NEWS

CHAPEL HILL -- One of North Carolina’s most important historical library collections has been donated to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Gilliam and Annette Wood of Edenton and their family.

Gilliam Wood's sister and brother-in-law, Anna and Trent Ragland, funded construction and established a support fund for the Hayes Plantation Library replica in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of UNC-CH’s Wilson Library.

The Hayes collection contains more than 1,800 books and rare bound volumes, plus 480 pamphlets and periodicals, dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, said Bob Anthony, North Carolina Collection curator. Its oldest volume is a 1573 digest of English legal cases; its first volume published in America is a 1764 "Collection of All Acts of the Assembly of North Carolina."

"Its significance is the opportunity it offers scholars to examine in more depth than previously possible the intellectual and cultural life of several of the most influential families of colonial and antebellum North Carolina," Anthony said.

The Hayes Library has been on loan at Wilson for more than a decade. Recently, the Woods decided to make the library a permanent fixture at UNC-CH because they wanted to help the university fulfill its mission of service to the people of North Carolina.

"We've always been interested in the university," said Gilliam Wood. "I went to school at Carolina and so did my wife, my father and my daughter. Annette is on the university's board of trustees. The Wood family thought it would be nice to consummate our connections to the university with this gift."

The Wood family inherited Hayes Plantation in 1865 from family friend James Johnston, who served on Carolina's board of trustees for nearly 50 years. The Johnstons and the Woods housed the collection in the plantation home's octagonal library -- the model for Wilson Library's replica -- for nearly two centuries.

James Johnston's father, Samuel, began building the collection in the 18th century with books previously owned by Charles Eden and Gabriel Johnston, first and second royal governors of the North Carolina colony. Samuel Johnston, a Revolutionary War leader, delegate to the Continental Congress, North Carolina governor and U.S. Senator, accumulated about 500 works during his lifetime. His son, James, added more than 1,000 items.

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