The Leona Hudson Collection held at the Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections contains information relevant to topics as diverse as South Georgia History, the Valdosta Social Scene, Missionaries in China, a history of devotional literature, Nazi trials, the military in Korea, and images from years of travel around the world. The collection spans a long time period, from 1884-2008, and is equally rich across those time periods. Since both Rosa Strickland and her daughter Leona Hudson were energetic “savers” who kept everything and passed it on, we have letters that span at least four generations of this family. The family names of Hill, Hudson, and Strickland are the most prominent. The collection is comprised of three series: Letters and Documents, Photographs and Scrapbooks, and Books and Artifacts. The letters are very extensive, housed in over 50 archival boxes. To make the letters more easily searched and retrieved, we indexed most of the letters, including all of the older ones, to the item level. You may search our ArchivesSpace system for an individual letter. Letters indexed individually run from 1884 to the 1960’s.
At least forty boxes are taken up by pictures, slides, and scrapbooks. Seven of those scrapbooks can be found on our Hudson website. These scrapbooks document everything from college in the ‘teens, to the war years and travels around the world. Overall there are over 20 scrapbooks and photograph albums in this collection. Seven large boxes of slides, which seem to be from the 1940’s and later, are part of this collection. Because so many of the slides seemed to be deteriorating, we have digitized them, and the images are currently available from the Archives. This series also includes many framed pictures and formal photographs of family members from approximately the 1870’s to the 1970’s. A selection of the formal photographs has been scanned and is part of our Leona Hudson online exhibit. Several boxes of old and over-sized negatives are part of the collection. A few boxes of loose pictures documenting family events and travels are in this series. The Books and Artifacts part of the collection is much smaller.
Many of the artifacts will be in the display case for the Hudson Collection found in Archives. This collection contains materials that could be interesting to researchers in Military History, 20th century American and World History, South Georgia History, Valdosta, Georgia, Women’s Studies, photography, genealogy and many with other interests as well. The strength of this collection is that it documents all of these areas so thoroughly. To aid researchers we have created very detailed records of this collection.
Written by Deborah Davis, Archivist, Valdosta State University