Lenoir County NcArchives....Introduction Clellan Sutton Collection

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joe P. Sutton, PhD, sutton@edtesting.com, June 19, 2017.

Clellan Sutton Collection, Bucklesberry Community, La Grange, NC.

INTRODUCTION TO THE COLLECTION

Clellan Thomas Sutton (1908-1999), life-long Bucklesberry farmer,
recognized the importance of preserving old Sutton documents that had
been passed down for generations. In the 1930s, Clellan obtained a hand-
woven basket from his grandparents’ home that contained more than 300
documents spanning nearly two hundred-years from 1748 to 1939.

The papers remained in the basket until September, 1976, at which time
Clellan loaned a sample of the papers to East Carolina University for
review. The documents were copied and cataloged in the Joyner Library
Manuscript Collections (Manuscript #315) by archivist, Martha Elmore,
in January, 1977. Titled the Sutton Family Papers, an overview of the
collection is available online:

See https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/0315

Clellan returned the papers to the basket, where they were housed until
2014, when several local Bucklesberry Sutton educators began meeting weekly
to inventory the documents, scan them, and enclose them in acid-free,
archival quality plastic sleeves for preservation. The arduous task of
transcribing the documents, a labor-intensive effort, followed soon there-
after, and was completed in March, 2017.

The Clellan Sutton Collection includes a total of 322 documents as follows:
birth and death records (6); deads and surveys (10); invoices (63); legal 
papers(17); letters and postcards (17); photographs (41); receipts (151);
and miscellaneous papers (17).

The Clellan Sutton Collection is arguably the largest album of its kind
that speaks to the ancestry and origins, and the lives and times, of the
Sutton Family from the Bucklesberry community of La Grange, NC, in Lenoir
County. However, it is not the only collection of Sutton documents. Other
descendants from Bucklesberry also have various papers in their private
possessions. The Collection is presently owned by, and in the possession
of, a local Bucklesberry descendant who wishes to remain anonymous. Digital
scans of the entire Collection of documents are being donated to East
Carolina University Manuscript Collections.