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P40: Louis Round Wilson Collection

Extent: 849 items.

Formats: black-and-white and color photographs, photograph album, tintypes, daguerreotype, ambrotype, cyanotype.

Provenance: Penny and Elizabeth Wilson, Chapel Hill, NC, 8 November 1989; accession number 30377.

Biographical Sketch: Louis Round Wilson (27 December 1876–10 December 1979) was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, the sixth child of Jethro Reuben and Louisa Jane Round Wilson. In 1909 Louis Round Wilson married Penelope Bryan Wright of Coharie. The couple had four children: Elizabeth, Louis, Jr., Penelope, and Mary Louise (Mrs. Dean Stockett Edmonds, Jr.). Wilson died just shy of 103 years old and is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Wilson attended various Lenoir schools, and worked as a typesetter and printer's devil from 1891 to 1894 before he enrolled in Davenport College in Lenoir in 1894. In 1895 he attended Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where he also first worked in a library as an assistant. Wilson then transferred to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the autumn of 1898, graduating in May 1899. In August of that year he began teaching at Vine Hill Male Academy in Scotland Neck; the following year he taught at Catawba College in Newton.

In 1901 the University of North Carolina appointed Wilson as its librarian, a position he held until 1932 when he left Chapel Hill for the University of Chicago to become the dean of the Graduate Library School. During those thirty-one years, Wilson developed collections, and oversaw the planning and construction of two of the university's main libraries: the Carnegie Library in 1907 and the building in 1929 that, in 1956, would bear his name. He also trained staff librarians and taught courses in librarianship, joining the faculty in 1907. In 1920 Wilson was named Kenan Professor of Library Science.

Wilson returned to the UNC School of Libray Science faculty in 1942. In 1951 he became special assistant for development to the chancellor and in 1959, after retiring from the faculty, he accepted the position of special assistant to the president of the University of North Carolina system, from which he retired in 1969.

This sketch is abridged from a much more detailed entry in Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Volume 6), by William S. Powell.

Collection Description: The collection is minimally organized and sorted, consisting largely of family snapshots and some studio portraits. Box 1 contains some photographs related to Wilson Library.

Related Material: Louis Round Wilson Papers (#3274), Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Container List

Box 1: Photographs of Louis Round Wilson and others
Box 2: Identified photographs not including Louis Round Wilson
Box 3: Identified photographs that do not include Louis Round Wilson
Box 4: Identified photographs that do not include Louis Round Wilson
Box 5: Special photograph formats
Box 6: Unidentified

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This page was last updated Wednesday, February 07, 2007.