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This collection has use restrictions. For details, please see the restrictions.
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 FAQ section for more information.
Reference prints from images created for Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina: Woman drawing water from a well, in the Charles Anderson Farrell Photographic Collection (P0024), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 3.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 688 items) |
| Abstract | In 1923, Charles Anderson Farrell, a native of Yadkin County, N.C., became the first professional photographer for the Greensboro Daily News in Greensboro, N.C. In addition to his work for the newspaper, Farrell operated a photography studio, camera store, and art supply shop in downtown Greensboro. Farrell contributed photographs to several University of North Carolina Press books. The collection includes 688 photographic images (photographic negatives and prints) related to three books published by University of North Carolina Press that Farrell worked on as a photographer: Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe (1939), about a young African American boy and his family; Bernice Kelly Harris's Dramatis Personae: Photographic Studies: Eastern Carolina Folk Plays (1940), and Aubrey Lee Brook's Walter Clark: Fighting Judge (1944), about Clark, who served as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, 1903-1924. |
| Creator | Farrell, Charles Anderson, 1894-1977. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Subject Headings
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.
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Related Collections
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Biographical
Information
Charles Anderson Farrell was a native of Yadkin County, N.C. He graduated from Wake Forest College, and after serving in the First World War, he returned there to teach English for a short time. Farrell married Anne McKaughan, and they had three children: Charles B., Peter S., and Roger H.
In 1923, Farrell moved to Greensboro where he became the first professional photographer for the Greensboro Daily News. In the 1920s and 1930s, Farrell also operated a photography studio, camera store, and art supply house in downtown Greensboro. Highlights of Farrell's career included taking some of the first aerial photographs of North Carolina, taking exclusive aerial photographs of Reynolda House in Winston-Salem, N.C., following the fatal shooting of the heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune Z. Smith Reynolds; and taking the pictures for Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe (1939), a portrait of a young African American boy and his family in the 1930s. Farrell died at the age of 83 in the Friends Home at Greensboro, N.C., in 1977.
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Scope and Content
The collection includes 688 photographic images (negatives and prints) related to three works published by University of North Carolina Press, which Farrell worked on as a photographer. They include Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tobe (1939), Bernice Kelly Harris's "Dramatis Personae: Photographic Studies: Eastern Carolina Folk Plays" (1940), and Aubrey Lee Brook's Walter Clark: Fighting Judge,(1944).
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. Tobe, 1938-1939.
Arrangement: Subject/Chronological.
For the Tobe assignment, Farrell assembled a composite family from African Americans living in the Goshen community (the Garner family) south of Greensboro and possibly from within the city itself (the Goins family). The photographs show children and adults in a rural agrarian setting.
The primary portion of this series is the 222 black-and-white negatives Farrell made to illustrate Tobe, which includes all 61 of the images that appear in the book and an additional 161 alternative negatives. There are four negative formats:
Eleven negative envelopes from Farrell's The Art Shop with minimal annotations and a Kensington Film Book with a partially completed index page have been retained. All of the negatives used for the book and a few additional negatives have corresponding interpositives and duplicate negatives made by the Photographic Archives as preservation copies.
There are 64 (5x7) reference prints made from the 61 negatives used in Tobe. The photographs are printed close to full frame, permitting researchers to see how the photographer composed the scene prior to cropping by the editor. In the reference print made from the negative for the chapter "Tomatoes for Winter," one can see the image without the additional retouching that added tomatoes to the plants and bushels as seen in the book.
The single 2 1/4x3 1/4 negative may have been made by the book's author, Stella Gentry Sharpe, who initially submitted her own photographs for the project. Deemed unsatisfactory, UNC Press hired Farrell to make the images. The image appears in the chapter "Halloween Fun."
Also included are a set of twenty-nine negatives. The series also includes an order envelope from The Art Shop labeled "Tobe's Cousins" and, in different handwriting in red ink, "apparently this proposed book was never published." The film pack negatives are individual portraits of a young girl and boy; the 35mm negatives are group portraits and farming scenes.
| Black and White Film Box 01 |
Original negatives created for Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 01Black-and-white sheet film negatives 103 images Images that appear in Tobe have corresponding page numbers and titles on sleeve. |
| Black and White Film Box 02 |
Original negatives created for Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 02Black and-white sheet film negatives 129 images Images that appear in Tobe have corresponding page numbers and titles on sleeve. |
| Black and White Film Box 03 |
Original negatives created for Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 03Black-and-white 35mm roll film negatives 5 rolls of film (19 images) |
| Print Box 01 |
Reference prints from images created for Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 01Black-and-white photographic prints 64 images |
| Print Box 01 |
Original sleeves for negatives created for Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 0111 envelopes |
| Print Box 01 |
Correspondence related to Tobe, circa 1938-1939 #P0024, Series: "1. Tobe, 1938-1939." 01ManuscriptsThe documents in this folder are photocopies of originals that can be found in the Charles Anderson Farrell Papers (#4452) in the Southern Historical Collection. |
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Series 2. Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina, 1939-1940.
Arrangement: Subject/Chronological.
This series comprises 107 negatives and 34 photographs related to Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina. Several of the negatives have corresponding interpositives and duplicate negatives made by the Photographic Archives as preservation copies. There are 25 photographs that were likely made contemporarily to the negatives. The Photographic Archives made nine 5x7" reference prints from the original negatives.
A section of Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina entitled "Dramatis Personae: Photographic Studies by Charles Farrell" is composed of 16 images that illustrate characters and scenes from the plays. Negatives for twelve of these photographs are extant, only eleven of which have corresponding small photographs. There are, conversely, 14 small photographs made from negatives that do not appear in the book.
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Series 3. Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, 1943-1944.
Arrangement: Subject/Chronological.
Items in this series consist of 56 negatives and one 5x7" reference print. The print, made from the original negative, is of slave cabins and is nearly identical to the view depicted in the book. Farrell used the latter format to photograph African American subjects and the bronze buck statue at Albin. Images mainly depict views of fields, river views, barns, cattle, and slave cabins at Ventosa; two negatives are exterior views of Clark's law office in Halifax. Several of the negatives have corresponding interpositives and duplicate negatives made by the Photographic Archives as preservation copies.
This series contains nine of the ten negatives used for the book, one of which is a panoramic view made from two negatives of fields at Ventosa, Clark's ancestral home on a large plantation along the Roanoke River in Halifax County (Northern forces burned Ventosa during the Civil War). Other images include a bronze buck statue at Albin, the colonial mansion built in the early 1800s on the Clark family estate at Scotland Neck; a dike along the Roanoke River, two descendants of slaves, and a section of the slave quarters at Ventosa; a tester bed once used at Ventosa; and Walter Clark's law office building in Halifax. Only the negative of the tester bed is lacking.
| Black and White Film Box 03 |
Original negatives created for Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, circa 1943-1944 #P0024, Series: "3. Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, 1943-1944." 03Black and-white sheet film negatives 56 images |
| Print Box 01 |
Reference prints from images created for Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, circa 1943-1944 #P0024, Series: "3. Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, 1943-1944." 011 image |
| Print Box 01 |
Passages from Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, circa 1943-1944 #P0024, Series: "3. Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, 1943-1944." 011 image The documents in this folder are photocopies of pages from Walter Clark: Fighting Judge. |
Processed by: North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, 1997 and Patrick Cullom, August 2011
Encoded by: Patrick Cullom, August 2011
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