Allen W. Trelease

Dr. Allen Trelease, Emeritus Professor of History and former member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries, has died. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Trelease was the author of Making North Carolina Literate: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro from Normal School to Metropolitan University, covering the period 1892-1994. In doing so, he spent many hours over a ten-year period in the University Archives, and was a familiar sight in Jackson Library. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries for a total of six years. He was known to the Board for his generosity and wry sense of humor, and once told us, “I wanted to make the title ‘Making Carolina Literate,’ but was dissuaded from doing so in deference to the sensibilities of our colleagues at Chapel Hill.”

Trelease was also the author of the books Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, and The North Carolina Railroad, 1849-1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina. He was editor of the UNCG centennial book Changing Assignments: A Pictorial History of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He also served as head of the Department of History and as president of the Historical Society of North Carolina.