This digital collection contains seven images from the photograph series of The Reverend J. Norton Atkins Papers. The photographs in this collection were taken by Reverend Atkins, an amateur photographer, during his time in Ashe and Watauga Counties in North Carolina. The Reverend J. Norton Atkins Papers are a collection of Rev. Atkins' correspondence, sermons, mission records, and photographs generated while he was an Episcopal priest and teacher in Ashe and Watauga Counties. John Norton Atkins was born in August 4, 1881 to George Washington Ely Atkins and Mary Chew Atkins in Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was a vice president of Western Union. In the letters, he was called both Norton and "Tommy", possibly after the British soldier nickname, "Tommy Atkins." Rev. Atkins studied at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee for three years (1898-1901) before finishing his undergraduate education at Columbia College (later Columbia University) in New York in 1902. He was a teacher at the Valle Crucis Mission School from November 1902 to June 1904. From 1904 to 1907, Rev. Atkins attended General Theological Seminary in New York and spent the summers in Valle Crucis Associate Missions. He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Junius M. Horner on December 22, 1907 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Gastonia, North Carolina. Rev. Atkins worked as a mission priest in Ashe and Watauga Counties from 1907 to 1919. In 1910, Rev. Atkins worked as the priest in charge at Christ School of Arden, where he met his future wife, Katharine Moran of Wisconsin. He and Moran married on December 31, 1913 in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross in Tryon, North Carolina. They had four children: Mary Katharine (b. 6 April 1915, d. 16 Nov 1984), Joseph Addison (b. 19 June 1917, d. 25 April 2000), John Jr. (b. 6 January 1919, d. 30 June 1994), and George Albert (b. 1 March 1920, d. 18 February 2009). Rev. Atkins died on September 11, 1962 in Blowing Rock Hospital in Blowing Rock, NC. He and his wife are buried at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Valle Crucis, NC. For more information, see the guide to the Reverend J. Norton Atkins Papers, 1895-2005, undated (bulk, 1900-1920), http://www.collections.library.appstate.edu/findingaids/ac182.

Select items from the Reverend J. Norton Atkins Selected Photographs Collection