This collection has access restrictions. For details, please see the restrictions.
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the Duplication Policy section for more information.
This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.
Size | 0.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 200 items) |
Abstract | Charles Anderson Farrell was a native of Yadkin County, North Carolina, and in 1923 moved to Greensboro where he became the first professional photographer of the Greensboro Daily News. In the 1920s and 1930s, Farrell also operated a photography studio, camera store, and art supply house in downtown Greensboro. Farrell died at the age of 83 in the Friends Home at Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1977. The collection includes correspondence, photocopies and drafts of literary manuscripts, clippings, and other material documenting the career of Charles A. Farrell (1894-1977), a Greensboro photographer, who contributed the photographs for several University of North Carolina Press books. The majority of the material relates to Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe (1939), ahead of its time as a Southern book because it pictured blacks favorably as warm, intelligent human beings. |
Creator | Farrell, Charles Anderson, 1894-1977. |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
Processed by: Connie Cartledge, July 1986; Revised by Suzanne Ruffing, September 1996
Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008
This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.
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.
Charles Anderson Farrell was a native of Yadkin County, N.C., and, in 1923, moved to Greensboro where he became the first professional photographer of the Greensboro Daily News. In the 1920s and 1930s, Farrell also operated a photography studio, camera store, and art supply house in downtown Greensboro.
Farrell was a graduate of Wake Forest College, to which he returned to teach English for a short time after serving in World War I.
Farrell married Anne McKaughan. They had three children, Charles B., Peter S., and Roger H.
Highlights of Farrell's career included taking some of the first aerial photographs of North Carolina, taking exclusive aerial photographs of Z. Smith Reynolds's estate in Winston-Salem following the fatal shooting of the heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune, and taking the pictures for Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe (1939), a portrait of a young black boy and his family in the 1930s.
Farrell died at the age of 83 in the Friends Home at Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1977.
Back to TopCorrespondence, photocopies and drafts of literary manuscripts, clippings, and other material, 1938-1977, concerning the various University of North Carolina Press books to which Farrell contributed photographs, and books for which he considered doing photographic work. The UNC Press books represented in the collection are E. T. H. Shaffer's Carolina Gardens, 1939 edition; Bernice Kelly Harris's Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina, circa 1940; Aubrey Lee Brook's Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, 1944; and Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe, 1939. Also included are papers relating to several unpublished works, a brief biography of Farrell written by his wife, and Farrell's obituary.
The majority of the materials concern Tobe, which describes the life of a young black boy and his family in the 1930s. Included is correspondence between Farrell and UNC Press editor W. T. Couch, advertising manager Porter Cowles, and Stella Sharpe concerning production and promotion of Tobe There is also information relating to royalties. Also included is correspondence relating to the law suit that was filed by Arthur Garner of Greensboro, N.C., regarding the use of pictures of himself and his family in the publication of Tobe and letters documenting public reaction from blacks and whites toward Tobe.
Back to TopFolder 1 |
Carolina Gardens |
Folder 2 |
Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina |
Folder 3 |
Tobe, 1938 |
Folder 4 |
Tobe, January-June 1939 |
Folder 5 |
Tobe, July-December 1939 |
Folder 6 |
Tobe, 1940 |
Folder 7 |
Tobe, 1941 |
Folder 8 |
Tobe, 1943, 1945, 1977 |
Folder 9 |
Walter Clark: Fighting Judge |
Folder 10 |
Unpublished works, 1939-1943 |
Folder 11 |
Biographical materialsContain a biography of Farrell written by his wife and Farrell's obituary. |