’ books and other materials at the State Employees’ Appreciation Day rally in Raleigh. News from State Historic Sites and Properties North Carolina Transportation Museum The initial stages in the restoration of the massive Back Shop have been completed. The exterior of the building has been stabilized, the underside of the new roof sealed, windows and temporary doors installed, and hazardous materials abated, principally by the encapsu-lation of asbestos and lead paint. The 600 feet by 150 feet facility, which opened in 1905, was constructed by John P. Pettyjohn and Company of Lynchburg, Virginia, in less than a year. Even though 40 percent of the wall and roof areas are made of glass, the walls con-tain approximately 2.5 million bricks. The renovated Back Shop is projected for use as an immense exhibit area. One of the featured attractions of the Back Shop exhibits made a dramatic entry on April 16. The sixty-one-feet-long fuselage and sixteen-feet-wide center wing section of a DC-3 airplane were transported by trucks one hundred miles across the Piedmont. The airplane had been on display since 1979 at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham and was purchased by the Transportation Museum to be the centerpiece of the renovated Back Shop. John Bechtel, master mechanic at Spencer, supervised the disassembly and transport of the plane. The fuselage was carried on a Department of Transportation flatbed truck, while the wing section was hauled by Yarbrough Transfer Company of Winston- Salem. The vintage airplane will be renovated and reassembled in the Back Shop. The museum’s annual Rail Days Festival on May 1-2 fea-tured two recently acquired diesel locomotives, a living history trib-ute to Presidential campaign trains, and a number of special demonstrations. The seventy-nine- year-old Shay steam loco-motive was operated for the first time this year. It was joined by a rare Fairbanks-Morse engine, for-merly North Carolina Ports Authority locomotive No. 1860, and F40PH No. 307, previously in service with AMTRAK. Living history demonstrations included a blacksmith at work, a Railway Post Office car receiving mail on the fly, and the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang of Virginia showing how tracks were kept aligned by hand. Festival participants also visited V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 8 9 The DC-3 arrives safely in the restored Back Shop at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer. The plane was transported across the Piedmont from the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. with a hobo, browsed model train layouts, listened to railroad music by Ivy Creek Recordings, and dined on railroad chili and barbecue. Northeastern Historic Sites Section Spring rains could not dampen spirits at the annual Halifax Day celebration on April 12. Not only was this year the 228th anniversary of the Halifax Resolves, the first official call for American independence in 1776, but also the 50th anniversary of the Historical Halifax Restoration Association. The group was organized in June 1954 and staged its first Halifax Day ceremony the next April. A reception and birthday party for the association followed the customary festivities. Several chapters of the Sons of the American Revolution, whose national organization has recognized Halifax Day as an official annual event, participated in this year’s celebra-tion. The program featured the presentation of the year’s Halifax Resolves Awards. Andy Whitby of Weldon was recognized for his outstanding commitment to local historic pres-ervation activities, and Rocky Mount Mills was honored for the preservation of its mill village. After the awards presentation, an interpretive stone marker was dedicated at the site of the Free Church, the first house of worship in Halifax, built in 1793. Ken Johnson, a lay minister at Grace Episcopal Church of Weldon and a former employee at Historic Halifax State Historic Site, blessed the historical marker. The 1767 Chowan County courthouse, closed for renovation since 1996, will officially reopen to the public on October 8. Linda Jordan Eure, Historic Edenton site manager, and Judith W. Chilcoat, operations manager, are members of a committee planning events for opening day and the entire week of October 4-8. Contractors and county officials anticipated the restoration would be completed by June 30. In January, the final $200,000 of a total cost of $3,236,673 was received from the state’s repair and renovation fund. The colonial courthouse, a National Historic Landmark, is one of the finest Georgian-style public buildings in the South. Historic Edenton and Chowan County will jointly over-see general operations of the building, which will be open for tours and public programs, as well as the occasional court session. A large, fully paneled assembly room upstairs will also be available for private functions. Students from the Christian Fellowship Church School in Waukegan, Illinois, caused quite a sensation as they toured the his-toric district of Edenton with interpreter Deborah Sliva on April 30. The fourth- and 9 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S These elementary schoolchildren from Illinois visited Historic Edenton in Revolu-tionary War attire as part of a hands-on history lesson. fifth-grade students and their instructors, attired in authentic reproduction uniforms of the Continental army, were participating in their Spring Freedom Tour of national his-toric sites. As part of a hands-on learning approach, students agree to a one-year enlist-ment in the Continental army. They also research one of the Founding Fathers of the country. Joseph Hewes, an Edenton resident and one of the three North Carolinians who signed the Declaration of Independence, was the subject of research for a student in the program this year. Accordingly, the group traveled to Edenton to tour the his-toric buildings and to visit the Joseph Hewes monument, where the student delivered his Founding Father speech to classmates. Piedmont Historic Sites Section The annual African American Heritage Festival was held on June 12, featuring great food, vendors, and music. Performers included the Rahman Ensemble, Logie Meachum, the Capitol City 5, Dancers on the Move, and Different Drum. Among the highlights of the fes-tival were a special exhibit of African American collectibles from the personal collection of Effley Howell, sponsored by Thankful Heritage; a reading and book signing by Sedalia author Annette Dickens; displays by the African American Quilt Circle of Durham; hair wrapping by Robin Babatunde; childrens’ games and activities; and assorted crafts. The Boyd Toben Memorial Baseball Tournament, featuring teams from area Mustang and Bronco Leagues, was held on June 12-13 at the Bundrige Athletic Field. The festival was sponsored by Sam’s Club of Greensboro, McDonald’s of Stoney Creek, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Historical Foundation, the Boyd Toben Memorial Fund, and Louis Raiford. Of special interest at this year’s festival, memorial director Tracey Burns-Vann and her husband Andre Vann signed copies of their new book, Sedalia and the Palmer Memorial Insti-tute. A number in the Black America Series of Arcadia Press, the volume includes more than two hundred photographs provided by Sedalia families and Palmer Memorial Institute alumni, many of which have been hidden away in scrapbooks and not seen for decades. For more information about the book and its authors, visit the Arcadia Press website, www.arcadiapublishing.com. Roanoke Island Festival Park This summer special daily programs will be presented in the History Garden at 1:00 P.M. The programming is included in the cost of the general admission ticket. The daily sched-ule, running from June 6 to August 14, is as follows: Sundays – The Civil War on the Outer Banks Mondays – Delicate Ribbon of Sand: The Unique Environment of the Outer Banks Tuesdays – Daily Life in Elizabethan Times Wednesdays – “Pleased to Meet You”: Personalities of Roanoke Island Festival Park Thursdays – This Fabled Shore: Outer Banks History Fridays – Folklife and Culture on the Outer Banks Saturdays – The Roanoke Voyages These special summer offerings are in addition to the regular daily programs, which include musket (11:00 A.M.) and pike (4:00 P.M.) drills at the Settlement Site, and the setting (10:30 A.M.) and furling (5:00 P.M.) of sails, and the firing of the swivel gun (12:00 P.M.) on the Elizabeth II. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 1 For the seventh consecutive year, the park will host the “illuminations” Summer Per-forming Arts Series, presented by the North Carolina School of the Arts. The five-week arts festival features theatre, music and dance performances, and film screenings. Faculty, current students, and alumni of the School of the Arts, one of the leading arts conservato-ries in the nation, will perform throughout the festival. Evening theatre and musical per-formances are held outdoors on the park’s spacious lawn, where the mosquitoes are held at bay by pest repellant machines. Guests are invited to bring blankets, lawn chairs, and pic-nic baskets to enjoy the ninety-minute performances, which begin at 8:00 P.M. The After-noon Classics musical series will be held in the Art Gallery at 2:00 P.M., Tuesday through Friday, and include piano, classical guitar, chamber music, a brass quintet, and a saxophone quartet. Four film screenings of both School of the Arts student movies and Hollywood feature films will be presented in the Film Theatre on Saturday nights. A five-dollar dona-tion per person is requested at each performance. For a complete schedule of events, visit the “illuminations” website, at www.ncarts.edu/illuminations. Southeastern Historic Sites Section In November 2001, Mitch Bowman of the Virginia Civil War Trails Program visited Bentonville with a North Carolina road map and a concept to create a similar historic trails venture in the Tar Heel State, focusing on the final 1865 campaign. Since then a North Carolina Civil War Trails team has been meeting regularly at Bentonville, and the project is off to a great start. As of March 2004, there were sixty-nine sites funded in thirty-one localities. Completion of the first phase of the project is slated for March 2005, with the grand opening of the North Carolina Civil War Trails at Bentonville Battlefield. The Johnston County Convention and Visitors’ Bureau has graciously funded eight local interpretive panels. Donny Taylor, site manager at Bentonville Battlefield, has obtained permission to place trails signage on private property. Historic interpreter Becky Sawyer has researched and located key images for the panels, including the flag of the Twenty-sixth Illinois Veteran Volunteers. The eight panels will connect various sites of the Bentonville campaign, from the Union army’s advance from Averasboro to the end of the trail at Smithfield. Their locations and content will include: 1) Bentonville Battlefield: the Harper House and its role during the battle; 2) Village of Bentonville: Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower’s charge, the desolation of the village, and the use of private homes as field hospitals; 3) Hannah’s Creek: the skirmish between elements of Col. Robert F. Catterson’s Fed-eral brigade, including the Twenty-sixth Illinois, and Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry; 4) Confederate line of march: the Confederate advance and retreat along Devil’s Race-track Road; 5) Union line of march: the Union advance upon Smithfield after the consolidation of Northern armies in Goldsboro; 6) Hastings House: the headquarters of both Generals Bragg and Johnston before and after the Battle of Bentonville; 7) Johnston County courthouse: General Sherman’s headquarters during his occupation of Smithfield; 8) Stevens’s House/Mitchener Station: site of the last grand review of Confederate armies, and a reception for Governor Vance and other dignitaries from Raleigh. 9 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 brochures about the markers will be printed, and information will also be made available on the Civil War Trails website at www.civilwartraveler.com or www.civilwartrails.org. The next meeting of the trails team will be at Bentonville in September. On March 20-21, Bentonville Battlefield presented a living history program to com-memorate the 139th anniversary of the battle. More than one hundred volunteers and approximately twenty-eight hundred visitors attended the two-day event. This year’s pro-gram focused on a re-creation of Camp Vance, one of several Confederate camps of instruction in North Carolina. After being situated for nearly two decades in the Eastern Office in Greenville, the Education Branch of the Museum and Visitor Services Section relocated to the future site of the CSS Neuse/Civil War museum in downtown Kinston on April 1. With the state assuming ownership of the former East Group building on North Queen Street, it was deemed imperative to establish a presence in the facility. A second motivation for the move was the desire to return artifacts from the CSS Neuse to Kinston. Most of these have been in storage in Raleigh or Durham following extensive conservation treatment to repair damages from the floodwaters of Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The future museum facility has ample storage space and, for security and insurance purposes, it is essential to have an employee of the division in the building with the artifacts. Jann C. Brown, educa-tion specialist, can now be reached at (252) 526-9600. Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens The thirty-sixth annual decorative arts symposium, held March 21-23, attracted approximately seventy visitors. In keeping with the statewide focus upon North Carolina crafts during 2004-2005, this year’s theme was “‘A Choice and Very Splendid Assortment of Goods’: Craftsmanship in North Carolina.” As always, the symposium featured a panel of expert speakers, each of whom addressed a topic related to crafts and artisans in the Tar Heel State. The opening lecture was presented by Catherine W. Bishir, who retired from the State Historic Preservation Office at the end of 2001 and is now the senior architec-tural historian with Preservation North Carolina. She addressed the subject, “North Carolina Architecture: Tradition, Taste, and Region.” Both Matthew W. Hobbs, a gradu-ate student at Duke University, and Jane D. Lukas, coordinator of special programs at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), examined an aspect of furniture production in the state. Lawyer and collector William W. Ivey of Asheboro offered “An Artistic Study of North Carolina Schools of Long Rifles, 1780-1835.” Becky H. Minnix, a guide at MESDA, spoke on North Carolina bed covers, and Charles G. Zug III, director of the North Carolina Pottery Center at Seagrove, presented an overview of the state’s illustrious pottery tradition. Symposium attendees were also treated to tours of the palace, with particular emphasis upon its decorative arts, special presentations by site staff mem-bers, and social hours and a private dinner in historic New Bern homes. The annual Gardeners’ Weekend, held April 2-4 in conjunction with the New Bern Historic Homes, Gardens, and Arts Tour, featured an impressive array of heritage tulips in free tours of the Kellenberger Gardens. According to palace horticulturalist Lisa Wimpfheimer, heritage tulips are quite different from the popular hybrids available today. They are significantly shorter and smaller, with pointed petals and as many as seven blooms per stem. Bulb expert Carl Van Staalduinen shared gardening tips about tulips and other bulbs during the weekend. The palace again hosted an outdoor summer concert series, with four evenings offering a wide variety of music. Listeners relaxed on blankets with picnic dinners on the south V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 3 lawn overlooking the Trent River. The Second Marine Expeditionary Force Band returned for the opening performance on May 17, with its usual rousing rendition of patriotic and popular tunes. The Craven Community Concert Band entertained on May 30, followed by the North Carolina Symphony on June 7. The series concluded on July 5 with a performance by the 440th Army National Guard Band. USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial Special events marked the first and last days of May at the battleship memorial. The annual living history day on May 1 featured demonstrations of daily shipboard drills and inspections, special tours of living history areas, and exhibits in the visitor center highlight-ing the role of civilians, especially women, on the home front during World War II. A new crew of interpreters portrayed sailors and marines as they went about their daily routines aboard a wartime battleship. Areas available for tours included the ship’s guns on the main deck, the superstructure, featuring the bridge and combat information center, and living quarters and sickbay on the second deck. The traditional Memo-rial Day observance was celebrated on the after-noon of May 31. Again, the battleship and U.S. Cellular offered the VALOR (Veterans and Loved Ones Reconnect) Program, in which veter-ans could place free tele-phone calls to service buddies, family, and friends throughout the country. The battleship director, Capt. David R. Scheu, welcomed visitors aboard while an all-service color guard marched on the colors. As an enormous “Holiday Flag” was unfurled from the stern, the Second Marine Division Band performed the National Anthem. The Reverend John L. Gillespie, pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church of Wilmington, gave the invocation. After Captain Scheu had recognized each service branch, Brig. Gen. Vergel L. Lattimore, a native of Charlotte, delivered the in memoriam remarks. Brigadier General Lattimore is the Air National Guard assistant to the Air Force Chief of Chaplains at Bolling Air Force Base in the District of Columbia, and an ordained AME Zion minister. After the keynote address, Robert G. Greer, chairman of the New Hanover County Board of County Commissioners, and Spence H. Broadhurst, mayor of Wilmington, committed the memorial wreath to the waters of the Cape Fear. Rev. John L. Gillespie offered the benediction, the U.S. Marine Honor Guard delivered a twenty-one-gun salute, and buglers concluded the program with “Taps.” 9 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S The USS North Carolina decked out for the annual Memorial Day observance. News from State History Museums Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex To underwrite the cost of its summer camp for children, the museum received a $2,500 grant from the Cumberland County Foundation. In keeping with the two-year statewide Celebration of North Carolina Craft, the focus of this year’s weeklong Summer Kids Excellent Adventure was on Tar Heel craft traditions, artisans, and products. The free camp, held June 7-11, provided children ages nine to twelve hands-on opportunities to learn weaving, rope making, and candle making. North Carolina Maritime Museum (Beaufort) The sounds, creeks, rivers, and the ocean surrounding Beaufort are ideal for sailing, kayaking, and rowing. For the inexperienced or new boater, the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort offers programs and classes throughout the year. Long known for its highly successful Junior Sailing Program, the museum has for the past several years expanded its instruction to provide for adults. Adult Learn to Sail classes are conducted aboard a thirty-foot keelboat, and Traditional Boat Handling classes are held aboard sharpies or spritsails. These five-hour classes are available most Fridays and Saturdays throughout the summer and fall. Family sailing and individual lessons are offered under special arrangements through the Friends of the Museum. Learn to Kayak classes are held throughout the summer and fall and provide a level of comfort to those individuals who enjoy quietly exploring area creeks and rivers. Kayaking trips to the Rachel Carson Reserve and the basic classes include the observation of local wildlife with a natural science curator. The Beaufort Oars, established in 1991, use an adaptation of the six-oared Cornish gig. Members of the Oars currently row three V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 5 The Beaufort Oars practice their strokes in Gallants Channel. times a week out of the museum’s Gallants Channel annex. The museum has expanded the Beaufort Oars gig program to include sliding-seat rowing shells, starting with recre-ational singles. Anyone interested in rowing single shells can join the new sliding-seat pro-gram upon payment of the annual dues. If you have wanted to get out on the water, but didn’t know exactly how to start, con-tact the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, where boating opportunities abound. Call the museum weekdays at (252) 728-7317 for more information. The museum has published a revised new paperback edition of Traditional Work Boats of North Carolina, by Michael B. Alford, curator of maritime research at the museum until his retirement in 1996. First published in 1990, the volume quickly became the standard in the field and was soon out of print. Copies may be obtained from the Museum Store (Sharon.Resor@ncmail.net) for $7.95, plus shipping and handling. Alford’s research enabled the design of a building plan for the construction of a replica of a periauger, the workboat of eighteenth-century North Carolina (see Carolina Com-ments, January 2004). The thirty-foot log vessel, constructed by museum staff and volun-teers at the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, was christened on June 19. The periauger is scheduled for sea trials in July before setting out on August 15 on a three-week voyage from Beaufort to its home port of Hertford. It will visit six historic ports along the way. North Carolina Museum of History The museum staff has developed an exciting new educational tool by which teachers may earn continuing education credits from the comfort of home. Through a series of six online courses, educators can refresh their understanding of various aspects of North Carolina history and import creative ideas for use in the classroom. Participants in the online sessions can complete assignments at their own pace and exchange ideas with their peers by means of an electronic bulletin board. The self-directed courses include printable handouts, suggestions for utilizing primary sources, links to relevant websites, and tips for evaluating potential Internet sites. Teachers can earn up to forty contact hours, including technology credit, of continuing education. The first of the six-week courses, Legends of North Carolina, was offered in April and May. The second, Stories of the Civil War, began on June 1. Other topics to be covered include American Indians Past and Present, North Carolina at Home and in Battle during World War II, Women in North Carolina History, and the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina. Participants must submit a registration form and fee of $25 for each course. A printable registration form is available at http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/ProfDev.html. For more information, call (919) 715-0200, ext. 314, or e-mail beth.crist@ncmail.net. On April 22, Jean Fagan Yellin, distinguished professor of English emeritus, at Pace University, discussed the research of and read selections from her new biography, Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Dr. Yellin has devoted more than twenty years to the study of Jacobs. She edited a 1987 edition of the slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, in the process proving conclusively that Jacobs was the author behind the pseud-onymous Linda Brent. During the program, Dr. Yellin repeatedly acknowledged her indebtedness to George Stevenson Jr., now private collections archivist at the North Carolina State Archives, who was then head of reference services. He spent countless hours, after his normal workday, identifying people, places, and incidents mentioned in the slave narrative, using original records in the archives. Through his painstaking 9 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S research, Dr. Yellin was able to identify Harriet Jacobs as the author and Edenton as the setting for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. A reception and book signing followed the program, which was originally scheduled for February 26 but postponed as a result of inclement weather. Last August, spooks from around the world congregated in Raleigh for the inaugural international spy conference. The event was so well received, drawing worldwide media coverage, that a second conference has been scheduled for September 1-3. This year’s theme will be Spies, Lies, and Deception: From Pearl Harbor through the Age of Terror-ism, examining the interrelationships between terrorism, espionage, and the intelligence community. The panel of speakers scheduled to appear include recognized experts in the field. The keynote speaker, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, is the senior adviser on counterterrorism to the Chief of National Security in Iraq. His topic will be “The Continuing Threat of al-Qaeda and the Future of Terrorism.” Nigel West, who spoke at the inaugural confer-ence, returns to address “Countering Terrorism Using Counterintelligence Techniques: The British Experience in Northern Ireland.” Other scheduled speakers include Dennis Pluchinsky, diplomatic security analyst and university lecturer on international terrorism; Kim Cragin, regarded as the leading expert on suicide bombers; and Tom Kimmel, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, who will compare the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center. Dr. James Leutze, retired chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will again serve as chairman and moderator. The conference is jointly presented by Bernie Reeves, editor and publisher of Metro Magazine, the North Carolina Museum of History, and the Museum of History Associates. The registration fee is $300. Members of the Museum of History Associates, senior citi-zens, active or retired military or intelligence personnel, and educators or employees of institutions of higher education may register for $175. For registration information, access the conference website at www.raleighspyconference.com, or contact Vincent Cavallari at (919) 733-3076, or by e-mail at vcavallari@ncmuseumassoc.com. The Capital Area Visitor Center, currently located in the Andrews-London House at 301 North Blount Street in Raleigh, will soon be moved to the North Carolina Museum of History. The Andrews-London House is part of the Blount Street Historic District that will be turned over to the private sector for development. After the visitor center opera-tion has been physically relocated, the staff members will be transferred from the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties to the Division of State History Museums. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 7 9 8 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Upcoming Events June 26 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Sun, Sea, and Sailing: Photographs and Memorabilia of Morehead City Tourism in the late 1930s. Opening of exhibit of photographs from the Webb Library depicting the Morehead City waterfront, Fort Macon, Atlantic Beach, sailing races, fishing, and notable people and fashions of the thirties. Exhibit to run through August 19. July 10 North Carolina Museum of History. A Closer Look: Home Front to Battlefront. Visitors can touch as well as see reproduction artifacts that illuminate the daily lives of soldiers on the front lines and their families at home during the Civil War. 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. July 11 Historic Bath. Palmer-Marsh House Summer Music Series. American and British patriotic music is performed by vocalist and harpsichordist Lorraine Hale of East Carolina University and Donald Shiffler of North Carolina State University, who plays various colonial musical instruments. Seating is limited to thirty persons. Advance tickets are available at the visitor center. 2:00 P.M., free of charge but donations accepted. For more information, call (252) 923-3971 or e-mail bath@ncmail.net. Roanoke Island Festival Park. A Day in the Life. Opening reception for black-and-white photography show, exploring a typical day at the N.C. School of the Arts, as students study music, drama, and dance. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Show runs from July 6 through July 28. July 13 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Twentieth Anniversary Celebration. A variety of special programs commemorates the daylong celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Elizabeth II State Historic Site. The day will conclude with an orchestra performance by the N.C. School of the Arts “illuminations” series at 8:00 P.M. For additional information, call (252) 475-1500, or visit the website, www.roanokeisland.com. July 13, 15 Historic Bath. Past Times Day Camp. Children aged five to ten learn about correspondence methods of the past, writing with quill pens, and making paper. They end the two-day workshop by creating a collage of their own work. $10 fee. 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. July 13-16 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Summer Children's Performance Series: Faustwork Mask Theatre. Rob Faust mixes monologue, physical comedy, and theatre as he explores the artistic, cultural, and psychological uses of masks in a fast-paced solo performance. $5 admission at the door, free for general admission ticket holders. 10:30 A.M. in the Film Theatre. July 14 North Carolina Museum of History. History à la Carte: Ava Gardner. Billie Stevens, director of the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, provides glimpses into the public and private life of North Carolina's glamorous movie star. 12:10 to 1:00 P.M. July 16 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. North Carolina Music Day. Celebration of the music of mariners and coastal people features the museum’s own singer-songwriter Connie Mason and singer-storyteller John Golden. 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. July 22 North Carolina Museum of History. A Talk with North Carolina’s First Lady. Mary Easley, First Lady of North Carolina, discusses the changing role of a governor’s wife. 12:10 P.M. July 24 North Carolina Transportation Museum. Cub Scout Day. Scouts can earn credit for various merit badges. Pre-registration required. To register or for further information, contact Brian Moffitt at (704) 636-2889, ext. 257. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 9 9 Upcoming Events July 25 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Laura Long Concert. A member of the Lost Colony Choir, Laura Long has been performing at the park for many years. Free. 4:00 P.M. in the Film Theatre. August 1 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Paintings by John de la Vega. Opening reception for display of oil paintings, photographs, and sculptures by local artist. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Exhibit will run through August 27. The artist will present a lecture and slide show on August 12 at 7:00 P.M. August 7-8 House in the Horseshoe. Annual Battle Reenactment. Re-creation of the 1781 attack on the Alston House. Other attractions include cannon demonstrations, sutlers selling period goods, and a military encampment. Reenactment at 4:00 P.M., Saturday, and 2:00 P.M., Sunday. August 8 Historic Bath. Palmer-Marsh House Summer Music Series. Concert featuring eighteenth-century string music and singing, with historian and ethnomusicologist Simon Spalding. Seating is limited to thirty persons. Advance tickets are available at the visitor center. 2:00 P.M., free of charge but donations accepted. For more information, call (252) 923-3971 or e-mail bath@ncmail.net. North Carolina Museum of History. Summer Family Performance Series: Bett Padgett. Singer-songwriter Bett Padgett weaves captivating lyrics with evocative melodies to bring to life stories from North Carolina history. 3:00 to 4:00 P.M. Roanoke Island Festival Park. Lost Colony Choir Concert. Annual concert performed by the Lost Colony Choir. Free. 2:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. August 18 North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Afternoons at Three: A Pirate’s Table. Presentation concerning the types of foods available to pirates and sailors on board early-eighteenth-century ships. Features samples of dishes and a display of relevant artifacts from the purported Queen Anne's Revenge. $5 admission. Reservations required. 3:00 P.M. August 21 Bentonville Battlefield. Living History Program and Artillery Demonstration. Reenactors demonstrate the firing of a three-inch ordnance rifle and small arms, perform close-order drills, and discuss Civil War uniforms and equipment. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufort. Lured by Fishing. Opening of art exhibit featuring the works of Carol Lassiter of Chapel Hill. The collection includes oil paintings of fishing lures, oars, and seafood, steel cutouts of fish, and photographs from a 1930s fishing trip. The exhibit will run through October 17. North Carolina Museum of History. African American History Tour. Explore the lives and accomplishments of renowned African Americans from North Carolina. 1:30 to 2:30 P.M. August 28-29 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Native American Festival. Weekend festival includes demonstrations, storytellers, dancers, drummers, and food vendors. Saturday, 12:00 to 6:00 P.M., Sunday, 12:00 to 4:00 P.M. August 29 Mountain Gateway Museum. Sunday Afternoon Muse Program: The Dowden Sisters. Talented musicians perform traditional string music. 3:00 P.M. September 8 North Carolina Museum of History. History à la Carte: A Growing Community: Latinos in North Carolina. Marisol Jimenez, director of the Advocacy Initiative, El Pueblo discusses how Latinos are finding new lives and homes in North Carolina and the ways the state is working to meet the needs of this expanding community. 12:10 to 1:00 P.M. 1 0 0 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S Upcoming Events September 11 Historic Bath. John Lawson Walking Tour. Bea Latham conducts a walking tour of Bath and describes the town as it was when John Lawson lived there. $2 fee. 10:00 to 11:30 A.M. Horne Creek Living Historical Farm. From Peel to Pie. Living history demonstrations include cider making, apple peeling contests, and fruit drying techniques. Southern heritage apples, apple butter, cider, and fried pies are available for sampling and purchase. Tours of the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard are also offered. 11:00 A.M to 4:00 P.M. September 12 Roanoke Island Festival Park. Textiles and Treasures of the Middle East. Opening reception for exhibit of art dealer Stan Atkins’s collection of carpets, weavings, and art from Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. Some items will be offered for sale. 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. Exhibit runs from September 2 to October 27. September 18 CSS Neuse/Governor Caswell Memorial. Revolutionary War Living History Program. Colonial era artillery demonstrations, musket drills, women’s fashions, and games highlight the program honoring Gov. Richard Caswell. 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Museum of the Albemarle. Sixteenth Annual Moth Boat Regatta and Day on the River. Join the museum staff and the Pasquotank River Yacht Club on the Elizabeth City waterfront for the annual regatta and family-oriented Day on the River program, featuring exhibits and activities that highlight the maritime heritage of the Albemarle region. 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. (regatta begins at 11:00 A.M.) James K. Polk Memorial. Rededication of Polk Memorial Monument. Living history program features rededication of the monument erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1904. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Reed Gold Mine. North Carolina Open Gold Panning Competition. Participants in junior and adult divisions test their speed panning skills, with prizes for the top three finishers. Fee for panners. Registration at 9:00 A.M., competition begins at 12:00 P.M. September 19 North Carolina Museum of History. Writer’s Block: When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance of the Confederate Home Front. Jacquelin Glass Campbell, assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut, discusses her new book that details the efforts of Confederate women of the Carolinas to defend their homes against invading Union troops. A book signing will follow the program. 3:00 to 4:00 P.M. September 25 Duke Homestead. Tobacco Harvest Festival and Mock Auction. Costumed interpreters demonstrate traditional tobacco harvesting, stringing, and curing. Visitors can hear the unique clamor of the only remaining tobacco auction in Durham. Music, refreshments, and historic games are also offered. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. North Carolina Museum of History. Fixin’ Grits: Talking and Tasting. Mary Ellen Gibson, director of women’s studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, introduces the quirky documentary, It’s Grits, and presents for tasting a variety of recipes using grits. 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. Register by September 10 at (919) 715-0200, ext. 299. September 26 Mountain Gateway Museum. Sunday Afternoon Muse Program: Medicine Moon. Chief Two Trees discusses healing practices of Native Americans, and John Paul McNeil and the Mooniacs provide musical entertainment. 3:00 P.M. Staff Notes Two new editors joined the staff of the Historical Publications Section on May 3. Dr. Michael W. Coffey was hired as an editor I in the Civil War Roster Branch. Denise Craig, who had been working in the section as an intern and temporary employee since July 2003, became a permanent part-time editor I in the General Publications and Periodicals Branch. In the Government Records Branch of the Archives and Records Section, Ron Leach has been named records management analyst supervisor and head of the State Agency and University Records Unit, effective June 1. Elizabeth Preston began work that day as a processing assistant IV in the Correspondence Unit of the Public Services Branch. In the Division of State Historic Sites and Properties, Beth Carter has been named site manager at Fort Dobbs. Ellen Payne has been hired as an historic interpreter II at Aycock Birthplace, and Lee Ann Johnson to a similar position at the North Carolina Transporta-tion Museum. At Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens, Rob Lindmar is a new horticul-tural technician/gardener, Nancy Hawley the communications and marketing manager, and Orlando Venters a new security guard. Dee Sage has resigned as administrative opera-tions/ human resources coordinator. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 1 Upcoming Events September 27-28 Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum. It’s About Time. Program for schoolchildren includes colonial games, nineteenth-century chores, blacksmithing, farming and wildlife exhibits, and demonstrations of historic rifles. 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Teachers should call (336) 449-4846 to register. September 30 Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex. Arsenal Roundtable. Join the discussion about the North Carolina Arsenal and the effects of national events upon life in Fayetteville, 1800-1865. 7:00 P.M. October 1-3 Thomas Wolfe Memorial. Thomas Wolfe Birthday Celebration. Special readings, tours, and lectures commemorate the 104th birthday of the novelist. October 2 North Carolina Museum of History. 2004 Symposium on Civil Rights. Health is a Civil Right!: Health Care Matters in North Carolina. Third in a series of annual conferences examining aspects of the Civil Rights movement within the context of contemporary issues. This year’s symposium explores the ways African Americans and Native Americans in North Carolina have approached health care over the years. A health fair in the museum lobby will follow the program. 8:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Free. Pre-registration by September 29 is required. Call (919) 715-0200, ext. 283, to register. October 4, 11, 18, 25 Historic Edenton. Colonial Living History Days. Includes demonstrations of colonial games, chores, and domestic skills. Children will be given hands-on opportunities in various activities. 9:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. Fee for supplies. Reservations required for groups. October 9 Bentonville Battlefield. Civilian Living History Program. Costumed interpreters perform nineteenth-century domestic chores, such as open-hearth cooking, sewing, knitting, and dyeing. Program includes discussions of the hardships Southern women endured to provide for their families during the Civil War. 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. In the Division of State History Museums, Joseph Barricella joined the staff of the North Carolina Maritime Museum as a graphic artist in February. He produces two-dimensional design work to support exhibits and educational programs, and designs The Waterline, the museum’s newsletter. At the North Carolina Museum of History, Suzanne Mewborn is the new Tar Heel Junior Historian Association program coordinator, and Joel Rhodes has been hired as a museum specialist (audiovisual technician). Connie Mason, collections manager and historian at the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort, has been named the winner of the 2004 Brown-Hudson Folklore Award by the North Carolina Folklore Society. Past recipients of the award, presented annually to “persons who have contributed in a special way to the appreciation of North Carolina folk life,” include Paul Green, Doc and Merle Watson, and Michael B. Alford, former curator of maritime research at the museum. Connie Mason is a singer, songwriter, and musician who has entertained audiences for years with her songs rooted in the history and folklore of the North Carolina coast. Obituaries Veteran DCR employees were saddened by the news that former secretary Patric G. Dorsey passed away in Ellerbe on April 29. Secretary Dorsey, the wife of Commander P. C. Dorsey, USN (Ret.), was named to the position by Gov. James G. Martin in January 1985 and served eight years at the department’s helm. Born in Oklahoma in 1924, Secretary Dorsey attended the Penn Hall School in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Wayne State University, the University of Southern Cali-fornia, and the University of Maryland, studying art history, languages, and architecture. As her husband was stationed in various parts of the world, Dorsey spent many years over-seas. In the Far East, the Dorseys were avid art collectors, and both were patrons of the Royal Thai Art Society. In 1964, the Dorseys established a permanent residence in New Bern, where they restored three historic homes, including the dwelling of former governor Benjamin Smith (1810-1811). Additionally, Mrs. Dorsey was a member of the Craven County North Carolina Symphony Association, the New Bern Preservation Foundation, the New Bern Historic Preservation Society, the Historic Raleigh Properties Commission, and numerous other preservation groups. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the National Advisory Council on Adult Education. As secretary of DCR, Dorsey brought a strong commitment to program enhancement. During her administration, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown State Historic Site was opened, and the first initiatives in computer technology were begun in earnest. Secretary Dorsey was known as North Carolina’s “cultural ambassador,” visiting over seventy-five of the state’s counties and giving nearly a thousand speeches during her tenure. She is survived by her husband and three sons and their families. * * * Frank L. Horton, cofounder of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) and the first director of restoration at Old Salem, died on February 21. A memorial service was held on April 16 in the auditorium of the visitor center at Old Salem. During his twenty-two years with Old Salem, Horton supervised the restoration of more than forty buildings and the removal of more than one hundred non-conforming 1 0 2 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S structures. With his mother, he founded MESDA in 1965 and became its fulltime direc-tor in 1972. In this position, he initiated an unparalleled field research program, inven-torying more than fifteen thousand pieces of early decorative arts in southern homes. Researchers at MESDA have continued his legacy with the compilation of a directory of artisans at work in the South before 1821, a listing that now exceeds seventy-five thousand names. Horton retired in 1988, but continued to serve the museum as director emeritus. Old Salem named its new museum complex in his honor in 1997, and the Frank L. Horton Museum Center is now home to MESDA, a children’s museum, and a toy museum. Call for Papers The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with the support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has announced a conference, “Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers in Retirement,” to be held March 3-4, 2005. In conjunction with the publication of the first volume in the documentary edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, the conference will bring together documentary editors, historians, and scholars to examine the Founding Fathers in their years of retirement. The meeting will be held at the Jefferson Library in Charlottesville, and out-of-town attendees are invited to stay on the campus of the Univer-sity of Virginia. Papers addressing the central topic and proposals for moderated panels are invited. Submissions should include a one-page prospectus for a twenty- to thirty-minute paper and a brief curriculum vitae. The deadline for submissions is August 1. Materials should be addressed to Retirement Conference, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello, P.O. Box 316, Charlottesville, VA 22902, or as e-mail attachments to ICJS@monticello.org. Colleges and Universities East Carolina University On October 23, the university will host a symposium, “Eastern North Carolina and Literary Inspiration: A Homecoming.” The symposium, organized by the J. Y. Joyner Library, the Department of English, and other units on campus, will honor Snow L. and B. W. C. Roberts of Durham. The Roberts recently donated to the library the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection, an assemblage of more than twelve hundred works of literature, 1734 to the present, each with a North Carolina setting. During the event, authors of juvenile and adult fiction with ties to eastern North Carolina will discuss the symposium theme and read from their works. Scheduled speakers include Sue Ellen Bridgers, Elizabeth McDavid Jones, Carole Boston Weatherford, Randall Kenan, Michael Parker, Bland Simpson, and the keynote speaker, Allan Gurganus. The library will demonstrate its new North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library, which includes titles from the Roberts Collection that were set in eastern North Carolina counties. For more information or to receive registration materials, contact Maurice C. York, at yorkm@mail.ecu.edu or at (252) 328-0252. University of North Carolina at Charlotte John David Smith, Graduate Alumni Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, has been named the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, effective July 1. Karen Cox has had a book and two articles relating to the United V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 3 Daughters of the Confederacy published during the past year. Her book, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, was pub-lished by the University Press of Florida. Her article, “The Rise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy,” appeared in Lives Full of Struggle and Triumph: Southern Women, Their Organizations, edited by John Salmond and Bruce Clayton, and also published by the Uni-versity Press of Florida. She also wrote “The Confederate Monument at Arlington: A Token of Reconciliation,” which was included in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscape of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson, and published by the University of Tennessee Press. University of North Carolina at Greensboro On September 17 and 18, the departments of history and English will host an interdis-ciplinary conference that will examine the various forces that shaped new cultural identi-ties around the “Atlantic rim” during and after the Age of Exploration. The conference, “Creating Identity and Empire in the Atlantic World, 1492-1888,” will feature papers by historians and literary scholars exploring the ways that new identity creations enabled the peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe to imagine and erect common bonds of civil society and, conversely, the bonds of subjugation and slavery. Featured speakers will include Ira Berlin of the University of Maryland, Barry Gaspar of Duke University, and Stephen J. Greenblatt of Harvard University. The conference will be held in the new Elliott University Center. For more information, visit the conference website at www.atlantic.uncg.edu. State, County, and Local Groups Cape Fear Museum The museum held several special events in May to commemorate Confederate History Month. On May 1, the museum hosted an exclusive showing of prints of Civil War battle scenes by Brian Kraus, artist and art teacher from Morehead City, and pewter miniatures of Civil War generals by Gary Gerber, a Morehead City craftsman. A new long-term exhibit that traces the evolution of the Cape Fear Museum from United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) relic room to premier regional museum of history and science was unveiled on May 7. The exhibit features objects from the original collection of Cape Fear Chapter No. 3 of the UDC. The accomplishments of the chapter and the history of the artifacts were discussed by Sue Miller. Dan Morrill, author of The Civil War in the Carolinas, gave a presentation about the research behind his book, copies of which he signed after the program. Caswell County Historical Association The association will entertain approximately two hundred history teachers from around the nation this summer as part of a new initiative to improve the teaching of American history. The North Carolina Museum of History and the Thomas Day Education Project have partnered to implement a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose educational initiative (Landmarks of American History Teacher Workshop) incor-porates historical individuals and places into the advanced training of teachers. This partic-ular grant focuses on Thomas Day and Elizabeth Keckly, and features historic sites in Milton, Yanceyville, and Hillsborough. Four groups of about fifty teachers each will 1 0 4 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S participate in weeklong workshops, and each group will spend a Saturday (June 19 and 26, and July 17 and 24) in Caswell County. The museum will provide volunteers to conduct tours and will serve supper for the teachers. Greensboro Historical Museum For three weeks this summer, the museum is hosting a traveling exhibit that commem-orates the centennial of Duke Power Company. The display features relics of company history and vintage household items of the early twentieth century. The exhibit will be on view from June 22 to July 16. In February, Fred Goss assumed the position of museum director, succeeding the retired Bill Moore. Goss was formerly assistant director of the Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita, Kansas, and chief executive officer of the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1998, he received the Kansas Museum Association Award for Excellence for Site Development. Lower Cape Fear Historical Society At the May meeting of the society, the winners of two of its prestigious annual awards were announced. The Clarendon Award, given to the year’s publication that best inter-prets the history of the Lower Cape Fear region, was presented to Alan D. Watson for his book, Wilmington, North Carolina to 1861. The Society Cup for meritorious contributions to the aims and works of the association was awarded to Paul Allaire, program director and overseer of the Latimer House restoration project. New Bern Historical Society The annual spring Historic Homes, Gardens, and Arts Tour, held April 2-3, was expanded this year to include four homes in the Riverside Historic District. Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens also joined the tour, offering a special value ticket for admittance to the palace, the kitchen, the gardens, the John Wright Stanly House, the Robert Hay House, and the George W. Dixon House. Several historic churches in the downtown area were also involved, providing music or meals for tour participants. The Phoenix Society for African American Research An exhibit reception honoring the life and career of Dr. Milton D. Quigless Sr. was held on May 21 at the Quigless Clinic/Hospital in Tarboro. The exhibit consists of a display of Dr. Quigless’s medical equipment, including an examination table, blood pressure gauge, scale, and his medical bag, along with certificates, diplomas, plaques, and other personal memorabilia. The clinic opened in November 1946 as a twenty-six-bed hospital and outpatient clinic. It served a substantial portion of eastern North Carolina for approximately sixty years. During Dr. Quigless’s years of practice, patients of all races sought out this general practitioner and surgeon, who was well-known for his treatment of allergies, asthma, arthritis, dermatitis, and weight control. He treated patients for their entire life span and continued to practice at the Quigless Clinic until his death in November 1997. The hosts for the event were the Quigless family and the Phoenix Society for African American Research. The historic exhibit was produced by the late Helen G. Quigless Jr., first president of the Phoenix Society. The clinic is available for viewing by appointment only. Call (252) 823-5104 or (252) 823-7879. V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 5 Additions to the National Register of Historic Places (Administered by the State Historic Preservation Office) 1 0 6 C A R O L I N A C O M M E N T S The Amis-Bragg House in Jackson, Northampton County, is an excellent example of the Greek Revival style adapted to fit a town lot. The house was built around 1840 for Junius Amis by Thomas Bragg, well-known architect and father of the governor, Thomas Bragg Jr., who bought the residence in 1843 and lived there for twelve years. The J. C. Black House in Carthage, Moore County, was constructed in the Queen Anne style about 1893 and features a striking corner tower. Black was longtime county attorney for Moore County, first president of the Carthage Railroad, organizer and president of the Bank of Carthage, mayor of Carthage, and state senator. Yopps Meeting House, also known as Yopps Primitive Baptist Church, was built in 1890 on the site of an earlier multi-denominational worship center, shared—at different times—by Methodists, Presbyterians, Missionary Baptists, and Primitive Baptists. The church stands in rural Onslow County on the old post road from Sneads Ferry to Wilmington. Additions to the National Register of Historic Places (Administered by the State Historic Preservation Office) V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3 , J U L Y 2 0 0 4 1 0 7 Cedar Point was built in Elkin, Surry County, around 1840 by Richard Gwyn, founding father of the town. It is probably the oldest house in Elkin and remained in the Gwyn family until 1975. About 1870, the house was significantly updated by Richard’s son, Thomas Lenoir Gwyn, who added the classical porches and, probably, the front gable. The brick Neoclassical Revival George Sperling House stands tall among the simple frame dwellings of rural Cleveland County. It was constructed near Shelby in 1927 by Augustus Branton, whose skill as brick mason and master carpenter is evident throughout the house. The Edward F. Worst Craft Cabin is one of several structures on the campus of the Penland School of Crafts built in the twentieth-century Rustic Revival style. The Penland School Historic District in Mitchell County is significant for its role in the handicraft revival in southern Appalachia during the early 1900s. Carolina Comments (ISSN 0576-808X) Published quarterly by the Office of Archives and History North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Raleigh, North Carolina Jeffrey J. Crow, Editor in Chief Kenrick N. Simpson, Editor Historical Publications Section Office of Archives and History 4622 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4622 Telephone (919) 733-7442 Fax (919) 733-1439 www.ncpublications.com Presorted Standard U.S. Postage Paid Raleigh, NC Permit No. 187 |
OCLC number | 02047645 |