Creator: Booker, Elsie H., collector.
Collection number: 4580
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Abstract: Elsie H. Booker (1923- ) of Durham County, N.C., collector of antiques, artifacts, and family papers. Papers of various families. Series 1 Markham, Leigh, and related families: Correspondence, business and legal papers, account books, genealogical information, pictures, and other materials of the Markham, Leigh, and other related families, chiefly of North Carolina. Markham family correspondence includes letters, 1873-1928, from William David Markham of Missouri, the Indian Territory, Texas, and New Mexico, containing information about crop and herd conditions, religion, business, and politics; and letters, 1880s-1900s, mostly from Wake County, N.C., and Bayboro, Ga., concerning Baptists, pregnancy, childbirth, education, deaths, and other matters. Also included are records relating to slaves; legal documents, 1867-1869, pertaining to the backruptcy proceedings of Elizabeth C. Yancey of Chapel Hill and Durham, N.C.; post cards, 1907, picturing men hanged in Durham; scrapbooks of materials collected by Harold Cole Markham, while he was a high school student in Durham, N.C., and during his World War II tour of duty in the United States and Europe; photographs, collectors’ cards, and prints, ca. 1935-1945, relating to Adolph Hitler, the German military, and scenes in Europe during World War II; and ballads. Series 2 Durham and Lloyd families: Documents relating to the Lloyd and Durham families of Chapel Hill, N.C., include a teacher’s application, 1900, for a position at a black public school, probably in Orange County, N.C.; an extensive series of love letters, 1941-1942, discussing dating, high school, and other topics of concern to teenagers; and a labor payroll schedule, 1947-1948, for state roadway construction work in Granville County, N.C. There are also twenty merchant’s account books, 1884-1928, many of which probably belonged to W. A. Lloyd, and a diary, 1934-1938, documenting work on a roadway construction crew in piedmont and western North Carolina. Series 3. Abernathy, Blackwood, and other families: Items relating to the Abernathy, Blackwood, Moore, Peeler, Shepherd, Steele, and other unrelated famili
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: The collection contains business and legal papers primarily of the Shephard, Leigh, and Markham families of Orange and Durham Counties, North Carolina. Papers include a will that calls for the sale of land and slaves (1819); a property inventory listing slaves (1821); and documents relating to the hiring of slaves (1832, 1839). Among the Durham and Lloyd family correspondence is a letter of application for a position as a teacher at an African-American public school in the Beth-Carr district, probably in Orange County, North Carolina. (1900). In addition, the collection contains post-Civil War letters of three African-American families: the Goodwins of South Carolina, the Pickens of Connecticut, and the Mitchells of Durham, North Carolina.