becomes the past. Since the state has enjoyed its greatest progress in the past fifty years, preservation of source material of that period at the University has been especially fortunate. The Collection has furnished bibliography for many graduate students who carry out an important function of a state university in contributing to betterment of the state through study of its problems and achievements. ‘‘No isolated problem or process can be truly understood without a complete and accurate picture of the complex which makes up the environment.’’[1]
Another great private collection destined to come to the University by bequest in 1954 had its beginning before the turn of the century. Major Bruce Cotten, Class of 1895, has said that the urge to collect was aroused in him early in life when he volunteered to help his mother assemble an exhibit of state literature for the World’s Fair at Chicago and found that only about twenty volumes could be located at the moment. This failure to present North Carolina to the world gave him an urge to do better. His pursuit of North Carolina material did not cease even during the migratory years of a long and distinguished service in the army, though Uncle Sam had to bear the expense of transporting volumes that soon numbered in the hundreds.[2] After his retirement to a permanent home in Baltimore, more concentrated collecting became possible. He became well-known as a book lover who had no rival for knowledge of books and zeal for finding them in his field. His special interest was in beautiful copies of the rarer volumes. Some of them which had always eluded him have come to his collection at Chapel Hill since his death by means of a substantial income which he established so that preservation of his state’s bibliography in his name might be perpetuated.
Other private libraries, especially valuable as they reflect the interests, activities, and talents of their collectors, have come as gifts. Some of these which should be mentioned are: the Kemp Plummer Battle Collection given by his family following his death in 1919, a monument to a lifelong interest in history of the state as well as varied participation in its progress as President of the University and its first Professor of History; the Alexander Boyd Andrews Collection, invaluable source for the history of transportation with complete files of early North Carolina railroad reports gathered during his long service in their construction and administration; the James Sprunt Collection of Wilmington newspapers covering the period from 1846 to 1890, a remarkable source for the Civil War period when that port was the last refuge of blockade runners of the Confederacy; the Rowan County Historical Society file of Salisbury newspapers the longest files of
- ↑ Donald Dean Parker, Local History [No place, 1944), p. vii.
- ↑ Bruce Cotten, Housed on the Third Floor [Baltimore, 1941].
