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[Identification of item], Frank Clyde Brown Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
The Frank Clyde Brown Papers were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as a gift.
Processed by RL Staff, date unknown
Encoded by Meghan Lyon, August 2012
This collection is minimally processed: materials may not have been ordered and described beyond their original condition.
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This finding aid is NCEAD compliant.
Frank Clyde Brown (1870-1943) served as a Professor of English at Trinity College, Duke University, from 1909 until his death. A native of Virginia, he received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1908. While at Duke University he served in many capacities, including being chairman of his department, University Marshal, and Comptroller of the University during its initial construction. These aspects of his life are chronicled in his papers held by the
This collection of materials, however, is concerned with activities to which he devoted equal time and energy, the organization of the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1913 and his personal effort to gather and record the nuances and culture of "folk" of North Carolina and its near neighbors, which occupied him from 1912 until his death. Under the impetus of a 1912 mailing from John A. Lomax, then President of the American Folklore Society, Brown as well as other faculty members and other citizens in North Carolina, became interested in folklore and organized the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1913, with Brown as secretary-treasurer. As secretary-treasurer of this organization from its inception until his death, he provided the organizational impetus behind the Society. Through his course in folklore at Duke, he also sent class after class out to gather the folklore of their locales, both during their studies and afterward. And virtually every summer he could be found in the most remote parts of the state, with notebook and recorder -- first a dictaphone employing cylinders, and later a machine employing aluminum discs provided for his use by the University. The result, by 1943, was a collection of about 38,000 written notes on lore, 650 musical scores, 1400 songs vocally recorded, and numerous magazine articles, student theses, books, lists, and other items related to this study. The material originated in at least 84 North Carolina counties, with about 5 percent original in 20 other states and Canada, and came from the efforts of 650 other contributors besides Brown himself.
Although Brown promised the Society on an almost yearly basis to publish at least part of this collection to which its members were contributing, he never took more than a few tentative steps toward doing so. Thus at Brown's death in 1943, Newman Ivey White, also a Professor of English at Duke University and a close colleague of Brown's, whom Brown had charged with continuing the work, inherited the dual confusion of the folklore collection, which was piled in Brown's attic office at home, and the conflicting claims of ownership of the collection of Mrs. Brown, the North Carolina Folklore Society, and Duke University. When it became apparent that all were amenable to seeing the collection in print, White assumed the post of general editor, which passed to Paull Franklin Baum, also a Professor of English and Director of the Duke Press, after White's death in 1948.
This collection includes Brown's personal papers, part of which are the items of the Folklore Collection, and the papers of the editorial project which published much of the folklore in seven volumes as (
The collection is divided into the following series: Personal Papers, General Editors' Papers, Associate Editors' Papers, Charles Bond's Research Material, Cylinders and Discs, Re-recordings of the Cylinders and Discs.
The Personal Papers series includes all items gathered by Brown, as taken over in 1943 by Dr. Newman Ivey White, who served as first general editor of the project from its inception then until his death in 1948. Brown's personal correspondence related to his folklore study is filed alphabetically. It includes an alphabetical index and a chronological card index, both prepared for the editorial project. Correspondents include local folklorists and fellow professors. Other papers include composition books with fragmented transcriptions of folklore findings, draft of a talk on folklore, photographs of Brown, and some printed material. The folklore collection itself is filed alphabetically by contributor (the person who passed the folklore to Brown, not necessarily the person who knew the "lore" submitted to begin with) and also includes anonymous contributions. These "manuscripts," as Newman White labeled them, are the earliest extant record of the contributions, ranging from scrawled pencil notes on scrap pieces of paper to typescripts made by Brown and others from memory or made for one of his many efforts to publish a portion of the collection at various points in his life. Occasionally such a typescript will hold contributions of more than one person, and in such a case it is filed with one of the contributors, with cross-references. Especially prominent among the contributors is Maude Minish Sutton, a fellow folklorist, who gave Brown the use of her large findings of songs and games, among other contributions, along with her often voluminous notes on these items. Part of the folklore collection are folders of clippings gather by Brown which have been arranged according to Brown's Classification Scheme, described below. Another portion of this series is the Papers, Articles, Etc subseries, which contains auxiliary folklore information collected throughout Brown's effects by White and arranged in rough alphabetical order. These materials include specialized bibliographies, student papers, and printed items.
The General Editors' Papers include items which were related to and produced by the work of Newman Ivey White, who served as general editor from 1943 until his death in 1948, and Paull Franklin Baum who assumed duties then and saw the project through to its completion in 1964. Drafts of publication are included of the table of contents, title page, etc., for Volume 1 and of the general introduction, as well as other miscellaneous materials. Successive progress reports on the project include the Classification Scheme, where White sets out an extended version of Brown's sixteen-point system of folklore classification by which White organized the folklore contributions and determined the various groups of items: husbandry, omens, tokens, luck-signs, folk-medicine, magic, divination, housewifery, folk-sermons, pseudoscience, words, place-names, riddles and sayings, children's sayings, games, customs, legends, ballads, and songs. The series also includes newspaper and magazine reviews, correspondence, financial papers, and administrative materials. Finally, the series includes typescripts, both original and carbon copies, of each item in the collection, arranged according to the Classification Scheme. These were prepared by White.
The Associate Editors' Papers have been organized by editor, with H.M. Belden and A.P. Hudson being grouped together. Belden and Hudson's volumes on songs and ballads include editorial drafts for Volumes 1 and 3, as well as early drafts for Volumes 2 and 3. Paul Brewster's subseries includes returned typescripts for games and rhymes. Wayland D. Hand's subseries includes returned typescripts for superstitions. Claire Leighton's subseries includes typescripts for her to reference in creating woodcut illustrations for the volumes. Jan Schinhan's subseries includes lists of scores and songs. Archer Taylor's subseries includes typescripts and drafts for riddles. Stith Thompson's subseries includes typescripts of tales and legends. Bartlett Jere Whiting's subseries includes typescripts for proverbs. George Wilson's subseries includes typescripts of folk speech.
The Charles Bond's Research Material Series stems from the work of Charles Bond, a student of Professor Holger O. Nygard of Duke University. Bond opened the collection in 1970-1971, and prepared both an outline as well as a Tabulation of Unpublished Items in the collection. This series also includes correspondence, an index, and card files.
The Recordings Series includes original wax cylinders and aluminum discs (these are unable to be played); re-recordings of the cylinders and discs; and supplementary material.
These are searchable subject entries for this collection. Performing a search on these subjects in the Duke University Libraries online catalog will bring up other related research materials.
[Original audiovisual materials are closed to use. Digital listening copies are available.]
[Original audiovisual materials are closed to use. Digital listening copies are available.]
[Original audiovisual materials are closed to use. Use of these materials may require production of listening or viewing copies. Please contact a reference archivist before coming to use this collection.]