Register of the Craven-Pegram Family Papers, 1785-1966
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Descriptive Summary
Title
Craven-Pegram Family Papers,
1785-1966
Creator
Craven-Pegram Family
Extent
11.4 linear feet
Approximately 6,565 items
Repository
Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0185
Language
English.
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Administrative Information
Access Restrictions
Collection is open for research.
However, patrons must sign the Acknowledgment of Legal Responsibility and Privacy Rights form before using this
collection.
Also, all or portions of this collection may be housed off-site in Duke University's Library Service Center. Consequently, there may be a 24-hour delay in obtaining these materials.
Please contact Research Services staff before visiting the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library to use this collection.
Use Restrictions
The copyright interests in this collection are unknown at this time. For more information, consult a Reference Librarian and the copyright section of the Regulations and Procedures of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Craven-Pegram Family Papers,
Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
Provenance
The Craven-Pegram Family Papers were given to Duke University Library
in 1968 through the settlement of the Annie McKinnie Pegram estate.
Copyright interests in these papers have not been transferred to the
University.
Processing Information
Processed by Janie C. Morris
Completed October 31, 1990
Encoded by Alvin Pollock, Electronic Text Unit, UC Berkeley Library
This finding aid is NCEAD compliant.
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Biographical Note
The children and grandchildren of Braxton Craven (1822-1882),
first president of Trinity College in Randolph County, N.C., and his wife,
Irene (Leach) Craven, are the principals in the Craven-Pegram Family
Papers. The children of Braxton Craven most prominently represented
are Sallie Kate (Kate) and Emma Lenora Craven, who married William
Howell (W. H.) Pegram. The grandchildren primarily featured are those of
Emma L. and W. H. Pegram, George Braxton, Annie McKinnie, Irene
Craven, John Edward, and William Howell Pegram, Jr.
Kate Craven, who attended Greensboro College, returned to her
family's home in Trinity, N.C. to live until 1928, when she moved to
Durham. Kate lived with two of Emma and W. H. Pegram's children,
Irene and John Edward (Edward or Ned) Pegram, until her death in
1945.
Emma L. Craven (d. 1904) and W. H. Pegram (d. 1928) married in
1875 and lived in Trinity, N.C. until 1892, when they moved to Durham,
N.C. W. H. Pegram was a professor in Trinity College from 1873 to 1919
and professor emeritus from 1919 to 1928. He taught chemistry and for
many years was secretary to the faculty.
Annie M. Craven (d. 1966) graduated from Trinity College and
began teaching German and mathematics at Greensboro Female College
in 1901. She was involved with the social and religious life on the
campus and also taught Sunday school at the Greensboro jail for several
years. During the 1920s, the N.C. Board of Charities and Public Welfare
appointed her to the Guilford Board of Public Welfare. In 1938, she
became a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. With only a brief interruption in her tenure at Greensboro
Female College, after a fire in 1904, she retired from the College in 1948.
After her retirement, she lived in Durham with her sister Irene and her
brother John Edward.
William H. Pegram, Jr. worked in Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. In 1916 he married Rosalie Pitzlin of
Houston, and they settled there.
John Edward Pegram (d. 1951) tried several different occupations
including school principal, lawyer, businessman, and farmer.
Irene Craven Pegram (d. 1958) taught for several years at West
Durham High School and in the Durham city school system into the
1920s. After a period of ill health, she retired to manage the Pegram
family home. Irene and John Edward, both of whom never married,
continued to live in the home.
George Braxton Pegram (1876-1958) graduated from Trinity
College and served as a school administrator in Trinity and Roxboro,
N.C. In the fall of 1899, he went to Columbia University where, during
his fifty seven years of association with the school, he was a student,
professor of physics, dean of graduate studies, vice-president, and
adviser to the president. He was a pioneer in the field of atomic energy
research, became one of the country's leading physicists. During the
1950s, he was an educational consultant at the Oak Ridge Institute of
Nuclear Studies in Tennessee. He married Florence Bement in 1909,
and they had two children William Braxton and John Bement Pegram.
The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, 1970-1971
describes a collection of about 35,000 items of his professional and
personal papers located at Columbia University.
The daughter-in-law of Braxton and Irene (Leach) Craven, Nannie
(Bulla) Craven (d. 1937), married James Lucius Craven, a physician. He
died in 1885 at the age of thirty-five, leaving her with five sons to rear.
She supported herself and the children by teaching at Archdale and then
at Trinity High School in Trinity, N.C.
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Collection Overview
The Craven-Pegram Family Papers span the period 1785 to 1966,
with the bulk dating from 1892 to 1958. The collection chiefly consists
of correspondence among various family members and friends, and
photographs. Included are legal and financial papers, writings and
speeches, genealogical material, newsclippings, and printed material.
While the principal focus of the collection is Sallie Kate Craven (Kate) and
her sister, Emma L. (Craven) Pegram and her family, information about
earlier generations of the Craven, Pegram, and Leach families is included
in the legal and genealogical material.
The major strength of the collection is the information on the
descendents of the first president of Trinity College, Braxton Craven. The
letters document the lifestyles and roles of young girls and women in the
late 19th and early 20th century and the socialization process of girls.
Additionally, single career women, married women who raised a family at
home, and a widow supporting a family are represented in the collection.
Other topics in the Correspondence Series include: the impact of
Trinity College on the development of a community and the effects of the
loss of the institution, Columbia University's Physics Department, the
economic depression of the 1930s and how it impacted upon Pegram
family members, high school and college education in North Carolina,
and the process by which young men obtained jobs and established
themselves in their occupation. Some of George B. Pegram's letters
describe his attendance at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and
describe social occasions he went to that were attended by Dwight David
Eisenhower (1949, Jan. 30 and Dec. 31), then president of Columbia.
Annie M. Pegram's letters home (1904-1948) recount her many activities
at Greensboro College and her involvement in community life in
Greensboro. A few letters dating from the turn of the century into the
1940s provide a glimpse at hiring domestic help, particularly cooks.
Through the collection, one is able to study the functions of the family
both as an economic and social unit.
Of particular interest to those studying the history of Trinity
College are the weekly letters of Kate Craven to Emma L. Pegram (1892-
1903) after she and her family moved to Durham in 1892. In addition to
news about family and friends in Trinity, N.C., Kate also discussed her
bitterness over the movement of Trinity College to Durham and its effect
upon the Trinity community. The correspondence series also contains
an unsigned, undated letter, relating to a contract Braxton Craven had
signed with the U.S. government about the education of Cherokee boys
at Trinity College.
Emma Pegram's letters, written chiefly to her son George from the
mid-1890s to 1903, contain many comments about the administrators
and faculty of Trinity College and Trinity Park School in Durham.
Scattered references are made to John Carlisle Kilgo, president of Trinity
College, and his family.
A letterbook primarily containing letters which Nannie (Bulla)
Craven wrote to her son, Harvey Bernard Craven, details the financial
hardships faced by the widowed parent of five sons. She wrote the
majority of the letters, 1893 and 1896, from Trinity, N.C. while Harvey
was a student at Trinity College. Her letters also provide a glimpse of the
Trinity community after Trinity College moved to Durham. There are
scattered references to Trinity High School, a tuition based school in
Trinity that remained after the college was relocated, and its faculty. The
narrow parameters within which women of the period lived are clearly
illustrated.
Correspondents other than family members include: M. H.
Lockwood (1897), who taught in the Department of Physics at Trinity
College; Thomas Arthur Smoot (1898-1900), who was the headmaster at
Trinity (N.C.) High School, 1895-1896, professor of physics and
chemistry at Greensboro (N.C.) Female College, 1898-1900, and later a
minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; and Jerome Dowd
(1941-1945) who wrote a book about Braxton Craven, entitled The Life of
Braxton Craven.
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Detailed Description of Collection
Correspondence Series
Box 1
1862-1894, Mar.
(7 folders)
Box 2
1894, Apr.-1896, Oct. 15
(8 folders)
Box 3
1896, Oct. 16-1898, Dec.
(8 folders)
Box 4
1899, Jan.-1900, Feb.
(7 folders)
Box 5
1900, Mar.-1901, Feb.
(7 folders)
Box 6
1901, Mar.-1902, Sept.
(8 folders)
Box 7
1902, Oct.-1904, June
(7 folders)
Box 8
1904, July-1906, Sept.
(7 folders)
Box 9
1906, Oct.-1908, May
(6 folders)
Box 10
1908, June-1910, Dec.
(7 folders)
Box 11
1911, Jan.-1915
(9 folders)
Box 12
1916-1927
(8 folders)
Box 13
1928, Jan.-1937, May
(8 folders)
Box 14
1937, June-1940, May
(9 folders)
Box 15
1940, June-1943, Dec.
(8 folders)
Box 16
1944, Jan.-1946, Dec.
(8 folders)
Box 17
1947, Jan.-1952
(10 folders)
Box 18
1953-1961
(9 folders)
Box 19
1962-1966 and undated
(5 folders)
undated, letters and fragments, S. Kate Craven, Annie McKinnie Pegram, Irene Craven-Pegram
(3 folders)
Box 20
Letterbook,
1893-1898
Legal Papers
Box 21
1785-1961
(4 folders)
Estates of:
Braxton Craven & Irene Leach Craven
1884-1945 and undated,
(2 folders)
Sallie Kate Craven,
1928-1946
John Edward Pegram,
1942-1952
William Howell Pegram, Sr.,
1916-1937
Financial Papers
1840s-1909
Box 22
1910-1965
George B. Pegram's Ledger, Roxboro Institute,
1898-1899
Pegram Family's Household Account,
1906-1908,
Writings and Speeches
1914-1951 and undated
Stories about Brazil,
1930s
Genealogy
Craven and Leach Families,
undated
Pegram Family,
undated
Box 23
Pegram Family,
undated
(3 folders)
Miscellaneous
1892-1963 and undated
(2 folders)
Record book, Greensboro jail,
1919-1929
Memorial volume,
1951
Box 24
Memorial volume,
1958, Jan.
Memorial volume,
1958, Aug
Scrapbook,
1876?-1904
Scrapbook,
undated
Clippings
Box 25
1890s-1960s and
undated
(4 folders)
Printed Material
1875-1942 and undated
(2 folders)
Pictures
People
A (4 picture envelopes)
Bassett, John Spencer
Bassett, L.-B (2 picture envelopes)
Carr, Julian Shakespeare and American Indian Couple
Carr, O.-Ch ( 3 picture envelopes)
Craven, Braxton (2 picture envelopes)
Craven, Harvey Bernard and Family
Box 26
Craven, Irene (Leach)
Craven, J. (2 picture envelopes)
Craven, Sallie (Kate)
Craven, W.
Daniels, Josephus
Do-E (3 picture envelopes)
Flowers, Robert Lee
Fr-H ( 9 picture envelopes)
Kilgo, John Carlisle Family
Kin-Le ( 5 picture envelopes)
Lockwood, M. H.
Mer-Mi (2 picture envelopes)
Mordecai, Samuel Fox
Ne-Page (2 picture envelopes)
Peacock, Dred and Family
Box 27
Pegram, Annie McKinnie
(3 folders)
Pegram, Emma Lenora (Craven)
Pegram, George Braxton & Family
Pegram, George Washington
Pegram, Irene Craven (2 picture envelopes)
Pegram, John D. & Family
Pegram, John Edward et.al.
(4 folders)
Box 28
Pegram, William & Gladys Blacknall Pegram et.al.
Pegram, William Braxton & Family
Pegram, William Howell,
d. 1928
Pegram, William Howell, Jr.,
Rosalie (Pitzlin) Pegram et.al.
Pl-Rol (7 picture envelopes)
Smoot, Thomas Arthur
Southgate, James Haywood et.al
St-Tur (6 picture envelopes)
People (Identified) Miscellaneous
(3 folders)
Box 29
People (Identified) Miscellaneous
People (Unidentified)
(2 folders)
Geographic
Georgia. Stone Mountain (Carving)
Massachusetts. Amherst
New York. Niagara Falls
North Carolina:
Bath
Durham (9 picture envelopes)
Durham County
(2 folders)
Lake Junaluska
Salisbury
Trinity (5 picture envelopes and folders)
Miscellaneous
(2 folders)
Oversize Materials
Oversize Cabinet
OC:I:10:
Miscellaneous Papers,
1873-1908
Chiefly diplomas and certificates.
Oversize Cabinet
OC:IV:6
Legal Papers,
1836-1944
Chiefly deeds and insurance papes.
