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Collection Number: 03860

Collection Title: Foust Family Papers, 1920-1949

This collection has access 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 Duplication Policy section for more information.


This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

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Size 1.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 150 items)
Abstract Personal and family correspondence of the Foust family, an African-American family living in rural Alamance County, N.C., concerning their daily lives, efforts to make a living, and education, including Edna Lee Foust's training as a nurse. Also included are students' notebooks, test papers, essays, and other educational material.
Creator Foust (Family : Alamance County, N.C.)
Curatorial Unit University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Language English
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Restrictions to Access
RESTRICTED: Research agreement reads: "As long as these people and their children are still living, and because their papers have come into the Southern Historical Collection without their knowledge, the Southern Historical Collection asks that the papers be used only for scholarly purposes, and further requests that proper names or identifying data be omitted in any quotation or publication based on the papers. We feel justified in making these papers available to scholars only if those who use them agree not to publish or quote them in any way that would invade the privacy of the persons concerned. In order to abide by this stipulation, these papers may be cited as Group #3860 in the Southern Historical Collection. Bruce Kirkham also asks that 'a copy of any and all published works which draw directly on or pertain to these papers be furnished [to him] ... theses and dissertations don't count.'"
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 Foust Family Papers #3860, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Acquisitions Information
Purchased from E. Bruce Kirkham of Chapel Hill, N.C., in April 1968.
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.
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Processed by: Suzanne Ruffing, September 1996

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

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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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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Scope and Content

Personal and family correspondence of the Foust family, an African-American family living in rural Alamance County, N.C., concerning their daily lives, efforts to make a living, and education, including Edna Lee Foust's training as a nurse. Also included are students' notebooks, test papers, essays, and other educational material.

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Contents list

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Series 1. Correspondence and Related Material, 1920-1949.

About 150 items.

Arrangement: chronological.

Primarily correspondence and receipts of the Foust family of Alamance County, N.C. Letters, 1920-1926, are to Laura Coble in Graham, N.C., and to her brother Henry Coble in Philadelphia, Pa., from friends and family in Ohio; to Walter Coble in New Haven, Conn.; to Henry at college in Talladega, Ala.; to Marinda Coble Foust, their sister who married George G. Foust, in Winston-Salem, N.C.; and to Clora H. Johnston at Lincoln Academy, Kings Mountain, N.C. These letters discuss daily activities, courtships, borrowing and repaying money, sickness and health, births and deaths, and family and neighborhood news. From 1920 to 1926, there are also receipts from Marinda Foust for installment payments of about one dollar per week to Well-Brietz Furniture Company in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Papers, 1932-1939, include four letters from George Foust in Winston-Salem, where he was making hogsheads for a tobacco company for about two dollars per week, to his wife Marinda and their children in Graham, 1932; a receipt of G. G. Foust showing $42.60 realized on cotton sold to gin at Burlington; and two letters to Marinda Foust from her nephew, John Coble, in Woodbury, N.J., and her niece, Selma Foust in Ramseur, N.C.

In 1945, papers of Edna Lee Foust, daughter of George G. and Marinda Coble Foust, begin. Papers, 1945-1947, include correspondence between Edna and hospitals and other institutions as she tried to enroll and find nursing scholarship aid after her graduation from the Graham Colored High School in 1945. There are also letters from friends and her mother while she was attending classes at the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing, September to December 1947. Folder 5 contains mimeographed papers from the Lincoln Hospital training course. There is also a letter from Rev. George F. Coble in Woodbury, N.J., to Marinda requesting the family Bible so that he could present his birth record to get a birth certificate.

The remaining papers, 1948-1949 and undated, include letters from Edna Lee Foust's mother in Alamance County, N.C.; programs and leaflets concerning activities in Richmond, Va., where Edna took a training course at St. Philips Hospital, 1948, to become a practical nurse; a letter, 1949, indicating Edna was working in a hospital near her home in Haw River, N.C., and had become a licensed practical nurse; and newspaper clippings.

Folder 1

1920-1926

Folder 2

1932-1939

Folder 3

1945-1946

Folder 4

1947

Folder 5

1947 (Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing)

Folder 6

1948-1949

Folder 7

Undated

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Series 2. Portfolios, 1924-1947.

3 items.

Arrangement: chronological.

Four portfolios of student notebooks, test papers, essays, compositions, laboratory results, and other items.

Folder 8

Volume 1: circa 1924 and circa 1928

Papers of Henry A. Coble for science, history, music, and other courses and two thin bluebooks of Rev. Allison Coble, circa 1928, on church subjects. 175 pp.

Folder 9-10

Folder 9

Folder 10

Volume 2: 1946 and undated

Papers of Edna Lee Foust for history, rural sociology, English, French, and other courses, while at Graham Colored High School and Winston-Salem Teachers College. 225 pp.

Folder 11-14

Folder 11

Folder 12

Folder 13

Folder 14

Volume 3: 1947

Papers of Edna Lee Foust for nursing, mathematics, chemistry, and other courses while at Lincoln Hospital, Durham, N.C. 350 pp.

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Series 3. Pictures, 1913-1946 and undated.

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