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Size | 1.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 600 items) |
Abstract | Thomas Perrin Harrison served as dean and professor of English at North Carolina State College, Raleigh, N.C. The collection contains chiefly professional correspondence about literary scholarship and administering the English Department at North Carolina State College, Raleigh, N.C., and letters received by Harrison from his children, James Leftwich Harrison (b. 1895), New York banker, about his work, family matters, and public events; Thomas Perrin Harrison, Jr. (b. 1897), student and instructor at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and professor of English at the University of Texas, about his work as a literary scholar and academic; Florence Harrison Dunlop, student at Bryn Mawr College and resident of Washington, D.C., about her experiences at Miss Madeira's School, Washington, D.C., 1917-1919, and at Bryn Mawr, 1919-1923, and life in Washington, D.C., in the 1920s and the 1930s; and Lewis Wardlaw Harrison, about life as a student at the University of North Carolina, 1922-1925. Also included are thirty Civil War letters exchanged between Harrison's parents, Col. Francis Eugene Harrison, serving with the 1st South Carolina Rifles in Virginia, and Mary Eunice Perrin Harrison, and her Perrin relatives in Anderson and Abbeville Districts, S.C. |
Creator | Harrison, Thomas Perrin, 1864-1949. |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom with the assistance of Julia Smith, November 1992
Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008
Back to TopThe 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.
Thomas Perrin Harrison (1864-1949) was born in Abbeville and raised in Andersonville, S.C., son of Francis Eugene and Mary Eunice Perrin Harrison. He attended Abbeville Academy and the Citadel, and earned his Ph.D. in English at Johns Hopkins University in 1891. He taught English at the Citadel, 1886-1888; at Clemson College, 1891-1896; at Davidson College, 1896-1909; and was professor of English at North Carolina State College from 1909 to 1939. From 1910 to 1939, he was dean of the College and head of the English Department at North Carolina State College, except for a leave of absence during World War I, when he was a YMCA educational officer with the American Expeditionary Forces.
Harrison wrote articles on many literary topics, including Shakespearean etymology and interpretation. He was active as a Presbyterian layman and noted as a public speaker. Harrison married Adelia Lake Leftwich (d. 1944) of Baltimore in 1894. Their four children were: James Leftwich (b. 1895), Thomas Perrin, Jr. (b. 1897), Florence, and Lewis Wardlaw.
Back to TopThe collection contains chiefly professional correspondence about literary scholarship and administering the English Department at North Carolina State College, Raleigh, N.C., and letters received by Harrison from his children, James Leftwich Harrison (b. 1895), New York banker, about his work, family matters, and public events; Thomas Perrin Harrison, Jr. (b. 1897), student and instructor at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and professor of English at the University of Texas, about his work as a literary scholar and academic; Florence Harrison Dunlop, student at Bryn Mawr College and resident of Washington, D.C., about her experiences at Miss Madeira's School, Washington, D.C., 1917-1919, and at Bryn Mawr, 1919-1923, and life in Washington, D.C., in the 1920s and the 1930s; and Lewis Wardlaw Harrison, about life as a student at the University of North Carolina, 1922-1925. Also included are thirty Civil War letters exchanged between Harrison's parents, Col. Francis Eugene Harrison, serving with the 1st South Carolina Rifles in Virginia, and Mary Eunice Perrin Harrison, and her Perrin relatives in Anderson and Abbeville Districts, S.C.
Back to TopArrangement: chronological.
Chiefly letters to and from Thomas Perrin Harrison and members of the Harrison and Perrin family.
Papers 1861-1869 include letters exchanged by Harrison's father, Colonel Frank E. Harrison, serving with the 1st South Carolina Rifles, and his wife Mary E. Harrison. Frank Harrison wrote from Virginia and other locations about regimental politics, his health, religious services he attended, and camp life in general. Mary Harrison wrote about family and neighborhood news from the Abbeville and Anderson districts, S.C. There are also a few other letters received by Frank Harrison during the war and some letters to Mary from her Perrin relatives during and after the war.
The bulk of the papers are dated 1912-1939 and include both professional and family papers of Thomas Perrin Harrison. Family correspondence is chiefly with Harrison's children. James Leftwich Harrison corresponded with his father while he was a banker in New York City, usually writing about family matters and his work, but sometimes commenting on business conditions, including the stock market crash in 1929. Thomas Perrin Harrison, Jr., was a graduate student and English instructor at Cornell University, 1919-1924, and professor of English at the University of Texas beginning in 1924. Like his father, he wrote scholarly works on English literature. His letters chiefly discuss books and ideas, teaching problems, and academic life in general. Florence Leftwich Harrison (later Mrs. A. McCook Dunlop) wrote from Miss Madeira's School in Washington, D.C., 1917-1919, and from Bryn Mawr College, 1919-1923, describing her friends, teachers, and schoolwork. From 1926 to 1934, she wrote while a resident of Washington, D.C., and Chevy Chase, Md. For a short time, she worked in the office of Senator Peter G. Gerry of Rhode Island, and she wrote to her father about this work and about her stay in Warwick, R.I., in 1927. Lewis (Luke) Wardlaw Harrison wrote from the Asheville School, 1919-1921, and described his social life and academic experiences at the University of North Carolina, 1922-1925. After 1925, he continued to write while working in New York and on a conservation project on the Colorado River in Texas.
Professional correspondence is of several types. Beginning around 1913, Harrison, as dean at North Carolina State College, carried on an extensive correspondence, especially 1913-1920, with traveling lecturers, concert artists, and theatrical groups, arranging performances at the college. There are also many letters dealing with routine administrative matters and with Harrison's interest in teacher education. In 1918, there is an interesting series of letters about how many English courses North Carolina State should require its students to take. As chair of the English Department, Harrison was also concerned with hiring teachers for the Department and placing its graduates in teaching positions. Other correspondence relates to Harrison's making speeches, arranging extension courses, publishing books, and discussing educational problems with professors at other institutions.
There are no materials dating from mid-1918 to mid-1919, when Harrison was serving with the AEF in France.
Through the early 1920s, the greater portion of the correspondence relates to college affairs. These include a tremendous controversy over ownership of the design of North Carolina State College class rings, and problems with students sponsored by the International Serbian Educational Committee, Inc., who had been studying at North Carolina State since 1919 and who, in 1923, were refusing to return to Serbia.
In 1923 and 1924, there are letters exchanged between Harrison and a patent lawyer who was helping Harrison obtain a patent for a flushable paper toilet seat cover. The patent was rejected several times as being too closely related to patents granted to another inventor in 1915. The volume of materials drops off considerably after 1923. By 1925, almost all of the correspondence is with Harrison's children, especially Louis (Luke) and Thomas, Jr. Letters in the 1940s are chiefly related to genealogy; those dated after Harrison's death in November 1944 are largely miscellaneous family letters written to Louis about general family affairs.
Folder 1 |
1861-1864 |
Folder 2 |
1869-1910 |
Folder 3 |
1912-1913 |
Folder 4 |
1914 |
Folder 5 |
1915 |
Folder 6 |
1916 |
Folder 7 |
1917 January-June |
Folder 8 |
1917 July-December |
Folder 9 |
1918 |
Folder 10 |
1919 |
Folder 11 |
1920 January-May |
Folder 12 |
1920 June-December |
Folder 13 |
1921 January-May |
Folder 14 |
1921 June-December |
Folder 15 |
1922 January-May |
Folder 16 |
1922 June-December |
Folder 17 |
1923 January-May |
Folder 18 |
1923 June-December |
Folder 19 |
1924 |
Folder 20 |
1925 |
Folder 21 |
1926 |
Folder 22 |
1927 |
Folder 23 |
1928 |
Folder 24 |
1929-1933 |
Folder 25 |
1934-1944 |
Folder 26 |
1945-1947 |
Folder 27 |
1948-1951 |
Folder 28 |
1952-1973 |
Folder 29 |
Undated |
Photographs, chiefly of Thomas Perrin Harrison, as follows: