Collection’s Correspondence Unearths Valuable Information about Early 20th Century Apache Students

The Stephen Beauregard Weeks Papers, 1746-1941 (collection #00762) is composed of correspondence, diaries, notebooks/logs, and other volumes related primarily to the history of southern education and religion. Documents cover a wide array of subjects, such as southern Quakers and slavery, the Methodist church in North Carolina and the South, 18th century Moravians in North Carolina, and the formation of the Southern Historical Association.

The collection’s creator, Stephen B. Weeks (1865-1918), was a white North Carolina educator and historian who at the beginning of the 20th century also worked as the superintendent of the San Carlos Boarding School for Apache Indians in Arizona. Coverage of his time and role there largely consists of correspondence between 1899 and 1907. These letters illuminate valuable biographical information about Apache students and their families, as well as provide contextual insight into the nature of other Native American boarding schools at the time.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency of the Department of the Interior, first initiated their paternalistic campaign for assimilation-through-education in the 1870s. Boarding schools operated both on and off reservations, but each generally shaped its policies and practices from Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s (1879-1918) model. This institution’s guiding slogan was “To civilize the Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him civilized, let him stay” (Native Heritage Project, 2012). Government agents and educators believed it to be in the best interest of Indigenous peoples to “advance” through Americanization, and from this understanding developed an oppressive educational system which forcibly removed them from their families—sometimes as young as five-years-old. These schools then sought to strip Indigenous students of their native identities and culture. A framework as such did not tolerate students’ remnant adherence to Indigenous language, religion, and/or other customs. Failure to comply was often severely punished in the form of physical and emotional abuse. Beatings, labor, confinement, as well as sexual abuse, malnutrition, and disease were common experiences among students.

Below are two photos courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society. They capture Carlisle’s mission to replace Indigenous culture and their precedential setting for successive boarding schools with parallel ideologies. Visit the Cumberland Historical Society’s digital collection of more than 3,000 related images for larger views.

Of particular note regarding the series of letters uncovered from the Southern Historical Society’s collection is evidence of an imposed coding system used to identify students. These tag bands, as they were called, were placeholders in the forced transition from Apache to English names. They appear throughout Stephen B. Weeks’ correspondence in various combinations of letters and numbers, such as TE 18, SB 55, and CJ 18 (see Box 17). Government agents instigated this tag band system first by dividing the Apache population into bands—each allocated with a corresponding letter—and from there assigned individuals (married men first) an identifying number.

Seen in this 1903 letter from an agent of the U.S. Indian Service to Stephen B. Weeks is introduction of a new Apache student and her family. Her grandfather is referred to by tag band CJ 28 and her father by English name David Norton. The agent suggests the student be assigned the name of Tina Norton, illuminating the name replacement practices common among such boarding schools.
Another instance of referral to Apache students by their tag band, in this case TA 36.

It’s important to note that this arbitrary system not only undermined Indigenous practices, autonomy, and decision-making, but also inflicted profound emotional harm on students and other Apaches subjected to it.

Keith H. Basso (1940-2013), a notable linguistic anthropologist, focused his research on the Apache people and has many publications which discuss these findings. In his collection of essays Western Apache Language and Culture (1992), Basso frames language as “everywhere a symbolic form without parallel or peer” and posits that “the activity of speaking—of enacting and implementing language—is surely among the most-meaning filled of all” (p. xii). Language is core to one’s identity, both individually and collectively as a people. To remove and replace it with something foreign is to severely deconstruct the person.

Photo courtesy of Goodreads.

Basso goes on to explain that central to Apache language in particular is its significance of placenames—a value transferrable to the significance of more generalized proper nouns. Apaches intimately relate to their environmental landscape, geographic locations often holding noteworthy power in the exchange of stories and resulting sociocultural understandings about the world. These placenames facilitate tribal morality and standards of social interaction. Basso elaborates, “the character of these meanings—their steadier themes, their recurrent tonalities, and, above all, their conventionalized modes of expression—will bear the stamp of a common cast of mind. Constructions of reality that reflect conceptions of reality itself, the meanings of landscapes and acts of speech are personalized manifestations of a shared perspective on the human condition” (p. 140).

From this groundwork, Basso extrapolates that Apache placenames set precedent for the weight of other proper nouns, such as individuals’ names. Outsiders’ neglect of this Apache reality is rooted in an uninformed and over-simplified “view of language in which proper names are assumed to have meaning solely in their capacity to refer […] as agents of reference” (p. 143). Apache students with tag bands and, later, English names were primed for total loss of their native heritage with the initial loss of their native names.
Powerful insight from an Apache woman, known as Mrs. Annie Peaches and who was Basso’s first Apache teacher in 1959, further conveys this tragedy. She observes that “If we lose our language, we lose our breath. Then we will die and blow away like leaves” (p. xiii-xiv).

This collection’s listings of tag band identifiers, as well as Apache students’ English names, provide exciting new pathways into genealogical research and promote discussion about the detrimental effects of deracination practices imposed on Indigenous peoples nationwide. Note that findings listed from Box 17 (see above) may not be a comprehensive account, so we invite you to look through other boxes in the series for even more information on early 20th century Apache students at the San Carlos Boarding School. You can access the Finding Aid for the Stephen Beauregard Weeks Papers, 1746-1941 through this link https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00762/ or visit the Research Room at Wilson Special Collections Library for in-person access to its abundant correspondence.

Additionally, listed below are several links to related collections from the National Archives and Records Administration which provide avenues to supplementary research, as well as resources for more contextual information about the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ boarding schools and Kevin H. Basso’s book on the Apache language. Finally, linked at the bottom is information about a Minneapolis based nonprofit working to collect and connect digitally dispersed Native American boarding school records. Please check out their website below for more information about how to help with this initiative.

Resources/references:

New Collections: Love Letters

We have a number of new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Love and war were in the air, as the bulk of the materials include courtship correspondence and letters written by people while they were serving in the Armed Forces. Some highlights:

  • New materials span from the 1830s-2007
  • Subjects geographically range from the Kwajalein Atoll to Martha Washington College to the New Orleans levees.
  • Lots of love! Many of these collections feature letters between loved ones.
  • Some interesting mentions include a pair of waraji rice straw sandals, some 375 reported yellow fever deaths, and former UNC System President Frank Porter Graham participating in anti-war efforts of the 1930s.

Click on any of the collection titles to learn more about the materials, view any digital items, and request them for use in our reading room.

Continue reading “New Collections: Love Letters”

Violence, Hardship, and the Southern Response

The South has witnessed unspeakable historical violence, hardship, and unrest. Whether it is a system developed over hundreds of years or the single act of one person, Southerners have used these circumstances as fuel to protest for a better reality and a better future.

At first blush, an archive might seem like an unusual place to learn about current events. We can’t provide the latest headline, updated numbers, or 24-hour news coverage. What an archive can do, though, is help explain how we got here in the first place. It can provide context, it can set the scene, and it can fill out a timeline. It can help draw comparisons, and it can bear witness to cycles, to repetition, and to causes and their effects. It can show what has worked in the past, and what has not.

We continue, as we always have, to collect the stories of those who stand up against violence and hardship. Below are just a few of our many collections that highlight how people have confronted difficulties in the past and fought for a South they could believe in.

Continue reading “Violence, Hardship, and the Southern Response”

New Collection: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel Papers, #4592

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“The Ark Restored” by Oertel, 1881.
From Folder 8 , in the Johannes Adam Simon Oertel Papers #4592, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

The Southern Historical Collection is pleased to highlight a new collection available to the public: the Johannes Adam Simon Oertel Papers, #4592.

Johnnes Adam Simon Oertel (1823-1909) was born in Bavaria and came to the United States in 1848. His artistic achievements include art completed for many churches, a widely reproduced work titled “Rock of Ages,” and a piece on the ceiling of the House of Representatives in Washington D.C. He considered a series of canvas paintings called “Redemption”  to be his greatest achievement. He served as a rector for the episcopal church in Lenoir and Morganton, N.C., Glen Cove, N.Y., and Emmorton, Md.

The collection consists of his diary, sketchbooks, newspaper clippings, and letters. Topics covered in his diary reveal how difficult he found providing for his family. However, he always maintained his faith in God, and firmly believed in his calling to be a religious artist. He lamented art-buyers’ preference for foreign over American art, and portraits and landscapes over religious artwork.

The image above appears in his sketchbook, which may be found in his papers at the Southern Historical Collection. If you’d like to learn more about Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, you can view the finding aid for this collection, or come visit us at Wilson Library!

Educating Voters During the Civil Rights Movement

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This powerful image, part of the James A. Felton and Annie Vaughn Felton Papers (#05161), is a flyer used by the Voter Education Project in 1970. James A. Felton co-founded an African American organization in North Carolina called the People’s Program on Poverty. Its aim was to study and change poverty at the grass-roots level. This flyer shows one way it worked with the Voter Education Project to support the education of African American voters in The South during the civil rights movement.

Learn more about the collection using its finding aid:
The James A. Felton and Annie Vaughan Felton Papers #5161, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

New Collection: Lewis Family Papers, #5499

We are pleased to announce that the newly acquired Lewis Family Papers (SHC #5499) collection is open and available for research. For more about this collection, please view the finding aid. Here’s a brief summary…

The Lewis family arrived in Raleigh, N.C., in 1923, when John D. Lewis Sr. took a job as a district manager for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham, N.C. He and his wife, Luella Alice Cox Lewis, and their two children, J.D. Lewis (John D. Lewis Jr.) (1919-2007) and Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004), lived in southeast Raleigh and were members of First Baptist Church. J.D. Lewis was a Morehouse College graduate, one of the first African American members of the United States Marine Corps, and the first African American radio and television personality, corporate director of personnel, and director of minority affairs for WRAL of the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). J.D. Lewis also worked as the special markets representative for the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company; as the project director of GROW, Incorporated, a federally funded program for high school dropouts; and as the coordinator of manpower planning for the state of North Carolina. Lewis was active in many civic and community organizations as well. Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004) graduated from the Palmer Institute for Young Women and Hampton Institute. She built a successful and celebrated career as a choreographer and professor of dance at the University of Michigan. The collection consists of papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials that chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s working life and the civic and community organizations he supported. Lewis’s career is documented by materials from Capitol Broadcasting Company, including editorials he wrote and produced; GROW, Incorporated; Manpower; Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company; National Association of Market Developers; and the National Business League. Lewis’s civic leadership is evident in records of the Raleigh Community Relations Committee, which worked to integrate Raleigh public schools; political campaigns; and the Team of Progress, a group interested in political leadership at the city and county levels of government. Community organizations represented in the collection include the Garner Road YMCA; Alpha Kappa Alpha Debutante Ball; the Eastside Neighborhood Task Force; the Citizens Committee on Schools; Omega Psi Phi; and Meadowbrook Country Club, which was founded in 1959 by a small group of African American community leaders. Other materials document the Method Post Office dedication in 1965; the Montford Point Marine Association; and a youth charrette, possibly on integration of Durham schools. There are also clippings and printed materials on such topics as black power, African American history, Morehouse College, and Shaw University. There are several issues ofPerfect Home, a home design and decorating magazine published by John W. Winters, a real estate broker, home builder, city councilman, state senator, and civic leader. Family materials are mainly biographical and include newspaper clippings, funeral programs, school materials, awards and certificates, and photographs. There are a few family letters, including one from 1967 with a first-hand account of rioting on Twelfth Street in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for student performance on the grounds that it perpetuated stereotyped images of African Americans. Photographs include portraits and snapshots of four generations of the Lewis and related Cox families, documenting family life from the 1910s through the 2000s. There are non-family group portraits of Omega Psi Phi members of Durham, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company employees on its 21st anniversary, and of unidentified groups at other civic and community events. There is one folder of J.D. Lewis photographs that depict him in various work contexts. Also included is a portrait of a young Clarence Lightner, who owned a funeral home business and later served as the first African American mayor of Raleigh. Audiovisual materials chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s work at Capitol Broadcasting Company/WRAL and his interest in African American community and history. Included are audiotapes of his editorials for WRAL; videotape ofHarambee, a public affairs program about the concerns of the general public and especially African Americans; audiotape of musical performances, possibly for Teen-Age Frolic, a teenage dance and variety show; audiotape of Adventures in Negro History, an event sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Raleigh; and film of unidentified wedding and seashore scenes. Also included are several published educational film strips on African American history with accompanying audio.

Please click here to view the finding aid.

New Collection: Lewis Family Papers, #5499

We are pleased to announce that the newly acquired Lewis Family Papers (SHC #5499) collection is open and available for research. For more about this collection, please view the finding aid. Here’s a brief summary…

The Lewis family arrived in Raleigh, N.C., in 1923, when John D. Lewis Sr. took a job as a district manager for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham, N.C. He and his wife, Luella Alice Cox Lewis, and their two children, J.D. Lewis (John D. Lewis Jr.) (1919-2007) and Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004), lived in southeast Raleigh and were members of First Baptist Church. J.D. Lewis was a Morehouse College graduate, one of the first African American members of the United States Marine Corps, and the first African American radio and television personality, corporate director of personnel, and director of minority affairs for WRAL of the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). J.D. Lewis also worked as the special markets representative for the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company; as the project director of GROW, Incorporated, a federally funded program for high school dropouts; and as the coordinator of manpower planning for the state of North Carolina. Lewis was active in many civic and community organizations as well. Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004) graduated from the Palmer Institute for Young Women and Hampton Institute. She built a successful and celebrated career as a choreographer and professor of dance at the University of Michigan. The collection consists of papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials that chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s working life and the civic and community organizations he supported. Lewis’s career is documented by materials from Capitol Broadcasting Company, including editorials he wrote and produced; GROW, Incorporated; Manpower; Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company; National Association of Market Developers; and the National Business League. Lewis’s civic leadership is evident in records of the Raleigh Community Relations Committee, which worked to integrate Raleigh public schools; political campaigns; and the Team of Progress, a group interested in political leadership at the city and county levels of government. Community organizations represented in the collection include the Garner Road YMCA; Alpha Kappa Alpha Debutante Ball; the Eastside Neighborhood Task Force; the Citizens Committee on Schools; Omega Psi Phi; and Meadowbrook Country Club, which was founded in 1959 by a small group of African American community leaders. Other materials document the Method Post Office dedication in 1965; the Montford Point Marine Association; and a youth charrette, possibly on integration of Durham schools. There are also clippings and printed materials on such topics as black power, African American history, Morehouse College, and Shaw University. There are several issues ofPerfect Home, a home design and decorating magazine published by John W. Winters, a real estate broker, home builder, city councilman, state senator, and civic leader. Family materials are mainly biographical and include newspaper clippings, funeral programs, school materials, awards and certificates, and photographs. There are a few family letters, including one from 1967 with a first-hand account of rioting on Twelfth Street in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for student performance on the grounds that it perpetuated stereotyped images of African Americans. Photographs include portraits and snapshots of four generations of the Lewis and related Cox families, documenting family life from the 1910s through the 2000s. There are non-family group portraits of Omega Psi Phi members of Durham, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company employees on its 21st anniversary, and of unidentified groups at other civic and community events. There is one folder of J.D. Lewis photographs that depict him in various work contexts. Also included is a portrait of a young Clarence Lightner, who owned a funeral home business and later served as the first African American mayor of Raleigh. Audiovisual materials chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s work at Capitol Broadcasting Company/WRAL and his interest in African American community and history. Included are audiotapes of his editorials for WRAL; videotape ofHarambee, a public affairs program about the concerns of the general public and especially African Americans; audiotape of musical performances, possibly for Teen-Age Frolic, a teenage dance and variety show; audiotape of Adventures in Negro History, an event sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Raleigh; and film of unidentified wedding and seashore scenes. Also included are several published educational film strips on African American history with accompanying audio.

Please click here to view the finding aid.

Legacy finding aids update

The latest group of updated and encoded legacy finding aids has just been posted online. Some of the notable collections in this group are:

Mary Farrow Credle Papers, #1853

Mary Elizabeth Farrow Credle (1881-1946) was the daughter of Wilson T. Farrow (1837-1916) and Mary Elizabeth (Respess) Farrow (1846-1905). The collection contains chiefly business papers (deeds, accounts, receipts, contracts, letters), but also personal correspondence preserved by Mary Farrow Credle from preceding generations of the Credle family, Farrow family, and Respess family in Beaufort County and Hyde County, N.C. Members of the families were engaged in coastwise shipping, maintaining ships, buying and selling lands and slaves, farming and other businesses. Included are papers of Isaiah Respess, merchant and trader, who was imprisoned alternately by the Confederate and Federal authorities during the Civil War; the Reverend Joseph B. Hinton (1788-1872), antebellum state legislator, of Beaufort County and Raleigh, N.C.; Wilson T. Farrow (1837-1916) of Ocracoke Island and Washington, N.C.; and their kin.

Louis and Mildred Graves Papers, #4010

Louis Graves (1883-1965) was a writer, journalist, and founder of the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Weekly, and married his wife, Mildred Moses Graves (1892-1976), in 1921. The collection comprises personal and professional papers of Louis Graves. Family correspondence includes letters to Louis Graves’s mother, Julia Charlotte Hooper Graves (1856-1944); his sister, Mary Graves Rees (1886-1953); and his brothers, Ralph Graves (1878-1939) and Ernest Graves (1880-1953); as well as letters to and from Mildred Graves’s father, Edward Pearson Moses (1857-1948); her brother, Herbert Moses; her nephew, Edward Kidder Graham Junior (1911-1976); and her niece, Allen Claywell Irvine. Included in the professional correspondence are letters to and from writers; newspaper editors; publishers; academic figures, chiefly at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; North Carolina political figures; and readers of the Chapel Hill Weekly.

Cotten Family Papers, #3589

Cotten family members include Robert Randolph Cotten of Pitt County, N.C., his wife, Sallie (Southall) Cotten, (1846-1929), and their children and grandchildren. The collection includes family correspondence of Robert Randolph Cotten, of his wife, Sallie (Southall) Cotten, and of their children and grandchildren. Sallie (Southall) Cotten’s papers concern women’s rights, state and national women’s organizations, women’s war work, 1916-1918, the Virginia Dare Memorial Association, and her many other interests and activities, as well as family and social matters.

A complete list of all updated and encoded legacy finding aids can be found here.

Legacy finding aids update

The latest group of updated and encoded legacy finding aids has just been posted online. Some of the notable collections in this group are:

Ella Noland MacKenzie Papers, #3667

Ella Noland MacKenzie of Glen Ora, near Leesburg, Loudon County, Virginia was the daughter of Lloyd and Elizabeth Noland. She married physician John Carrerre MacKenzie (died 1866) of Baltimore, Md. The collection contains the family and personal correspondence of Ella Noland MacKenzie. Included are letters from Ella while in school in Virginia and Baltimore, Md., 1844-1850; visiting her aunt, Sara (Hollingsworth) Gibson, wife of Dr. William Gibson (1877-1868), in Philadelphia, Pa., 1850-1851; 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, 1852-1860; scattered letters regarding difficulties experienced by the Nolands and MacKenzies in Virginia and Maryland during the Civil War, 1861-1865; letters written during Reconstruction including correspondence with relatives in Europe, 1865-1870; and scattered letters, 1870-1886. Incidents mentioned include the sale of slaves and property from an estate, 1849; a slave uprising near Glen Ora, 1856; descriptions of public sentiments toward the South in Philadelphia, 1861; the departure of one branch of the family for Europe in voluntary or involuntary exile, and the arrest of John Carrerre MacKenzie as a Confederate sympathizer, 1864.

Harriet Hardison Robson Papers, #4203

Harriett Hardison Robson (b. 1899) of Wadesboro, N.C., was married to C. J. Canaga, a United States Army officer, and from 1927-1931 they lived in Peking, China where he was assigned as a language officer and military attache. The collection consists primarily of letters from Robson to her mother written while she was living in Peking. The letters describe Peking, the military and political struggle between Nationalist and Communist forces for control of the Chinese government, Chinese customs, trips to historic sites around Peking and to northern provinces, and social activities among the foreign legations in Peking. Also included are a drawing of William Henry Donald, a few clippings, and a Christmas card. Additionally, there are 51 photographs taken in the northern provinces of China and the Hawaiian Islands.

D. H. Duryea Letters, #3595-z

D. H. Duryea was a solider in the 1st Minnesota Regiment and served with General William T. Sherman’s army during the march through Georgia and the Carolinas. The collection contains letters from D. H. Duryea to his wife at home while he was serving in the Civil War. The letters discuss troop movements, rations shortages, conditions in Decatur, Ala., and Savannah, Ga., cotton, and prisoners captured.

A complete list of all updated and encoded legacy finding aids can be found here.

Legacy finding aids update

The latest group of updated and encoded legacy finding aids has just been posted online. Some of the notable collections in this group are:

Charles Lyon Chandler Papers, #3614

Charles Lyon Chandler (b. 1883) was a United States foreign service officer, Philadelphia banker, history professor, and author. The collection contains the papers of Chandler, consisting mainly of material related to his unpublished biography of Joel Robert Poinsett (1779-1851) of South Carolina, diplomat, United States representative, United States Secretary of War, and anti-nullificationist. Also included are letters and correspondence of Chandler while he worked abroad for the United States State Department in Europe, Asia, and South America, 1906-1913, and in Latin American again in the 1940s; speeches and articles; diaries, 1904-1911; thirty-nine pocket memorandum books; and three scrapbooks on Latin American topics, 1909-1919 and 1943-1944, especially concerned with commerce between the United States and Brazil during the 19th century.

Stephen Berry Culver Diary, #3992

Stephen Berry Culver (1841-1902) of Sandy Hill, N.Y., was a graduate of Union College, carpenter, teacher, bookkeeper, active member of the Methodist Church, mining and chemical engineer, and clerk in the Naval Office, New York, N.Y., 1884-1902. The collection contains the diaries of Culver, along with the related enclosures which include clippings, genealogical notes, writings and letters. The diaries, begun when Culver was a teenager, relate chiefly to his involvement with the Methodist Church; family illnesses and deaths; national news; and local social, cultural, and political affairs, primarily related to the Sandy Hill, Schenectady, Mt. Vernon, and New York City areas of New York.

J. Bryan Grimes Papers, #1765

J. Bryan (John Bryan) Grimes (1868-1923) of Pitt County, N.C., was a conservative leader of the Farmers’ Alliance, the Grange, and other agricultural organizations; managed the family farms in Pitt County and Beaufort County; and was North Carolina secretary of state, 1900-1923. The collection includes 20th century business, personal, and official correspondence of Grimes, with the bulk of the papers concerning his service as North Carolina secretary of state and various Democratic political campaigns.

William Oscar Spears Papers, #3964

William Oscar Spears (1885-1966) of Chattanooga, Tenn., was a United States naval officer who retired as a rear admiral. The collection contains the personal and family papers of Spears, the bulk consisting of detailed letters to his wife, Blanche Snodgrass Spears, concerning his missions to Brazil, 1919-1927, and Peru, 1930-1933; and his service visits to Panama, Cuba, and other South American countries. There are many references to social activities and local political events, including references to riots and political strife in Lima, Peru, 1930-1932; and descriptions of conflict in Havana, Cuba in 1933-1934.

A complete list of all updated and encoded legacy finding aids can be found here.