Creator: Boykin family.
Collection number: 78
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Abstract: The Boykin family of Camden, S.C., included Alexander Hamilton Boykin (1815-1866), cotton planter, state legislator, and Confederate officer. Family, business, and military papers of Boykin family members, chiefly 1830s through 1862. Much of this material consists of correspondence and accounts with Reeder & DeSaussure, Charleston cotton factors, regarding cotton produced at the Plane Hill, the Boykin family plantation near Camden; bills of sale for land and slaves; legal papers; and correspondence among members of the Boykin and DeSaussure families, including Alexander Hamilton Boykin’s wife, Sarah Jones DeSaussure Boykin (fl. 1835-1866) and his son, Alexander Hamilton Boykin, Jr. (1846-1923).There is also Civil War military material pertaining to Boykin’s Rangers, which became Company A of the Second South Carolina Cavalry and which Boykin commanded in Virginia, 1861-1862. Items relating to Boykin family genealogy are also included.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Mainly business and plantation papers, the collection contains slave bills of sale; a typescript narrative entitled “The Tell-Tale Letter Picked Up by a Slave” (1865); and transcriptions of letters concerning John W. DeSaussure’s emancipation of his slaves (1865). Post-Civil War materials contain the paper “Articles of Agreement between Freedmen and Women and S. Boykin” (1868) and letters concerning labor problems on plantations (1865-1881).