Mary Jo Bratton served with distinction as ECU’s first university historian, authoring a major study of the development of the institution from its beginnings through its seventy-fifth year. In addition to her work on university history, Bratton also published articles and books on local history, including a volume on the history of Greenville.
Bratton was born in Matoaka, West Virginia in 1926 and grew up in nearby Bluefield, West Virginia. After completing undergraduate degrees at Montreat College in 1947 and Virginia Tech in 1949, she finished a M.A. and Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill.
Bratton joined the History Department at ECU in 1967. Her research centered on Southern social and cultural history. She published her first book, John Esten Cooke: The Young Writer and the Old South, 1831-1860, in 1969. In addition to a later piece on Cooke published in the Southern Literary Journal in 1981, Bratton wrote multiple articles for the North Carolina Historical Review. She was also an active member of the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Southern History Association.
Bratton played a vital role in preserving ECU’s institutional history. In preparation for East Carolina’s seventy-fifth anniversary, celebrated in 1982, Chancellor Thomas Brewer appointed Bratton university historian, with her primary duty being the publication of a history of the school. At the time, there was no ECU university archive, so Bratton took it upon herself to collect extant records from all corners. Emma L. Hooper, a longtime professor at East Carolina, had earlier assembled a working collection of documents, which she donated for Bratton’s use. Their efforts contributed to the beginnings of the ECU University Archives.
In 1986, Bratton published the first major history of the university, East Carolina University: The Formative Years, 1907-1982. In addition to documents, Bratton’s study relied on interviews with five former presidents and chancellors, political figures, members of the board of trustees, faculty, students, and townspeople. Following the success of her history of East Carolina, the Pitt County Chamber of Commerce asked Bratton to author a history of Greenville. The result, Greenville, Heart of the East: An Illustrated History, appeared in 1991.
Dr. Bratton served as the History Department’s director of graduate studies from 1986 to 1989, and as interim chair of the department from 1992 to 1994. Following her retirement in 1995, Bratton was named a professor emeritus.
Sources
- Bratton, Mary Jo Jackson. East Carolina: The Formative Years, 1907-1982. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University Alumni Association, 1986.
- Bratton, Mary Jo Jackson. Greenville, Heart of the East: An Illustrated History. Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications, Inc., 1991.
- “ECU Professor and Historian Dies at 72.” The Daily Reflector, October 23, 1998.
- Mary Jo Bratton Papers. UA90-24. University Archives, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.
- Robinson, Lorraine Hale, ed. A Briefe and True Report: A History of Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, 1909-2004. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University, 2006.
Citation Information
Title: Mary Jo Bratton
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 3/21/2018