Margaret Virginia Briggs Collection

Collection

Identifier: MC 1339

Staff Only
Select files to request

Scope and Content Note

The collection contains two scrapbooks, two publications, The Helm 1946, published by the WAVES Naval Supply Depot, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and While So Serving by Eleanor Hart and Harriet Welling (Robert W. Kelly Publishing Corporation, New York), and twelve additional photographs. The scrapbooks contain photographs, personal and official letters, picture postcards, greeting cards, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, pamphlets, autographs, personal notes, printed songs and poems, receipts, admission tickets, postal stamps, and other memorabilia. The photographs not included in the scrapbooks are: a wedding picture of Margaret Virginia and Richard Shively; John Kelley and Nellie Waters Briggs; Briggs house near Hope, Arkansas; Robin Davis and Gemima; and several pictures of Margaret Briggs with her dolls.

Dates

1945-1946

Creator

Briggs, Margaret Virginia (Person)

Language of Materials

Materials are in English.

Access Information

Please call (479) 575-8444 or email specoll@uark.edu at least two weeks in advance of your arrival to ensure availability of the materials.

Use Information

No Use Restrictions Apply.

No Interlibrary Loan.

Standard Federal Copyright Laws Apply (U.S. Title 17).

Biographical Note

Margaret Virginia Briggs was born on July 1, 1911, to John Kelley and Nellie Fortune Waters Briggs near Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas. She graduated from Hope High School, Arkansas, in 1930 and studied for a year at the Evanston Art Institute in Illinois and later at the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio. Not being able to secure a job as an artist, Briggs began working for Frigidaire Company, Dayton, Ohio, in 1931. She joined the WAVES in the United States Navy Reserve in May 1945 and kept a very detailed record of her service in her scrapbooks. Following her discharge, she married Richard Shively, a savings & loan officer in Gem City Bank, Dayton, Ohio. She taught ceramic classes and china-painting of reproduction dolls. In 1974, she created and copyrighted two dolls with porcelain heads--Gemima and Gigi. Briggs and her husband served as officers in the International Doll Society for a numbers of years. Both of them were also ardent travelers and photographers. Margaret Virginia Briggs died in May 1991.