Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

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 Brown Family Papers #4349, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Gladys Brown Proctor of Chapel Hill, N.C., in June 1983.

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.

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.

• Agriculture--North Carolina.
• Brown family.
• Brown, Joseph Addison, 1863-1937.
• Brown, Minnie McIver, 1874-1957.
• Education--North Carolina.
• Family--North Carolina--Columbus County.
• Proctor, Elizabeth Gray, fl. 1897-1903.

Joseph Addison Brown

Joseph Addison Brown was born in Columbus County, North Carolina on 9 July 1863. In 1890, he became interested in agriculture, and was chiefly responsible for the development of the strawberry-growing industry in North Carolina. He also served on the national executive committee of the Southern Cotton Association, and was one of the nine original members of the interstate Tobacco Growers Advisory Committee.

Joseph Brown was first elected to the North Carolina State Senate in 1893, and served seven other terms, ending in 1928. He was also chairman for a time of the Columbus County Democratic Executive Committee.

During his first term as senator, Brown met Minnie McIver, who was teaching school in Whiteville. The couple was married on 9 June 1898. They had one daughter, Gladys McIver Brown (later Proctor). Joseph Brown died on 26 June 1937.

Minnie McIver Brown

Minnie McIver was born in Moore County, N.C., on 1 January 1874. She attended the Southern Female College in La Grange, Ga., and spent a year at North Carolina's State Normal and Industrial School in Greensboro (now UNC-G). From 1896 to 1898 she taught music at high schools in Henrietta and Whiteville, N.C. After their marriage, she and Joseph Brown lived in Chadbourn, where she lived until her death on 21 January 1957.

Minnie Brown was active in many organizations in Columbus County, helping to found its first literary club in 1901, and its chapter of the D.A.R. Music continued to be important in her life; she was an organist at the Chadbourn Presbyterian Church, and worked for the inclusion of music in the public school curriculum while serving as chairman of the State Federation of Women's Clubs.

Brown's club activities emphasized social service, and as a result, Governor Angus McLean appointed her to the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, on which she served from 1925 to 1937. She was also a member of the State Education Commission, the first woman member of the Board of Trustees of the State Normal and Industrial College (appointed in 1917), and in 1925, she became a member of the consolidated University of North Carolina's Board of Trustees.

Brown spoke before numerous North Carolina civic groups on a variety of topics, and wrote and published locally some short stories and historical sketches, mostly about people and events in southeastern North Carolina.

Approximately three-fourths of this collection consists of letters to and from Joseph and Minnie Brown. About 240 of them were exchanged between Joseph and Minnie during their courtship and engagement in 1897-1898. Correspondence from other years is less voluminous (an average of five items per year), and is a mixture of personal and business mail, mostly incoming.

The rest of the papers consist of legal documents, texts of Minnie's speeches and short stories, typed copies of sermons, apparently transcribed by Minnie for her pastor, the typescript of a diary kept by Gladys Brown Proctor's mother-in-law, writings by others, and biographical material on the Brown and McIver families. There are also eight photographs, mostly unidentified.

• P-4349/1-8