Creator: Yancey, Benjamin C. (Benjamin Cudworth), 1817-1891.
Collection number: 2594
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Abstract: Planter, lawyer, antebellum Alabama newspaper editor, Democratic state legislator in South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia; U.S. minister to Argentina; Confederate officer in Virginia, 1861, and Georgia militia officer in the Atlanta Campaign, 1864; publisher of postwar agricultural journals and promoter of agricultural societies, business, and industry in Georgia; and brother of William Lowndes Yancey. Yancey’s papers, primarily 1835-1891, include extensive correspondence with public figures and with a large and widespread family connection, which included the Yancey, Bird, Cunningham, Hamilton, Phinizy, and Patterson families; papers relating to plantations in Cherokee County, Ala., and Floyd County, Ga., including correspondence with overseers; papers relating to law practice and politics, especially in the 1840s and 1850s in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina; correspondence and letterpress copy book in Argentina, 1858-1859, including letters to Secretary of State Lewis Cass; and papers relating to military service and varied business, industrial, and agricultural pursuits after the war. Also included are volumes of miscellaneous accounts, 1850-1885, and a woman’s diary, 1850, of a seven-week trip from Georgia to New York and New England.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Includes an 1866 letter from the Freedman’s Bureau to Yancey regarding an adjustment of contract. Microfilm available.