Creator: Bumpas family.
Collection number: 1031
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Abstract: The collection includes diaries, scattered correspondence, and writings of a family of Methodist ministers and editors of church publications of North Carolina. Among other volumes are the diary, 1838-1844, and autobiography, 1842, of Sidney D. Bumpas (1808-1851), while a minister and editor at various places in North Carolina, and the diary, 1842-1854, of his wife, Frances Moore Webb Bumpas (1819-1898), editor and publisher of the “Weekly Message” of Greensboro, N.C., 1851-1871, and officer in the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society. There is very little information about Frances’s editing or missionary activities. Also among the volumes are the intermittent diary, 1874-1899, of Sidney and Frances’s son, Robah Fidus Bumpas (1850-1933), who was a Methodist minister in the North Carolina Conference for 54 years, and a diary of Robah’s 1906 trip to Europe and the Middle East. In addition, there are scattered letters, including one from 1847 about a service Sidney Bumpas led that was attended by Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker; poems by family members; and stories by Robah Fidus Bumpas. There are also four scrapbooks, chiefly containing 20th-century clippings on church and world affairs, and material collected by Paul F. Bumpas about racial violence in Tennessee in 1946 when he was the district attorney responsible for investigating and prosecuting the cases.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Materials include information concerning racial violence in Tennessee in 1946 collected by Paul F. Bumpas. A diary of Sidney D. Bumpas contains an account of the mistreatment of free black Lunsford Lane in Raleigh, North Carolina (1842).