Greetings from North Carolina: A Century of Postcards from the Durwood Barbour Collection

postcard featuring Greetings from Chapel Hill

On exhibit in the North Carolia Collection Gallery, Wilson Library through Sept. 30
Information: North Carolina Collection Gallery, (919) 962-1172

Program featuring Durwood Barbour
Thursday, July 12
Reception at 5 p.m.; Program at 5:45 p.m.
Program information: Liza Terll, (919) 962-4207

New: View selected postcards online

June 14 - Anonymous cotton pickers toiling in the field. Beach-goers in bathing costumes at Wrightsville Beach, around the beginning of the 20th century. Advertising for Bull Durham Tobacco, Trailways buses and businesses, from laundries to lumber mills.

These are some of the images in "Greetings from North Carolina: A Century of Postcards from the Durwood Barbour Collection," on exhibit through Sept. 30 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of Wilson Library.

Barbour, of Raleigh, acquired 7,894 North Carolina postcards over 25 years and gave the collection to UNC's library in 2006. The exhibit will show about 150 of the postcards.

The Carolina alumnus will speak about the collection in a free public talk, "A Carolina Postcard Journey," in the library at 5:45 p.m. July 12. A reception and exhibit viewing begin at 5 p.m. Steve Massengill, a retired image archivist from the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, also will speak. A fellow collector, he has known Barbour for years.

"He had an eye for collecting the unusual, and things that would document the history of the state," Massengill said. "Lots of research can be pulled from this massive collection."

Barbour, of the UNC class of 1952, began collecting postcards in the early 1980s to enhance his collection of North Carolina currency. He soon was scouring flea markets, postcard shows and eventually online auctions, building a visual record that would capture the range of Tar Heel history.

postcard featuring avalon fire

Fire at the Avalon Mill, Rockingham County, N.C.
June 15, 1911

Unlike today's postcards, those of the past depicted nearly everything: mundane scenes of family and town life, advertising, the progress of industry and such disasters as floods and fires. Many studio photographers in the first decades of the 20th century supplemented their income by printing so-called "real photo" postcards, many of which captured everyday life while reflecting the photographer's artistic sensibilities.

Bob Anthony, curator of the North Carolina Collection, said that the Barbour collection will be a boon for historians, students of art and photography and anyone who wishes to see a glimpse of the state's past. The donation doubles the size of the UNC library's postcard holdings, Anthony said. The library will begin digitizing its North Carolina postcards and putting them online this summer.

Barbour said he is pleased that the collection will remain together and be available for consultation and research. "It's a true collection, not an accumulation," he said. "Every card is an individual card, and some are truly unique."

The North Carolina Collection Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and 1-5 p.m. Sundays. For details about the July 12 program, contact Liza Terll at (919) 962-4207.

Related links