Archibald Henderson Collection

Title

Archibald Henderson Collection

Description

Archibald Henderson (1877 - 1963) was a descendant of Salisbury's Henderson family, financiers of Daniel Boone's trek into Kentucky. Archibald was a multi-talented mathematics professor at the University of North Carolina, whose scholarly interests included mathematics, history and literary criticism. Henderson is the author of various books and articles, including biographies of George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain. Henderson was on his way to meet with Shaw in England when he made the acquaintance of Mark Twain, also a passenger on the same ship. From this meeting a friendship was formed, resulting in Henderson writing various articles and the biography of Twain.

The Archibald Henderson Collection at Rowan Public Library contains an assortment of works on drama, literary criticism and American history. The portion of the collection archived here are papers accumulated from Henderson's friendship with Mark Twain.

The digitized version of this collection was produced as a part of the Internet Multimedia Studio (IMS) project in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). The IMS project is a part of an initiative to enhance the instructional use of technology at UNC-CH. The virtual archives presented here is the result of a pilot project conducted with the Rowan Public Library in Salisbury, North Carolina, during the spring of 1997. It had the explicit goal of developing a model for conversion and distribution of such materials that could be applied on a larger scale to libraries across the state. SILS faculty member, Dr. Helen R. Tibbo, coordinated this project with Mr. Kevin Cherry, a recent SILS alumnus, and Public History Librarian at Rowan Public Library. SILS students, Laura Micham and Lynn Pritcher, were responsible for the document selection, scanning, and Web page development for this project.

Collection Items

Programme of Concert
Held on the SS Minneapolis

It was on the SS Minneapolis that Archibald Henderson met Mark Twain, aboard to participate in the "concert" held to raise funds for The Seaman's Orphanage. This program featured Twain reading from his autobiography, as…

Photograph
Mark Twain and Archibald Henderson, taken at "Stormfield," near Redding, Connecticut

Photograph
Mark Twain, Archibald Henderson (in the middle) and Mitchell Kennerley and daughter on the deck of the S.S. Minneapolis
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