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 Geraldine Niva Johnson Collection #20364, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Carolyn Sanger in August 2002 (Acc. 99299)

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: Laura Smith, July 2018

Updated by: Patrick Cullom and Anne Wells, May 2019

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.

• Folklore--Maryland--Photographs.
• Folklore--Maryland.
• Hand weaving--Maryland--Photographs.
• Hand weaving--Maryland.
• Johnson, Geraldine Niva, 1940-2016.
• Rag rugs--Maryland--Folklore--Photographs.
• Rag rugs--Maryland--Folklore.
• Rag rugs--Maryland--Photographs.
• Rag rugs--Maryland.

• Souls Grown Deep Foundation Collection (#20491)

Geraldine Niva Johnson was a white folklorist who specialized in women’s crafts, especially woven rag rugs and quilts. Her folklife fieldwork experience began while in working on her doctorate at the University of Maryland, College Park, in College Park, Md. She participated in a crafts survey for the state of Maryland in 1975. This project took her to the highlands of the Western Maryland panhandle, where she documented the domestic rug-making. This work became her doctoral dissertation The Weaving of Rag Rugs: A Women’s Craft in Western Maryland. The research was ultimately published as Weaving Rag Rugs: A Women's Craft in Western Maryland (1985, University of Tennessee Press) .

The collection of white folklorist Geraldine Niva Johnson contains photographic materials and research files related to her field work conducted chiefly in Maryland during the 1970s and early 1980s for her dissertation and book, Weaving Rag Rugs: A Women’s Craft in Western Maryland.

• Image Boxes (IB-20364/1-8)