By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- In the foreground of the sepia-toned photograph is a horse and buggy, with two riders, hats on, sitting stiffly. S.R. Carrington's Bar is behind the buggy and a sign for Blackwell's Durham Tobacco is on a many-columned house off to the left.

This is Durham -- "young and raw," accurately notes the caption -- circa 1898, the year of the founding of the N.C. Mutual and Provident Loan Association. The photograph is one of many hundreds, along with a multitude of books, magazines, newsletters, business plaques, promotional items, newspaper clippings and thousands of other items collected over more than a century that document the history of the nation's largest and oldest African-American life insurance company. They make up N.C. Mutual's historic archive collection that officially will be transferred to N.C. Central and Duke universities today.

The materials, which range from the mundane to the irreplaceable, will be moved next month from the Mutual Life Building on West Chapel Hill Street to Duke's Library Service Center and be mutually administered by Central's Archives, Records and History Center and Duke's John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

"This is a very important collection," said Karen Jean Hunt, the director of the Franklin Center collection. "Not just because of the business itself and its long history, but it's very, very important to join companies like Toyota, Honda and Coca-Cola who have preserved their histories. To have an African-American business that thought enough of what they had to preserve all of this is very significant. We hope this will be a model for other African-American businesses to preserve their history."

To Andre Vann, coordinator of university archives at NCCU, the materials in what will be called the N.C. Mutual Collection are "a national treasure."

"The collection tells the story of a unique institution," Vann said. "But in a much larger sense, they tell the story not just of North Carolina Mutual, but of a community, of Durham. These are community records and papers."

Obtaining the archives for the two universities also has practical benefits, Vann added.

"They will allow both universities to work with not only scholars, faculty and students to help preserve very important historical documents and records, but will also give us the ability to train and cultivate a cadre of students in history and library science and to train them in various preservation techniques," he said.

The archives, including the personal papers of all the company's chief executives, sprawl across the lower level of the Mutual Life building and occupy part of the 12th floor. The lower level's metal bookcases are filled with boxes and magazine files containing everything from myriad copies of The Whetstone -- for many decades, the insurance company's self-published quarterly magazine -- to actuarial tables from the 1940s in Box #67.

On the 12th floor, a rotating document and photo exhibit showcases items ranging from a shot of Mutual agents at the "Western Underwriters Association meeting in Charlotte, 1924" to a note from Eleanor Roosevelt's office at the White House to the front page of The New York Times in 1966 that trumpeted the opening of the company's new headquarters.

"It's a very extensive collection," said Kimberly Moore, public relations manager for the company. "Everything's here -- all the documents, all the books, everything the presidents kept in their offices. They really respected the value of history."

For many years, the company had its own archivist. When the last one left his post a few years ago, Duke's Hunt approached the company about the possibility of obtaining the archives.

"We had been aware of the collection for some time," she said. "Then we had some conversations about it and the company was amenable to the idea of providing more broad access to the collection."

The Franklin Center had been looking for some time for projects it could share with NCCU, Hunt said. "This one made sense," she said, "because we both sort of shared John Hope."

Housing the archives at the library center, Hunt and Vann both said, will enable broader access to the materials but also help protect them, in a temperature and humidity-controlled, secure location.

They also will remain in the community where they were generated, Moore pointed out. "We talked to a lot of folks about placing the collection, but Duke and North Carolina Central were the natural choice," she said. "This way we can keep the collection accessible to anyone who wants to see it."

The multitude of items will be cataloged by the end of the year and digitized by the end of next year. Today's ceremony, in the Heritage Room on the 12th floor of the Mutual offices, begins at 11 a.m. and is open to the public.