SALISBURY — Livingstone College was founded by a man named Joseph Charles Price, but until recently the amount of his primary source material available at the college was limited. However, thanks to a donation last month from Rex Butler, students and visitors can peer into Price’s mind through verified letters, notes and other pieces now on display at the campus in the The Gerald Shrader Butler Collection.

Butler stumbled upon the pieces at the estate sale of a former history professor from Central Piedmont Community College. 

“They had two pieces,” Butler said. “I asked if they had any more and they said, ‘Yeah.’”

When the professor died, his children hired someone to clear out his house. Butler lent a hand and in exchange, the professor’s descendants let him keep several Black history artifacts. It turns out that there were several more Price pieces in the collection. 

“We have Dr. Price’s hand-written notes of a particular speech he was working on,” said Kim Allman, a librarian, archivist and curator at Livingstone College. “Then, I realized that we had the more finalized copy of the speech with his handwritten corrections and it is all on Livingstone College stationary.”

Allman told a group at the Heritage Hall archives, where the documents are stored, that the collection includes original tickets to Price’s lectures in England and love letters to his wife, Jenny. 

“He loved her,” Allman said. “You get the personal side of this amazing man. As I have been reading his words and transcribing them, the word that comes to mind is genius, but not just genius, also passionate and compassionate.”

Laura Johnson is the director of library services at Livingstone. She said that when the college is approached by a private donor, there are steps involved to verify authenticity of the artifacts in addition to other elements of accepting the donation. 

“We had to receive them through the library because Heritage Hall archives falls under the library,” Johnson said. “The procedure is that we look at it, so we can see whether or not it is legitimate.”

Other considerations include if the pieces can be covered by the college’s insurance. 

“With it being such a major donation, especially about our first president and founder, we wanted to make sure it was acceptable for what we want but also legitimate,” Johnson said. “You can see for yourself that it is a legitimate thing. 

“We looked at the printing of it, the paper that it was on because it was on Livingstone paper. We looked at the writing itself because we had things to compare it to to make sure it was his handwriting.”

The latest additions greatly expands what the college has on file from its founder. 

“This does not compare to what we have on Price,” Johnson said. “Some other schools have things that we don’t have. We had a few of his things. Some things have been lost over the years because they were not curated properly. So that is what we are trying to do now, is get everything curated properly.”

Johnson said they will eventually digitize the pieces.

“It means so much to us because now we can say we have some information about Joseph Charles Price, where archivists can come and do the research here, rather than going to a school that did not have anything to do with him,” Johnson said. 

Current Livingstone President Dr. Anthony J. Davis said it meant the world to him to have the college’s founder’s work on display. 

“It is a ‘sankofa’ moment for me,” Davis said. “It’s a Ghanaian word, meaning looking back to look forward. It’s amazing to see what Joseph Charles Price envisioned and what his contribution was to higher education as far back as the 1800s and to see Livingstone college and being able to lead a Livingstone College.”

When asked what the donation meant to the college, Johnson said it simply but put it best, “It is home.”