Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro, 1880-1945
Textiles, Teachers, and Troops makes available more than 175,000 digital images documenting the social and cultural development of Greensboro from Reconstruction to World War II. Photos, books, personal papers, scrapbooks, and oral histories demonstrate how the textile industry, education, and the massive World War II military presence helped Greensboro grow into one of the leading manufacturing and education centers in the Southeast.
Textiles, Teachers, and Troops is a collaborative project among seven cultural heritage institutions in Greensboro and was funded in part through a Library Services and Technology Act Grant administered by the State Library of North Carolina.
Collections included:
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- The Art Shop was established by Charles Farrell in Greensboro in 1923, and his wife, Anne, joined the business in 1935. The couple were both talented photographers, and over the next 25 years they captured many people, places and events in Greensboro and across North Carolina. Many of the latter images can be found in the Charles A. Farrell Photograph Collection at the North Carolina State Archives. The Art Shop Collection held at the Greensboro History Museum consists of several thousand negatives and over 1500 contact prints. The images digitized as part of Good Medicine have to do with the early existence of sanitaria, hospitals, medical organizations, and drug manufacturers in the Greensboro area. Not all items from this collection have been digitized.
- The papers of Raymond Binford (1876-1951), President of Guilford College, 1918-1934; Chairman, Board of Education, Five Years Meeting, 1930-1945; minister and professor of biology, and Helen Titsworth Binford (1885-1952), President, North Carolina PTA, c.1930; Field Secretary, Carolina Institute of International Relations; and community volunteer, were given to the Friends Historical Collection by their children, Anna Naomi Kirchner, Richard, Frederick, and Mary Margaret Bailey c.1953.
- When the State Normal and Industrial School was established in 1891, it was governed by a Board of Directors. This body was charged with overseeing the administrative actions of the school, including the appointment of the president. In 1932, the school changed it name to Woman's College of the University of North Carolina and became one of the three branches in the Consolidated University of North Carolina. Administrative duties for the school were shifted from the Board of Directors to the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees. These are the records of the State Normal's Board of Directors between 1891 and 1931.
- The Benjamin Cone Papers are composed of materials from the files of his personal office. Since the collection originated from the Cone office files it by no means represents a complete collection of his papers. Although the bulk of the material relates directly to Cone, a substantial amount deals with other members of his family.
- Robert and Lyra Dann were former Guilford College faculty members who lived in Ireland working with the Miles Linen Company from 1924 to 1927 when they returned to this country to teach at Oregon State College in Corvallis, Oregon. There are 14 letters in the collection, 11 from Mary Mendenhall Hobbs and 3 from Lewis Lyndon Hobbs.