Melbourne Village Community, 1948-1963

The Alice Griffith Carr Papers include extensive correspondence, journal articles, reports, working papers, clippings, genealogical materials, and photographs.

The heart of the Alice Carr Papers is the correspondence in Series 1. The first part of this series consists of correspondence from Alice Carr and is arranged in simple chronological order. The individuals she wrote to most frequently were her sister, Katherine Carr Harris in McRae, Georgia and her aunt, Alice Ladley Totten, and cousin, Bessie Totten in Yellow Springs. Spanning the years 1901-1962, these letters cover the bulk of her life and are a rich source of information about her. They show her development from a bright, enthusiastic teenager, to a young nurse in World War I and postwar Europe, to her internationally recognized work as a public health administrator in Greece, to her retirement in Florida where she continued to be active, thoughtful, and innovative. She wrote candidly about her feelings and opinions as well as her experiences, and her personality, her views of life, and her work are interestingly and often humorously brought to light.

The rest of the correspondence series consists of letters written to Alice Carr from various family members and friends. It is arranged so that major correspondents are given their own file folders while the remainder of the letters are arranged chronologically. Span dates for the entire series are 1901-1968.

Series 2, Red Cross Materials, and Series 3, Near East Foundation Materials, contain correspondence, reports, journal articles, and personnel papers connected with Carr's professional life and work for these two organizations. The most interesting materials are the reports she wrote for the Near East Foundation concerning rural medical cooperatives, village rehabilitation, public health, sanitation, and disease control. Balkan Journal, An Unofficial Observer in Greece written in 1944 by Laird Archer, the Foreign Director of the Near East Foundation, is included in Series 3 and contains many references to Carr's work in Greece. Series 2 covers the years 1917-1944, and Series 3, 1926-1947.

Series 4 is a miscellaneous collection of Carr's personal papers and includes biographical and genealogical materials, newspaper clippings, her will and death certificate, files on various organizations, a file on Melbourne Village Community and some of her projects there, a file of grade reports from Antioch, a short story she wrote in 1903, and her collection of passports and visas. Materials in this series cover the years 1898-1968.

The Lizzie B. Schilling Estate Papers, Series 5, consists of legal documents pertaining to Alice Carr's cousin who died in 1948. Carr was the executor of the estate and the papers have mainly genealogical value because they trace the ancestry of Carr's paternal grandmother, Sophronia Thomas Carr, in order to establish heirs of the estate. This series also contains Lizzie Schilling's diaries from 1918-1926 which give an insight into the routine life of a Springfield housewife during the period.

The photographs in Series 6 are arranged into several categories including portraits, family and friends, France and World War I, Greece, Florida, and trips. The bulk of the photographs date from around 1905 until the mid 1960s, but date as early as 1869.