The Tate Collection consists of approximately eighteen linear feet of material representing every period of Harold S. Tate’s professional career. The earliest items in the collection date from 1922, just after Tate began his undergraduate studies at Clemson College, while the most recent are from the early 1980s. The collection is arranged and described in five series: Correspondence; Family Papers; Topical; Photographs; and Drawings, Greeting Cards, Postcards, Prints and Sketches. Within the five series are letters, telegrams, journals, certificates, commissions, reports, financial records, pamphlets, travel brochures, maps, photographs, and drawings.
Series I: Correspondence
Series I, Correspondence, is organized chronologically from 1924-1981. The earliest letters, written in the 1920s and 1930s, are occasional and generally among family members and friends. Very little of Harold Tate’s correspondence as a Clemson College faculty member survives. In fact, there is evidence that his office files were discarded at some point in the 1940s while he was on military leave from the college. After Tate was called to active military duty in March 1941 and stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, he began the practice of writing letters to Cleone, his wife, and Simmons (Tim), his son almost every day. Cleone responded in frequent, if not daily, letters and Simmons, as he grew older, also wrote his father on a regular basis. Cleone’s letters contain news of family and friends as well as reports about Clemson College, the weather, and Simmons’ school activities. Tate’s letters to his wife chronicle his military duties, especially while stationed at Fort Benning, and also contain frequent questions about individuals or specific situations at home. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American declaration of war against Japan, Tate’s letters are not as specific about military matters because he was sensitive to issues of censorship. Many of the World War II letters were, unfortunately, not dated; however, they have been grouped at the end of the year when they were likely written. In addition to family letters, a considerable quantity of military orders and related correspondence will be found in the collection, especially after Major Tate was deployed to the South Pacific island of Efate in May 1942 as part of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment. This material Tate brought back to the United States with him when he returned during the summer of 1944. After Tate was reunited with his family, the letters exchanged by Harold and Cleone ceased until they were separated once again, briefly, while Tate attended a school in Virginia in the fall of 1944, and for a longer period when Tate was assigned to Japan as part of the American military government there in the late summer of 1945. Before Cleone and Simmons joined Tate in Japan in August 1946, letters crossed the Pacific from both directions on an almost daily basis. Cleone and Harold were separated only once more, for less than a year, when it was necessary for Cleone to hurriedly evacuate Shanghai as the Communist forces approached in late 1948. Harold remained in China until September 1949 when he finally managed to secure an exit visa and book passage out of the country. Increasingly, therefore, after 1949 correspondence relates to business, with only occasional family letters present. The major exception to this trend involves to the frequent letters exchanged between parents and son after Simmons matriculated at Harvard in the fall of 1947. Simmons wrote his parents three or four letters a week while a Harvard undergraduate [1947-1951] and during his service in the United States Army [1951-1953], but less frequently after he completed his military duty and entered Harvard Law School in September 1953. From 1953, when Harold was hired as the Education Advisor for The Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, until he retired from that job in 1968, most letters in this series pertain to business, with an occasional letter from a family member. After he retired, Tate continued to correspond with friends and family members until ill health forced him to curtail most of his activities in the late 1970s. Even so, there are a few drafts of notes and letters that Harold sent in the last years of his life.
Series II: Family Papers
The Family Papers series includes the non-correspondence material related to Harold Simmons Tate, Sr. and the members of his family and is divided into the following subseries: Faith Clayton, Lawrence G. Clayton, M. D., Frederick Van Clayton, Nellie Simmons, Cleone Clayton Tate, Guy Tillman Tate, Harold Simmons Tate, Jr., and Harold Simmons Tate, Sr. Most of the material in the Family Papers series relates to Harold S. Tate, Sr., but both Cleone Clayton Tate and Harold Simmons Tate, Jr. are represented by a significant number of documents. Diplomas, certificates and reports detail Cleone Clayton Tate’s schooling while other documents provide information on her employment during World War II, organizations she joined, and her travel. Report cards, an essay, and other school-related material provide information on Simmons Tate’s early years. Other family members, however, are represented by only an item or two.
Harold Simmons Tate, Sr. retained and preserved a significant quantity of his personal and professional papers. Although the collection contains nothing from Tate’s childhood and adolescent years except a brief sketch titled “Outline of Abbeville Days,” ca. 1975, several items, including a scrapbook that contains clippings, photographs, and ephemera, chronicle his Clemson College years. This subseries also includes articles and reports written by Tate, as well as talks and speeches he delivered. In addition, biographical material, certificates, college transcripts, diplomas, employment and financial records, legal documents, notes, programs, travel-related items, and journals are present.
Just after Tate entered Clemson College as a student, he began the practice of making frequent entries in a diary or journal. The earliest surviving diary dates from Tate’s sophom*ore year, 1922-1923, and contains very short descriptions of events. By the end of the decade, Tate initiated the practice of recording longer notes about his activities, usually on sheets from a notebook, or even on blank pages of pamphlets. Scattered journal pages exist for brief periods--a day, a week, or a month or two--for the 1930s. On the rear cover of a pamphlet that Tate picked up when he and Simmons attended the Fourth Engineering-Architecture Day at Clemson College on 13 April 1940, he wrote: “Thought it might be a good idea to again keep a date with my Journal which be it regretted by me has not had the honor for some few years.” Journal entries survive only for 3 and 4 May 1940, so Tate’s resolution to resume his journal was short-lived. It was not until 13 April 1942, the day he sailed from San Francisco for his first foreign duty station, that Tate resumed his journal entries. This time, however, the process became part of his daily routine and, with only a brief hiatus in 1944 and another in 1945, he consistently recorded his daily activities and thoughts until 10 June 1981, less than a year before his death. For almost half of his life, Tate chronicled his career and family life in detail, often writing a full page or two. He also preserved additional material, especially newspapers clippings, invitations, programs, letters, and a few photographs in his journals. These items were usually attached to the journal pages and remain where Tate inserted them. Tate’s journals are obviously essential for providing details of his own life, but his entries also illuminate the broader story of the events he witnessed. For example, his entries for 1942-1944 show the tedium of life for an American soldier on a South Pacific island where there was no combat. From 1945 until May 1948, he recorded the process through which the American military government tried to revive, and at the same time, control the Japanese textile industry. From May 1948 until September 1949, while in Shanghai advising the government on China’s cotton program, he witnessed and wrote about the Communist campaign that swept across that country, finally forcing him to leave his post. He was present in the Philippines in 1950-1951 as a Fulbright Lecturer and recorded that country’s efforts to provide vocational education opportunities to its citizens. In Greece from 1951-1953 as chief of the Textile Division of the American Mutual Security Agency, he was part of the effort to produce economic stability in a country only a few years removed from the threat of a Communist insurgency. And from 1953 until 1968, Tate’s diary entries provide an excellent history of the operation of the United States Army Infantry School at Fort Benning during the crucial years of America’s involvement in Viet Nam. Even in his retirement, Tate continued to record observations on events in the local community, the nation, and the world.
Series III: TopicalMaterial in this series was collected by Harold Tate in his professional capacity as well as in his private life and conforms to the basic topical arrangement that Tate used for his files. The largest subseries, Pamphlets, Periodicals and Brochures, contains items from every period of Tate’s adult life as well as a few publications that obviously belonged to Cleone Tate. The newspaper subseries contains issues from foreign cities that Tate visited as well as a few special issues from American papers. The issues of The Harvard Crimson date from the years that Simmons was a college student. Newspaper clippings generally include news or information about Harold Tate, and are arranged chronologically.
Series IV. Photographs
Harold Tate was interested in photography for much of his life and, while many of the photographs in this series were taken by him, others were taken by professional photographers. For example, the thirty-four photographs taken by Chester L. Smith on Efate Island are clearly the work of a professional. A number of the photographs from Japan were produced by professionals; most of the images from the Philippines, on the other hand, appear to be Tate’s work.
Photographs are arranged chronologically by time periods, based on Tate’s place of residence, and then alphabetized according to subject matter. The descriptive titles were taken from names or descriptions that Tate usually recorded on the backs of images.
Series V. Drawings, Greetings Cards, Postcards, Prints and Sketches
With the exception of the drawings, the items in this series were collected by Harold Tate during his world travels. The postcards were souvenirs, mostly from Japan, but with examples from Greece and Italy as well as the United States. Four greeting cards, representing camp scenes and native life on Efate, were drawn by a soldier who served with Major Tate on the island. This series also includes a few prints that Tate collected while in Japan and three portrait sketches, two of Harold and one of Cleone, that were executed in Japan or China. Tate often drew quick sketches, or doodles, while in meetings or in spare moments, and included in this series are twenty-six examples. He also saved drawings by his granddaughters and a dozen or so of those are present.
