J. Eric Elliott

From July 2017 through December 2020 Eric aided other researchers as Archivist at the Moravian Archives in Winston-Salem, NC, one of the region's most important collections of colonial, community, and church history - and a center for family history research. (see www.moravianarchives.org) Eric was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1982 with a B.A. with highest honors in European History with a thesis on the origins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Germany. Eric received an M.A. in History and Sociology of Science in grad school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. Eric wrote the Polymers and People exhibit (which toured the country for much of the next fifteen years) while serving as Student Curatorial Assistant at the E. F. Smith Collection in the History of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1987 he completed his law degree, begun at Chapel Hill, at Villanova University. Eric was a DAAD Stipendiat during doctoral research in 1988 at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, on the history of colloid chemistry. A long -time resident of Winston-Salem and local community leader, Eric conducted over 150 oral history interviews for the Women's Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1999-2004. He later designed historical displays interpreting the history of several local businesses, including on the Fries family at Winston-Salem's Historic Brookstown Inn and on the Bahnson family at Spring House Restaurant. He completed his 2004 book on Winston-Salem’s Historic West End after leading the area's neighborhood association in the 1990s, raising funds for historic signage and the clock at Grace Court; and designing, then raising funds for, a tourist brochure to support the area's businesses and housing infrastructure. The brochure went through six editions in ten years. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Eric has two sons, linguist John and civil engineer Zach.