Restrictions to Access

Use of audio or moving image materials may require production of listening or viewing copies.

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 James E. Wise Collection #20131, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 102657, Acc. 102668).

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.

Encoded by: Anne Wells, October 2016

Archival processing of the James E. Wise Collection was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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.

• Caldwell County (N.C.)
• Christians--North Carolina--Customs and practices.
• Gospel music--North Carolina.
• Holiness churches--Hymns.
• Holiness churches--North Carolina.
• Hymns, English--North Carolina.
• North Carolina--Religious life and customs.
• Parsons, Coy.
• Parsons, Margaret (Preacher)
• Pennell, Bonnie.
• Preaching
• Rural churches--North Carolina.
• Sermons, American--North Carolina.
• Sermons.
• Townsell, Ray.
• Wise, James E., 1949-
• Witness bearing (Christianity)
• Worship programs.

• North Carolina Folklore Broadcast Collection (#20105)

Born in Georgia, raised in Florida and a resident of North Carolina since 1966, Jim E. Wise is an alumnus of Duke University (BA, English) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (MA, folklore). He has been a reporter, editor, and columnist for newspapers in Durham, N.C., for more than twenty-eight years and has taught adult classes on local and southern history for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke. His publications include On Sherman's Trail: The Civil War's North Carolina Climax, Murder in the Courthouse: Reconstruction and Redemption in the North Carolina Piedmont, Durham: A Bull City Story, and Durham Tales: The Morris Street Maple, the Plastic Cow, the Durham Day that Was and More.

The James E. Wise Collection consists of 3 field recordings of a Saturday evening church service held at the Rescue Mission Church, a holiness church of the Sons of God denomination, in Lenoir, Caldwell County, N.C. The recordings were made by historian and author, James E. Wise, while he was a graduate student in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and correspond to his 1977 thesis, "The Sons of God in the North Carolina Mountains: An Exercise in Thick Description." The recordings feature music, testimonies, and sermons by Margaret Parsons, presiding preacher for Rescue Mission Church, Lenoir, N.C.; Bonnie Pennell, gospel soloist and testifier; Ray Townsell, preacher and testifier; and Coy Parsons, guitarist, gospel soloist, and testifier. Recordings are on 1/4" open reel audio. Also included in the collection are tape logs and transcripts that correspond to the audio recordings found in the collection, as well as ephemera and transcripts that correspond to additional Sons of God field recordings found in the North Carolina Folklore Broadcast Collection.

• Audiotapes (FT-20131/408-409, FT-20131/808)