Abstract: Three generations of the Spears and Hicks families of Virginia and North Carolina, including Sallie Gray Spears Lewis (b. 1833), her daughter Sallie Moore Spears Hicks (b. 1860), and her grandson Charles Spears Hicks (b. 1886), a North Carolina banker. Primarily personal letters, 1852-1917, detailing the family, social, and financial affairs of members of the Spears and Hicks and related Gray, Warren, Glasgow, and Lewis families of Fincastle and Botetourt County, Va.; Malden and Charleston, W.Va.; Wilmington and Dunn, N.C.; Paris, Tex.; Saline County, Mo.; and other locations. Subjects include military life and social conditions during the Civil War; farming in various locations; student life at the Augusta Female Seminary (later Mary Baldwin College) in Staunton, Va., 1875-1881; conditions among slaves, including an 1861 slave list; women’s lives and business dealings; banking in North Carolina, 1908-1917, including mention of a Chinese banker in Wilmington; engineering of heating and cooling systems, 1908-1917; experiences of an elderly woman living with her daughter’s family; and social aspects of tuberculosis. There are also many letters from Virginia lawyers William A. Glasgow and his son Frank T. Glasgow.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Topics discussed include slavery in Virginia in the correspondence between 1852-1861 (Folders 1 & 2). An letter dated 14 June 1880 also discuss race relations in England (Folder 13); and white relations with African American servants in West Virginia throughout 1908-1917 (Folders 18-27). The collection also contains a slave list  from 1861 (Folder 10).

Abstract: Folklorist and performer Joan Fenton earned a Masters degree in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1981. She is the owner of several stores in Charlottesville, Va., that feature traditional and contemporary handicrafts. Sound recordings and related documentation. Sound recordings include interviews, songs, and tall tales by artists in the southern roots traditions from North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Louisiana. Fenton’s folklore thesis fieldwork about Howard Cotten, an African American tall tale teller in North Carolina, is represented by his songs, anecdotes, and tales about fishing and hunting that were recorded between 1976 and 1978. Also included are recordings from the 1978 John Henry Folk Festival where Hazel Dickens, Viola Clark, the Badgett Sisters, Walter Phelps, Ethel Phelps, Sparky Rucker, Pigmeat Jarrett, and Sweet Honey in the Rock performed. Interviews and sound recordings relating to Jamie Alston, Wilber Atwater, Willie Brooks, Dona Gum, Maggie Hammons, Sherman Hammons, Guy B. Johnson, Everett Lilly, Mitchell “Bea” Lilly, Varise Conner, Phillippe Bruneau, Carl Rutherford, and the Balfa Brothers are included. Also included are interviews with and songs of Charles Williams, a washboard player from White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., and Nat Reese, a guitarist and blues singer from Princeton, W. Va. Fenton is the primary interviewer on these recordings, some of which were made in performers’ homes where she accompanied them on guitar, but there are also a few field tapes done by others, including some with the Reverend Gary Davis in Jamaica, N.Y., 1971-1972 and others done by John Cohen in New York in the 1950s. Documentation of field recordings includes transcription notes from interviews conducted by Fenton and notes compiled from the audio material. Note that artists important in the collection appear as access points in this record.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Anecdotes and tales about fishing and hunting, animals (Rooster and Buzzard, etc.) as told by African-American storyteller Howard Cotten, recorded by Joan Fenton in 1978; n.p. [3 reels, FT1159]. Henry Johnson, an African-American musician, performs five unidentified country blues songs with guitar accompaniment, recorded by Joan Fenton, Michael Levine, and Steve Wolf in Union County, South Carolina, 1973 [1 reel, FT1282]. Country blues, gospel, fiddle tunes, and ballads performed by Jamie Alston and Wilbur Atwater, recorded by Joan Fenton, Michael Levine, Steve Wolf, and Bruce Bastin in Orange County, North Carolina in 1973 [2 reels, FT1298-FT1299]. Dubs of field recordings of Reverend Gary Davis [“Blind Gary Davis”] originally recorded by John Cohen at Davis’ apartment in New York City in 1952. Includes songs with guitar accompaniment and also features Reverend Peoples and Annie Davis [4 reels, FT1339-FT1342]. Interviews with and songs by Charles Williams, a washboard player from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and Nat Reese, a guitarist and blues singer from Princeton, West Virginia, recorded by Joan Fenton in 1978 [FT1493]. Recordings of an African-American church service with electric gospel music, biblical readings, chanted sermon, and congregational testimonies, recorded by Joan Fenton near Princeton, West Virginia, ca. 1975 [5 reels, FT1508-FT1512]. Interview with Elvie Johnson on topics including railroading, blues, and dancing. Johnson also plays songs with Travis style guitar accompaniment, recorded by Joan Fenton in Meadow Creek, West Virginia, 1975 [FT1514].

Abstract: John Berkeley Grimball was a rice planter of Charleston and the Colleton District, S.C. Married Margaret Ann (“Meta”) Morris. Grimball’s diary discusses plantation management and cultivation of crops, especially rice; slavery and free blacks; plantation finances; social and cultural life in Charleston, S. C.; travel, especially to the Virginia springs and to New York, and the modes of transportation he used in his travels; the suffering of the civilian population during the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Episcopal church to which Grimball’s wife and children belonged and the Presbyterian church where he worshipped; the education of his children, including a son who studied law, another who studied medicine, a third who went to the United States Naval Academy, and a daughter who attended Montpellier Institute in Macon, Ga.; and his own and his family’s health problems, including struggles during various epidemics. The diary also contains entries about members of families to which Grimball was related, largely through his wife, including the Manigault and Lowndes families of Charleston and the Morris family of Morrisania, N.Y. There is also mention of an 1834 hot air balloon ascension and of a duel in 1856.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Entries discuss, among other topics, slavery and free blacks. Diary entries document that, prior to the Civil War, Grimball owned 70 or 80 slaves himself and controlled the activities of others on his mother’s lands. During this period, most entries relate in some fashion to slaves: the management and care of slaves; their requirements in terms of clothing and punishments; their illnesses; their purchase and sale. Grimball also, apparently employed Mary, a free black woman, as a nurse. In October 1832, Grimball wrote of an appeal from a free black tailor for assistance in moving himself and his family to Liberia. In August 1835, there is a description of an incident at Salt Sulphur Springs, Western Virginia, where a black man sang love songs in a show, prompting guests from South Carolina to leave the room in protest. In 1867 and 1868, he recorded his sharecropping arrangements with a white man and with one of his former slaves. Microfilm available.

Abstract: Interviews conducted in West Virginia in 1997 by Bryan T. McNeil for his honors essay “In My Time: The Strike of 1949 in the Lives of the Coal Miners of Southern West Virginia” (Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998). The four interviewees are retired from the coal mining industry: Rufus Bethel is an African-American who worked as a coal miner; Roderick Pickett was a mine foreman; and Louis Vasvary and Fred Iddings are Anglo-American former coal miners.In the interviews, the participants discussed their lives, including their family history, their childhood, their experiences in the mines, and their thoughts on the United Mine Workers of America and on the mining industry in West Virginia. Special emphasis is placed on the period 1949-1950 with the men talking about the lifestyle during that time, their knowledge of negotiations during the 1949 strike, and their opinions relating to that event.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Interviews conducted by Bryan T. McNeil for his honors essay “In My Time: The Strike of 1949 in the Lives of the Coal Miners of Southern West Virginia”. The four interviewees are retired from the coal mining industry one of which is Rufus Bethel, an African-American who worked as a coal miner.