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.
Size | 2.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 400 items) |
Abstract | This collection documents four generations of the Wyche Family, a white family from Columbus County, N.C. The papers date from 1854 to 2020, though chiefly consist of letters, 1900-1918, to Joseph Byron Wyche from family and friends. Topics include childhood and daily life; health; engagement and newlywed life; military service, 1903-1906, in San Francisco, the Pacific, and Wyoming; and medical education in the mid-nineteenth-century. Other materials include Wyche family genealogies, dry goods receipts, account books, and school materials. |
Creator | Wyche (Family: Columbus County, N.C.) |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
Processed by: Nancy Kaiser and Biff Hollingsworth, February 2017
Encoded by: Nancy Kaiser, February 2018
Updated by: Dawne Howard Lucas, March 2023
Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.
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.
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The Wyche family, a white family from Columbus County, N.C., includes four generations: Cyril Granville Wyche (1825-1910) and Mary Elizabeth Rouse Wyche (1840-1921); their sons Richard Wyche (1862-1933), Thomas Wyche (1860-1939), and Henry Wyche (1859-1904), who married Mary Matilda Maultsby Wyche (1858-1922); their son Joseph Byron Wyche (1881-1957), who married Mary Bailey Blanchard Wyche (1884-1961); and their son Ray Byron Wyche (1927-2020) and his family.
Cyril Granville Wyche was a physician in Columbus County, N.C., beginning in 1854. In the late 1890s, Henry Wyche co-founded Pierce and Company, a dry-goods mercantile business in Redbug, N.C. (later in Hallsboro, N.C.). In 1913, the family entered the lumber business. Pierce and Company had a number of locations and facilities in Columbus County, N.C. Joseph Byron Wyche attended Wake Forest College and operated the family business store in Hallsboro, N.C., after his father died. He also served on the local school board, as he met his wife Mary Bailey Blanchard Wyche when he hired her to teach at the Redbug School.
Back to TopThe Wyche Family of Columbus County, N.C., Papers, 1850-2020, document four generations of the family, though chiefly consist of letters to Joseph Byron Wyche from family and friends in the early part of the 20th century while he attended Wake Forest College and for the decade afterward until he married Mary Bailey Blanchard Wyche in 1912. There are also letters he received in 1918 while he was treated for tuberculosis at a sanatorium in Hoke County, N.C. Topics include childhood and daily life; health; engagement and newlywed life; military service, 1903-1906, in San Francisco, the Pacific, and Wyoming, where Native Americans had resisted confinement to reservation land and were rumored to be preparing to fight U.S. Army troops; and medical education in the mid-nineteenth-century. Other materials include Wyche family genealogies, dry goods receipts, account books, and school materials.
Back to TopArrangement: as received from donor.
Digital Folder DF-05596/1 |
Transcriptions, 2017Thirty selected letters from 1868, 1907, 1911-1913, transcribed by the donor. |
Box 1 |
GenealogiesIncludes biographical narratives. |
Obituaries of Joseph Byron Wyche children |
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Miscellaneous family papers, 1830s-1910s |
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Cyril G. Wyche account books, 1860s-1870s |
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Cyril G. Wyche and Mary Elizabeth Rouse Wyche, 1850s-1890s |
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Thomas Wyche and Richard Wyche, 1870s |
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Henry Wyche, 1903-1904 |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1900-1903Letters received from Wake Forest acquaintances. |
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Box 2 |
Joseph Byron Wyche, 1901-1904Letters received from relatives and friends in Columbus County, N.C. |
Joseph Byron Wyche, 1902-1907Letters received from Wyche relatives in distant places. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1903-1906Letters received from W. A. Pierce in military service in the Pacific and in Wyoming. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1904-1907Letters received after college. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1904-1953Letters from family and friends. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1907-1927Includes a 10 June 1912 letter from a Wake Forest College professor commenting on the end of fraternities and the present danger of "too much athletics." |
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Box 3 |
Joseph Byron Wyche and Mary Bailey Blanchard Wyche, 1910-1913 |
Joseph Byron Wyche, 1918Letters received at sanatorium. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche estate, 1959 |
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Joseph Byron Wyche, 1940s-1990sObituaries. |
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War rations books |
Acquisitions information: Accession 20221215.5
Arrangement: as received from donor.
Contains materials from Cyril Granville Wyche (1825–1910), Joseph Byron Wyche (1881-1957), and Ray Byron Wyche (1927-2020).
Box 4 |
Cyril Granville Wyche, undatedIncludes a fragment of a letter from J. W. Manier. According to the Wyche family, Manier might have been Cyril Granville Wyche's first cousin. Wyche's father, James Wyche, had a sister named Mary who married a John D. Manier. |
Joseph Byron Wyche, 1900sIncludes a two-page biographical sketch, copies of two photographs from the early 1900s, and a 1914 U.S. Civil Service postmaster exam report. |
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Joseph Byron Wyche geneaology notebook |
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Ray Byron Wyche, 1934-2020Includes a 1934 handwritten letter two Santa Claus; school documents including report cards, certificates, and diplomas; documentation of Wyche's career as a postmaster and newspaper correspondent; and documentation of Wyche's civic contributions to Columbus County, N.C. A copy of his obituary is also included. |
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Oversize Paper Folder OPF-5596/1 |
Ray Byron Wyche: Wake Forest College diploma, June 1950 |