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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 Carl H. Pegg papers #4771, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Eleanor S. Pegg of Chapel Hill, N.C., in August 1995 (Acc. 95113) and George Brown Tindall in July 1997 (Acc. 97089).

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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.

• Heisser, David C. R.
• Higby, Chester Penn, b. 1885.
• Historians--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• History--Study and teaching--North Carolina.
• Pegg family.
• Pegg, Carl H. (Carl Hamilton), 1905-
• Pegg, Eleanor Smith.
• Sydnor, Charles S. (Charles Sackett), 1898-
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Faculty--History--20th century.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962). Dept. of History.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Faculty--History--20th century.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dept. of History.

Carl Hamilton Pegg was born on 13 April 1905 in a farmhouse near the center of Deep River Township, Guilford County, N.C. He attended Millwood Common School from age six to twelve, skipped three years and then spent two years in prep school. He entered the University of North Carolina in 1923, completing work for a Ph.D. in European history and government in 1929.

Pegg taught at the University of Mississippi in fall and spring 1929-1930, during which time he lived in a boarding house adjacent to the William Faulkner home. He remembered seeing William and his father, who was bursar of the University, frequently and recalled playing ball with William in the late afternoons and teaching William's brother. Pegg spent the summer 1930 studying and traveling in Europe.

Pegg joined the UNC History Department faculty in 1930 and remained there until his retirement in 1975. In 1934-1935, he developed a syllabus for the General College's freshman interdisciplinary course. The widely diverse bibliographic needs of the new course prompted the University Librarian to set aside a large reading room for General College students. By the mid-1940s, the room had evolved into the social sciences reading room, stocked with over 50,000 volumes and heavily used by all undergraduates. This collection was eventually housed in its own building as the Undergraduate Library.

Beginning in the late 1930s, Pegg developed 20th-century European, Russian, Eastern European, and Far Eastern history courses, and assisted in strengthening the History Department's graduate program. He was chair of the Department from 1960 to 1965 and directed over 50 M.A. theses and 35 Ph.D. dissertations.

Pegg helped found the Southern Historical Association in the 1930s and spoke at its first meeting in 1935. He also helped organize the European section within the Association and served as its chair in the late 1950s.

Pegg's chief teaching and writing focus was 20th-century Europe. Among Pegg's major publications were American Society and the Changing World (with L. M. Brooks and others, 1947); Contemporary Europe in World Focus (1956); and Evolution of the European Idea, 1914-1932 (1983). After retirement, he compiled and published History and Historians in the University of North Carolina, 1795-1950 (1990). He was also well published in historical journals both in Europe and in the United States.

Pegg was an ardent conservationist. He and his wife Eleanor owned and cared for several forested tracts in Orange and Chatham counties, N.C.

[Adapted in part from an autobiographical essay that Carl Pegg wrote sometime after 1983.]

Correspondence, financial materials, writings, genealogical materials, and other items relating to Carl Hamilton Pegg.

Correspondence and related items, 1931-1983 and undated: Letters beginning in the 1930s include those exchanged with colleagues, particularly Charles S. Sydnor at the University of Mississippi, Chester Penn Higby at the University of Wisconsin, and, David Heisser at Appalachian State University. Some correspondence relates to Pegg's History Department work, including a few letters in the 1930s about establishing the General College's library. Other letters relate to Pegg's publications. There are also a few letters from Pegg's brother Fred, first in medical school in Virginia in the 1930s and then as a doctor in Winston-Salem, N.C.; letters in the mid-1930s relating to Pegg's marriage; and letters and other items in the 1970s, about settling Pegg's brother's estate and establishing the Herbert Dale Pegg and Mayme Kate Carter Pegg Scholarships at UNC-CH. About 150 items.

• P-4771/1-3