HSNC Notes the Passing of Dr. Henry C. Ferrell of ECU.
Dr. Henry Clifton Ferrell, Jr., 86, longtime professor of History at East Carolina University died on August 21, from complications of Covid 19.
A native of Guilford County, Dr. Ferrell was born in 1934 to the late Henry Clifton Ferrell, Sr., and Mary Louise Williams Ferrell who raised their family in Greensboro, N.C. The eldest of five children, he was a 1952 graduate of Greensboro High School. He worked his way through Duke University from which he received an AB in History in 1956 and his MA in History the following year. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1964- his dissertation there later becoming a book in 1985, a political biography on Claude A. Swanson. In 1960 he joined the faculty of East Carolina University where he spent the next 46 years- becoming a mainstay there and eventually University Historian. He retired from ECU in 2007, and thereafter a three-volume series entitled: The United States Congress and National Defense, 1915-1939. He was active in the Greenville Community and was an active member of Jarvis Memorial Methodist Church. He is survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Martha Elizabeth Smith Ferrell, and three children, their spouses and his grandchildren.