Ifh 
 
 Kft*-' 
 
 Tvt^ 
 

 (ftorttpU Htttttctatta Htbrarg 
 
 StSjsica, N«n fork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE [NCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 

 AN ACCOUNT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COLLECTION OF BOOKS 
 
 RELATING TO 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 FORMED BY 
 
 STEPHEN B. WEEKS 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029557059 
 
THE WEEKS COLLECTION 
 
 CAROLINIANA 
 
 STEPHEN B. WEEKS 
 
 RALEIGH 
 
 E. M. UzzELL & Co., Printers and Binders 
 
 1907 
 
 J. 
 
 UNI VI k;-n Y 
 
 I- I I ; I ; /> I ; V 
 
P^Sio34-t 
 
THE WEEKS COLLECTION OF CAROLINIANA. 
 
 STEPHElSr B. WEEKS. 
 
 "The real University is a collection of books." — Caklyle. 
 "Witli the love of books in his heart no man is ever poor." 
 
 — Lawgford. 
 
 "The more useless and unpopular a science is the more precious it 
 is." — Aristotle. 
 
 In undertaking to comply with the courteous request of 
 the North Carolina Historical Commission for some account 
 of my collection of books relating to the history of our State 
 it is proper for me to crave pardon of the reader for what 
 might seem at first sight unwarranted egotism and personality. 
 But personal it must be if I am to treat the subject at all. I 
 have been engaged in this delightful pastime for more than 
 twenty years, and for the last fifteen there has probably never 
 been ,a day when the Collection was not in my mind in some 
 form or other. To it I have given moments of leisure ; to it I 
 have given days of toil ; it has been with me from day to day, 
 from year in to year out, and an account of it cannot be other 
 than personal. It is .almost more than personal ; it is to me as 
 near a living, vital organism as it is possible for an inanimate 
 thing to be. It is instinct with life, for its books represent the 
 best thought that ISTorth Carolina has produced. It is a thing 
 of beauty and a joy forever, and there is no wonder that it 
 appeals to me with all the subtlety of affection that a sen- 
 tient being might possess. 
 
 To give the history of this Collection is almost the same as 
 writing my autobiography, for I have always been a collector. 
 The collecting mania first appeared as a fancy for gathering 
 the nicely polished and evenly cut ends of wood that fell from 
 the work-bench of old Jonathan Duncan, the local wheel- 
 wright, in Pasquotank County thirty-five years ago. This is 
 
the first form of the gentle madness, which, like ambition, is 
 an infirmity of noble minds, that possessed me. But I soon 
 outgrew the stage of block collecting; not, however, till my 
 uncle of blessed memory had given me many a proper lecture 
 on the impropriety of carrying off such wooden odds and ends 
 without so much as saying "By your leave, Mr. Duncan." 
 
 Perhaps the next stage was that of scrap-books. I could not 
 give dates were they desirable, for I only remember that this 
 mania seized me before my ninth year, superinduced by an 
 aunt who was also mother, and who thought in this way to 
 inspire in me a literary trend. The few country newspapers 
 that were in reach, The North Carolinian, the extreme radical 
 organ of Elizabeth City, published by Dr. Palemon John; 
 The Richmond Christian Advocate, a stray copy of the Toledo 
 Blade now and then, and such others as came to hand, were 
 eagerly scanned and ruthlessly clipped for whatever took my 
 childish fancy. I had not yet gotten to the useful stage of col- 
 lecting. Perhaps every collector has to pass through what 
 may be called the destructive stage, for, inexperienced and 
 narrow of vision, he presumes to judge for all the world as 
 well as himself, and as a result, if he has access to much 
 material, destroys more than he saves. Such was my experi- 
 ence later when I first began collecting North Carolina mate^ 
 rials. Twenty years ago I knew the State so well that I dared 
 say what was useful for its history and threw the rest away. 
 iN^ow I am more humble. 
 
 But I am ahead of my story. After the scrap-book stage 
 had become a part of my nature I turned my thoughts to 
 botany ; not that I knew aught of botany in a scientific sense, 
 or even so much as knew that there was such a science. I 
 took it in the simplest form — in the form in which it appealed 
 to me in every-day life. I began by bringing together as 
 many specimens as possible of the woods native to the section 
 in which I lived (Pasquotank). These were pr^epared in a 
 crude fashion by putting one end of the stick between the 
 joints of a rail fence and then cutting it down to a certain 
 
thickness with a drawing-kiiif e ; this tool and an old saw 
 being the only scientific instruments in my laboratory. But 
 they served my purpose passing well. I gathered all the va- 
 rieties of trees and woody plants within reach^ labeled them 
 carefully and laid them away. When I visited neighboring 
 counties I was awake to my opportunities and secured speci- 
 mens of anything new ; when my aunt went on a visit to Illi- 
 nois she was charged to exert herself in my service, and in that 
 way several specimens unknown to my part of North Carolina 
 were added to my store. But I felt the need of knowledge ; I 
 wanted some guide, some manual, into which I might look 
 when I had am unknown specimen in hand. Thus were my 
 first ideas of botanical science evolved, for I had never so 
 much as heard of a text-book on botany, nor did I know the 
 word itself. 
 
 But this fad ceased to interest me, for I had exhausted the 
 possibilities of my position and, building on my dead self, I 
 passed on to other hobbies. The next was newspapers. My 
 desire was to get one copy of as many different papers as I 
 possibly could, and while it lasted publishers were importuned 
 for specimen copies and my friends and acquaintances made 
 miserable with my begging for every stray newspaper that 
 happened to add" a new title to my collection. 
 
 I was then, and am now, in a dilettante way, a atamp collec- 
 tor. I cannot assign that amiable weakness to any particular 
 period, for it covers all ; but I have had more control over this 
 propensity than over others, for stamp collecting requires 
 expert knowledge, much time and much money, and while I 
 am always interested in a good collection of stamps, I have 
 not had the disposition to go deeply into the matter for myself. 
 
 By the time that my newspaper fad had worn off I was 
 ready to enter the University. Here I was introduced to the 
 intellectual life more fully than I had been before. Having 
 been always a lover of books, a voracious reader, an enthusi- 
 astic gatherer of everything that came in my way, and a buyer 
 as well for my means, I had still perhaps never seen more than 
 
200 or 300 volumes in any single library in my life. Imag- 
 ine, then, my feeling when on the first Saturday after my 
 arrival on the Hill I was escorted to the fourth floor of the 
 New East Building and was introduced to the five or six 
 thousand volumes at that time belonging to the Philanthropio 
 Society of the University. My awe and reverence were 
 unspeakable; my joy unbounded, for I love to browse in a 
 library, and it was here that I had my first real acquaintance 
 with literature. This does- not mean that I read overmuch in 
 my undergraduate days. It was rather the reverse. I con- 
 fined myself closely to textrbooks, and the reading was only 
 as leisure allowed or necessity demanded. I have always ques- 
 tioned if this was not a mistake. I was working for grades, 
 but the stuff learned in the text-books has long since passed 
 into the limbo of forgotten things. Would the result have 
 been better had I turned myself loose in the library and fol- 
 lowed the bent of my nature ? But this came later, for in 
 my senior year I read Martin and AVilliamson, which I had 
 discovered in the library only a few months before — so little 
 was the history of our own State cultivated twenty-one years 
 ago, the library committee of one of the societies of that 
 institution even refusing to bu}^ a ISTorth Carolina book ! I 
 made extensive notes on both, with an idea of using them in 
 time. 
 
 Another matter that tended largely to develop my tastes 
 along these lines was my appointment in 1884 as one of a 
 committee to edit and publish a new edition of the Register 
 of Members of the Philanthropic Society. Because of the 
 natural inclination, perhaps, most of this work fell to me. 
 I carrieil one of the old catalogues in my pocket and 
 studied it as leisure afforded. It became a constant source 
 of inspiration; the great men Avhose names it contained 
 became, whether living or dead, my friends and com- 
 panions. In them I lived over the history of the Uni- 
 versity and of the State, and learning something of each, I 
 wished to know more. This introduced me, through my mas- 
 
ter, the accomplished Doctor Battle — ^to whom the men who 
 sat at his feet owe an unsurpassed example of kindly courtesy 
 and gentle enthusiasm contagious in its intensity and ennoh- 
 ling in its influence — to the larger world of State celebrities 
 as contained in Wheeler's History and his Reminiscences, 
 which was then just appearing. 
 
 It would seem that my interest in the State's life came 
 through the biography of her great men. It was personal ; it 
 was individual. The strong man appeals more to the youth- 
 ful mind than does the event in which he acts his part. It is 
 the actor and not the action which attracts; the individual, 
 the person, the ego that compels attention. Certain it is that 
 my interest was first aroused by studying the register of 
 members of the Phi. Society and by following them up in 
 Wheeler; and the first ISTorth Carolina book that I bought 
 was M. H. Moore's Pioneers of IMethodisni in Virginia and 
 North Carolina. I was acquainted with the author, and that 
 lent additional charm to the reading, just as do the autograph 
 ■ letters with which I extra illustrate my books to-day. Moore's 
 Pioneers I count as the cornerstone of my Collection, and the 
 date of its acquisition is February 2, 1884. 'Not that I did 
 not have items before that date which have since gone into 
 the Collection; but because for some unknown reason that 
 book and that date are irrevocably fixed in my mind as the 
 turning point of all my subsequent work in this line. 
 
 While I was a student in the University the Collection grew 
 very slowly. I had become a subscriber to the ISTorth Caro- 
 lina University Magazine the first year I was in the institution 
 and a little later began to chase after that dreadful bugaboo of 
 the collector, "back numbers" ; but I ruined many valuable 
 copies of that and other magazines before I had cut my first 
 teeth in collecting, for I tore the copies to pieces and saved a 
 picture here and an article there and had these imrelated 
 excerpts bound together in big volumes. I have known of 
 public libraries that bound many separate pamphlets together ; 
 but I soon saw the folly of cutting and condemning and of 
 
binding together unrelated items. Now I save all and bind 
 every separate item separately. During these years also I 
 contributed my first sheets to the history of the State in the 
 shape of a Eegister of Members of the Philanthropic Society 
 in 1886, and another edition, revised and enlarged, in 188Y; 
 together with the Minutes of the Y. M. 0. A. Convention of 
 JSTorth Carolina for 1886, 1887, and 1888, and a History of 
 the T. M. C. A. in the State in the latter year. These mat- 
 ters are mentioned because they have no little to do with 
 developing a taste which was already keenly felt and which 
 grew by what it fed upon. It happened, also, that during 
 these years a number of State papers came to my hands. 
 These were clipped so far as they had items of local historical 
 interest; the clippings were carefully mounted, uniformly 
 bound and indexed. I have ten volumes of this sort coming 
 down to 1894. Since then the mass of clippings has become so 
 great that I am simply appalled when I think of doing any- 
 thing with them except letting them alone. It was as early 
 as the summer of 1887 that I formed the idea of compiling 
 a Bibliography of North Carolina, but I soon saw that if 
 such a work was to be done it would first be necessary for me 
 to gather the materials on which it was to be based. 
 
 It was thus my interest grew. When I went to the Johns 
 Hopkins University in 1888 the work of collecting was sus- 
 pended in part while I was acquiring a more thorough knowl- 
 edge of history and of historical methods. The idea was dor- 
 mant; it was not dead. The virus of collecting had taken 
 too deep, too vital a hold on my nature to be shaken off. I 
 did not try. I have tried only once in my life. That was 
 just after I came to the Southwest. Then I concluded it was 
 time to stop. I made a good resolve and stood by it for two 
 weeks; then I saw a North Carolina item that I had never 
 heard of before offered for 25 cents. I fell, and have never 
 since made an effort to reform. When I went back to North 
 Carolina in the summer of 1891 from the Johns Hopkins I 
 had about 300 items on State history, mostly digested history 
 
and including : Moore's Pioneers ; Wheeler's History and his 
 Eeminiscences ; liawks's History; Schenck's North Caro- 
 lina; Caruthers's Caldwell; Byrd's Dividing Line (1841); 
 Vass's ISTew Bern Presbyterian Church; Lawson's History 
 (1860); Grimes's Letters; Draper's Kings Mountain; Ben- 
 nett's Chronology; Burkhead's Centennial of Methodism; 
 Dowd's Prominent Living North Carolinians; Debates in 
 Convention of 1835; Moore's Eoster; Colonial Eecords, and 
 a number of historical, biogTaphical, and university pamph- 
 lets. From that time my Collection has been insistent in 
 season and out of season, in pleasure and in sorrow, in health 
 and in sickness, at home and abroad, never ceasing, unend- 
 ing, always, everywhere, from everybody. 
 
 But this does not imply that at that time my knowledge of 
 collecting was more than rudimentary, or that my sympathies 
 were as wide as the State. I had been reared a Methodist 
 and educated at the University; hence, I cared nothing for 
 other denominations or other institutions. But I soon out- 
 grew that idea. At that time I devoted my attention in col- 
 lecting mainly to what I may call digested history rather 
 than to the more important original sources. This phase of 
 my mental development is well illustrated by my Bibliogra- 
 phy of the Historical Literature of JSTorth Carolina, published 
 in 1895. There are few references to sources in that work; 
 it deals almost exclusively with the historical works written 
 about the State and her citizens. But I came later to see that 
 if the Collection was to be of the greatest value it must have 
 newspapers, public documents of all kinds, journals of legisla- 
 tive, deliberative, and religious bodies — in a word, all that 
 vast mass of original materials on which digested history is 
 based. This brought me into the wide field of statute law, 
 codes or revisals, and session laws; to the journals of the 
 houses of assembly, the documents printed by the State, and 
 the still larger mass, but far more scattered and diificult to 
 obtain, printed by the United States and dealing with North 
 Carolina in whole or in part, and to the joiirnals or minutes 
 2 
 
10 
 
 of the various organizations in the State. The next phase 
 of development was that in which I reached out and included 
 in my work all the writings of North Carolina citizens, 
 regardless of their subject. Then came the last phase ; that 
 had to do with North Carolina imprints, and had been devel- 
 oped partly in my bibliography of the ISTorth Carolina press 
 in the eighteenth century. I have only gradually come to 
 realize that a book printed in North Carolina regardless of 
 its contents is no less a part of the history of the State than 
 is one which devotes itself entirely to that history or to the 
 biography of her citizens. In fact, it stands for a phase of 
 industrial life that nothing else can explain so well. Thus 
 the imprint "Ealeigh, 1805," to be found in the volume of 
 sermons of Devereux Jarratt, the Virginia Episcopal evan- 
 gelist of a hundred years ago, tells a tale of intellectual 
 activity and business enterprise on the part of its publisher 
 and of growth of the infant capital for which nothing else 
 can be substituted. Further, most books written by natives 
 or residents of the State are printed within its borders, and 
 an extension of the scope of the Collection to include State 
 imprints brings us visibly nearer to a complete list with no 
 correspondingly great increase of labor. 
 
 It may be said here that a line must be drawn somewhere 
 as to what may properly be counted as the productions of 
 North Carolina authors. Should Thomas H. Benton be 
 included, for instance, because he was born in the State, 
 while his life was spent elsewhere ? The uniform answer of 
 bibliographers would be, No, The consensus of opinion on 
 inclusion is that a State bibliography should include the 
 works written while a resident of the State (or while still 
 identified with the State, I should add), written about the 
 State or its citizens, or published in the State ; and these 
 rules have been followed in this Collection. Thiis Tom 
 Dixon's The One Woman and his The Life Worth Living 
 are included, while Benton's Thirty Years' View and his 
 Abridgment are omitted. 
 
11 
 
 Having thus traced my own mental growth in the matter 
 of book collecting, it will be possible for me to give some 
 account of the Collection itself, treating it under some of the 
 great divisions to which the subject naturally lends itself. 
 I shall undertake to mention a volume only now and then of 
 the many in my hands, considering those of most intrinsic 
 value or that are for any other reason particularly worthy 
 of note. Only a detailed catalogue would suffice for them 
 all, and that is not desired nor possible. 
 
 ASSOOIATIOKT BOOKS. 
 
 Association books, or livres de provenance, as the French 
 call them, is a term used to describe books which, however 
 unimportant in themselves, are yet connected with the names 
 of great men. Who, for instance, would not delight to hold 
 in his hand the identical volume of tales read by Daniel 
 Boone and his fellows when they were making their first 
 settlements in Kentiicky, and which is now in the library of 
 Colonel Eeuben T. Durrett of Louisville ? In the same way 
 the copy of Bradley's Treatise on Husbandry, now in my Col- 
 lection, once the property of Edward Moseley and bearing 
 his autograph and bookplate, brings us sensibly nearer to 
 that patriot-statesman of colonial days — the best abused man 
 in the colony, and certainly its most prominent and useful 
 citizen. And is there not aroused a sympathetic chord with 
 the past as we open Littleton's Defense of the Christian 
 Revelation, once the property of Clement Hall, so far as 
 knovTQ the first native of ISTorth Carolina to take holy orders 
 and the first to publish a book, and see his name on the fly- 
 leaf, written 154 years ago ? Are not sentiments of patriot- 
 ism and enthusiasm for colonial days excited when we can 
 handle books once the property of Governor Gabriel John- 
 ston (with bookplate), of John Hodgson, of James Hasell 
 (with bookplate), of General Alexander Lillington, of James 
 Iredell the elder, and of William Hooper, the signer ? And 
 if sentiments for the merely curious are aroused they may 
 
12 
 
 be gratified by seeing the orginal commission of one of the 
 predecessors of Mr. Secretary Grimes, in the person of 
 Daniel Aliehurst, commissioned February 8, 1692, as Secre- 
 tary of that part of the province of Carolina north and east 
 of Cape Fear Eiver, bearing the autograph sig-natures and 
 seals of the Lords Proprietors, including that of the gentle 
 Quaker, John Archdale, whose memory we still lovingly 
 cultivate while that of others is allowed to rot — a fate which 
 most of them richly deserve. 
 
 INCUNABULA. 
 
 The world is always most interested in the beginnings of 
 things. The North Carolina press dates from June 24, 
 1Y94, when James Davis, having set up his press in New- 
 bern, entered upon his five-year contract to do printing for 
 the colony. His very first issues were perhaps paper money ; 
 proclamations in the shape of broadsides and journals of the 
 assembly. But these have all perished, so far as known. In 
 1751 the first copies of Swann's Kevisal, popularly known 
 as the Yellow Jacket, were issued. The date of this pu.blica- 
 tion has usually been given as 1752, and not until the Charle- 
 magne Tower Collection of Colonial Laws came into posses- 
 sion of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, about 1890, 
 was the existence of the 1751 issue known. But my own 
 copy is older than the one in the Tower Collection. My copy 
 ends with the laws for 1750. The other four known copies 
 with the 1751 imprint all have the laws for June session, 
 1751, bound in. This is presumptive evidence that my copy 
 was printed, bound, published, and sold before June, 1751. 
 It is beyond doubt the oldest of all known copies, and it may 
 possibly be the very first copy of what is certainly the first 
 book issued by the first printer in ISTorth Carolina. Is not 
 the possession of this book, the oldest monument of the 
 jSTorth Carolina press, something in which any citizen might 
 rejoice? I have three other imperfect copies of the Yellow 
 Jacket. All lack the title, but one bears internal evidence 
 
13 
 
 of being a 1751 issue. It was bound without the laws of 
 June session, 1751; but failing in a purchaser, the two-page 
 index was removed and the laws of 1751 were added. The 
 Eevisals of the statutes compiled by James Davis and pub- 
 lished by him in 1761 and 1766 it has never been my good 
 fortune to secure. Later revisals — Davis, 1773 ; Iredell, 
 1791, with various supplements; Martin, 1804, in one and 
 two volumes; Potter, Taylor, and Yancey, 1821; Nash, Ire- 
 dell, and Battle, 1837; Moore, 1855; Battle, 1873— are all 
 present. 
 
 The earliest session laws I have are those for 1762, 1764, 
 1765, 1766, and 1774. The latter is represented twice — 
 once as a supplement to Davis's Revisal of 1773 and once in 
 a beautifully clean, untrimmed copy in separate form. Those 
 for 1782 testify eloquently to the struggle which our fore- 
 fathers were waging. They are printed on three sizes of 
 paper, it being impossible to find enough paper to make all 
 the pages of one size, even for the, very small edition issued. 
 The session laws for 1764 were printed by Andrew Steuart 
 in Wilmington, "printer to the King" ; and thereby hangs a 
 pretty tale of struggle between power and privilege on one 
 side and grim determination to reassert the inherent rights 
 of Englishmen on the other. The tale is told here and there 
 in the Colonial Records. I have gathered and connected the 
 parts in my Press in North Carolina in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, and reprint the whole in my sketch of James Davis in 
 the new Biographical History of JSTorth Carolina. From 
 1782, with the exception of perhaps a dozen years, my set of 
 the session laws is complete to date and the lacunse in the 
 earlier years may be supplied in part from reprints and later 
 editions. And I may add here that when Mr. Chief Justice 
 Clark was compiling the colonial laws for the State Records 
 he had to come to this Collection for at least one act of which 
 a complete copy could be found nowhere else. 
 
 Another early imprint in the Collection is James Davis's 
 Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace (JSTewbern, 
 
14 
 
 1774). J\ry copy lacks a leaf in the middle, but is the only 
 one known to me. Martin's Justice (ISTewbern, 1791) is 
 there, as is Haywood's Manual of ISOO. One of the rarest 
 of these early imprints is Martin's edition of the laws of 
 171)1, 1792, 1793, and 1794, published in 1795. I have but 
 a single copy, while I have two copies of his Private Acts 
 (1794) and three of his British Statutes (1792). The edu- 
 cational side of the eighteenth century is represented by the 
 only copy that I know of Henry Patillo's GeogTaphical 
 Catechism (Halifax, 1796). The early nineteenth century 
 press is seen in Burkitt and Read's History of the Kehukee 
 Baptist Association (Halifax : Abraham Hodge, 1803), which 
 I believe to be the first historical book ever printed in the 
 State. I have also Martin's Executors (Newbern, 1802) 
 and his translation of Pothier on Obligations (1804), for it 
 must be remembered that the first English publication of that 
 great French book on law was made by Frangois Xavier Mar- 
 tin in ISTewbern, IST. C. . Nor must I fail to mention the 
 Abstract of Army Accounts, published about 1793, in a very 
 limited edition; but five copies are known, four of them, 
 including my own, being imj)erfect. 
 
 I have examples of eighteenth century work from the 
 presses of James Davis of Newbern ; of Thomas Davis, ISTew- 
 bern and Halifax ; Arnett and Hodge, jSTewbern ; F. X. 
 Martin, JSTewbern; Hodge and Wills, Halifax; Hodge and 
 Wills, Xewbern ; Hodge and Wills, Edenton ; Abraham 
 Hodge, Halifax, and Andrew Steuart, Wilmington. I have 
 nothing from the Fayetteville, Hillsboro, Salisbury, and Ral- 
 eigh presses of the eighteenth century. The earliest Raleigh 
 imprint that I have is 1804 — Matilda Berkely, the work of 
 Mrs. Joseph Gales. 
 
 Up to the time of the publication of ray Libraries and 
 Literature in ITorth Carolina in the Eighteenth Century, in 
 1896, I had discovered 153 separate Worth Carolina publi- 
 cations, 1749-1800. It is probable that a revision in the light 
 of present knowledge would swell this list to more than 200 
 
15 
 
 titles. I have between forty and fifty titles bearing a North 
 Carolina imprint prior to 1800. They are in all stages of 
 preservation, from the complete and beautiful Eevisal of 
 1751 and the perfect session laws of 1774 to the four pages 
 vs^hich is my all of the Eevisal of 1765. 
 
 PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 
 
 Public documents I believe to be the least known, the least 
 appreciated and most contemptuously regarded of all forms 
 of literature. Their common occurrence, their bulk, the 
 large size of the editions, their supposed dryness, the very 
 abbreviation, "Pub. Docs.," by which both State and Ped- 
 eral publications are known in public libraries and book 
 shops, their binding in full library sheep, the formidable 
 appearance that long lines of uniform dress present, their 
 relegation to the top shelves of the library, all tend to make 
 them forbidding. The casual student never gets further than 
 the title ; the average reader shuns them with horror. 
 
 And yet no class of publications are of more value. This 
 is the literature which comes closest to the people as a whole. 
 The State is here, both author and subject ; this is the State's 
 autobiography. It is here only that we can see to the best 
 advantage the activities of the people in their organic capac- 
 ity; only here can we trace movements in education, the 
 development of banks, the inception of canals, railroads, and 
 the like. The documents of a city bear the same relation to 
 it as do those of a State to their author. A city's documents 
 include charter and city ordinances, reports of school boards, 
 police, fire, engineers, water-works, etc. It is the business 
 record of the city; it stands in the same relation to the city 
 as the books of a company stand to their business. The people 
 as individuals are vitally concerned in their own work as 
 parts of an organic whole. No man may presume to call 
 himself the historian of a people till he has studied long and 
 carefully their laws and public documents. And yet no class 
 of sources has been so frequently neglected. 
 
16 
 
 My collection of the public documents of the State, includ- 
 ing the laws and the journals of the two Houses of Assembly, 
 is fairly complete since about 1840. Of earlier years I hare 
 only a few imperfect legislative journals ; but more of public 
 documents, including Treasurers' Reports, Murphey's Memoir 
 on Internal Improvements (1819), and most of the reports 
 and documents of the Board of Internal Improvements, 1818- 
 1840, and of the Olmsted-Mitchell Geological Survey, 1824- 
 1829. The publications of these two bodies are coimted as 
 the very beginnings of geological work in America, and 
 Murphey's Memoir is the chief cornerstone. 
 
 The documents on education begin vsdth Walker's report 
 to the Assembly of 1816, which preceded Murphey's report 
 by two days; includes Caldwell's Letters on Popular Educa- 
 tion (Hillsboro, 1832, and not strictly a public document), 
 aiad a complete set of the Wiley reports, those of the Kecon- 
 struction period and most of those of later days. 
 
 The later geological reports, Emmons, Kerr, and Holmes 
 surveys, the various constitutional conventions and their doc- 
 uments are present, but not all in complete sets. As I bave 
 said, my session laws are nearly complete since 1782. 
 
 When we come to a study of the documents of the United 
 States the story is the same. The Federal Government bas 
 published hundreds of documents that concern ISTorth Caro- 
 lina in whole or in part. They relate to almost every phase 
 of her life-history, to her biography and even genealogy. 
 They appear principally in the form of contested elections in 
 Congress, in matters growing out of the Civil War, claims 
 for damages, Indians, resolves of the State Legislature and of 
 public bodies, speeches of members of Congress, education, 
 internal revenue, coast survey matters, and above all, under 
 beads connected with the river and harbor bill. Many sur- 
 veys of ISTorth Carolina watercourses have been ordered, and 
 the reports made contain not only much material of value 
 on the natural features of the State, but also on local com- 
 merce and history. As the State now does nothing in the way 
 
17 
 
 of internal improvements, the Reports of the Chief of Engi- 
 neers, U. S. A., furnish us practically a complete history of 
 the work for the improvement of harbors and waterways in 
 the State. The set of separates in my Collection from these 
 Reports, starting in 18Y6, the time when separates were first 
 issued, is believed to be complete. These are supplemented 
 by many reports on surveys for the same period which are as 
 complete as repeated applications to all offices having the 
 matters in charge have been able to make them. The task of 
 collecting any class of documents of the Federal Government 
 is much greater than that for those of the State Government. 
 The former are printed along with great numbers of similar 
 documents for other States ; great alertness and much reading 
 of government catalogaies is the price of their acquisition. 
 The number of such documents in my hands is several hun- 
 dreds at least; many are of post-bellum date; others go back 
 to the thirties and forties and even earlier, and vary in size 
 from a single page to a large volume. 
 
 CIVIL WAB AND CONFEDERATE IMPEINTS. 
 
 Another phase of this interesting work that has been found 
 worth cultivating is the literature growing out of the Civil 
 War and its aftermath, the darker days of Reconstruction, 
 and .the publications issued in the State during the Civil 
 War period. 
 
 It is believed that the set of laws and public documents 
 issued by the State during those years is fairly complete, 
 including the proceedings and documents of the four conven- 
 tions, 1861-'62, 1865-'66, 1868, 1875 ; the impeachment trial 
 of Holden, in three volumes, together with a fourth volume, 
 probably unique, consisting of the speeches excerpted from 
 the body of the proceedings and bound into a single volume to 
 the order of Josiah Turner, Jr., then public printer, with 
 many of the preliminary documents, orders, reports, etc., 
 leading up to the trial. 
 
18 
 
 Edwards's Sketck of Macon represents what is believed to 
 be about the only purely historical or biographical publication 
 in the State during the war. Of the domestic literature grow- 
 ing out of the war, the histories of regiments, companies, com- 
 mands, etc., with two or three exceptions, I have all publica- 
 tions of which I have knowledge, and particular efforts have 
 been made to learn. I have also Scharf's Confederate Navy, 
 Taylor's Blockade-Running, Hobart Pasha's Sketches, and 
 others. The Federal side has not been forgotten and includes 
 Conyngham's Sherman, Bowman's Sherman, Sherman's Offi- 
 cial Report, his Memoirs, and Boynton's fierce and merciless 
 review of the same; Haines' Letters from the 44th Massa- 
 chusetts Volunteer Militia, which saw service in and around 
 ]^J"ewbern and Washington; all except one of the ^Narratives 
 which concern ISTorth Carolina that have been published by 
 the Soldiers and Sailors' Historical Society of Providence, 
 E. I. ; Pox's Regimental Losses ; Porter's ISTaval History ; 
 Gen. R. C. Hawkins's Assassination of Loyal North Carolin- 
 ians (by G. E. Pickett) ; Woodbury's Burnside, Rev. W. G. 
 Hawkins's Lunsford Lane and the second edition of Lane's 
 Autobiography (1842) ; Colyer^s Services of the Freed Peo- 
 ple (New York, 1864) ; Official Records of the TTnion and 
 Confederate Armies and Navies (incomplete) ; and many 
 documents published by the Federal Government on matters 
 growing out of the war. 
 
 In Confederate, publications or imprints the Collection is 
 very strong, and contains many besides those issued in North 
 Carolina. Besides the laws, journals and documents pub- 
 lished by the State and already mentioned, I have a number 
 of novels, and many school books which were prepared, pub- 
 lished, and used during the war. The Collection contains 
 Sterling and Campbell's Our Own Readers ; Moore's Dixie 
 Readers ; Johnson's and Landers's Arithmetics ; Moore's 
 Geographies, the only ones published in the Confederacy; 
 Smythe's and York's English Grammars ; Craven's Bullion's 
 English Grammar, while Bingham's Latin Grammar and 
 
19 
 
 Csesar stand alone in tlieir field and represent the high-water 
 mark of Confederate scholarship. 
 
 Nor must I forget Warren's Surgery and a mass of Confed- 
 erate commissary and subsistence papers of various kinds 
 and about 28 original company muster-rolls, some of them not 
 found in Moore's Roster. These were discovered in a garret 
 in Chapel Hill in the stimmer of 1891. The temperature was 
 more than a hundred in that garret and the dust had accumu- 
 lated for generations. I was in an oven, perspiring profusely, 
 almost stifled with dirt and dust, which increased as every 
 new item was brought to light ; but I stuck to my task. It 
 was too entertaining, too exhilarating to be deserted, and 
 when I came down, hot and tired, wet and dirty, but happy, 
 I had material essential to the history of the great war that 
 cannot be duplicated. The muster-rolls have been submitted 
 to and copied by the War Department for its compilation of 
 Confederate Kosters. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS AISTD MAGAZINES. 
 
 I believe tliat this part of the Collection can hold its own 
 with other sections. The oldest volumes are The North Caro- 
 lina Star (Raleigh, 1820), and The Elizabeth City Star, and 
 Eastern North Carolina Intelligencer (1826), although there 
 are a few miscellaneous numbers of an earlier date. Then fol- 
 lows a complete copy of the first volume of the Baptist Inter- 
 preter, from which the Bihlical Recorder was later evolved ; 
 21 volumes of newspapers published in Raleigh, 1844-'56; 
 many copies of the Hillsboro Recorder from about 1825 ; 201 
 copies of the Daily Confederate (Raleigh), April, 1864, to 
 March, 1865; and some 100 miscellaneous issues of other 
 North Carolina Civil War papers, mostly Raleigh; about 
 250 copies of Richmond war papers, principally the ^Whig; 
 some 300 copies of the war numbers of the Charleston Mer- 
 cury, and some 200 of the Southern Fireside. The set of 
 DeBow's Review is far from complete, but that of the South- 
 
20 
 
 em Review (Charleston, 1828-'32) is entirely so; the South- 
 ern Literary Messenger lacks but two numbers ; the Farmer's 
 Journal (Vol. I, Bath, IsT. C, 1852), and some 16 numbers 
 of the first two volumes of The Arator (1855-'56) are pres- 
 ent. Wiley's Common School Journal (1856) is represented 
 by its only number, while his North Carolina Educational 
 Journal (1858-'64:) is fairly complete. The post-bellum j 
 magazines, like Land We Love, Our Living and Our Dead 
 (newspaper form not quite complete). Southern Historical • 
 Monthly, ISTorth Carolina Baptist Historical Society Papers, 
 North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, Publi- 
 cations Southern History Association, Southern Historical 
 Society Papers (Richmond), to Vol. XIII, Journal Elisha 
 Mitchell Scientific Society, South Atlantic (incomplete). 
 South Atlantic Quarterly, American Historical Magazine 
 (ISTashville, Vols. IV-IX), and North Carolina Booldet, are 
 complete except as indicated. The North Carolhia Uni- 
 versity Magazine (1844-1906) is represented by what I am 
 quite sure is the only complete set of that valuable college 
 and historical publication in the world. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY. 
 
 Por reasons unknown to me the State has produced little 
 of formal biography. Most dead men have to be content with 
 a few lines in the daily press ; a few, perhaps two or three a 
 year, are honored with more extended notice in the shape of 
 a pamphlet memorial ; but I recall at this time Macon, Vance, 
 and Craven as the only natives of the State and spending their 
 lives in ISTorth Carolina who have been honored with formal 
 biographies. I have made particular effort to secure all 
 of the biographical pamphlet literature, and have met with 
 great success. The Collection contains, besides pamphlets 
 and the various memorial addresses delivered in the last 
 twenty-five years, autobiographies of Travis, Jenkins, Barr, 
 Joseph Thomas, and Howell ; McRee's Iredell, Barton's Jack- 
 son, Hubbard's Davie, Caldwell's Greene, Johnson's Greene, 
 
21 
 
 Caruthers's Caldwell, Eeid's Life, the worthless Cotton's 
 Macon, Edwards's Macon, Dodd's Macon, Dowd's Vance, 
 Haywood's Tryon, and the Journal of Charles Osborne, native 
 of Chatham and Quaker reformer, who was the first to 
 demand immediate and universal emancipation. I have also 
 the Eeminiscences of Levi Coffin, a Guilford County Quaker, 
 reputed president of the Underground Railroad, and the 
 Life of Addison Coffin, another Guilford County Quaker, 
 who was one of its earliest conductors. "Extracts from 
 the Manuscript Writings" of Barnaby ISTixon (Richmond, 
 1814) carry us back to the quieter days of Quakerism, 
 while the Life of "Chicken" Stephens takes us to Reconstruc- 
 tion times and Caswell County and sets us to reading Fool's 
 Errand by the South's keenest, most versatile, and bitterest 
 critic. 
 
 Of collected biography, besides Wheeler's Reminiscences 
 there is to be found Brant and Fuller's Cyclopaedia of Emi- 
 nent and Representative Men of the Carolinas (IST. C. volume 
 only), A. Davis Smith's Western North Carolina Historical 
 and Biographical and the new and scholarly Biographical 
 History of North Carolina, so far as published. This publi- 
 cation represents more ambitious plans and is pitched on a 
 far higher plane than anything hitherto undertaken by us. It 
 clothes its volumes in the best dress, tells the life-history of 
 the best men in the State far better than has ever been 
 attempted before and presents a goodly company worthy of 
 emulation. I shall extend my set of these excellent and beau- 
 tiful volumes from the original number to twenty or twenty- 
 five by extra illustrating, inserting extra portraits, sketches, 
 pictures, documents, and many autograph letters. 
 
 In genealogy the Collection is weak, for few genealogical 
 studies have been published on the families of the State, and 
 these are of recent years. I have Bailey, Craighead, Roulhac, 
 Branson, two distinct families of Jones, Shuford, McAllis- 
 ter, and such short genealogies as are found in the general 
 works dealing with history and biography. 
 
22 
 
 GENEEAL HISTOEY^ TOWN AIsTD COUNTY HISTOEY^ AND MAPS. 
 
 All the general histories are present in some edition except 
 Brickell. Lawson is represented by two editions (Raleigh, 
 1860; Charlotte, 1903), by his Journal of a Thousand Miles 
 Travel, from the London edition of 1711, and by the German 
 translation published in Hamburg, 1712 — AUerneuste Besch- 
 reibuno- der Provintz Carolina in West-Indien — which was 
 perhaps issued in connection with DeGraffenried's Swiss 
 colonial project, and was certainly intended to boom settle- 
 ment, Williamson and Martin are both represented by beaii- 
 tiful sets in the original boards and entirely uncut. Wheeler 
 — almost a cornerstone of the Collection; Hawks, with all 
 three editions of volume one, and Moore, take their proper 
 places. 
 
 There are many books that deal with particular sections, 
 like Hunter's Western JSTorth Carolina; or with counties, as 
 Tompkins, Eumple, Fries, Stockard; or travels, as Smyth, 
 Bartram, Michaux; or with particular denominations, like 
 Foote, Bernheim, Chreitzberg, Burkhead, Burkitt and Kead, 
 Biggs, Hassell, Cheshire, Beichel, Clewell, Paris, Purefoy, 
 Benedict, Delke, Logan, Gano, Ashplund (Southampton, Va., 
 1791), and many pamphlets on church history, church biog- 
 raphy, and sermons, representing all denominations and all 
 periods. 
 
 The minutes of the Methodist Conferences before the 
 organization of the JSTorth Carolina Conference are there, as 
 are many of the yearly minutes since the organization of that 
 body. I have the journals for the first twelve years after the 
 re-organization of the Diocese of ITorth Carolina (1817-'29) 
 and many of later date. The minutes of Presbyterian Synods 
 and Baptist Associations, though eagerly chased, have to a 
 large extent escaped my watchfulness. 
 
 The Eevolution is represented by Jones's Defence, Good- 
 loe's Birth of the Republic, Caruthers's Incidents (2 vols.), 
 Tarleton's Campaign (1787), Mackenzie's Strictures (1787), 
 
23 
 
 the Clinton-Coriiwiallis Controversy (2 vols.), the Corn- 
 wallis Correspondence (3 vols.), Eamsay's Revolution in 
 South Carolina (2 vols.), Drayton's Memoirs (2 vols.), 
 James's Marion, G-arden's Anecdotes (1822-'28, 2 vols.), 
 Lee's Memoirs, and his son's Campaign of 1781 in the Caro- 
 linas, Johnson's Greene (2 vols.), and Fanning's ISFarrative 
 (large paper). 
 
 I believe that I have nearly everything published in the 
 way of town and county histories or historical sketches. I 
 have gathered also, many of the illustrated pamphlets issued 
 by the railroads for advertising purposes. These contain 
 much descriptive and illustrative material and include the 
 Southern's large volume, The Empire of the South. 
 
 The separate maps are represented by Homans (1725), 
 Wimble (1738), Hyrne (1749), Mackay (1760), Bellin 
 (1762), Mouzon (1775), Eomans (1776), Pocock (1777), 
 Lewis (1795), Price and Strother (1808), Pierce (ca. 1856), 
 and others; and by a number of coast charts. Civil War 
 (Federal), county, and city maps. 
 
 POETET AND WOVBLS^ SEEMOITS AND MISCELLANEOUS 
 UTEEATURE. 
 
 Under this head may be mentioned : Attempts at Rhyming 
 by an Old-Field Teacher (Raleigh, 1837), a volume whose 
 author I have tried without success to discover ; both editions 
 of Dr. Mangum's Myrtle Leaves (1858 and 1864) ; Hill's 
 Hesperus (1861), believed to have been the first volume of 
 poetry published in the Confederate States; Major Jep Jos- 
 selyn's Tar-heel Tales in Vernacular Verse, which seems to 
 have been the product of one of Sherman's bummers and 
 concerns ISJ^orth Carolina only in name ; Rhodes's Indian Gal- 
 lows (1846) ; Strong's Francis Herbert, copies of which were 
 later in life bought and destroyed by the author ; Jesse Jen- 
 nett's Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Wilming- 
 ton, 1807) ; Wood ISTotes (2 vols.) ; Hawks's Poems (1873) ; 
 James Ephraim McGirt's Avenging the Maine; and Miss 
 
24 
 
 Peterson's Little Pansy, made famous by the enthusiastic 
 homage of the Charlotte Observer. 
 
 Th& novels include P. X. Martin's translation from the 
 French of Stephanie de Bourbon (Newbern, 1801) ; Mrs. 
 Joseph Gales' Matilda Berkely (Ealeigh, 1804) ; Judge 
 Strange's Eoneguske (2 vols., Washington, 1839), which 
 deals with the Cherokees and is said to have damaged him 
 politically, and others of later date. 
 
 Sermon literature is represented by Patillo (Wilming- 
 ton, Del.(?), 1788), Porster (1821), Mclver's Southern 
 Preacher (1824), Buxton (1852), Eavenscroft, Ives (1844), 
 Branson's North Carolina Sermons (3 vols.). Skinner 
 (1894), and many single sermons by men who never rose to 
 the dignity of publishing a volume. 
 
 The domestic literature of our State has taken largely the 
 form of history, biography, poetry, and novels. Besides those 
 already mentioned, I may make brief note of what is perhaps 
 the completest set of the annual, general, and society cata- 
 logues and of the various addresses of the University of 
 ISTorth Carolina, a small number of separate portraits of 
 iN'orth Carolinians, and in addition: Caldwell's Geometry; 
 Guion's curious and very entertaining book, The Comet; 
 Bingham's English Grammar, prepared during the war, but 
 not published till afterward ; Essays on Agriculture and 
 Eural Affairs (1818), by an author whose identity, like him 
 of the Attempts at Rhyming, has eluded all my efforts at 
 identification ; Shep. Dugger's jumble of rhetoric and bathos, 
 called Balsam Groves of the Grandfather Mountain ; Saw- 
 yer's comedy, Blackbeard (1824) ; both editions of the Selec- 
 tions from the Writings and Speeches of Thomas L. Cling- 
 man — the only ]S[orth Carolinian, I believe, to publish such 
 a collection ; complete and unmutilated copies of the two 
 Praud Commissions; the Military Trial of the Murderers 
 of Archibald Beebee (Tolar-McRae) ; numerous State, 
 county, and town directories ; three editions of Helper's 
 Impending Crisis and his anti-negro books of later date ; 
 
25 
 
 three or four books written by negroes ; Mrs. Mason's Wreath 
 from the Woods of Carolina; a complete set in mounted 
 form of Sprunt's A Colonial Plantation and his What Ship 
 is That ? which appeared in weekly instalments in the South- 
 port Leader some thirteen years ago; Pettigrew's Spain and 
 the Spaniards (1861) ; Williamson on Climate (1811), 
 which served as an introduction to his History of North Caro- 
 lina; many almanacs, beginning with Hodge and Boylan's 
 for 1801 ; the life of "Beau" Hickman, the Warren County 
 deadbeat; a contemporary account of Nat Turner's insurrec- 
 tion, with a horrible frontispiece ; an edition of Locke's Fun- 
 damental Constitutions printed in 1720 (London) ; many 
 speeches delivered at various times and places by various 
 individuals ; the extensive Prefatory Notes to the ten volumes 
 of the Colonial Records written by Colonel Saunders, paged 
 continuously and bound into a single volume, forming a very 
 valuable book on the history of the colony and unpublished 
 in this form; and what is perhaps the only case on record 
 where a North Carolina author has had a single volume 
 printed under three distinct titles and two of them in a for- 
 eign country, for Wiley's Old Dan Tucker (London, ca. 
 1851), his Utopia; an Early Picture of Life at the South 
 (London, ca. 1853), and his Eoanoke (Philadelphia, v. d.) 
 are all the same book. 
 
 MxlNUSCRIPTS, AT7T0GEAPHS, AND RELICS. 
 
 The division of manuscripts and autographs will compare 
 favorably with other sections. It includes many manuscripts, 
 in part original, in part copies, of material relating to the 
 career of Gen. Joseph Martin and dealing with the Chero- 
 kees and the winning of Tennessee to civilization, most of 
 which have been recently published by myself. I have an 
 account book kept in Wilmington in 1767; all of the cor- 
 respondence of Willie P. Mangum, United States Senator 
 and President of the United States Senate, with autograph 
 letters from many men of his day prominent in the State and 
 
26 
 
 ISTation, including Badger, Brown, Branch, Battle, Gaston, 
 Graham, T. J. Green, Hoke, W. 11. Haywood, Morehead, 
 Edward Stanly, Governor Owen, j\Iacon, Yancey, and others. 
 Of national characters from other States there are letters 
 from John Tyler, Buchanan, A. H. Stephens, Joseph E. 
 Johnston, J. Watson Wehb, Scott, William E. King, Clay, 
 Benton, Calhoun, Eeverdy Johnson, John Bell, Lewis Cass, 
 and one from Lincoln in which he asks Mangum's assistance 
 in getting the commissionership of the General Land OfRce. 
 I have also a part of the correspondence of Calvin H. Wiley, 
 with several letters from Gen. D. H. Hill, Jonathan Worth, 
 W. W. Holden, and others, of his time; the correspondence 
 of D. E. Goodloe, with Greeley's scrawl, which is after all 
 quite plain compared with that of some other folks I know ; 
 letters from Sumner, Chase, Seward, and many from Sunset 
 Cox, for whom Goodloe wrote that part of his Three Decades 
 of Federal Legislation which deals with Eeconstruction. I 
 have also Goodloe's manuscript history opposing the authen- 
 ticity of the 20tli May Declaration of Independence and those 
 parts of his history of Eeconstruction not used by Cox. I 
 have the Journal of Jeremiah ITorman, Methodist pioneer 
 in southeastern ISTorth Carolina a hundred years ago ; Wood's 
 manuscript History of Methodism in the Yadkin Valley, as 
 well as the unprinted parts of Doub's Llistory of Methodism 
 in ISTorth Carolina, and a part of the correspondence of Willie 
 P. Mangaim, Jr., long United States consul in China and 
 Japan. 
 
 The relics, as such, are few, but they include an iron 
 hatchet of antique pattern dug wp on the site of old Eort 
 Baleigh on Eoanoke Island in 1862. Its history is authentic, 
 for I received the hatchet from, the late William J. GrifUn of 
 Elizabeth City, who got it from Dough ( ?), by whom it was 
 found. The late G. Brown Goode of the Smithsonian Insti- 
 tution, believed that it was of sixteenth century workmanship. 
 
27 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 As every collector well knows, it is exceedingly difficult to 
 draw rigid lines of demarcation on what skall be called a 
 jSTorth Carolina book and what not. In endeavoring to solve 
 this question, I have interpreted the term "i^orth Carolina 
 literature" liberally and have included many items like Hay- 
 wood's Tennessee (1891), Eamsey's Temiessee, Eamsay's 
 Revolution in South Carolina, Gibbes's Documents, Gregg's 
 Old Cheraws, Carroll's Collections, Hewatt's Rise and Prog- 
 ress of South Carolina and Georgia, and even Major Hanger's 
 Life and Adventures, in the Collection, for the reason that my 
 experience has uniformly been that in writing an author will 
 use more books than would appear to a casual observer as 
 proper to go into a formal bibliography of that subject, and 
 my purpose has been to form first of all a working Collection 
 out of which I may prepare a bibliography not only full, but 
 because of its range and comprehensiveness capable of fur- 
 nishing isolated facts and local color. I have many other 
 books dealing with various phases of Southern history which 
 seem just beyond the bounds of I^orth Carolina literature, 
 even when that term is liberally interpreted, but which, never- 
 theless, are of value to the State student, such as the collec- 
 tions of the Virginia Historical Society, Burk's Virginia 
 (4 vols.), some of the American Archives and State Papers, 
 Hotten's Lists, Bulletins of Bureau of Polls and Library, 
 Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, Ctollections South 
 Carolina Historical Society (3 vols.), Ramsay's South Caro- 
 lina (2 vols., 1809), Mills' Statistics, and the histories of 
 education in the various Southern States. 
 
 Of seventeenth century imprints, like Hilton, Home, Wil- 
 son, Lederer, Ash, I have not one ; but they are all present in 
 the form of reprints ; which for all practical purposes are as 
 good, and in some cases even better. The oldest item is Law- 
 son's Journal of a Thousand Miles Travel (London, 1711). 
 The newest was received yesterday. The Collection repre- 
 
28 
 
 sents four languages: The exceedingly rare and valuable 
 Walter's Mora Caroliniana (London, 1788) is in Latin, and 
 of this I know of but two copies in America ; the Lawson of 
 Hamburg (1712) and Muelinen's Christoph von Graffenried 
 are in German; Laboulaye's Histoire des Etats-Unis, which 
 contains an illuminating analysis of Locke's Fundamental 
 Constitutions, and some other items, are in French. I know 
 of at least one item in Spanish — a book on Masonry. 
 
 My purpose in making this Collection has been manyfold. 
 I wished to make first of all a working Collection of Caro- 
 liniana for my own use in my JSTorth Carolina studies in 
 general ,and for use in compiling my Bibliography of JSTorth 
 Carolina in particular. In this I have met with success — 
 such success that an exhatistive study of many phases of the 
 State's history can not be made without consulting this Col- 
 lection. Then the Collection has increased my knowledge 
 amazingly and has afforded me infinite pleasure. But do not 
 think that it has come for the asking. I have had to pay a 
 price : much study, continued alertness, and great reading. 
 During the last three years, 1903, 1904, and 1905, I have 
 read by actual count 71,289 pages of book catalogues, mostly 
 of old or second-hand books, or an average of 23,763 pages 
 per year ; and this is not above the average for the last fifteen 
 years. I have many hundreds of cards alphabetically 
 arranged with manuscript notes or mounted clippings which 
 relate to books that are known or believed to contain materials 
 on ISTorth Carolina, but which I have never seen. The cards 
 are eliminated as soon as the title in question comes to hand ; 
 but still the unknown quantities grow, for as- my knowledge 
 of the subject increases I but increase the surroimding circle 
 of darkness. 
 
 My aim is to secure every book, pamphlet, or magazine 
 article that in whole or to any considerable extent concerns 
 
 Worth Carolina, ISTorth Carolinians or their work. Twenty ^ 
 
 two years of labor have accumulated some jIySOO items ; but 
 this is perhaps not over half that aech vnth propriety be 
 
 /^ ^ 
 
29 
 
 included in a bibliography of the State. In my Bibliog- 
 raphy of the Historical Literature of North Carolina, pub- 
 lished in 1895, I gave 1,491 titles, mostly digested history; 
 of these I had at that time 863 titles; in 1900 I had about 
 1,200 of them ; since then I have secured of those titles per- 
 haps only twenty or thirty more, for they have risen in price, 
 become much scarcer, and are lost in the greater mass of 
 material novsr appearing as a result of the historical and intel- 
 lectual awakening of the last ten years. 
 
 ISTor have many of these items come to me except through 
 personal solicitation. I have written much and printed long 
 lists of wants. It is probable that my set of the JSTorth Caro- 
 lina University Magazine alone cost me a thousand personal 
 letters. I have searched many garrets, cellars, and outhouses. 
 One of my most important finds was made just in time to save 
 the stuff from destruction. The house was being repaired. 
 The stuff had been gathered into a single room and con- 
 demned. Some of it had been actually carried off and put 
 to base uses. The subsequent fortune of the remainder may 
 be easily guessed when I say that I found among this material 
 ISTorth Carolina session laws dating to 1782, the Abstract of 
 Army Accounts, and my own great, great, great grandfather's 
 autograph. 
 
 The value of such a Collection is further enhanced when it 
 is remembered that a very large number of the items are mere 
 pamphlets of twenty to sixty pages ; that they are printed, not 
 published ; that they are rarely sold, never get into the book 
 markets and seldom into public libraries; tliat they are 
 printed in very limited editions, distributed unbound to 
 friends, and from the indifference and contempt to which 
 "pamphlets," one of the most valuable sources of contempo- 
 rary history, are usually subjected, soon perish. To the 
 generation that produces them such publications are trash; 
 to the next they are priceless. The counties, the State, the 
 ISTation, the bookselling world have been searched for these 
 ephemera. The Collection is weakest in those books which 
 
30 
 
 by reason of publication or the general subject covered are best- 
 known and most widely distributed, like Catesby, Adair, 
 Hutchins, Stednian, Brickell, tlie early editions of Lawson, 
 and similar works. It is strongest in local imprints, pamph- 
 lets, and ephemera. 
 
 There are three other valuable Collections of ISTorth Caro- 
 lina books in private hands, those of Mr. F. A. Sondley of 
 Asheville, of Mr. H. R. Scott of Eeidsville, and of Mr. 
 Thomas M. Pittman of Henderson. The first two I have 
 never seen. Pittman's Collection I saw ten years ago. It was 
 then very valuable and contained the Eevisal of 1765, much 
 coveted by myself. With his keen historical sense, wide 
 knowledge, and well-known enthusiasm, the owner has no 
 doubt added much in number and value. Were these four 
 private Collections brought together as a part of the State 
 Library ISTorth Carolina would have, with what she now pos- 
 sesses in the form of newspapers and ptiblic documents, a mass 
 of material beyond the rivalry of future collectors and in 
 fullness perhaps unsurpassed by any similar Collection in 
 other States. Of the valuable Collection formed by Dr. Dred 
 Peacock, and to which I contributed many duplicates, I have 
 heard nothing since it passed out of his hands. 
 
 I have written this account of what many call a foolish fad, 
 not simply because the Historical Commission has requested 
 it, but becaiise in this way I hope to interest others in the 
 profitable and educating pastime of book collecting — an 
 unending source of pleasure which may be had for the price 
 of three good cigars per day, and one so full of exhilarating 
 fascination that some one has vnttily said it "adds a new 
 pang to death." 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out to an educated person the 
 value of such a Collection as my own, even in privato hands, 
 to the State as a whole. We have long complained that our 
 history has been either mis-written or not written at all. 
 The fault is our own, for students have been and are still 
 hampered in finding material which they know to exist. 
 
31 
 
 History cannot be written apart from great libraries, and the 
 first step towards such libraries is the personal enthxisiasm, 
 the exuberant, overflowing abandon that characterized the 
 great collectors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
 when they went in their search for the lost treasures of the 
 ancients from one monastery to another and brought to light 
 from many a hidden corner the literary wealth of the Greeks 
 and Komans. These wandering scholars were also called 
 simpletons, enthusiasts, fanatics; but they gave to posterity 
 priceless manuscripts of which an earlier generation had never 
 dreamed; and from their work came the Renaissance — the 
 mother in turn of the Eeformation, the Revolution, and 
 modern life. 
 
 We need to have reproduced in ISTorth Carolina to-day, 
 mutatis mutandis, the enthusiasm of those wandering schol- 
 ars. Public libraries, some aided by Carnegie funds, some by 
 city and private funds ; school libraries, aided by State, 
 county, and private funds, are rising slowly in various parts 
 of the State. Let the librarian of each collect all possible 
 items that concern ISTorth Carolina or her citizens; let her 
 strive to get some of the general histories, like Williamson, 
 Martin, Wheeler, Hawks, and Moore. While these are all 
 poor, they are better than nothing; they may inspire a love 
 for the past and so lead to better things. Let her try by all 
 means to buy such books, new or old, as relate to her city, 
 county, section ; let her talk about these books, show them to 
 the patrons of her library and get them read. When we get 
 to be a reading people we shall not be satisfied with what has 
 been done ; we shall then demand better things, and when the 
 demand comes men will arise to build better than has been. 
 
 San Caelos Indian Reservation, 
 San Caelos, Arizona. 
 
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