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Local figure

Bowman Gray Jr.

Bowman Gray Jr., a 1929 graduate of the University of North Carolina, gave the university his large collections on the First and Second World Wars in the 1960s, now the Bowman Gray Collection in Chapel Hill. A Winston-Salem tobacco executive, he was president of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company from 1957 to 1959 and then its chairman until his death in 1969.

Source: UNC Libraries, Wilson Special Collections: Bowman Gray Collection of Papers Related to the First and Second World Wars, 1910s-1940s (#03953)

Also found in catalogs as Bowman Gray.

3 works about Bowman Gray Jr. are indexed here.

Search these 3 works Research sources View indexed works ↓

Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineThe Institute of Government’s building, 1935–19391935–1939 · 6 events · Albert Coates's first plan for an Institute of Government building collapsed when the Public Works Administration rescinded its grant in the summer of 1936. The University trustees had offered a site south of the Carolina Inn in 1935, and Coates had won extensions and let a contract, but the promised materials and cash never fully came through. With the campus site no longer available, he arranged to buy lots on the north side of Franklin Street facing Graham Memorial and borrowed to clear them in 1938. A gift from Will Reynolds paid for the land, gifts from Gordon and Bowman Gray covered half the building's cost, and Jefferson Standard Life lent the rest. The building opened in November 1939.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 4 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Bowman and Gordon Gray give the Chapel Hill Methodist church a pipe organ During A. P. Brantley's pastorate the church received a three-manual Moller pipe organ from donors who asked not to be named. They were later revealed as Bowman and Gordon Gray, university graduates of 1929 and 1930. People: Gordon Gray Place: Chapel Hill Methodist Church, Chapel Hill · Also named: A. P. BrantleySearch the index · The Chapel Hill Methodist Church: A Centennial History, 1853-1953 (1954), scan p. 47
  2. The Bowman Gray Memorial Pool opens in the new Woollen Gymnasium The pool, named for the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company president Bowman Gray Sr., was presented with Woollen Gymnasium on March 25, 1938, but a watchman kept swimmers out until it was officially opened; the Chapel Hill Weekly expected students to begin using it about April 19. His widow and his sons Bowman Gray Jr. and Gordon Gray gave much of the university's share of the cost; a Public Works Administration grant paid the rest. People: Gordon Gray Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: Bowman Gray Sr. · Also mentions: Woollen GymnasiumSearch the index · UNC, Names in Brick and Stone: Bowman Gray Memorial Pool · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, March 25, 1938, p. 6; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 1, 1938, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 8, 1938, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 15, 1938, p. 1
  3. Construction begins on the Institute of Government building on Franklin Street A $10,000 gift from Will Reynolds, given after Congressman William Umstead won an IRS ruling that the Institute was a charity, paid for the land. Gifts from Gordon and Bowman Gray covered half of the $50,000 cost and Julian Price's Jefferson Standard Life lent the rest on Coates's signature, against more than half his salary, for a scaled-down Federal-style building of three floors over a raised basement. People: Albert Coates, Gordon Gray, William B. Umstead, Bowman Gray Jr. Place: Institute of Government building, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill · Also named: Will Reynolds, Julian PriceSearch the index · Howard E. Covington Jr., The Good Government Man: Albert Coates and the Early Years of the Institute of Government (2018), p. 182 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, August 5, 1938, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, September 2, 1938, p. 4; Chapel Hill Weekly, December 2, 1938, p. 6; Chapel Hill Weekly, September 8, 1939, p. 5
  4. Bowman Gray Jr. gives the university his world-war collection Bowman Gray Jr. of Winston-Salem gave the University of North Carolina his collection of correspondence, clippings, pamphlets and propaganda on the First and Second World Wars, the first of the war collections he gave the university in the 1960s. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · UNC Libraries, Wilson Special Collections: Bowman Gray Collection of Papers Related to the First and Second World Wars, 1910s-1940s (#03953)

People named in the same events

People named in the same dated entries as Bowman Gray Jr., those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Indexed works

Works about or by Bowman Gray Jr.. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.

Battlelines: World War I Posters From The Bowman Gray Collection

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · 1988 · Rare Book Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A guide to the World War I posters in the Bowman Gray Collection of the Rare Book Collection at Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the library in 1988. Its 210 pages reproduce posters of 1914 to 1918, some in color, and end with a four-page bibliography. The posters were gathered by the private collector Bowman Gray.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Gray, Bowman -- Poster collections -- Catalogs.

NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson UNCSA

WWI propaganda posters: a selection from the Bowman Gray collection of materials related to WWI & WWII

1969 · Ackland Art Center

Published by the Ackland Art Center at the University of North Carolina in 1969 for an exhibition of First World War propaganda posters, selected from the Bowman Gray collection of materials on the two world wars, part of the university library's Rare Book Collection. One unnumbered illustrated volume, 31 cm.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Gray, Bowman -- Posters -- Private collections -- Exhibitions.

NC Cardinal

American posters of the Great War

Chenault, Libby · 2002 · Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Web exhibit from 2002 by Libby Chenault of 100 American World War I posters from the Bowman Gray collection in the UNC Rare Book Collection, grouped by theme with an essay on their history. Part of Documenting the American South, in the collection North Carolinians and the Great War.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Gray, Bowman -- Poster collections -- Catalogs.

NC Cardinal UNC

Start at OCPL

Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this person. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 610.711 CAR The Story of Medicine at Wake Forest University Carpenter, Coy Cornelius · 1970

    Coy C. Carpenter (1900 to 1971), the dean who in 1939 helped arrange the Bowman Gray gift that moved Wake Forest's medical school, tells its history from the two-year school opened on the college campus at Wake Forest in 1902 to the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, opened beside North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem in 1941. Published in 1970 by the University of North Carolina Press; 79 pages with portraits.

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