Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Cyrus Thompson Papers, #715, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Nere E. Day of Jacksonville, N.C., February 1963.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2009

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Medicine--Study and teaching--Louisiana--History--19th century.
• North Carolina--Politics and government--1865-1950.
• Physicians--North Carolina--Political activity.
• Public health--Southern States--History.
• Soldiers--United States--Correspondence.
• Thompson, Cyrus, 1855-1930.
• United States. Army--Military life.
• United States. Army--Recruiting, enlistment, etc.--World War, 1914-1918.
• United States. Army. American Expeditionary Forces.
• University of Virginia--Students--History--19th century.

Cyrus Thompson (1855-1930) was a physician of Onslow County, N.C., and a leader of the Populist Party, serving in the General Assembly in 1883 and 1885 and as North Carolina Secretary of State, 1897-1901. He also served as the Onslow County Superintendent of Health, 1907-1913.

The collection, chiefly from 1876, consist of letters received by Cyrus Thompson about state and national politics, family matters, and the medical profession and public health (from prominent men over the southeast). Political correspondence relates to state elections and the Populist Party. Among the family correspondence are letters received while he was at the University of Virginia and studying medicine in Louisiana in the 1870s, and letters from his son with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Also included are papers pertaining to the military draft of doctors in North Carolina in World War I. Some correspondents include Daniel L. Russell, Charles B. Aycock, J. Bryan Grimes, J. C. Pritchard, Thomas J. Jarvis, Marion Butler, O. Max Gardner, John B. Elliot, Enoch H. Crowder, Angus W. McLean, and Kemp P. Battle. There are also a few early Thompson family letters, 1830-1838.