March 2010

While the Russell-Arnold Archives at Presbyterian College is mostly known for its collections of books and documents, there are some interesting works of art hanging on the walls as well.

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The Reading Room features four portraits given to the library by Irene Dillard Elliott of Columbia. They feature members of the two early Laurens County families, the Parks and the Dillards. Included are Mary Puckett Dillard, Margaret Hunter Park, James Henry Dillard, and Nancy Hunter Park. Dr. James Henry Dillard and his wife, Margaret Hunter Park Dillard, were the parents of Mary Dillard, who married PC’s founder, William Plumer Jacobs.

 

Also featured in the Reading Room are representative prints from PCs collection of John James Audubon’s Quadrupeds of North America. These original, hand-colored lithographs come from the Imperial Folio of Audubon’s work, and were published in the 1840s.

 

In the Isabel Arnold Room hangs a portrait of Robert Hall Morrison, painted by an unknown artist. Morrison, a Presbyterian minister, was the first and youngest president of Davidson College. Three of his daughters married Confederate generals, including Mary Anna, who was the second wife of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Isabel, who married Daniel Harvey Hill. The Isabel Arnold Room contains furniture and other memorabilia from these three families.