SNCA Blog  

We can't wait to welcome everyone to our first in-person meeting since 2019
as we celebrate SNCA's 40th Anniversary at the State Archives Building in
Downtown Raleigh on April 18-19, 2024. The official theme, calls for
proposals, and registration information are coming soon. If you have any
questions in the meantime, please let me know. We'll see you in Raleigh
next spring!

Submitted by Kathelene McCarty Smith, Department Head, Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

A letter found in the papers of Dr. Charles Duncan McIver, the founder and first president of the State Normal and Industrial School (now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro), noted that he had always wanted to see a “first class [train] wreck.” He got his wish on the night of August 25, 1902, when Southern Railway’s Fast Mail Train No. 35 ran off the rails near Harkins, South Carolina. Fast Mail express trains had been operated by Southern Railway since the late 19th century and were particularly perilous because of their speed. But they were attractive to some passengers, such as Dr. McIver, as they often journeyed at night and were faster than the alternative methods of travel. He booked a seat on the No. 35 train in hopes of a quick trip to Atlanta, Georgia, to speak at the Teachers’ Institute.

The train, which carried the mail from New York to Atlanta, was running at the rapid speed of sixty miles per hour when it encountered a sabotaged section of the track. The conductor, Henry Busha, who was injured in the wreck, blamed the incident on “miscreants” whose mischief caused the train to hit the open switch and careen off the tracks, leaving the engine, mail car, baggage car, and coaches stranded on their sides. Busha made it a point to tell reporters that he had not jumped out of the engine but crawled to safety; thus, keeping his pride intact and ensuring that he was not to blame. News accounts considered it “nothing short of a miracle” that no one was killed, although several people were seriously injured. Many witnesses who were at the scene saw nothing wrong with the switch and believed that there was no evidence of foul play, but railroad authorities believed that there was proof of premeditative tampering, as a crowbar was found, and spikes were pried out of a side track. Believing that the saboteurs might still be nearby, bloodhounds were employed in efforts to hunt them down, but to no avail.

Train wrecks were not uncommon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and some included Fast Mail trains like the one Dr. McIver rode. One of the most famous occurred almost a year after McIver’s experience. On September 27, 1903, another Southern Railway Fast Mail train jumped the track near Danville, Virginia. Like the event that took place the year before, this crash was partially caused by the accelerated speed of train in the attempt to make up for lost time. The momentum resulted in a plunge of forty-five feet off the Stillhouse Branch trestle. The wreck soon became a public spectacle, and many people came to view the horrible scene. Eleven members of the crew perished, and almost everyone on the train was injured, becoming the worst train wreck in the history of the state of Virginia. Soon lore began to supersede facts, and ghostly figures and train whistles began to be witnessed. The incident even inspired the 1924 hit country song “The Wreck on the Southern Old 97,” which sold six million records, and since has been recorded by many country artists.

Dr. McIver knew that his wife, Lula, had been worried about his propensity for riding on night trains. In fact, she wrote her husband a letter only a few weeks before the wreck expressing her concerns. She cited a recent train wreck that occurred at night, and she expressed a strong preference for him to travel by day – even if it delayed his homecoming several hours. He noted her apprehension but countered with this comment made by Mark Twain: An insurance man tried to sell Twain a policy as he was boarding a train. Twain told him, “No, I don’t want it. More people die in beds than on trains.”

Mrs. McIver’s fears were realized when her husband’s train went off the rails in the early hours of August 25. She did not accompany her husband to Atlanta but remained at home on the college campus with their small family. As soon as he was able, he sent her a Western Union telegram reading, “In fearful wreck this evening but not injured at all.” After Dr. McIver was settled in his “delightful room on the fifth floor” of his Atlanta hotel, he wrote to Lula again, regaling her of his adventure. He described the general pandemonium after the wreck, especially the cries of “murder” from an older passenger. He wrote that the engine that “lay flat on the side and whistled mournfully for 20 minutes” and the wood which was strewn everywhere and eventually used for a bonfire. He even enclosed a piece of the wood in his letter as a “souvenir of the wreck.” His general tone was surprisingly cheerful, no doubt to soothe his wife’s panic, and he closed with “No news – Love to you all!

Ironically, Mark Twain’s story would not hold true for Dr. McIver. On September 17, 1906, he caught the early morning train to Raleigh, North Carolina, to meet a group who was traveling with politician William Jennings Bryan back to Greensboro. The train stopped in Durham for Bryan to make a campaign speech and for the party to have lunch. After lunch, McIver complained of indigestion and acute chest pains, and decided to return to the club car to rest. He died shortly afterwards, suffering a stroke while returning from Raleigh – on a train.

Sources:

• President Charles Duncan McIver Records, Correspondence of Dr. and Mrs. McIver, 1892-1902; Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
• “Bad Wreck Due to Miscreants,” The Atlanta Constitution 26 Aug 1902, p 7.
• “Wreck of the Old 97,” Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/wreck-of-the-old-97/

The Society of North Carolina Archivists Archives Month Committee invites you to a series of Lunch and Learns.  An impressive array of presenters is ready to explore this year’s theme:

Scandal,

Nuisance,

Calamity, &

Anguish in the Archives

 Murder victim, Dawson Street, Raleigh, April 1959.  NO_4-3-1959_pilkingtonmurder From the N&O negative collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC. Photo copyrighted by the News and Observer. Illegal to use without express permission from the N&O.

Thursday, Oct. 5 at 12:00 p.m. 

"It Was a Train Wreck: Calamitous and Scandalous Tales from the UNCG Archives," join panelists Patrick Dollar, Suzanne Helms, Stacey Krim, Erin Lawrimore, and Kathelene McCarty Smith as they share information about different incidents/people from their collections. 

 

Thursday, Oct. 12 at 12:00 p.m. 

"Forevermore I’ll Sing”: Traditional Ballads from Sodom Laurel with Donna Ray Norton an eighth-generation descendant of the original settlers of Madison County, and of its music tradition. The ballads that Donna Ray sings are widely known as murder ballads, but her family calls them love songs. You’re sure to hear something about unrequited love, someone’s father killing her lover, maybe even someone’s head getting cut off. 

 

Thursday, Oct. 26 at 12:00 p.m. 

“Misdeeds and Depravity in the A/V Collection,”with Ian Dunn, Processing Archivist in the Audiovisual Materials Unit of the Special Collections Section, State Archives of North Carolina. 

 

To register, visit the SNCA website https://www.ncarchivists.org/ and look for Upcoming Events.

Visit the SNCA Facebook page for additional tales of Scandal, Nuisance, Calamity, and Anguish in the Archives! 

W.C. Reese sent out a message at 4:55 p.m. July 7, 1959.  As Chief Dispatcher for the Clinchfield Railroad Company, it was his job to get news to the company’s directors in a timely fashion. Less than an hour earlier near Marion, North Carolina, Train No. 97 suffered a derailment.  Twenty-six cars, many of which were carrying alcohol, left the tracks and a fire was “fiercely burning.” It was the first communication about the calamity sent from his office in Erwin, Tennessee.

According to the official Accident Report, the cause of the crash was attributed to a “wrung journal” (a.k.a. an axel malfunction) on Seaboard Atlantic Lines car no. 8785 loaded with phosphate. A journal box held a car’s axels and helped to distribute the weight of the railcar and to keep the axels lubricated.  If the boxes were not properly maintained, they could overheat and catch fire.  

The train was travelling 40 miles an hour on its usual run from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Elkhorn, Kentucky, that hot and clear day. There were 43 loaded cars and 41 empties. Firefighters from Old Fort, Nebo, and Marion responded to the scene.  No injuries were reported.

In the end, when all the bills were tallied, the derailment of No. 97 cost $232,070.37, chiefly made up of repairs to damage to tracks, equipment, and signals. Today, that would translate to roughly $2.5 million.

Bob Ruiz travelled from his home in Swannanoa, N.C., to photograph the derailment.  His color slides are part of the Ruiz and Brown Families Papers housed at Western Regional Archive in Asheville. The Clinchfield Railroad Company Records are housed at the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. 

Contributed by Jonathan Dembo

The Manuscripts & Digital Curation Department of J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC announces that the papers of former ECU faculty member and U. S. Senator John P. East (R-NC) are now available for research. 

Researchers may access the finding aid online at: https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/0513?q=east

Researchers may select items of research interest to access through the online finding aid and may make appointments to visit the repository or obtain copies of documents in the collection through the Special Collections Division’s website at:  https://library.ecu.edu/specialcollections/

Senator East’s election marked a significant change in North Carolina politics and reflected changes in most of the rest of the Southeastern states.  Before he was elected to the Senate in 1980, the Democrats had held the seat since Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828, with only two, one-term, interruptions, in the 1840s and the 1890s.  After East won election in 1980, no Democrat has won reelection to the seat. 

The John P. East Papers (1908 – 1986, undated [bulk: 1964 – 1986]) consist of 607 archival containers and 7 oversized folders and contain over 258 cubic feet of manuscript materials.  The papers include biographical, genealogical, and historical materials relating to his life (5 May 1931 – 29 June 1986); his marriage to Priscilla Sherk East and their children; his service as an officer in the U. S. Marine Corps; his battle against poliomyelitis and the paralysis it caused; his graduate studies in political science and as a professor of Political Science at East Carolina University (1964 – 1980), including his teaching files for each of his classes, his academic and professional publications, speeches, and interviews; and also his conservative Republican political beliefs and affiliations and political career, including his several unsuccessful attempts to win political office in North Carolina (1966 – 1976), culminating in his successful campaign for and election to the United States Senate in 1980; but the bulk of the collection focuses on his service in the Senate, where he was aligned with Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and a member of Helms' political organization, the Congressional Club; including his mailing lists, correspondence and constituent cases and projects files; his office and staff files, including files of this administrative assistants, press secretaries and legislative assistants; his political patronage and nomination files, committee and legislative activities; his voting records, newsletters, voluminous clipping files, press and public relations files, including publications, audio and video of interviews, speeches, and political events; his frequent bouts of ill health due to poliomyelitis, hyperthyroidism, urinary tract blockages, and depression, and their side effects which may have contributed to his decision not to run for reelection and his death by suicide in 1986; also including photographic prints and negatives, microfilm of committee records, correspondence, case and general files, voter registration files; and also oversized materials (1981 – 1986, undated).

For more information, please feel free to contact Prof. Jonathan Dembo, who processed and cataloged the collection.  You may reach him by email or at the address below.

Jonathan Dembo

Professor Academic Library Services

Manuscripts & Digital Curation Department

J. Y. Joyner Library, Room #4014

East Carolina University

Greenville, NC 27858-4353

Phone: (252) 328-2661

Email:  demboj@ecu.edu

In April 2023, a couple of archives repositories across the state opened their doors to host SNCA members and give folks an opportunity to attend an in-person event together. Thanks to Stephanie Bennett at Wake Forest University, Adreonna Bennett at UNC Charlotte, and Joshua Hager at N.C. State Archives for arranging tours. And of course thank you to the archives folks who came out - it was nice to see some familiar faces and meet some new ones.

Here is Instruction Archivist Randi Beem doing some show and tell at UNC Charlotte's Atkins Library.

And State Archivist Sarah Koonts and Records Description Unit Supervisor  Josh Hager touring folks around the State Archives.

Here's to many more tours in the future!

Contributed by Alston Cobourn

In January 2023 East Carolina University’s Records Management merged with University Archives to take better advantage of synergies between the two areas, resulting in a new department located in the Special Collections division - University History and Records.  Records Manager Amy Bright moved to the division at that time, and just recently Zach Dale assumed the new position of Records and Archives Assistant.  The department is now fully staffed with four FTE.

Contributed by Adina Riggins

Reflections: A Look Back

• Records Management (RM) had a presence at UNCW's celebration of Love Data Week last February. 17 people attended the online session “Let’s Talk about Administrative Data: A Conversation about Archiving the Data in Your Office.” Slides are available here. What RM topics do you want to see addressed during next year's Love Data Week? The theme will be “My kind of data.”
   
• Records and Information Management Month, April 2023 - University Archives held a total of 4 workshops–one on Zoom and 3 others around campus. There were 48 attendees altogether. Check out this handy Records Management Guide customized for UNCW.

News & Updates

• Please continue to refer to the UNC System Records Schedule (2021). The Record Analysis Unit at the State Archives is currently short-staffed with only two analysts in Raleigh and two regional analysts.  Please send suggestions for schedule updates and revisions to University Archives for consideration by the State Archives.
   
• Following the RM workshops this past spring, we in University Archives have had the opportunity to consult with several staff members at UNC Wilmington on records management questions. A valuable reminder: Adhering to the records schedule is a process! Making a plan, testing, and communicating with stakeholders and the public are components of a records management project. It is fine to build time into your projects to complete these steps as you move toward compliance.
   
• Do you produce state publications? Examples are university and departmental magazines, books published by the university, the Atlantis and other creative magazines, strategic plans, exhibition catalogues, and more. NC General Statute 125 set up a process for schools in the UNC system – as state agencies – to send 10 printed copies and/or a digital version to the State Publications Clearinghouse at the State Library of NC. Copies are then distributed to designated libraries throughout the state in addition to the Library of Congress. See guidelines on donating to the State Publications Clearinghouse.

J-SNCA is a peer-reviewed journal that seeks to support the theoretical, practical, and scholarly aspects of the archival profession. The editorial board of J-SNCA invites members of the research and archival communities to submit articles for a general issue on archival topics to be published fall 2023. 

Submissions on archival methodology, metadata, collecting practices, outreach, and rethinking the goals of archival work in our current age, especially considering the ongoing recovery from COVID-19 and the national conversation on efforts towards antiracism, are all welcome.

 The deadline for article submission is July 1, 2023 August 1, 2023. All members of the archival community, including students and independent researchers, are welcome to submit articles. Contributors need not be members of the Society of North Carolina Archivists or live in the state of North Carolina. Article proposals are welcome and encouraged.

 Submission contact: helmsbl@wfu.edu

Don't miss these offerings for Records and Information Management month at UNC Wilmington: