When asked to recount the history of his remarkable North Caroliniana collection, Stephen Beauregard Weeks likened his bibliophily to a childhood game. When smooth wood ends had fallen from the local wheelwright's workbench, Weeks recalled, he had rushed to seize them, prizing these scraps as though they were gems. For more than three decades the adult Weeks experienced similar delight in gathering publications related to his native state. By the time of his death at the age of fifty-three he had built a collection of nearly ten thousand items, a remarkable accomplishment for a man who was never wealthy. Well trained in modern historical methodology, he published extensively on southern history and bibliography, particularly of North Carolina. Often his research was seminal, such as his work on southern Quakers and on intellectual life in early North Carolina.

Weeks was born on 2 February 1865 in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, to...