Perrow, Eber Carle, 1880-1968. Eber Carle Perrow collection of Southern ballads (MS Am 1576): Guide.

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Eber Carle Perrow (1880-1968) received an BA from Trinity College (North Carolina) in 1903, an MA in 1905, and in 1908 received a PhD from Harvard University in English Philology. His thesis at Harvard was: The last will and testament as a form of literature. Perrow was married to Bertha Perrow, was for a time an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi, and became a University of Louisville English professor. He was a lover of folk songs, and died in 1968 in Pickens, Georgia.

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Collection consists primarily of texts of lyrics of Southern African-American ballad folk songs, collected by Perrow, some pages apparently signed and in the hand of the local persons who related the text, but most in hand of Harvard students who wrote compositions for English A in 1909. Manuscripts are often only fragments, written in multiple hands, some are typed transcripts of lyrics, and there is one sheet of manuscript music of a ballad. There is also a 1908 letter from an unidentified person at Louisiana State University written to Perrow concerning text of Southern ballads.

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