Collections : [Roanoke Public Libraries]

Roanoke Public Libraries

Virginia Room
Roanoke Public Libraries
706 South Jefferson Street
Roanoke, VA 24016
Primary Collecting Areas:
Genealogy and local history
Description:
The Virginia Room holds Roanoke Public Library's non-circulating historical and genealogical research resources. The Virginia Room collects materials of the Roanoke Valley and the Commonwealth of Virginia and to a lesser degree, materials of states which are closely tied to Virginia and its people by birth, immigration, migration or by boundary divisions.
POC: Dyron Knick
Phone: (540) 853-2073
Start Over Repository Roanoke Public Libraries Collection A Guide to the McKendrie-Day Collection

A Guide to the McKendrie-Day Collection

The documents in the McKendrie Day Family Papers include family history documents and materials relating to Charles and Sarah McKendrie’s four daughters, Grace, Mabel, Jessie “Boots” and Hilda “Irene”. The majority of the materials focus on Mabel and Irene McKendrie. Mabel’s documents focus on her years spent as a teenager in Roanoke, VA (1926-1928). Her diary, travel journal and high school programs document the life of a budding teenager in 1920s Roanoke, VA. Her diary lists the names of friends and families living in Roanoke, VA. Her manuscripts, undated, show her skills as a young writer. In one of her manuscripts, “Ellen of the Westland”, there is a torn page from a magazine advertising a writing contest with a $25,000 cash prize for the best novel by a woman. The documents relating to “Irene” McKendrie focus primarily on her tragic death in a car accident in Washington DC on her 17th birthday. Compiled in a scrapbook, there are photographs, letters, newsclippings, and sympathy cards, many of them from Roanoke residents.

  1. Roanoke Public Libraries

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  • A Guide to the McKendrie-Day Collection 13