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This collection contains a flip-style ruled notepad titled "Poems by Old Shy" from Manchester, Virginia circa 1905. The book contains 115 pages of poetry; almost entirely typescript, except a few handwritten notes in pencil. The poems contain small stories and morals as well as larger reflections on age and the meaning of life. The signature of E.W. Weisiger (possibly Emmett Washington) appears on the front cover back and backboard. Three poems are pinned into the book which identify Weisiger as 'Old Shy." Also pasted and taped on the back cover is a clipping of a Sergeant James A. Lipscomb, who is identified as a "best friend." The cover wrap contains contemporary crude repairs and title is disintegrating from what appears to be the ink.

This collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, reviews, photographs, a lock of hair, and a scrapbook relating to the life and career of John Thaddeus "Jack" Ackerson, (1898-1975), who published radical antiwar poetry under the name George Jarrboe after his naval service during World War I and II. Ackerson wrote the chapbook "The Unknown Soldier Speaks" and many other pieces of writing under this pseudonym.

This collection contains a scrapbook belonging to Joy Rebekah Kime Benton (1886-1957) of Burlington, North Carolina, an author, poet, painter, and weaver. The contents of scrapbook items are principally documents from 1905 to 1908, although some paste-ins are from the 1930s. There are 128 pages with photographs, clippings, drawings, and ephemera pasted and laid in.

Norfolk Poet's Club Records (1912-1983; 2 cubic feet) include manuscripts of Josephine Johnson and Margaret Haley Carpenter; and correspondence of Mary Sinton Leitch, Josephine Johnson, Julia Johnson Davis, and William Stanley Braithwaite. There are also press releases, newspaper clippings, printed items, and scrapbooks about these poets and editors and their colleagues as well as their poetry and the creative writing process.