Abstract: During the 1950s and 1960s, collector, folklorist, and traditional music performer Mike Seeger recorded interviews and performances of many legendary old-time and bluegrass musicians.The collection consists of open reel tape and DAT audio recordings from 1955 to 2002, along with supporting logs and films. The audio recordings include both live performances and Seeger’s interviews with many notable bluegrass and old-time musicians; master tapes from various LP recording projects; and recordings of Seeger’s own band, the New Lost City Ramblers. Of particular interest are live concert recordings featuring such musicians as Tony Alderman, E. C. Ball, Dock Boggs, Buzz Busby, Alex Campbell and Ola Belle Reed, Maybelle Carter, Elizabeth Cotten, Sady Courville, Cousin Emmy, Hazel Dickens, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Roscoe Holcomb, Mississippi John Hurt, Tommy Jarrell, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Grandpa Jones, the Lilly Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, Carl Martin and Ted Bogan, Dennis McGee, Sam McGee and Kirk McGee (the McGee Brothers), Bill Monroe and Charlie Monroe (the Monroe Brothers), the Osborne Brothers, Don Reno, Marc Savoy, Red Smiley, Kilby Snow, the Stanley Brothers, Ernest V. Stoneman, J. C. Sutphin, Merle Travis, Wade Ward, Mac Wiseman, and the New Lost City Ramblers. Also includied are recordings of various performances and workshops at festivals, including the American Old-Time Music Festival, the Bean Blossom Music Festival, and the Culpeper Music Festival. There are also recordings from the New Lost City Ramblers’ European tour with Adam Landrenau and Cyp Landrenau, Cousin Emmy, and the Stanley Brothers. Performances were recorded at large and small venues, including New River Ranch near Rising Sun, Md.; Sunset Park, Pa.; and the Union Grove Fiddlers Convention in North Carolina. Seeger recorded in-depth interviews with many musicians, including Clarence Tom Ashley, the Benfield Family, Dock Boggs, Charlie Bowman, Maybelle Carter, Tommy Jarrell, Kirk McGee, Sam McGee, Eck Robertson, Leslie Riddle, Kilby Snow, Ernest V. Stoneman, and Wade Ward. Of particular interest is Seeger’s interview with Columbia Records talent scout Frank Walker. Other New Lost City Ramblers recordings include raw tracks and master tapes for the group’s albums; live recordings at folk festivals, colleges, and other venues; and band meetings. Supporting documentation includes Seeger’s logs for all of the audio recordings and an artist index. The Addition of February 2003 contains films of Mike Seeger and other musicians, including films of an old-time music workshop in 1977 and an interview with Mike Seeger. The Addition of July 2009 contains audio recordings featuring many of the musicians already represented in the collection and others, including Eddie Adcock, Howard Armstrong, Kenny Baker, the Balfa Brothers, Dewey Balfa, Ted Bogan, Hylo Brown, Vassar Clements, Sady Courville, Kyle Creed, Bobby Durham, Flick Flaharty, Alice Gerrard, the Goins Brothers, Ted Gossett, Sarah Gunning, Bill Harrell, Doc Hopkins, Tommy Jarrell, Lily May Ledford, Tex Logan, Carl Martin, Jimmy Martin, Dennis McGee, Melvin Robinette, Montana Slim, Ralph Stanley, Carl Story, Tut Taylor, Doc Watson, Nimrod Workman, and others. The addition also contains recordings of Mike Seeger’s interviews with musicologist Charles Seeger. The Addition of May 2010 includes video footage from Seeger’s documentary project, “Talking Feet.”

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection features several recordings of African American artists, as well as discussions of interactions between white and black musicians.

There are live performances of folk singer Elizabeth Cotten [Audiotape FT-3754; FT-3756];  country blues singer Mississippi John Hurt (who was recorded in the 1930s, and rediscovered in the 1960s).

There are also recordings of African American Appalachian string musicians Carl Martin and Ted Bogan [Audiocassette FS-9655; 9656; 9658-60; 9689-90; 9694; 9696]

There are also a number of Caucasian musicians who describe being influenced by African American musical traditions, such as the Seeger’s own band the New Lost City Ramblers [See Series 1: Audio Recordings, 1955-2002] , as well as the Jim Kweskin Jug Band [Audiotape FT-5704].

There are also a number of interviews, including from Maybell Carter [Audiotape FT-8821], Clarence Tom Ashley [Audiotape FT-5582], and Dock Boggs [Several recordings, including Audiotape FT-5603 thru FT-5611] discussing the influence of African American musicians on their music.

Mike Seeger’s documentary “Talking Feet” is available online through the SFC on Folkstreams. Click here to access the film and see other documentaries.

Abstract: Jeremiah Stetson (1810-1869), a farmer from Hanson, Mass., served in the 23rd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. The collection includes 20 letters and seven original poems written by Stetson during the Civil War to his wife, Abbie F. Stetson (d. 1901), in Hanson, Mass. Letters, 15 November 1861-10 December 1863, were addressed from army camps and hospitals in Annapolis, Md.; Port Royal, S.C.; and New Bern, N.C. In addition to accounts of battles at New Bern and Kinston, N.C., Stetson’s letters and poems are full of detailed descriptions of military life and hospital life, including comments on the enlistment of African Americans,the enthusiastic reception given by slaves to Union forces entering Maryland, infantry training exercises, the construction of camps and barracks, soldiers’ amusements, camp and hospital food, the uncertainty of mailing money and other valuables back to the North, and foraging in the area around New Bern. Stetson regularly sent instructions to his family on tending chickens, fruit trees, and strawberries.Letters show that Stetson’s son, Edwin Leforrest Stetson, was with his father as they left Perryville, Md., for Annapolis, Md. They were then sent south to participate in campaigns in eastern North Carolina and South Carolina. Edwin Stetson apparently participated in General John G. Foster’s expeditions from New Bern to take Kinston, N.C.; to attempt to take Goldsboro, N.C.; and to destroy railroads surrounding New Bern.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Stetson’s letters and poems are full of detailed descriptions of military life and hospital life, including comments on the enlistment of African Americans, as well as the enthusiastic reception given by slaves to Union forces entering Maryland.

This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Abstract: Daniel A. Powell was born on 29 July 1911 in Wilson, N.C. In the 1930s Powell worked as a salesman for the American Circulation Company, the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, and as advertising salesman for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. He was an account executive for the O’Callaghan Advertising Agency in 1939-1940 and served in the United States Army Air Force in World War II. Powell was briefly the Assistant Information Director for the West Tennessee Office of Price Administration in 1945 and in the same year became the Southern Director of the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.When the CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, the AFL’s League for Labor Education joined with the CIO’s PAC to cbecome the Committee on Political Education (COPE). Powell then became director of COPE Region 5, roughly the same territory he had covered for PAC. Powell served in that position until his death, 6 Aug Correspondence, subject files, audio tapes and discs, photographs, and other material of Daniel Augustus Powell (1911-1983), labor union official and civic leader of Memphis, Tennessee. The great bulk of these papers relates to the work of the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) for Area 5, which Powell directed from 1955-1983. There is also material on Powell’s work as head of the CIO Political Action Committee (PAC) in the southeast from 1945-1955; his membership in the Newspaper Guild; and his activities with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Memphis, the West Tennessee Civil Liberties Union, the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, the United States Civil Rights Commission, and the Tennessee Committee for the Humanities.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence in Series 1 (AFL-CIO PAC/COPE: State Files) contains letters to and from PAC/COPE national officers discussing topics such as responding to issues of race, anti-union activity, and the rise of the radical right.

Series 3 contains Powell’s personal writings. Folder 293 contains materials relating to the Civil Rights Commission of 1966 – 1977.

Folders 297 – 300 contain texts of reports or notes for speeches on such subjects as the attitudes of African Americans in various American cities in 1964, the Memphis garbage strike in 1968, and the rise of the radical right in American politics.

Audiotape T-4364/32 consists of recordings from the 1970 Symposium, “The Emerging South” of the LCQ Lamar Society. Participants include George Esser and Maynard Jackson; topics discussed include “The Black Man in Southern Politics”

Image folder P-4364/26-32 contains an image of a parade in Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

Abstract: Methodist and Episcopal minister and professor at colleges in Maryland, Delaware, and New England. Reminiscences relating epecially to slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland when Williams was a boy, and to Williams’s European travels and student life in Germany, 1869-1871; speeches while a student at Dickinson College, Pa., 1864-1865, and while he was teaching in New England, 1880- 1889; historical articles; a commonplace book; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection contains reminiscences, relating especially to slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland during Williams’s childhood (Folder 9).

Abstract: John McKee Sharpe of Stateville, N.C. Papers of John McKee Sharpe, including his own genealogical correspondence, and correspondence, business papers, etc., of the Sharpe family and of John H. McKee. Series 1, Sharpe Family papers, 1793-1890 (510 items), concerns members of the family who moved from Cecil County, Md., to Rowan, later Iredell, County, N.C. Prominent family members included the sons of Thomas Sharpe, Jr., namely Amos, John, and William (member of the Continental Congress from North Carolina), and Ebenezer Franklin Sharpe, son of Amos, and his son, Silas Alexander, who married a McKee. The papers consist of bills, receipts, and business papers, and the papers of Silas Alexander Sharpe as a colonel in the North Carolina Home Guard, 1863-1865. Silas Sharpe’s papers deal with militia activities in Iredell and Alexander counties, especially with conscription, apprehension of deserters, slaves detailed to work at Fort Fisher, and local defenses; and his business papers in connection with the Atlantic, Tennessee, and Ohio Railroad. Series 2, John H. McKee papers, 1820-1870 (173 items), contains scattered business and legal papers and extensive family correspondence with relatives spread across the South. Topics of significance include the legal separation of John H. McKee and his second wife, and the successes and failures of son Thomas Jefferson McKee (d. 1855), who settled in Shelby County, Tex. Series 3, John McKee Sharpe papers, 1903- 1954 (117 items), consists almost entirely of correspondence relating to the history of the Sharpe and McKee families and members of the related Caldwell, Mills, Moore, and Murdock families, and to Iredell County history.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers belonging to Silas Alexander Sharpe, a colonel of the North Carolina Home Guard for Iredell and Alexander Counties, concern conscription, apprehension of deserters, and slaves detained to work at Ft. Fisher. The papers include in Folder 1 a Maryland bond to a North Carolina resident demanding the delivery of a slave (1793). Folder 5 contains letters concerning the purchase of slaves (1846, 1849). In Folder 15, there are letters describing race relations in Laurens District, South Carolina, during Reconstruction (1871). Also, in the early 1850s there is correspondence concerning the death of John Stevenson and the manumission of his slaves, who emigrated to Liberia (See Folders 20 and 21).

Abstract: Civil War letters written home by Jonathan L. Whitaker, an Orange County, N.Y., physician serving as a United States Army surgeon at a hospital at Chester, Pa., and with the 26th U.S. Colored Troops near Beaufort, S.C.; and some family photographs. Most of the letters are addressed to Whitaker’s wife, Julia A. Wells Whitaker. They describe living conditions and physicians’ activities.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Whitaker writes to his wife on 9 Feb 1864 about hearing an African American minister preach in New York and conduct among African American soldiers. Other letters (31 March 1864, 2 May 1864) mention other African American troops and a black female cook in the camp.

On 11 April 1864, Whitaker writes a very detailed letter that spans several days, as they travel from the coast of North Carolina down to Beaufort, S.C. On 13 April (page 6), he notes that though several Union soldiers have taken over houses and other buildings abandoned by plantation owners, most of the dwellings in that area are occupied by the formerly enslaved community.

On 6 June 1864, Whitaker writes about a Dr. Uglow who struck the husband of “his woman” (presumably one of the African American women in the camp), imprisoned the man in the Guard House, and sent the woman away. Whitaker notes that the Dr. will be going to trial regarding the affair.

On 30 December 1864, Whitaker notes the arrival of several African American men and women arriving into the U.S.C.T.’s camp as “contraband”. Many, he cites, were formerly enslaved by the man on whose property the camp is currently residing on.

Abstract: Family of Joseph Hoomes Davis (1809-1879), Methodist minister and educator of Virginia and North Carolina, and Anne Turberville Beale Davis (1809-1894). Principal family members included Robert Beale Davis (1835- 1864), son of Joseph Davis and his first wife, Martha Beale; Richard L.T. Beale (1819-1893), brother of Anne Davis; and the four children of Joseph and Anne, Wilbur Fisk (b. 1839), John W.C. (b. 1840), Olin (b. 1844), and Martha Anne (b. 1846). Correspondence, diaries, and other family and business papers of the Davises and their children, with scattered business items for other relatives. The letters document home and religious life; Methodist church affairs on several North Carolina and Virginia circuits; college life at Randolph-Macon College, the University of Virginia, Wesleyan Female College, and Petersburg Female College from the late 1840s through the 1850s; a rumored slave insurrection in Murfreesboro, N.C., 1856-1857; secession politics in North Carolina and Virginia; Civil War preparations and camp life, especially with the Potomac Rifles and the Topographical Engineers; teaching in the postwar period in private schools and at the University of Virginia and Virginia A & M College (now Virginia Polytechnic Institute) in Blacksburg; and farming in Westmoreland County, Va. The diaries (53 v.) provide extensive information on the daily family and religious life of Joseph and Anne Davis, 1838-1883, and the farming, social, religious, financial, school, and family affairs of their children, 1856-1860 and 1881-1920. Diaries appear for Joseph and Anne Davis; Robert Beale Davis, John W.C. Davis, and Martha (“Nannie”) Davis Beale. Locations documented in the collection include Murfreesboro, N.C., and Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Boydton, Charlottesville, and Hague, Va. Scattered business items include letters, 1855-1860, from tobacco factors to James Thomas, Jr., relationship unknown, of Richmond, Va., and to John and William Murphy, cousins of Anne Davis, of Westmoreland County.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included is a letter, dated 6 March 1855, from Joseph Davis to his son, Robert, telling him about missionary work among South Carolina enslaved people organized by Bishop Capers and judge C. C. Pinckney. There is another letter from dated 5 January 1857 written by Anne Davis, giving a detailed and graphic account of a rumored slave insurrection and the fear and unrest attending it around Murfreesboro (See Folders 8 and 16).

Folder 29 contains a letter letter of 16 January 1861 from S. C. Brickenstein, a law student in Baltimore, to Robert Davis, discussing various topics including Maryland’s position in the secession crisis, and slavery.

Abstract: Single or very small groups of unrelated letters, many from the 19th century, to and from various persons, especially southerners who were prominent in the literary and political areas. Topics include family life; travels in North Carolina and other parts of the South; social life and customs; plantation life; slavery and slave sales North Carolina, Maryland, and other places; local and national politics; the Civil War, both military action and the homefront in Louisiana, North Carolina (including blockading the coast and attacking Fort Fisher), Mississippi, and other parts of the South; the University of North Carolina; World War I; literature; and other topics. Among the correspondents are Abiel Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, Alfred Holt Colquitt, Sherman Converse, Peter Early, Frank Porter Graham, Sam Houston, Washington Irving, Andrew Jackson, Laura Riding Jackson, North Carolina governor Samuel Johnston, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Milledge, Margaret Mitchell, Wilson Cary Nicholas, North Carolina writer William S. Pearson, Isaac F. Shepard, Edward Stanly, Edward Telfair, Albion W. Tourg?e, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Bedford Venable, and Daniel Webster.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 42B contains an 1855 letter from R. Tillotson in , which discusses among other topics the religious practices of enslaved people on his property.

Folder 59 contains two letters (2 and 24 March 1882) written by H. Church of London, England, thanking the Honorable Reverend William H. Fremantle, Anglican Churchman, for the loan of a copy of Goldwin Smith’s “Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery?”

Folder 105 contains a letter dated 12 December 1839 from Sherman Converse in North Carolina, who wrote about his impressions of slavery and plantations life.

Folder 109 contains a letter from 10 November 1831 from S.B. Husband of Maryland. Husband was writing on behalf of her friend Thomas Brown, Rachel’s owner, who, after returning home after a long absence, discovered that Rachel was about to sold to someone else. There were disagreements as to what should happen to Rachel and the letter relates Husband’s fear that Rachel would be freed.

Folder 110 contains a 1797 bill of sale for an enslaved woman named Hanah [?] in North Carolina.

Abstract: Leeland Hathaway (b. 1834) was a Confederate Army officer. Recollections concerning Hathaway’s early life at Deer Park Plantation in Montgomery County, Ky.; his education at Western Military Institute (Georgetown, Ky.); Kentucky Military Institute (Frankfort, Ky.), and Transylvania University (Lexington, Ky.); slavery; Kentucky politics prior to the war; and his Civil War experiences as a lieutenant in the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, serving with John Hunt Morgan during cavalry raids into Indiana and Ohio in 1863, and as a prisoner at Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary (Allegheny, Pa.), Point Lookout, Md., Fort Delaware, and Ft. McHenry (Baltimore, Md.). The reminiscences also concern Hathaway’s accompaning Varina and Jefferson Davis on their flight south after the fall of Richmond, and gives some idea of the war’s effect on the Hathaway family fortunes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Hathaway devotes several pages to the justification of the institution of slavery (1834-1861) and mentions aid given him by his father’s slaves in his preparations to join the Confederacy (1861); the shooting of Confederate prisoners of war in Maryland by black guards (1864); his reunion with a black Union officer who was a former childhood playmate (1865); and discusses at length the loyalty of one freed slave who remained with the Hathaway family after emancipation.

Abstract: Family and personal correspondence of Ella (Noland) MacKenzie, daughter of Lloyd and Elizabeth Noland of Glen Ora, near Leesburg, Va., while she was in school in Virginia and Baltimore, Md.; visiting her aunt, Sara (Hollingsworth) Gibson, wife of Dr. William Gibson (1877-1868), in Philadelphia, Pa.; and after her marriage in 1852 to John Carrerre MacKenzie (d. 1866), a Baltimore physician. Included are letters from the Nolands and other relatives in Virginia and from members of the MacKenzie family and friends in Baltimore, pertaining chiefly to plantation life, social conditions, and women’s activities. Incidents of particular note include a slave uprising, 1856, near Glen Ora; the departure in 1864 of one branch of the family for Europe in voluntary or involuntary exile; and the arrest of John C. MacKenzie as a Confederate sympathizer. Postwar items are scattered, with only slight information on John and Ella’s son, Dr. John Noland MacKenzie (1853-1925), a noted throat specialist.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters discuss a sale of enslaved individuals (1849) and the killing of a Virginia slave owner by the enslaved people on his property (1856). See Folders 2 and 5.