Arrangement: chronological, then alphabetical by author.

Chiefly correspondence between O. A. Kirkman ("Arthur" or "Ot") and family members, friends, and business acquaintances. The earliest letters between 1861 and 1871 are between J. C. Horney and Keezia Horney of Deep River, N.C., from A. A. Wheeler and Lydia Wheeler, and from Charles Pidgeon and Katherine Pidgeon. Their relationship to the Kirkman family is unknown.

From 1905 to 1917 letters. are between family members, friends, and business associates of O. A. Kirkman Sr. (1877-1930) and Lulu Hammer Kirkman, with some letters from the young O. A. Kirkman (1900-1985) to his mother. From 1918 to 1927, the correspondence is chiefly between the Kirkmans and their son, Arthur, in school in Charlottesville, Va.; in Cuba, 1919-1920, and in England, 1926-1928. These letters primarily concern Arthur's life at school, family matters, and events in High Point, N.C. Letters from his time in England also includes letters and postcards from various places he visited in Europe.

From 1928 to 1930, there are some letters from Katharine Morgan ("Kat") to her father, Reverend J. L. Morgan, written while Katharine was attending North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.

From 1929 to 1933, the correspondence is chiefly from O. A. Kirkman to friends and family. There is correspondence related to his membership and leadership of Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity. O. A. Kirkman Sr. died as the result of an automobile accident in July 1930, and there are condolence letters from family and friends related to this. From 1931 to 1936, there is correspondence between Arthur and various physicians about his mother (Lulu)'s medical condition resulting from injuries she sustained in the same automobile accident. Of interest is a report completed by Dr. Douglas Vanderhoof of the Tucker Sanitarium in Richmond, Va., in April-May 1933. His report is a review of her prior medical treatment and present condition.

Correspondence from 1933 contains the wedding announcement of O. Arthur Kirkman and Katharine Morgan Kirkman (1910-1985), as well as correspondence related to their honeymoon in the Caribbean. From 1933 through the early 1940s, there are letters between Katharine and her sister, Gladys Morgan Happer (1904-1963), and brother, Karl Ziegler Morgan (1908- ); correspondence from Arthur regarding various professional associations, investment interests, and High Point civic matters. Some correspondence relates to Arthur's service as mayor of High Point.

From 1942 to 1943, Arthur served as chair of the state Volunteer Industrial Salvage Committee for the War Production Board, and there is a great deal of correspondence related to this work. From May 1943 to late 1944, there are letters from Katharine to Arthur while he was in Puerto Rico working for the American Railroad Company of Puerto Rico, as well as letters from friends in High Point. Katharine and the children joined Arthur in Puerto Rico in late 1943. There are letters from Katharine and the children, Larkin and Caroline, to her parents.

Of particular interest in the correspondence immediately following World War II are letters, dating from 1945 to 1947, from O. Arthur Kirkman and Karl Ziegler Morgan, a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. These letters discuss the growing concern of scientists over atomic energy and its dangers, and advocate civilian and international control over the development of atomic energy.

In 1948, Arthur Kirkman was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives. Correspondence from 1949 to 1952 largely consists of letters from constituents and citizens' groups, discussing issues such as liquor control, public education, and taxes. In 1952, Arthur was elected to the North Carolina Senate. Correspondence with constituents deals with issues such as the annexation of land by the cities of Greensboro, N.C. and High Point, a minimum wage law for North Carolina, and the division of profits from state-run ABC liquor stores. Katharine Kirkman's work with the High Point City Council is sporadically documented in this series; however, there is some material related to her work on the High Point annexation issue. Correspondents from this time period include Luther Hartwell Hodges and Terry Sanford, both North Carolina governors.

After leaving the Senate in 1961, O. Arthur Kirkman remained involved in community affairs. Much of the correspondence from 1960 to 1965 relates to Arthur's service in community groups and special commissions. Material of note includes correspondence, meeting minutes, and plans from the Heritage Square Commission, and meeting minutes from the North Carolina Commission on Human Relations, which document efforts to evaluate and enforce compliance with the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Much of the correspondence after 1965 documents Arthur Kirkman's withdrawal from public life, including his resignation from his position at the High Point, Thomasville and Denton Railroad Company in 1965, and his retirement from the Board of Directors of Wachovia Bank and Trust Company in 1970. Most of the correspondence after 1970 is between Arthur and Katharine Kirkman and their family and friends. Correspondents include Arthur and Katharine's children, Alvin Larkin Kirkman, Caroline Elizabeth Kirkman McGuinn, John Manliff Kirkman, and Susan Gwynne Kirkman Honeycutt; as well as Karl Ziegler Morgan and Lois Morgan Johnson, siblings of Katharine Morgan Kirkman; Lina Keller, Katharine's cousin; and Henry Foscue and Holt McPherson, friends of O. Arthur Kirkman. Items of interest include an April 1976 clipping from the High Point Enterprise announcing Katharine's retirement from the Guilford County Board of Education, where she had served since 1963, as well as a June 1979 letter from Katharine to a publisher in High Point who was working on a book about prominent women in Guilford County, detailing her accomplishments as a member of the High Point City Council.

Kirkman correspondence can also be found in Series 13. Additional Correspondence, 1931-1937.

Chiefly correspondence, meeting minutes, financial documents, and other business records of the High Point, Thomasville and Denton Railroad. O. Arthur Kirkman served as Director, Secretary, Treasurer and Executive Vice President of the High Point, Thomasville and Denton Railroad Company from 1930 to 1965. Also in the series are the business records for the American Railroad Company of Puerto Rico, for which O. Arthur Kirkman served as the General Operating Manager, as well as other businesses in which O. Arthur Kirkman had either invested or served on the Board of Directors.

Arrangement: alphabetical.

Correspondence, reports, newspaper and magazine clippings, circulars, notes, and other printed material related to organizations and civic groups in which O. Arthur Kirkman and Katharine Morgan Kirkman were involved. Much of the material dates from the 1950s and 1960s, when both Arthur and Katharine were highly involved in political and civic matters. Particularly well-documented subjects include the North Carolina General Assembly; High Point, N.C., city government; politics; the Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity; and the Klein-Saks Economic and Financial Mission to Chile, in which Arthur participated in 1956. Katharine's service in the High Point City Council and the Guilford County Board of Education are also well-documented.

Arrangement: by type.

Included are materials related to the family, personal, and social lives of the Kirkman family. Much of this material documents the Kirkmans' travel to various countries. Other materials include birth certificates, diaries, and brochures, as well as essays and other materials from the studies of O. Arthur Kirkman and his family.

Arrangement: type.

Chiefly documents related to family financial and legal matters, including estate planning, estate settlements, household expenses, property management, investments, insurance policies, taxes, and personal expenses.

Educational expense records include O. Arthur Kirkman's record of expenditures as a college student, including the years he studied in Cuba (1919-1920) and at Oxford, England (1927-1928). Included are tuition statements, various invoices and receipts, and cancelled checks. Estate papers include wills, estate planning documents, funeral planning, and some related correspondence. Included are records for estates in which O. Arthur Kirkman acted as an executor.

Family records and ledgers contain household income and expenditures covering the years noted. Financial statements include annual statements submitted to Wachovia Bank for credit purposes. Annual expense and income statements prepared by an accountant cover all of O. Arthur Kirkman's personal investments.

Insurance papers include policies, receipts, claims, and correspondence related to the family's life insurance, as well as medical, accident, property, and automobile insurance. Investment files include chiefly correspondence about and listings of bond and stock investments. Miscellaneous financial and legal papers of O. Arthur Kirkman Sr. include invoices, receipts and correspondence related to various commercial enterprises and personal accounts.

Property-related documents cover the Kirkman family homes and various properties the family owned as investments. Included are blueprints for some properties, and invoices and receipts for improvements and repairs for various properties. Deeds generally range from 1905 to the mid-1970s. The folder for the Roaring Gap cottage includes plans for a Better Homes and Gardens Five Star Home Plan.

Retirement papers include information about O. Arthur Kirkman's retirement benefits from his service in the North Carolina State Legislature and from the Railroad Retirement Board. Tax documents include receipts for local and county property taxes, and information relating to federal income tax filings.

Arrangement: chronological begining with the Kirkman family. Other related families, Morgans, Buehlers, Shoups, Zieglers and Hammers follow. Photographs that do not appear to feature a Kirkman or a Morgan are arranged chronologically by decade. Photographs of various rail roads and depots are filed separately. Travel photographs, mostly from the 1920s are arranged by trip or event.

Arrangement: chronological.

The Morgan family is related to the Kirkmans via Katharine Morgan Kirkman. The bulk of the correspondence was written to Rev. J. L. Morgan and Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan from their children Gladys Morgan Happer, Karl Ziegler Morgan, Katharine Morgan Kirkman, and Lois Morgan Johnson. Letters from before 1919 are mostly from siblings of Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan discussing family-related subjects, including the death of Virginia's sister, Maude.

J. L. and Virginia Morgan's correspondence is particularly extensive with their children Gladys and Karl. Correspondence from 1920 to 1935 documents Gladys Morgan Happer's undergraduate education at Lenoir-Rhyne College, her medical education at the University of North Carolina and the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, and her post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. From 1935 to 1941, and again from 1946 to 1948, Gladys served as a Lutheran medical missionary in India, working as a doctor at various hospitals, including Vellore Medical College, Kugler Memorial Hospital in Guntur and the hospital at Highclerc School in Kodaikanal (now Kodaikanal International School). While in India, she married Colonel William Happer, a medical officer in the British Army. Her letters to J. L. and Virginia Morgan during these periods describe in great detail her medical work in India, her impressions of Indian society and culture, and her feelings about Christian proselytization in India. Letters written after World War II deal more with daily life in India, and how her young sons, William Happer Jr. and Ian Happer, adjusted to life in a different culture.

Karl Ziegler Morgan's correspondence with his parents documents his education at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, as well as his career as a physicist. After earning his Ph.D. from Duke in 1934, Karl taught at Lenoir-Rhyne College until 1943, when he was selected to work on the Manhattan Project. Letters from 1943 to 1945 track his work on the project at the University of Chicago and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., although there is no specific information on the work he was doing. After the end of World War II, he continued at Oak Ridge, where he was instrumental in developing the field of health physics, studying the effects of radiation on the human body, and attempting to minimize human exposure to radiation. He also became a public advocate of arms control and international nuclear regulation. Much of his correspondence from the late 1940s and 1950s was written from various cities around the world where he was attending conferences on health physics and nuclear regulation, including the Atoms for Peace conference in 1955. In his letters, Karl relates his activities at the conferences and during his travels, as well as his home life with his family at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and comments on the future of atomic energy.

Other correspondents include Anna Shafer, Ruth Buckley, and Ida Willis, sisters of Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan; Lina Keller, Virginia's niece; William H. Germann, a Lutheran pastor from Kirkland, Wash.; and Kathe and Gerd Nagel, a couple in Tubingen, Germany, to whom J. L. and Virginia Morgan sent aid packages in the years following World War II. Much of the non-family correspondence deals with Lutheran Church activities, particularly those related to J. L. Morgan's tenure as president of the North Carolina Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America. In addition, there is a long run of correspondence related to Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan's efforts to persuade the United States Park Service to erect a monument to Rupert Livingston, a soldier in the Union Army who was killed and buried in Salisbury, N.C., in 1864. Virginia and others believed that he was actually Robert Livingston, son of David Livingston, the famed British missionary to Africa.

Arrangement: by subject and chronological.

Genealogy notes are letters to J. L. Morgan, mostly about Morgan family lines as well as some Shoup and Ziegler family material. The correspondence is arranged chronologically. Also included are clipping files, K. Z. Morgan speeches, Gladys Morgan Happer prose and poetry, and sermons and speeches by J. L. Morgan and others.

Arrangement: by type.

Financial and legal documents, including bank statements, tax returns, receipts, legal records, and correspondence, mostly relating to the estates of Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan and J. L. Morgan. Virginia Morgan's estate records include court documents relating to the partition of land among the surviving children and the children of Gladys Morgan Happer, who had died before Virginia's death. J. L. Morgan's insurance forms include policies and correspondence related to his life insurance and pension received through the Lutheran Church, as well as widow's benefits received by Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan after J. L. Morgan's death.

Arrangement: by subject.

Scrapbooks include baby books containing childhood information, photographs, and birth certificates of the children of Katharine Morgan Kirkman. Also included are photograph albums containing pictures of Morgan family members.

Arrangement: by subject.

Photographs of members of the Morgan family, including J. L. Morgan, Virginia Clay Shoup Morgan, and their children, Gladys Morgan Happer, Karl Ziegler Morgan, Katharine Morgan Kirkman, and Lois Morgan Johnson. Included are photographs of J. L. Morgan at the opening of various Lutheran churches in North Carolina.

Arrangement: by subject.

Miscellaneous volumes include a biology notebook of Charlotte Purcell Spencer, whose relationship to the Kirkman and Morgan families is uncertain. Also included are journals of pressed leaves by Lulu Hammer Kirkman and another student, as well as a scrapbook about famous musicians compiled by Gladys Morgan in 1917.

Arrangement: alphabetical by last name.

This correspondence was originally filed separately by the donor and was organized alphabetically by the name of the correspondent. The vast majority of the correspondence dates from the 1930s, and deals with O. Arthur Kirkman's public activities, including his memberships in civic and social organizations, such as Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity, High Point College, American Business Club; his business interests, including his role as general manager of the High Point, Thomasville and Denton Railroad; and his governmental activities, including his service on the Board of School Commissioners for High Point, N.C., and the State Advisory Council of the North Carolina State Employment Service. There is considerable correspondence relating to the declining health of Lulu Hammer Kirkman, O. Arthur Kirkman's mother. There are also many exchanges of letters in which family members and friends ask Arthur for assistance in dealing with financial difficulties, and Arthur endeavors to help them. Frequent correspondents include Karl Ziegler Morgan, Rev. J. L. Morgan, Arthur's friends Thomas McEachern and Conrad Roser; James Lovelace, Arthur's law partner; and William Bradley Umstead, then representing the 6th District of North Carolina in the United States House of Representatives.

Acquisitions information: Accession 103524.

Processing information: Title compiled from original container.