A Peculiar Instrument in Collecting Foreign Records

Connecting the Docs: True Stories from the Old North State

In this episode of Connecting the Docs: Unprocessed, two former editors of , Bob Cain and Joe Beatty, join host John Horan to discuss the foreign collections within the State Archives of North Carolina. They discuss the decision to travel to the United Kingdom and collect these documents, an effort that went through fits and starts throughout the 20th century. Bob Cain shares his experiences doing this work in London in the 1960s and early 1970s and talks about how he found and shipped the collections to the State Archives in Raleigh. He discusses some of his favorite documents and reflects on how North Carolinians regard their history, from recent memories to the state’s colonial past.

Sources Mentioned:

Foreign Collections:

https://archives.ncdcr.gov/researchers/finding-aids/records-foreign-collections

Carolina Charter of 1663

https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p15012coll11/id/10/rec/1

The Colonial Records of North Carolina

https://www.ncdcr.gov/about/history/historical-publications/colonial-records