Postcards

This collection includes personal correspondence, diaries, poems, essays and private writings, education, employment, and military records, household ersonal business records, genealogy material, photographs & negatives, and newspaper clippings. The collection documents the Jennings' activities primarily between 1917 and 1967.

Ridley Wills began collecting Tennessee postcards in the 1930s, eventually amassing some 30,000 postcards. In 2015, he began distributing them to regional institutions. The cards in this collection represent landmarks in East Tennessee, especially in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and in Carter, Greene, Johnson, Sullivan, Washington and Unicoi Counties. There are images of schools, churches, hotels, towns, railroads, scenery and more.