James Thomas Powers papers, 1860s-1945 and undated.

ArchivalResource

Powers, James T., 1862-1943. James Thomas Powers papers, 1860s-1945 and undated.

James Thomas Powers papers, 1860s-1945 and undated.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/32527107

Collection pertains to Powers' career from the 1870s to the 1930s. There are also materials relating to the acting career and family of his wife Rachel Booth Powers. The Correspondence and Financial and Legal Papers Series deal mainly with professional matters, including contracts and letters of thanks for Powers' involvement in charity efforts during both world wars. The Printed Material Series contains scripts of plays, clippings relevant to James and Rachel Powers, autobiographical material, and theater ephemera. The collection contains a separate series for the writings of Rachel Booth Powers. Included here are several essays she wrote while in school, her teaching certificate, two autograph books dating from 1876 and 1877, and a diary kept in 1897. There is also a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings of poems written by her older sister, Alice Booth. In the Sheet Music Series one can find numerous popular pieces dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including some songs for which Powers wrote the lyrics. The Volumes Series consists of twenty-four undated notebooks belonging to James Powers that contain, in no immediately discernible order, ideas for plays, rough versions of what seem to be vaudeville skits, lyrics for songs, reminiscences of his career, and other miscellaneous notes. Finally, the Writings Series contains scripts of plays that Powers authored as well as some prose material. Of note in this series is a script that Powers intended to turn into, in his own words, a "motion picture play." The Photographs Series, the most substantial in the collection, contains over 260 images dating from approximately 1860 to the early 1940s of Powers, Rachel Booth Powers, their families, and various stage personalities; there are also related clippings and theater programs mentioning either Powers or Rachel Booth. Formats include one ambrotype and 21 tintypes, followed by many late 19th and early 20th century albumen prints and early modern gelatin silver prints. The professionally-taken photographs of persons and theater scenes are particularly rich as a resource for studying vaudeville and Broadway during Powers' life. In addition, this series contains a rare albumen print of John Wilkes Booth, a distant relative of Rachel Booth Powers, likely taken in the late 1850s or early 1860s.

1280 items (6.25 lin. ft.)

Duke University Libraries, Duke University Library; Perkins Library