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 John W. Markham Drug Company Records #4541, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Henry Lister of Chapel Hill, N.C., in December 1989.

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.

Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom, January 1990

Updated by: Laura Hart, March 2021

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Many items, particularly the 1916 bills and receipts, are in poor physical condition and require extremely careful handling.

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.

• Account books.
• Carrboro (N.C.)--Commerce--History--20th century.
• Carrboro (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Drugstores--Accounting.
• Drugstores--North Carolina.
• Hemphill, Clyde Hoke.
• Hemphill, Sallie Thelma Markham.
• John W. Markham Drug Company (Carrboro, N.C.)
• Physicians--North Carolina--History--20th century.

The John W. Markham Drug Store was located in Carrboro, North Carolina. Materials in this collection show that the drugstore flourished in the middle and late 1910s. A few pieces of blank stationery, dating from the 1890s, identify John W. Markham as a "General Commission Merchant and Wholesale and Retail Dealer in Heavy and Fancy Groceries" in Durham, North Carolina; these papers offer little other information about John W. Markham outside of his ownership of the drugstore, or about his wife, author of most of the letters in this collection.

A bit more information is available about the Markham's daughter, Sallie Thelma Markham Hemphill. She married Clyde Hoke Hemphill (1891-1959) on 2 September 1915. An undated letter in this collection hints that the marriage was not altogether happy. Hemphill, originally from Marion, North Carolina, was a 1911 graduate of the University of North Carolina. He attended medical school at the University of Maryland, graduating in 1913. Hemphill was a general practitioner in Chapel Hill for 14 years, perhaps starting around 1917. During World War II, he served as medical supervisor in charge of first aid stations at the atomic bomb facility in Hanford, Washington. At some point, he married Helen Chubbuck, a nurse from Idaho who had received her training in Salt Lake City. Hemphill and his second wife established a practice in Black Mountain, North Carolina. They apparently spent the months of May through October each year ministering to the holiday crowds in the resort town of Highlands, North Carolina. Hemphill retired in Black Mountain in 1958 and died there in 1959. There is no record of what became of the first Mrs. Hemphill.

(Sources for this note include items in the Newspaper Clipping File in the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Letters, 1913-1916; an account book, 1912-1917; and bills and receipts, 1916-1917; all relating to the John Markham Drug Company of Carrboro, N.C., and to Sallie Thelma Markham Hemphill and Clyde Hoke Hemphill, the daughter and son-in-law of the drugstore owner, John W. Markham. The letters discuss the unhappiness of Hemphill, a physician, and his wife. The account book and bills and receipts show purchases and expenditures of the drugstore and its clientele.