Saturday, Mar. 10, 2012
Wilson Special Collections Library
9:30 a.m. Coffee and pastries for attendees| Main Lobby
10 a.m. Program | Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

Map collectors, scholars of early America, and history buffs can learn more about an early North Carolina map at a free March 10 event in the Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC.

Independent scholar Michael McNamara will discuss questions of authorship and provenance surrounding the “Moseley Manuscript Map,” a recently discovered 1737 document that builds on Surveyor General Edward Moseley’s famous “A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina” (1733).

The “Moseley Manuscript Map” closely reproduces most of the original, but features additional detail on the interior of the colony and a proposed settlement at the head of the Pee Dee River where the Yadkin and Uwharrie rivers merge.

McNamara, of Williamsburg, Va., is president of Castle Development Corporation and is an avid map collector and researcher.

The event will also feature a display of several maps depicting North Carolina at the time of European settlement and in the century thereafter.

The North Carolina Collection, Rare Book Collection, William P. Cumming Map Society, and the Friends of the Library will sponsor the program.

Related Links

• North Carolina Maps (digital collection)

Download event poster (pdf)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Symposium, Wilson Special Collections Library (Free and open to the public)
5:30 p.m. Lecture by Daniel Beaumont
6 p.m. Photo lecture with Dick Waterman
6:30 p.m. Panel discussion with Rory Block, John Mooney, Joe Beard, Dick Waterman

Concert, Student Union, Great Hall, with Rory Block, John Mooney, and Joe Beard
7:30 p.m.
Purchase concert tickets beginning Feb. 14 from Carolina Union Box Office, ($5 for students with One Card; $15 for others)

Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203
Facebook event

The life of legendary blues singer Eddie James “Son” House Jr. will be celebrated with a symposium and concert March 13.

The tribute is sponsored by the Southern Folklife Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library, which holds a large collection of House’s commercial recordings.

The 7:30 p.m. concert will feature guitarist Joe Beard and guitarist/singers Rory Block and John Mooney, all of whom studied with House in the 1960s.

Tickets – $5 for students, $15 for others – will be available starting Feb. 14 through the Carolina Union Box Office, (919) 962-1449.

Before the concert, a free public symposium at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Library will feature author Daniel Beaumont discussing his new biography, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House (Oxford University Press, 2011).

At 6 p.m., photographer and manager Dick Waterman will show photos of House and other blues musicians including Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, and John Fahey. At 6:30 p.m., Beard, Block, and Mooney will join Waterman for a panel discussion.

House was born in 1902, in Riverton, Miss., and died in 1988. He became a Baptist preacher at 15, and only began to play guitar at age 25. His popularity rose after being “rediscovered” by Waterman and others during the 1960’s folk revival. House’s best-known recordings include “John the Revelator” and “Death Letter.”

The concert is the third and final event in the Southern Folklife Collection’s Blues Legacy Series. Previous events paid tribute to Howlin’ Wolf and Reverend Gary Davis.

Among the Son House items in the collection is a rare 1965 interview of him by John Fahey and Barry Hansen, later known as radio disc jockey Dr. Demento. (Listen to a digitized excerpt of the interview.)

Related Links

• Southern Folklife Collection
• Carolina Union Box Office

Southern Historical Collection Exhibit
Wilson Special Collections Library, 4^th floor
March 20 – July 1, 2012
Information: wilsonlibrary@email.unc.edu

An exhibit in the Wilson Special Collections Library will tell the stories of black families and communities in the South, and will encourage African American families to partner with the Library in preserving their family history.

Southern Roots, Enduring Bonds: African American Families will be on view in the Southern Historical Collection (4^th floor) March 20 through July 1, 2012. It will mark the launch of the African American Family Documentation Initiative in the southern Historical Collection (SHC).

The focal point of the exhibit will be photographs, letters, and documents from the newly acquired Lewis Family Collection. Pioneering broadcaster J.D. Lewis was North Carolina’s first African American radio announcer, hired at WRAL in 1947. For nearly five decades, he was a leading local figure on radio and television, including as host of “Teenage Frolic,” a popular weekly dance program that debuted in 1958 on WRAL television.

Lewis’s daughter, Yvonne Lewis Holley, and her family chose to donate their father’s papers to the SHC in order to help preserve their family legacy.

“The boxes in our basement were filled with newsclippings, letters, photographs, and recordings, many from the 1950s and 1960s,” said Holley. “We wanted to make sure that these materials would go to an institution and actually be used by students, scholars, and the general public, and not just sit in boxes.”

Also on exhibit will be items relating to Civil Rights activist Floyd McKissick and his family, and archival photographs, letters, and news clippings related to African American families in Durham, Raleigh, and across North Carolina.

SHC archivist Holly Smith is the initiative coordinator and part of the team organizing the exhibit. She said she hopes North Carolina’s African American families will recognize the depth of the Library’s commitment to caring for family treasures and making them available for students and scholars to learn from.

“The University has a duty and obligation to the surrounding community to preserve the history of the people who worked, slaved, and labored in this area,” said Smith.

To learn more about the African American Family Documentation Initiative, contact Smith in the Southern Historical Collection at (919) 962-1345 or email wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Related Links

• African American Family Documentation Initiative