Gene Hyde – UNC Asheville Archives

Cherokee Resources – Selections from the Bill and Alice Hart Collection

This is the second in a series of articles highlighting materials in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, which the Harts donated to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. This article highlights works documenting the Cherokee Nation.

Bill and Alice Hart’s Collection of the history and culture of Western North Carolina includes extensive works on the Cherokees, who have lived in this part of the world longer than any other humans. The Cherokee trace their roots in Western North Carolina to approximately 8000 b.c.e., and controlled about 40,000 square miles of territory in Southern Appalachia prior to the arrival of Europeans. Understanding the relationship of humans to the natural world in Southern Appalachia requires an understanding of Cherokee history and culture, and it is in this context that Bill and Alice Hart built an extensive collection of materials on the Cherokee.

The following is a selection of the Cherokee materials in the Hart Collection.

Early History of the Cherokees

Emmet Starr’s Early History of the Cherokees: Embracing Aboriginal Customs, Religion, Laws, Folk Lore, and Civilization, was published in 1917, and considered a landmark historical account of the Cherokee nation. Starr establishes his credentials in the book’s Preface: “I am a Cherokee, born in Going Snake District, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, on December 12, 1870.” Starr spent over 15 years researching this history, and the volume includes extensive use of primary sources. This first edition, self-published by Starr, is relatively rare.

Land of the North Carolina Cherokees

Published in 1970, Fred B. Bauer’s Land of the North Carolina Cherokees is a concise (70 page) history of legal issues concerning the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and their struggles to maintain their constitution and land rights in the Qualla Boundary. Bauer was a former Vice Chief of the Eastern Band, and was an outspoken advocate for Cherokee rights to their land during the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Formal Opening of the Chief John Ross House – offical program

John Ross served in leadership roles for the Cherokee Nation from 1819 to his death in 1866. Ross was President of the Ntional Committee of the Cherokee Nation from 1819 to 1827, the year that the Cherokee Nation adopted its Constitution. In 1827 he was Assitant Principal Chief, and in 1828 was elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. He was relected as Principal Chief and held the position until his death in 1866.

The John Ross House in Rossville, Georgia, was built in 1797 by John Ross’s grandfather John McDonald. The house was restored 1963, and this program documents the Formal Opening ceremonies, which included a stick-ball game, archery, crafts, and dancing.

Formal Opening of the Chief John Ross House, May 29, 1963.

33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair program, October 1950

The Cherokee Indian Fair provided members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians an opportunity to exhibit “the products of their fields, forests, and farms, their cook stoves and preserving kettles, their needles and looms, all the best of their wood craft, metal work, and pottery; in fact any products of their minds and hands in which the can take pride.” The program is illed with photographs and details about the wide range of items being exhibited and sold, including fruits, vegetables, canned goods, baked goods, clothing, plants, flowers, and crafts.

Program - 33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair, 1950 — Program – 33rd Annual Cherokee Indian Fair, 1950

Cherokee Fair & Festival: A History thru 1978

This 1978 pamphlet edited by Mary Ulmore Chiltoskey provides more depth and historical information about the Cherokee Indian Fair. It cites 18th century European descriptions of Cherokee harvest festivals in such historical narratives as John Lawson’s History of Carolina and William Bartram’s Travels of William Bartram, then adds contemporary Cherokee accounts of the Fair’s growth and development.

The Hart Collection includes documents and resources about Cherokee law, as well as nineteenth century congressional papers documenting Cherokee attempts to have treaty promises fulfilled. These include the Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation, Published by Authority of the National Council, 1875, and Congressional documents such as the US House of Representatives Bureau of Indian Affairs report “Cherokee Indians in North Carolina” from 1848, the U.S. Senate document “complaints of treaty violations by US, delivered by Cherokee delegation of Will P. Ross, W.S. Coodey, and John Drew, March 15, 1849,” and the U.S. Senate document “Committee on Indian Affairs, report on accounting balance owed the Cherokee nation by the US according to 1846 treaty terms.”

A small but representative sample of other Cherokee resources in the Hart Collection includes Art of the Cherokee : Prehistory to the Present by Susan C. Power, Cherokees of the Old South: a People in Transition by Henry Thompson Malone, The Shadow of Sequoyah: Social Documents of the Cherokees, 1862-1964, Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as told in the Correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot family, as well as numerous issues of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and North Carolina Archaeology.

One of the most important works in the collection is a first edition of The Cherokee Physician, Or Indian Guide to Health, as Given by Richard Foreman, a Cherokee Doctor. Originally published in Asheville in 1849, this book merits its own blog post. We will feature a special guest discussing The Cherokee Physician in a future blog post. Stay tuned!

For more information about these materials, please watch this video of Bill Hart discussing the Cherokee resources in the Hart Collection. This was recorded in the Hart’s private library prior to transferring the collection to UNC Asheville, but we have retained the original order that the Harts used to organize their collection.

The Bill and Alice Hart Collection is open to all, and we encourage you to contact Special Collections to make an appointment to spend time with this marvelous collection. Please contact us at speccoll@unca.edu to make an appointment. We look forward to seeing you soon!

– Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle

Hiking in the Smokies – Selections from the Bill and Alice Hart Collection

This is the first in a series of articles highlighting materials in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, which the Harts recently donated to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. This article highlights works related to one of Bill and Alice Hart’s favorite pastimes: hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains.

In the introduction to his 2009 book, 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies, Bill Hart described the importance of boyhood family camping trips in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Initially introduced to day hikes by his father, he became an avid hiking and camping enthusiast. The more he hiked in the Smokies, the more curious he became about not only the actual trails he traversed, but also the history and culture of the people who had lived there:

As the frequency of my walks in the Smokies increased, each visit began to take on a different meaning. I could not pass flowers and shrubs without having questions about their identities. Remains of old homesteads, outlines of old fields and rustic cemeteries led to wonderment about patterns of settlement and early life in the Smokies. Old roads, faint paths and abandoned rail grades caused me to wonder where they led and what secrets they held. Mountain peaks and place names bespoke of people and events in the past. In an effort to gain a layman’s knowledge about the Smokies, I began to read about the history, flora, fauna, lore, and music of the area and satisfied some of my curiosity.

The cover of Bill Hart's 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies. — The cover of Bill Hart’s 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies.

Indeed, Bill’s effort to gain a “layman’s knowledge” of the Smokies was a factor in he and his wife Alice curating and creating a massive personal library for over 50 years, one that scholars sought out and that is now at UNC Asheville. This post, the first of many, will focus on the Smokies hiking content in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, and further posts will continue to highlight the wide variety of materials in this extensive collection.

Smoky Mountains Hiking Club Handbooks

The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club (SMHC) was founded in 1924, two years before the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By 1926 the SMHC began to publish an annual Handbook which listed group hikes and other SMHC events during each year. The Bill and Alice Hart Collection contains nearly ninety copies of the SMHC Handbook dating from the first one in 1926 through 2018 – a nearly complete set with just a few years missing.

Each volume of the SMHC Handbook is a guide to SMHC hikes and events. Included are a schedule of hikes throughout the year with descriptions of each hike and the group leader (or leaders) for each hike, other scheduled club events such as fish fries, educational lectures, short essays by club members about hiking and the outdoors, general guides and insights into various places in the Park, photographs, maps, and information about the club’s members and leaders. The articles and hike descriptions in the handbooks portray a strong sense of camaraderie among the members, a shared sense of stewardship about the trails and the park, and often a wry sense of humor, as seen in the captions for these photos of a bear and a boomer (a red squirrel) from the 1939 Handbook:

A page from the 1939 Handbook of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club.

The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club remained active and continued to lead hikes and host group activities even during World War II. This entry from the 20th Anniversary edition of the Handbook in 1944 discusses not only wartime rationing but also shows a regular feature in each issue of the Handbook – the club’s Code of Ethics:

From the 1944 20th anniversary issue of the Handbook of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club addressing war time rationing.

Guide to the Great Smokies

Several of the many gems in the Hart Collection are the 1933 Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the 1935 revised edition of the Guide, both written by George McCoy and George Masa. And while the 1935 edition no longer lists Masa as a co-author, his photographs still grace the pages of this small and highly informative volume.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park guide from 1933. Photographer George Masa was a co-author and contributed photographs.

Welcome page from the 1933 Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Note the reference to George Masa in the text.

Hiking Trails of the Smokies

Due to his considerable experience hiking the Smokies, Bill Hart was asked to contribute some trail descriptions to Hiking Trails of the Smokies, published in 1994 by the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. Bill described about 60 miles of trails in the book, and this link goes to his description of the Beech Gap Trail (please click on link to open the narrative). In addition to describing the hike itself, Bill’s narrative places the trail in historical context. He describes Ira McGee’s mill and the railroad lines that were extended into this section of the Smokies in 1915 for logging, and also notes that the Civilian Conservation Corps had a camp in 1934-41 where Round Bottom Creek flows into Straight Fork, near the Beech Gap Trail. The hike is not merely a hike on a lovely Smokies trail, it’s also a trip through the past.

To watch a video of Bill Hart discussing these works and other materials from the Great Smokies part of the Hart Collection, please click on this link. This was recorded in the Hart’s private library prior to transferring the collection to UNC Asheville, but we have retained the original order that the Harts used to organize their collection.

– Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle

A cheer for our student workers!

Special Collections was fortunate to have three excellent students working with us this semester. History Department interns Elijah Reddick and Chandler Collins worked with us this semester, and History major Michael Dennis also worked with us. These three were remarkable, mastering the skills necessary to process challenging collections.

Chandler Collins, Elijah Reddick, and Michael Dennis (left to right) showing off favorite items from the collections they worked with.

We asked Michael, Elijah, and Chandler to pose for this photo with a favorite item from the collection they worked on this semester. Chandler worked on a large collection from the Rotary Club of Asheville, which included numerous banners, flags, and other materials collected from Rotary Clubs around the world. He selected a boomerang from an Australian Rotary Club.

Elijah processed the David Cohen Cartoon Collection, and he selected a cartoon with a visual pun, a drawing of a submarine with the caption “Sub Conscious.” Elijah wrote about his experiences as an intern in this blog.

Michael is working on the Margaret Shook Photograph Collection. Shook was a professional photographer in Asheville, and her collection contains a number of series of photos and slides on different topics, as well as some creative projects. Michael selected a photo showing the effects of Asheville’s urban renewal.

Congratulations to these excellent students, and best of luck to them! Elijah will be graduating in December while Michael and Chandler are completing their History degrees. Michael will be joining us again next semester when he will continue working on the Margaret Shook Photograph Collection. The finding aids for the Rotary Club of Asheville Collection and the David Cohen Cartoon Collection will be available early in 2023.

Thanks to all of you!

-Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle

The David Cohen Cartoon Collection

(This post is by Elijah Reddick, a History intern who worked in Special Collections in the Fall 2022 semester. )

By Elijah Reddick

The Collection Itself

The majority of my internship in UNC Asheville’s Special Collections was spent working on the David Cohen Cartoon Collection which was donated to the archive in November 2021. I organized and described David Cohen’s collection of hand drawn cartoons on an item level description within a finding aid. This meant looking at each cartoon individually and describing it based on personal judgment and trying to convey what the cartoon is trying to display visually and contextually. The top priority while describing the collection was to keep in mind the audience for the finding aid and to remember that David Cohen himself still wanted to access his collection after the initial donation. This meant not only creating a finding aid more personal to David for ease of use but also creating a finding aid that would help guide future researchers in their own personal projects.

The Cohen Collection consists of sixteen boxes so far with a majority of the boxes holding folders up to fifteen folders with ten cartoons in each, with exception to a few folders which have more than ten cartoons in them due to us wanting to keep certain time periods in sequential order. The cartoons are all hand drawn on a variety of materials including cardstock and regular sheet paper, the cartoons are also largely in black and white with use of a marker and pencil. Some cartoons display work with color and small uses of inlay materials to display patterns on objects or backgrounds.

David Cohen: A Drawn-Out Mind

David Cohen is an Asheville based artist/musician and resident of over forty years. He primarily draws editorial cartoons and commissioned cartoons for various outlets and companies. His cartoon work spans various subjects ranging from local issues based in Asheville to more national political events and even to one off, word play oriented jokes. His work has been recognized by media outlets such as USA today and his work is very well known in the local Asheville area. David Cohen has been drawing cartoons for the Asheville Citizen-Times Newspaper for seventeen years and also contributed cartoons the Greenline Express a predecessor to the Mountain Xpress.

I had the amazing opportunity to interview with David Cohen during my internship and asked him questions about what motivates him to draw cartoons and specifically about why he chooses the subjects he does. He told me so many things about Asheville, and as someone relatively new to the area is wildly intriguing, such as the Bele Chere festival and its hectic but also tourist-attracting atmosphere David parodies in a number of his cartoons. We also talked about the presence of religion in his cartoons and how often David pokes fun or finds pleasure in investigating the more controversial sides of certain faiths. David draws cartoons about a number of sensitive topics but he does so in a way that draws attention to the matter and provides enough context within the cartoon that it provides the viewer with a curiosity to go and investigate that topic more.

David Cohen also conducted a TED Talk in Asheville some years ago about his career. Link to Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avE5i5QIgA

National Politics and The Meaning of an Editorial Cartoonist

David Cohen’s cartoons touch on many topics both national and local in nature. There are even times where David goes into international news, whether that be talking about a foreign regime or national disaster, David Cohen has incredibly varied subject matter. National politics and specifically an interest in our three branches of government in the U.S. is where we see a vast majority of the cartoons in our collection residing, especially in the early to mid 2000’s. The political cartoons touch on gay marriage, religion in government, and the short comings of specific politicians. Since David Cohen is an editorial cartoonist these depictions of politicians and other public figures are done so in a caricatured manner with exaggerated features.

Cartoon showing Barack Obama and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Cartoon showing masters or gods of major religions playing golf

If you look earlier in our collection of David Cohen cartoons you will see a leaning away from such political cartoons and start to see a less politicized humor being created. Many of the cartoons pre-2000 are one off jokes or secular in topic, with many of the cartoons involving wordplay, historical references, or puns.

Cartoon showing a man walk into a bar in a doorway

Cartoon depicting John McCain and highlighting his perspective on the infamously known policy concerning the sexual orientation of U.S. service members known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

Cartoon depicting Barack Obama and criticizing his ability to handle the middle east summit on his own and without exterior guidance.

David’s Contribution to Asheville Through His Work

Perhaps the most influential and impactful part of the David Cohen collection are his cartoons that depict events and stories told within the local area of Asheville, NC. David covers topics specific to Asheville or topics that public opinion highlights such as houselessness, tourism, changing demographics, and local politicians. David Cohen’s local cartoons provide a local sphere of relatability and culture to long standing residents of Asheville, NC which is vital in a town that relies so much on exterior tourism and influence. David Cohen’s vast timespan of collected cartoons also archive and document Asheville’s local history in of itself, enabling a person who decides to look through the collection to see a timeline of important events, figures, and even public policies that have shaped Asheville into the city we see today.

Cartoon depicting two stereotypical groups of demographics seen within Asheville and how they interact with one another

Cartoon depicting a cop and a houseless man in Asheville, NC relating over the housing crisis

Cartoon depicting former Asheville, NC mayor Terry Bellamy and her struggles with equal rights legislation within the city

Cartoon depicting former member of Asheville City Council Cecil Bothwell and a critique towards his political career

Cartoon depicting a dissatisfied local dealing with tourist and photographers who often migrate to Asheville, NC for the natural scenery

What This Internship Has Meant to Me

My internship at UNCA Special Collections and the experience it has given me has grown so many of my professional skills while also changing how I think about archives. It has given me more than what I expected in terms of hands-on experience, collaborative efforts, and concepts around handling and describing a collection. It has provided me with challenges that confronted my writing skills, personal bias, and even morals when it came to what we put within a finding aid about the subject at hand; whether it be about word choice or censoring a topic for the potentially offensive nature of it. This is not to say that there was an active effort to censure the collection but it is to say that what you put in a finding aid and what you see in person can be different in order to maintain professionalism and a sense of academic sustainability within a setting such as Special Collections. This internship and specifically this collection taught me eventually to not describe the humor within a cartoon but to describe the significance of the cartoon, what does the cartoon give us in respect to its context, setting/environment, and even characters? Through David Cohen’s incredible storytelling skill and illustration along with the mentors I have been lucky to work with at the UNCA Special Collections Department I realized just how much individual local figures mean to a community like Asheville. Both in terms of creating and archiving works of historical value, it’s figures like these that maintain a culture of a place so multi-dimensional such as the one we reside in today.

Sources

All cartoons are from the David Cohen Collection, D.H Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville.

(Note: The finding aid for the David Cohen Cartoon Collection will be online in early 2023. )

Celebrating Asheville educator Lucy Saunders Herring

120 years ago this Saturday, Lucy Saunders (Herring) was born in Union, South Carolina, on October 24, 1900. A pioneering African American educator, she worked as a teacher, reading specialist, and as an educational and community leader from 1916 until 1968. Her work helped transform African American education in North Carolina, especially in Western North Carolina (Krause, p. 188). Her archival legacy includes the Lucy Herring Collection, her memoir Strangers No More: memoirs by Lucy S. Herring, and the Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, all held in Special Collections at UNC Asheville. Transcriptions of oral histories with Lucy Herring have recently been added to the Special Collections website: July 26, 1977, August 2, 1977 (tape 1), and August 2, 1977 (tape 2).

Saunders’ family moved to Asheville for her brother’s health in 1914. Two years later, when she was 16, Saunders was teaching at the Lower Swannanoa Colored School. A one-room schoolhouse with unpainted walls, a pot-bellied stove, and homemade desks, Lower Swannanoa was one of twelve “colored” schools in Buncombe County at the time. Saunders’ supervisor was John Henry Michael, who was not only the principal of Hill Elementary School, but also the Jeanes Fund supervisor of “Colored Schools” for the county. It was these two factors – the mentorship of John Henry Michael and the Jeanes Fund – that would shape Saunders’ early career as an educator.

Asheville State Summer School, Caning Chair Seats — J.H. Michael, Founder and Director, 1917-1938; Front Row: (left to right) Janet Kebe, Ethel Foster, Nettie Candler, Winifred Allen, Gertie Mance, Lucile Shepard, Back Row: J.H. Michael, Unidentified, Creola Bernette, Mamie Bell, Hattis Anderson, C.U. Reynolds, Blanche Graham, Unidentified, Unidentified, Hattie Love

Michael conducted the state-accredited Asheville Summer School for Negro Teachers which provided African American teachers with the opportunity to earn and upgrade their teaching certificates, as well as earn credit toward undergraduate college degrees. An experienced educator, Michael was impressed with Saunders’ classroom skills and in 1920 offered her a job teaching third and fifth grades at Hill Street Elementary School in Asheville. Saunders’ talents caught the notice of Annie Wealthy Holland, the North Carolina superintendent of Negro school, and in 1923 Saunders was appointed as a Jeanes Fund supervisor in Harnett County, in the central part of North Carolina.

Asheville State Summer School, 1930 – J.H. Michael, Founder and Director. Conducted at the Hill Street Elementary School

The Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, also known as the Negro Rural School Fund, or Jeanes Fund, was established by a Pennsylvania Quaker specifically to help maintain and assist rural and country schools for “Southern Negroes.” Originally started with a donation to the Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes in 2005 to assist black schools, by 1909 there were 65 Jeanes supervisors working in 10 states.

When Saunders arrived in Harnett County in 1924, her duties as a Jeanes supervisor were, broadly speaking, to improve education in the county’s black schools, which manifested itself in many ways. She visited all the black schools in the county on a regular basis, encouraged local teachers to teach such topics as sanitation, basic homemaking and light industrial skills. She also encouraged teachers to paint and whitewash houses, develop home and school gardens, as well as other tasks based on the Hampton/Tuskegee model of industrial education and homemaking (Krause, p. 198).

Saunders thrived as a Jeanes supervisor in Harnett County. In the 1920s many black teachers had substandard or provisional teaching certificates. To address this Saunders instituted training programs and extension classes drawing on faculty from nearby Fayetteville State Teachers’ College. Her efforts were part of a larger effort in North Carolina in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1926, only 33% (or 1,917 teachers) of North Carolina’s black teachers had high school educations. By 1928-29 that had dropped to 20%, and a decade later it was down to just 175 teachers. Her role in Harnett County was, essentially, as a county supervisor to the African American schools, raising funds, supervising schools, recruiting and hiring teachers, organizing training, and helping teachers improve their classroom teaching, as well as other administrative tasks.

Saunders also met Asa Herring while working in Harnett County, marrying him in 1925 and giving birth to their son, Asa Jr., in October 1926. Lucy Saunders Herring continued to work in Harnett County until 1935. By that time her marriage had failed, so she moved back to Asheville as a single mother, taking a job teaching English and mathematics at Stephens-Lee High School. Herring would continue working as a Jeanes supervisor in Buncombe County, taking a part-time position as Jeanes supervisor for the elementary schools.

For Herring, moving to Asheville meant leaving the flat North Carolina coastal plain of Harnett County and returning to the mountains. As she said in an oral history in 1977, “I thought and still think from the standpoint of physical beauty, Asheville is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen…There is something about the mountains that is satisfying and soothing” (Herring, July 1977 oral history).

By the time Herring arrived back in Asheville, the duties of Jeanes supervisors had expanded to also include improving “the quality of instruction,” to conduct meetings on reading and study, to guide field work and extension courses, to help implement standards, to encourage summer schools, libraries, and conferences, and to engage the community. As a Jeanes supervisor Herring became an active leader in Asheville, working with parent-teacher groups and community organizations and raising funds to buy additional books and other materials for schools.

In 1941 Herring was named principal of Mountain Street Elementary School, and by the late 1940s she became the first African American on the Asheville school and supervisory staff to have an office in city hall. At this time she began graduate work at the University of Chicago, traveling there over the summer for three years. She worked with Dr. William Scott Gray, the leading expert on remedial reading who had developed the “Dick and Jane” reading. Remedial reading was one of Herring’s passions, and based on her work with Gray she developed her own reading programs for teachers, supervisors, librarians, and principals. She was seen as an expert on remedial reading in North Carolina, and was invited to teach summer sessions at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now NC Central University) in Durham.

Letter inviting Lucy Herring to teach a Remedial Reading clinic at NC College for Negroes, 1944. From the Lucy S. Herring Collection

In 1949, the state allowed Asheville to “employ one colored supervisor” in the school system, and Lucy Herring was appointed as the supervisor for the African American city schools in Asheville, a position she held until her retirement in 1964. Herring was also offered a similar position in Winston-Salem but chose to stay in Asheville. During this time she was also president of the North Carolina branch of the National Association of Jeanes Supervisors. She was gaining a national reputation as an effective reading educator and supervisor, and was offered a job at the Tuskegee Institute, which she declined.

Letter from Asheville City Schools offering Lucy Herring a supervisor position in the city schools, July 1949. From the Lucy S. Herring Collection

Job offer from Tuskegee Institute, March 1960. Lucy Herring did not accept the position, preferring to stay in Asheville and work with elementary school students. From the Lucy S. Herring Collection

Asheville honored Herring in 1961 when the Asheville City Board of Education unanimously voted to name a new school after Herring – the Lucy S. Herring Elementary School, which operated from 1961-67 when it was then closed as part of court-ordered integration.

From the Asheville Citizen-Times, March 18, 1962. From the Lucy S. Herring Collection

Herring retired from the Asheville City Schools in 1964, having spent a career exclusively teaching in segregated schools. She remained extremely active in the community after retirement, serving on numerous boards and working to collect materials that document the Heritage of Black Highlanders in Western North Carolina. The materials she and others gathered constituted the Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection at UNC Asheville.

In 1968, Herring moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to live with her son Asa’s family. Her son, Lieutenant Colonel Asa D. Herring, Jr. was a fighter pilot and wing officer in the Air Force, and served in Vietnam when Lucy Herring was living in Phoenix. He started his career training as a Tuskegee Airman in 1944, but World War II ended before his training was completed. He left the military in 1946, but reenlisted in 1949 after President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 ending racial segregation in the military. Asa Herring Jr. became a fighter pilot and officer and flew 350 combat missions in Vietnam. The Library of Congress has created an Asa D. Herring, Jr. Collection and oral history with Lt. Col. Herring as part of its Veterans History Project.

Lucy Herring published her memoir, Strangers No More: memoirs by Lucy S. Herring, in 1983. She lived the rest of her life in Arizona, and passed away in Phoenix in October, 1995, a few days before her 95th birthday.

Sources:

Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804. Digitized by Digital NC.

Herring, Lucy S. Strangers No More: memoirs by Lucy S. Herring. New York: Carlton Press, 1983.

Herring, Lucy S. Interviews with Louis Silveri. 1977. Transcripts. Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection. D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804.

Krause, Bonnie J.,“‘We Did Move Mountains!’ Lucy Saunders Herring, North Carolina Jeanes Supervisor and African American Educator, 1916-1968,” The North Carolina Historical Review 80, no.2 (April 2003): 188-212.

Lucy S. Herring Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804.

Rummaging for bacon

When the Grove Park Inn opened in Asheville on July 12, 1913, one of the inn’s top priorities was insuring that the food and water served at GPI was of the highest quality. They proudly described their culinary philosophy in the “Eating” section of the 1916 GPI menu below, noting that “usually because of overwork and lack of exercise, digestion has grown poorer and poorer, until eating is a burden, when it should be one of the greatest pleasures.”

Grove Park Inn Exterior View — Grove Park Inn, circa 1920s.

It continues: “Grove Park Inn is not intended as a sanitarium for persons with indigestion, but we recognize the fact that those who can afford to patronize place like this are usually the overworkers, whose digestion needs our best assistance and not our opposition, as would almost seem to be the policy many hotels – so little thought do they give to the preparation of food.”

Dining Room, GPI — Dining Room at the Grove Park Inn

You could rest assured, if you were a Grove Park Inn guest in 1920, that the kitchen staff was there to prepare “the most wholesome, purest, cleanest foods we are able to secure and maintain a reasonable business.” Their culinary team was described in GPI’s literature as “the best cooks from Washington and New York.”

"Eating" details from the 1916 Grove Park Inn menu — “Eating” details from the 1916 Grove Park Inn menu

So where did Grove Park Inn secure these wholesome, pure foods? As documented in the Grove Park Inn section of the Blomberg, Patton & Grimes Biltmore Industries Archive, GPI ordered foods from a range of vendors, producers, and distributors, some local, and others from a distance. These records include nine boxes – 4.5 linear feet – of orders, correspondence, invoices, and payments for food served at Grove Park Inn. If there was a problem with an order from a vendor, it was quite common for Fred Seely himself – the manager of GPI from 1914 to 1927, and E. W. Grove’s son-in-law – to write the vendor to complain and demand redress.

Seely also had a certain amount of brand loyalty. “When we have adopted a brand or make, we stick to it and thus keep our foods uniform.” You’ll notice the list of brands on the menu above, including Heinz products and Squibb’s extracts. Sometimes, it seems, his brand loyalty eclipsed his common sense.

Which brings us to the case of the rummaged bacon.

Fred Seely was fond of Beech-Nut Bacon, which was produced by the Beech-Nut Packing Company in Canajoharie, New York. Seely wrote the Beech-Nut Packing Company on December 6, 1920, declaring “you are aware, do doubt, that we have always used Beechnut bacon, and mention it in our menus.”

Between 1920 and 1926, GPI routinely ordered bacon from Beech-Nut, orders that were shipped 800 miles from mid-state New York to Asheville via railroad. These rail orders were sometimes problematic. For instance, a bacon order was shipped “express” from Beech-Nut on April 7, 1920, and when it had not arrived in Asheville by April 23, GPI notified Beech-Nut that the shipment was late. Beech-Nut contacted American Railway Express on April 23, noting that GPI in Asheville had not received their bacon, and asked the railroad to “please trace at once as they are perishable goods.” The bacon did arrive at GPI on April 28, three weeks after shipment from New York. And this wasn’t the first time this happened – a shipment in January 1920 was also late and had to be traced.

Remember, these are “perishable goods.”

And Grove Park wasn’t concerned only about shipping, but also about the quality of the bacon itself. In the letter below Seely wrote Beech-Nut in December complaining of “the irregularity of the product. We get some very small pieces which is not what we want. Is there any reason why it cannot run regular and always be as large as you formerly sent us?”

GPI letter to Beech-Nut Packing, December 6, 1920 — GPI letter to Beech_Nut Packing, December 6, 1920

Problems in the procurement of pork products persisted, as noted when Beech-Nut shipped too much bacon:

Letter from GPI to Beech-Nut Packing, January 21, 1921

Or too little bacon:

Letter from GPI to Beech-Nut Packing, May 19, 1921

In this undated letter (from 1920 or 21) apparently GPI’s order threw normal packing operations at Beech-Nut into a frenzy. “To get Bacon of the size you require, it necessitates considerable rummaging around through our stock, which results in some delay getting these goods ready for shipment.”

Letter from Beech-Nut Packing to GPI, undated

Finally, it seems that all this rummaging, poor quality, and shipping woes were too much for Seely, as he wrote in this letter of June 9, 1921, stating that “we have always paid you a fancy price for Beechnut quality but what we are receiving now isn’t making us very enthusiastic about continuing it.”

Letter from GPI to Beech-Nut Packing, June 9, 1921

One of the questions this procurement tale begs is: why didn’t Seely try to source bacon locally? Buying pork in Buncombe County shouldn’t have been that difficult. According to the 1920 census there were over 3700 farms in Buncombe County, and farmers noted that they owned 10,074 swine. With all this locally available pork, it seems odd that Seely insisted on having his bacon shipped over 800 miles of rail lines.

To be fair, Seely did source a lot of food from local vendors. One of the largest files in the “food” section of these records are the invoices and orders with Virginia Fish & Oyster Company, an Asheville company that provided most of GPI’s seafood. Not only were they a local company, there’s no record that Virginia Fish & Oyster Company ever had to “rummage around” through their stock to fill an order.

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Collections used in this post:

The photos of GPI and the dining room are from the Grove Park Inn Photograph Collection

The correspondence is from the Blomberg, Patton & Grimes Biltmore Industries Collection

The GPI menu is from the Shirley Stipp Ephemera Collection

Exhibit Showcases UNCA’s Literary Magazine History

Bluets, the first campus literary magazine, was first published in 1929, just two years after Asheville Biltmore College (UNCA’s predecessor) was founded. Over the next 90 years the campus literary magazine would go through several name changes and transformations, finally becoming Headwaters in 1997, the name it retains today.

A new exhibit on the history of UNCA’s literary magazine heritage is now in the display cabinets outside of the Special Collections and University Archives reading room on the top floor of Ramsey Library. Curated by Headwaters co-editors Morgan Fuller and Matthew Maffei in conjunction with University Archives, the exhibit includes 36 different issues from 90 years’ of UNCA’s literary magazines.

The exhibit documents the name changes our literary magazine has had over the years, including Bluets, Images, Fury, The Rag & Bone Shop, Headwaters, plus a few one-time literary publications.

The exhibit also includes free copies of recent issues of Headwaters, so stop by, take in a little UNCA literary history, and pick up a recent copy of Headwaters.

All previous issues of Headwaters, Bluets, and UNCA’s other literary magazines are available to read in Special Collections/University Archives.

Asheville Postcard Company Salesman’s Samples Collection

By Joey Harrington, Special Collections Intern

Salesman’s sample books. Note how the two in the middle unfold to show the various postcards.

Lamar Campbell LeCompte founded the Asheville Postcard Company in 1913. For the majority of the company’s history, from 1930 to 1977 when LeCompte passed away, they were located on “a little street between Broadway and North Lexington” which writer J.L. Mashburn describes as just a “nook in an alley in a weather beaten establishment” (Mashburn 72). According to Mashburn this little “nook” contained an estimated ten million postcards dating from 1912 to 1950.

The Asheville PostCard Company Salesman’s Samples Collection was donated to UNCA Special Collections by local collector BIll Hart. The salesman’s sample books eachs feature different cards marketed to promote towns or communities, and were carried by salesman to be shown to prospective buyers. Dating from 1939 to 1941, the 11 sample booklets in this collection document the commercial process of how these popular and colorful cards came into the hands of consumers. Salesman would call at retail establishments such as tourist attractions, hotels, drugstores, and other venus with these samples and take orders for both generic and customized cards. The orders would be printed and shipped to the retailers, where they would be purchased by tourists and locals alike.

The booklets contain “linen postcards.” According to the cultural historian Jeffrey L. Meikle, linen postcards “so called for their embossed surfaces resembling linen cloth, dominated the American market for landscape view cards from 1931 into the early 1950s” (Meikle 2). The linen cards, which originated at Curt Teich in Co. in Chicago, were “based on retouched black-and-white photographs” printed on “inexpensive cardstock in vivid, exaggerated colors” (Meikle 2).

In the late 1930s and early 40s, when stamps were a mere half penny and mail could be delivered two to seven times a day, the postal service was the primary method of communication for many people in the United States (USPS). According to the US Postal Service website, in 1940 roughly 525,000 privately printed postcards were mailed in the United States and when you add “postal cards” that were pre-stamped, the number jumps to roughly 2.5 million.

“Sunrise on Mt. Mitchell, in the Land of the Sky”

For scholars like Meikle, these widely disseminated postcards offer “a window into popular middle-class attitudes about nature, wilderness, race and ethnicity, technology, mobility, and the city during an era of intense transformation” (Meikle 4). The recently donated postcard samples from the Asheville Postcard Company certainly seem to represent many of the “popular middle-class attitudes” that Meikle describes. The majority of the cards depict idyllic “nature scenes” of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with photos of places like Clingman’s Dome and Mount Mitchell, while also featuring the architecture of various downtown districts in Western North Carolina. The cards simultaneously present pictures indicative of a culture of white supremacy, with explicitly racist representations of African Americans featured in some of the photos.

The new collection, which includes over a hundred postcards, will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in studying Western North Carolina culture in the early 20th century and will now be available for reference at UNCA Special Collections. More cards from the collection are featured below.

Some of the cards, like this one, feature sexist or racist themes. Note how it could be customized to include “your city,” and that this was from the “Imprinted Series #968”

“A typical moonshine still” – such cards helped perpetuate Appalachian stereotypes.

“Busy tourist’s correspondence card” – the collection includes several variations on this theme.

An example of the “humorous” cards sold by the Asheville Postcard Company.

Joey Harrington studies History and Jazz and Contemporary Music at UNC Asheville.

Sources:

Mashburn, J. L., Asheville & Buncombe County…Once Upon a Time. Enka, NC: Colonial House Publishers, 2012.

Meikle, Jeffrey L. Postcard America: Curt Tech and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

Estate book of Col. Frank Coxe added to UNCA’s Special Collections

By Joey Harrington, Special Collections intern

Colonel Frank Coxe was born in 1839 to a slave-holding family on the Green River Plantation in Rutherford County, NC. The grandson of a prominent financier and land speculator who served in the Treasury Department during George Washington’s presidential administration, Coxe’s own career was marked by investments in the coal and railroad industries. However Coxe’s business ventures took a turn in the mid-1880s when he established the Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina — the largest development to occur in Asheville up to that time. In a 1979 interview his grandson (also named Frank) reflects on how his grandfather ended up in Asheville’s tourism industry:

Now my grandfather, Colonel Coxe, after the Civil War, he went to Charlotte. This coal money was pretty big money in those days, and he was considered a wealthy man… He spent about half of his time there and half of his time in Philadelphia. But had always had his eye on this Asheville area, because of his feeling that this could be one of the greatest resort areas in the country. When the railroads, four of them, from four directions, came in here, and he helped finance the building of the road from Old Fort up to this. [sic] He decided that the time was ripe to invest in Asheville, and in the form of this hotel, particularly. As I say, I think that the Battery Park Hotel was the springboard for this community.

The original Battery Park Hotel, constructed in 1886 and torn down in the 1920s, was situated on a scenic hill in downtown Asheville where a Confederate battery stood during the Civil War. According to historian Richard Starnes the hotel was built, in part, to “lure northern capitalists to the mountains, hoping luxurious accommodations and a pleasant visit would lead to regional ventures” (Starnes 49).

Battery Park Hotel, Asheville NC, circa 1890s

In addition to the hotel, Colonel Coxe also accumulated large tracts of land throughout the Asheville area, to the point that “every one of the buildings that you see along College and Patton, that were built between 1900 and 1920, except for the Public Service Building […] they were all built by the family” (Coxe Interview). Needless to say, by the end of his long career Colonel Coxe accumulated a large estate which according to a 1903 Citizen Times article was worth 7 million dollars (close to 200 million dollars in 2018 money according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator).

Coxe's signature on his will — Coxe’s signature on his will

The first page of Frank Coxe's handwritten will — The first page of Frank Coxe’s handwritten will

After Colonel Frank Coxe’s death in 1903, the Coxe Estate was bequeathed to his children Francis, Otis, Tench, and Maude. With the exception of Otis, they became the estate’s trustees, managing the properties and investments after their father’s passing.

Account book of the Frank Coxe Estate book covering the years 1908-1914

In 2018, a ledger book, titled the “Frank Coxe Estate,” was donated to UNCA’s Special Collections by private collector Bill Hart (the ledger can now be found in the Frank Coxe Papers). In the hand scribed book, business dealings from 1908 to 1914 are recorded in detail, documenting “Receipts” which includes income from the Battery Park Hotel, rental properties and the like, and “Disbursements,” documenting the payments to the Coxe children, land purchases, upkeep on properties, and other miscellaneous payments.

July, 1912. Monthly stipends to members of the Coxe family

July 1913. Entry showing regular income received into the estate account from the Battery Park Hotel

July, 1909. Disbursements to the Battery Park Hotel to cover the cost of fire damage, showing the estate was still tied up in the financial operations of the hotel

July, 1909. Colonel Frank Coxe was born and died on the Green River Plantation. Seven years after his death it seems the plantation was still being maintained by the heirs to his estate

It’s often the case that the estate of a deceased individual is divided up and willed off to their heirs, however it’s clear from the ledger that Colonel Coxe’s children maintained the Coxe Estate well after their father’s passing — continuing to manage the large amount of property that had been accumulated over the last half century in the Asheville area. Today, Coxe’s substantial influence over Asheville’s early development may be most easily recognized by the downtown avenue named after him. However, due to the extensive influence Coxe had in the early cultivation of Asheville’s tourism industry — George Vanderbilt stayed at the Battery Park Hotel before he decided to finance the construction of the Biltmore Estate — it would be difficult to overestimate the influence (for better or worse depending on who you ask) that the Coxe family has had on Asheville’s history and therefore on what Asheville is today.

Joey Harrington studies History and Jazz and Contemporary Music at UNC Asheville.

Sources:

Coxe, Frank. Interview by Bruce Greenawalt. June 9, 1976. Transcript. Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection. Ramsey Library Special Collections. University of North Carolina at Asheville, Ashevile, NC.

Starnes, Richard. Creating the Land of Sky: Tourism and Society in Western North Carolina. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005

Thomas Rain Crowe interview and collection

Special Collections recently added the Thomas Rain Crowe Regional Publications Collection to our holdings. Crowe, an internationally known writer, poet, editor, translator, and critic, who lives in Western North Carolina, is best known for his book Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Wood s, a narrative about living intentionally in a cabin in southwestern North Carolina. The collection contains over 250 items, mostly documenting Crowe’s writings in smaller regional newspapers where he published reviews, poems, articles, and other materials over the course of several decades. The collection also contains some books from Crowe’s New Native Press, as well as chapbooks, broadsides, journal articles, and books.

The collection was processed by Special Collections intern Renee Ambroso, an English Major at UNCA. As part of her internship Ambroso interviewed Crowe on video, and the interview, entitle Thomas Rain Crowe: A Writer’s Life, An Interview and Reading, has just made available on UNCA’s Ramsey Library YouTube channel.