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 Patience Bingham Photographic Collection on Molasses Making #70173, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Georgia Wier in September 2023 (20240108.2).

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, February 2024

Updated by: Davia Webb and Laura Smith, April 2024

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.

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.

• Bingham, Patience.
• College students--North Carolina--Photographs.
• Draft horses--North Carolina--Franklin County--Photographs.
• Ethnology--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States.
• Family farms--North Carolina--Franklin County--Photographs.
• Folklorists--North Carolina.
• Franklin County (N.C.)--Photographs.
• Hinson, Glenn.
• Molasses industry--North Carolina--Photographs.
• Molasses.
• Sorghum syrup.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Faculty--Photographs.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Students--Photographs.
• Wheeler (Family : Franklin County, N.C.)
• Wier, Georgia.

In 1989, Professor Glenn Hinson took students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who were enrolled in his Methods of Ethnography course, to a farm in Franklin County, N.C., owned by the Wheeler family. The Wheeler family made molasses and sorghum syrup using traditional means that included draft horses. Graduate student Georgia Wier and spouse Pati (Patience) Bingham attended the field trip. Bingham photographed the event with a focus on documenting traditional methods of making molasses.

The collections consists of 35mm color slides made in 1989 in Franklin County, N.C., by Pati (Patience) Bingham. The 37 images by Bingham document traditional methodologies of molasses and sorghum syrup making at a farm owned by the Wheeler family near Louisburg, N.C. Some images also depict members of the Wheeler family, Professor Glenn Hinson and students in his Methods of Ethnography course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who were visiting the farm on a field trip, and Bingham's spouse Georgia Wier, a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill.