Tulane University's
Louisiana Research Collection

LaRC Manuscripts Collection 256 is the family bible given to Tulane in 1973 by Virginia Williams Harris and Espy Williams of New Orleans.  It was donated in memory of their sister, Lealuh (or Leluh) Olivia Williams Davis (1877-1973), a member of the Trinity United Methodist Church. This bible is considered an archival collection because of its unique and personalized additions. The book itself, a large locking volume with ornate binding, contains handwritten genealogical notations about members of this branch of the African-American Williams family of Louisiana.   In various people's handwriting, there are lovingly written notes listing marriages, births and deaths having happened from the mid-nineteenth century forward through 1973, along with pressed leaves and flowers.  Toward the end of the volume, there is a small batch of family photographs, including tintype and printed individual portraits made at studios in New Orleans, kept probably since before the ...

The Robert C. Davey School, located in 1936 at 1307 Dryades St., between Erato and Thalia, was built on the site of two previous schools, the Webster School and the Jefferson School. Around 1911, it was named in honor of New Orleans politician Robert Charles Davey (1853-1908), who had served in the U. S. House of Representatives.   Later in the century, this building housed the  Myrtle Banks Elementary School.    LaRC Manuscripts Collection 184 consists of scrapbooks compiled by teachers and students of the Robert C. Davey School. Vol. 1 includes keepsakes commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the school in 1936, such as invitations, programs, telegrams, greeting cards, ribbons, buttons, leaves, children's artwork, mounted photographs of the school, teachers and other school employees, and other items of social ephemera. Vol. 2 includes school papers covering sessions in the 1950s. Images of the nineteenth-century schools on the locatio...