Support Fain Archives

Fain Archives is named for the Fain family of Murphy, North Carolina. In the mid-1920s local resident and shopkeeper, Fred O. Scroggs took an active leadership role in gathering donations of money, land, and labor to help establish the John C. Campbell Folk School. The gifts were documented on file cards which the Folk School refers to as “pledge cards.” The Fain family of Murphy have a “pledge card” in the archives showing that they supported the Folk school in the mmid-1920s. When the first History Center was developed in the mid-1990s, Mary Porter (Fain) Owen made a generous donation to establish the Archives in the name of the entire Fain Family.

The Fain Archives contains letters, maps of southwestern North Carolina, audio recordings of local and regional traditional music and oral histories, books pertinent to ballad and folksong study, and local/regional history and culture. Photographs document the topography of the region, local residents and community events. Significant to the archival collection are photographs by portrait photographer Doris Ulmann, a well-respected artist who included Appalachian people among her interests. Textiles, woodcarvings by the Brasstown Carvers Cooperative, baskets, ironwork, and ephemera are also important to the Folk School’s archival collection.