Abstract: John Hughes was a Patrick County, Va., planter. The collection is chiefly court orders and debt settlements concerning John Hughes. Also included are several slave bills of sale.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Represented are members of the related Bryan, Leventhorpe, Davenport, and Avery families, including Edmund (1791-1874) and Ursilla (Hampton) Bryan of Rutherfordton, N.C.; their daughters, Ann Eliza (Bryan) Mills and Louise (Bryan) Leventhorpe; Louise’s husband, Collett Leventhorpe (1815-1899), an English-born officer in the Confederate Army; and their descendants, including members of the Hampton family of Henry County, Tenn., and the Avery family of North Carolina. Personal and business papers of the Bryan, Leventhorpe, and related families. Material prior to 1860 includes Edmund Bryan’s journal during the Creek Indian War in Alabama, 1814; annual returns addressed to him as a general in the North Carolina militia, 1827-1838; and nine letters, 1812-1816, from Israel Pickens discussing the War of 1812, taxes, and Washington, D.C., politics. There are also papers pertaining to slaves and to the Leventhorpe family’s iron and gold mining interests. Scattered Civil War items concern the secession crisis, Collett Leventhorpe’s career as a Confederate brigadier general in eastern North Carolina, and civilian affairs in Rutherfordton. After 1880 the papers relate principally to Judge Alphonso Calhoun Avery (1835-1913) of Burke County, N.C.; and newspaper editor Johnston Avery.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Material prior to 1860 includes many documents relating to the buying and selling of slaves (See Folders 1-6 particularly, for items from 1797 to 1842). There is also a documented dated 18 February 1843, which is an agreement to transfer slaves in partial payment for construction of William Davenport’s home (See Folder 9).

Civil War documents also the secession crisis (See Folders 19-22 for documents from 1861 to 1865).

Abstract: Documents from the case of Jack Warren (alias Will Warren) vs. Stephen Pettes, in Norwich, Conn. The case involved a dispute over Warren’s status as slave or free black.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: John Ball and Keating Simons Ball (1818-1891) were planters of Charleston District, S.C. Records of Comingtee, a Cooper River, S.C., plantation, in Charleston District (later Berkeley County), and other rice plantations of the Ball family, including Stoke, Kensington, and Midway. Volumes contain slave records listing supplies issued, births and deaths, names, and other data, 1780-1833; and shipping receipts for crops, 1841-1851. They also include diaries and notebooks of Keating Simons Ball, 1849-1840 and 1874-1884, that record weather, planting, and neighborhood and personal activities. Included in one volume are two pages headed “Orderly Book for the Regiment of Light Dragoons,” 1779. Family members mentioned include Elias Ball (fl. 1675-1751) and John Ball, Jr. (1782-1834).

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Records of Comingtee, a Cooper River, South Carolina, plantation in Charleston District (later Berkeley County), and of other rice plantations of the Ball family, including Stoke, Kensington, and Bridway. Volumes contain slave records listing supplies issued, births and deaths, names, and other data (1780-1833, 1836). Microfilm available.

Abstract: Thomas Legare was a commission merchant in Charleston, S.C., in the 1760s and 1770s. The volume contains receipts written to Thomas Legare from various individuals whose crops and other goods and property (including slaves) Legare sold. Receipts also appear for services, including cooperage, carpentry work, shipping, and supplies (tar, turpentine, bricks, shingles, and other goods) that Legare purchased for his business and personal use. Signatures appearing most frequently are Henry Ballingal, G. Waddon Bone, Charles Elliott, Joseph Fabian, Thomas Farr, Isaac McPherson, Edward Perry, Joseph Shirving, Vardell & Wilkes, and Edward Wilkinson. Freight receipts often refer to shipments on the schooner “Liberty.”

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: One volume containing receipts written to Legare from various South Carolina planters whose crops and other goods Legare sold. Two receipts show that at times Legare sold slaves on commission (1768, 1770). The collection also contains one receipt signed by Abraham Jackson, a free black, for cash received upon Legare’s sale of five pounds of Jackson’s rice (1768).

Abstract: Brownrigg family of Wicklow County, Ireland; Chowan, Pasquotank, and Hertford counties, N.C.; and Mississippi. Included are Richard Brownrigg (d. 1771) of Ireland; brothers John and Thomas Brownrigg; Thomas’s wife, Ruth; their son, Gen. Richard Thomas Brownrigg (b. 1793); and their daughter, Elizabeth Brownrigg, who married the Hon. John L. Bailey. Correspondence and other papers, mainly 1771-1861, of the Brownrigg family of Chowan County, N.C., and Lowndes County, Miss. Included are deeds, contracts, bills and receipts; copies of family data and wills, including the wills of Richard Brownrigg (1735-1771) and his son Thomas Brownrigg (1767-1826); personal letters concerning health, education in North Carolina, fisheries, travels, and property in Chowan and Pasquotank counties, N.C., and Lowndes County, Miss. Typed transcriptions of John Brownrigg’s letters, 1784-1794, written in Ireland and Jamaica; letters, 1807-1811, from Richard Thomas Brownrigg at the University of North Carolina; letters, 1835, written on a wagon caravan journey from North Carolina to Mississippi; journals, 1835 and 1836, written by Richard Thomas Brownrigg on trips from North Carolina to Mississippi; personal account books, 1835-1858, of Richard T. Brownrigg and his son John Brownrigg; and a few letters, 1944, of Richard Thomas Brownrigg (b. 1865).

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Financial and legal materials contain many items concerning the buying and selling of slaves (1736-1862). Personal correspondence includes comments on the disposition of slaves (1885); the prayer of slave “old Dick” (1835); messages sent home from slaves traveling with their owners (1835); and an observation of the “kindly affectionate relations” between slaves and masters in southwest Virginia (1835). Microfilm available.

Abstract: Family and business correspondence, legal and political documents, reminiscences, and family history of the De Caradeuc family of France, Haiti, and South Carolina. Early letters and legal documents, 1771-1783 (in French), include a grant of land and titles by Louis XV, and a letter from Calonne. Business letters, beginning 1786, refer to the exportation of sugar from the De Caradeuc plantation on Hispaniola and the insurrections there. Letters from the De Caradeuc family in France to the family in the United States refer to the conflict between church and state in the early days of the Third Republic. Correspondence is chiefly 18th-century and written in French, but papers from 1878 to 1893 are in English. Twentieth- century papers are invitations and other family material. Also included are a Civil War and Reconstruction diary, 1863-1865, of James Achille de Caradeuc (1816-1895) of Aiken and Charleston, S.C., chiefly consisting of reflections on current events, a memoir by James A. de Caradeuc, family records, and a fragment of an unascribed novel dealing with a northern naturalist in South Carolina just before the Civil War.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Business letters, beginning 1786, refer to the exportation of sugar from the De Caradeuc plantation on Hispaniola and the insurrections there.

Abstract: William Page of Retreat Plantation, St. Simons Island (Glynn Co.), Ga., grew rice and Sea Island cotton. Page also owned Colonel’s Island, Ga. The collection is primarily business papers related to ownership of land; purchase of articles for plantation and personal use; purchase and hire of slaves; settlement of the estates of John Timmons, Thomas Cater, and Joseph Dopson; the upbringing of Thomas Cater’s son, Benjamin; shipment and marketing of cotton; and accounts of commission merchant Hugh Ross in Savannah, other merchants in Savannah, Darien, and Brunswick, Ga., and the firms of B. & I. Gray & Co. and William Christie in Liverpool, England.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included are letters and a copy of an advertisement of reward which document Page’s efforts to recover two runaway slaves in  1818 and 1819 (Folders 44-46) and an appraisal of slaves belonging to the estate of John Timmons  in 19 April 1798 (Folder 54).

Abstract: Land grants, deeds, bills, accounts, wills, other business papers, and some family correspondence of David Coffield (d. 1818?) of Edgecombe County, N.C.; his sons, Spier W. Coffield and John W. Coffield; and their Whitaker, Bellamy, Hall, and other relatives in Edgecombe, Nash, and Halifax counties, N.C. Papers after 1835 are chiefly from the Bellamy family. Included are papers of various estates; papers of Stephen W. Carney (1762-1811) relating to racehorse breeding near Scotland Neck, N.C.; Dr. John F. Bellamy’s business papers in Nash County; and a daybook, 1860-1861 (480 p.) of Whitaker, Batchelor & Co., a general mercantile firm in Enfield, N.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In Series 2 (Financial & Legal Papers), there are various records related to enslaved individuals, such as bills of sale.

Abstract: Correspondence, financial and legal papers, and other materials relating to Eliza Mary Bond Johnston Weissinger of Hillsborough, N.C., and her family. The collection consists chiefly of correspondence of Weissinger, her first husband, George Mulhollan Johnston, and her aunt, Mary Williams Burke, concerning family and personal matters, social affairs in Hillsborough, N.C., and Marion, Ala., real estate, slaves, and finances.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence, financial and legal papers, and other materials of Weissinger of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Several letters relate to slaves and slavery (1785-1805; 1819-1831). See Folders 1-9.