University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Manuscripts Department

The Manuscripts Department of the University Library had its origin in the establishment of the Southern Historical Collection by the university's Board of Trustees on 14 January 1930 and the appointment of Dr. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, a white historian and Kenan Professor of History and Government, as its first director. During the early years of the collection, Hamilton traveled extensively throughout the Southeast gathering manuscript materials, frequently rescuing them from attics and barns. His mission was to save southern history from obscurity and to make its primary sources available for research in a single great collection. A charismatic man, he was the object of both sympathy and antipathy; his supporters applauded his efforts to preserve southern manuscripts, while his detractors resented the intrusion of "Ransack" Hamilton into their locales.

The Southern Historical Collection was housed in the University's Louis Round Wilson Library, completed in 1929. Its early growth was supported by private donations, chiefly an endowment provided by Sarah Graham Kenan and by grants from the Carnegie Foundation. In the early 1940s the salaries of the support staff were incorporated into the Library budget, and in 1948 the director's salary was included as well. Collecting trips and professional travel, however, continued to be supported mainly by the collection's endowment funds. Dr. Hamilton retired as director in 1948 but continued to travel and acquire materials for the collection until 1951. By that time the collection held an estimated 2,140,00 items documenting many aspects of southern history, particularly the social system of the Old South, plantations, slavery, and the Civil War.

As the collection came to function more as a unit of the Library, it was called upon to handle manuscript materials received through bequest to the university. In November 1958, as a result of this expanded responsibility, it was included in a newly created and broader administrative unit, the Manuscripts Department. The department developed three main areas of collecting: (1) private papers and institutional records relating to southern regional development (the Southern Historical Collection), (2) manuscript writings and other papers of regional, national and international literary figures (General and Literary Manuscripts), and (3) the official manuscript records of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of the General Administration of the University of North Carolina System (University Archives). The Southern Folklife Collection was established as a fourth collecting area in 1985, its purpose being to document the South's expressive traditions, especially in music.

In 1975 the Library revised its administrative structure and placed the Manuscripts Department under the supervision of the associate librarian for public services. The structure was further refined in October 1981, when the Manuscripts Department, the North Carolina Collection, and the Rare Book Collection were placed under a new associate librarian for special collections. The Library eliminated the position of associate librarian for special collections in 2002 but re-established it in 2006.