Women's History Manuscript Collections at the Rubenstein Library

Promoter of indigo culture in South Carolina. Included are a letterbook containing both personal and business correspondence, legal papers, and land surveys.

Hereford, England. Chiefly letters from Stephenson to her brother William, describing her life as a domestic servant in the service of Abraham Whittaker of Lyson House.

Cherokee Co., GA. Businesswoman. Account book, 1847-1855, kept by Franklin, a widow, concerning a gold mine, sawmill, farm, water-powered mill, and a coal and slate mining business begun by her on a 40-acre lot on the Etowah River which she won in the gold lottery of 1832. Included are entries for work done by hired hands and slaves; work by both women and men is recorded. Second volume includes an account ledger kept by Franklin's son and copies of letters by Ophelia Yearby.

London, England. Domestic worker. Correspondence, journals, and poetry documenting a young servant's travels throughout Europe and the Mediterranean with her employers. Contains detailed descriptions of local customs and a running commentary on the activities of the wealthy class.

Brunswick Co., NC. Farm account book includes entries for women laborers.

Wilmington, NC. Seamstress. Account ledger recording type of work, materials and fabrics used and payment received for her sewing, as well as other miscellaneous accounts and inventories.

Richmond, VA. Official correspondence, minutes, speeches and writings, financial statements, research data and photographs of a vocational guidance agency led by educator and social reformer Orie Latham Hatcher. Included are records from predecessor agencies, the Virginia Bureau of Vocations for Women, 1914-1919, and the Southern Women's Educational Alliance, 1920-1936, which document research on women's occupations and training and efforts made to provide vocational guidance to rural girls and college women in the South. Records also document Hatcher's career as a pioneer in vocational guidance research and service and her work with other women's organizations such as the American Association of University Women and the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs.

Records of the CIO's Industrial Union Councils, Organizing Committees, Political Action Committees and Publicity Departments for various states contain correspondence, subject files, financial papers, pamphlets, petitions, serials, speeches, and clippings that document the organization's administration and activities in procuring and disseminating information on political issues as well as efforts in organizing and educating workers in Southern industries. Materials contain general information on women in industry as well as information on organizations and unions in which women play a major role such as the Textile Workers Union, the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union, the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, and the Highlander Folk School.

Charlotte, NC. Account book, receipts, memoranda, a letter, clippings, mostly 1901-1909, that primarily record household accounts, especially expenditures for food, goods, and services. Includes payment to black men and women for work in the house and on the grounds. Members of the extended family are occasionally included in the records.

Durham, NC. Black businesswoman. Employed by North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company for 32 years, Rosser acquired several pieces of rental property in Durham and her hometown, Lynchburg, VA. Legal and financial papers document rental and maintenance of the properties; personal loans to individuals; and her investments in stocks and government bonds. Correspondence also relates to rental property but is chiefly personal and contains several letters to foster-daughter Mattie Meyers, who was a leader in the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP. Photographs of family date back to the mid-1800s.

Durham, NC. Chiefly personal and professional papers of Clydie Scarborough, manager of the Scarborough Nursery School in Durham for over fifty years. Includes scrapbooks, clippings, printed material, and photographs relating to the nursery school. Also letters from her husband, John Clarence Scarborough (1877-1972) founder of the black Scarborough-Hargett Funeral Home in Durham, her mother, family photographs, and other genealogical information about the Fullwood family.

ounded in 1979, the Coalition's primary concern was expanding the limited employment opportunities for women in the rural South. Correspondence, project files, research files, subject files, personnel records, legal and financial records, photographs, video and audio tapes, and publications document the organization's activities from its inception to its demise. Project files document various programs designed to challenge institutional discrimination, open up jobs for women and people of color, support women organizing to improve working conditions, and help women develop the skills necessary to control their own economic circumstances. Administrative files include minutes of board meetings, grant proposals, mailing lists, and internal memorandum which show how the organization was run

Atlanta, GA. Correspondence, minutes, financial papers, reports, and pamphlets relating to the Southern Conference on Women and Children in Industry which Underwood chaired.

McLean, VA. Teacher, librarian, New Deal administrator. Correspondence, financial statements, writings, interviews, research reports, printed materials, photographs, diaries, and scrapbooks comprising Warburton's personal and professional papers. The bulk of the collection consists of the records of the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth, 1946-1963, of which Warburton was the executive secretary. Also included is material for other organizations and institutions such as Brookwood Labor College, Columbia University, Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, Spelman College, Atlanta University, Affiliated Schools for Workers, and the U.S. Children's Bureau. Topics include workers in the North and South during the 1920s; workers' schools and training unemployed teachers in the 1930s; and migrant farm laborers in the South.

Charlottesville, VA. Papers of Williamson and her mother, Isabelle Holmes Perkinson, including letters to Perkinson from former students of the University of Virginia who patronized her boardinghouse; notes and bills reflecting frequent financial difficulty; letters from Williamson to her mother while attending the Georgetown Visitation Convent, Washington, DC, visiting the Panama Canal Zone, and working in the Navy Department in Washington, 1913-1917. Additional correspondence relates to World War I, early moving pictures, life during the Roaring Twenties, and the beginning of the Depression.

Carefully assembled over forty-five years by noted bibliophile, activist, and collector Lisa Unger Baskin, this collection is a transformative body of material documenting women at work.
In Baskin’s own words, "the unifying thread is that women have always been productive and working people and this history essentially has been hidden."

Trade cards and advertisements help to document the history of working women. The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection includes thousands of ephemeral cards, labels, broadsides, photographs, and clippings that together testify to the diversity of ways that women have earned a living.