Series
1
Mary Jo Bratton Personal Papers
1967-1998
Records created by Mary Jo Bratton during her tenure as history professor and as University Historian. Dr. Bratton was born in Matoaka, West Virginia on July 18, 1926. She attended Montreat College for 2 years and received
her B.A. in Biology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1949. She got her M.A. and Ph.D. in history at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1965 and 1969.She came to East Carolina University in 1967 and served as as department chair from
1992 to 1994. In 1980 Chancellor Thomas B. Brewer commissioned a history of the university to be written to commemorate the school's 75th anniversary. Dr. Bratton began her research in 1980 and published East Carolina
Universty, The Formative Years 1907-1982 in 1986. This research and publication led to her participation in the symposium ECU: A Past to Build Upon, A Promise to Fulfill in 1982. The Symposium Proceedings are available in
Joyner Library. She also co-authored a 90th anniversary publication with photographer George Threewitts. In addition to her extensive research on ECU, Bratton published a biography of southern author John Esten Cooke and an
illustrated history of Greenville entitled Greenville: Heart of the East. Dr. Bratton retired from the university in 1995. She continued to research and write until her death in 1998. The records have been divided into ____ sub-series.
Scrapbooks, memorabilia and photographs donated by the John Christenbury family regarding his college career and coaching at high schools in North Carolina and Florida. John B. Christenbuy was born in Statesville, NC in 1907.
In 1926 he entered Davidson College and pursued a college athletic career in wrestling, baseball and track. Among the memorabila related to his years at Davidson are his varsity award which he received in 1930. This document
lists him as the captain of the wrestling team.
Upon graduation from Davidson he accepted a position at Altamont Consolidated High School in Crossnore, NC. He is credited for founding the football program there. He took leave from Crossnore to continue his education at
Columbia University receiving a master's in physical education in 1934. There is a clipping in the collection regarding his work at Crossnore. In 1934 Christenbury moved to Jacksonville, Florida where he served as athletic director
at the Bolles Military and Naval Training School. There are several clippings and unidentified photographs of teams and individual Bolles players in the collection.
Leaving Jacksonville in 1937, Christenbury moved to Asheville, NC where he coached at the high school. Again there are numerous photos and clippings from his work in Asheville. Also in the collection is the team's batting
averages for an undetermined year.
Christenbury arrived at East Carolina Teacher College in 1940 and served as the first football coach until 1943. His 1941 team went undefeated and still hold's ECU's best winning record 7-0-0. In his two years at the college,
ECTC chalked up 15 wins and 12 losses. On July 1, 1944, John Christenbury was killed in an explosion at Port Chicago, California. His wife and daughter survived him.
The loose photographs and newspaper clippings have been removed from the scrapbooks. The photographs are housed in the University Archives Photograph Collection, Record Group UW0000, Series 2, Sub-Series 11 Non-ECU
Photographs. The clippings are in box one of this series.
Clipping file created regarding faculty and staff, material will be integrated into UW0000 Series 1 as those files are opened.
Research compiled for his book In Retrospect, biographies of people for whom ECU buildings and rooms have been named for. In process.
