Abstract: Letter from Kelsall in Nassau, Bahamas, to his sister, Elizabeth L. Amelia Kelsall, at her plantation near Beaufort, S.C., offering to buy slaves from her and giving her financial advice.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: One letter from Kelsall in Nassau, South Carolina, to his sister, Elizabeth L. Amelia Kelsall, at her plantation near Beaufort, South Carolina. Mr. Kelsall offers to buy his sister’s slaves and move them to Nassau. Photoprint only.

Abstract: John Brownson Ker (1860-1916) was an attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y. He and his wife, Ellen Burke Ker, were both from Louisiana planter families. They were married in 1892. Their son David (1893-1918) served overseas in World War I. Their daughter Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn (d. 1960) was a volunteer leader in social welfare and mental health projects in the New York City area; organizer of a community development and aid to children project in Jacmel, Haiti, 1956-1959; and a press correspondent in Haiti. Correspondence and other papers of the family of John Brownson Ker and his wife Ellen Burke Ker. Early letters, 1779-1882, are of John Brownson Ker’s parents and other Ker and Brownson relatives, most of whom were planters in Louisiana. Most of the earliest letters concern the lower Mississippi River area while it was under Spanish and British control. Papers, 1834-1882, are mainly correspondence of John Brownson’s Ker’s father, David Ker (1825-1884). Among the papers of the 1850s are bills of sale for slaves, bills for dry-goods, and bills for physician’s fees. Correspondence, 1911-1959, includes a items relating to John Brownson Ker and Ellen Burke Ker and their son David Ker and daughter Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn. Many of these letters document David Ker’s life, military service in France, and death in World War I. Much of Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn’s correspondence concerns her views, 1957-1959, on politics and social conditions in Haiti, and her interest in psychoanalysis. Included are more than 30 items of Carl Alfred Meier, with whom she underwent analysis in Switzerland in the 1930s. There are also psychological and sociological writings of Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn, including reports on the situation in Haiti, 1957-1959; a few financial papers; six notebooks, 1901-1954, containing poems and thoughts of Ellen Burke Ker; clippings; and family photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Materials from the 1850s include slave bills of sale (See Folders 3 & 4). Folder 22 also contains reports on Haiti from the late 1950s gathered by Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn.

Abstract: Ker family and related Baker and other families of Mississippi and Louisiana, including John Ker (1789-1850) of Natchez, Miss., and Concordia Parish, La., who was a surgeon, planter, 1830s Louisiana state senator, and vice president of the American Colonization Society; his wife Mary Baker Ker (d. 1862); their daughter schoolteacher Mary Susan Ker (1838-1923),who taught at the Natchez Institute; and two grandnieces whom Mary Susan raised: Matilda Ralston (Tillie) Dunbar (fl. 1890s-1960s), who clerked in a Fayette, Miss., bank, and Catharine Dunbar Brown (d. 1959), who first taught at the Natchez Institute and later owned a rare book and antiques store. Topics discussed in materials, 1800-1960s, include medicine; Louisiana and Mississippi plantation affairs; slavery; Presbyterian church activities; local, state, and national politics, including the conduct of the 1813-1814 Creek War and the War of 1812 (note an 1814 Andrew Jackson letter about the defense of Louisiana); men’s and women’s education, chiefly at the Natchez Institute and Oakland College, Miss.; and travel, especially Mary Susan Ker’s 1886 European tour.There are also materials relating to Mary Susan’s and Catharine Dunbar Brown’s teaching at the Natchez Institute; to Tillie Dunbar’s bank clerking in Fayette, Miss.; and to Catharine’s Ye Olde Booke Shoppe in Natchez. Also included are estate papers, bills and receipts, property inventories, wills and indentures, slave lists, account books, and other items documenting antebellum plantation and land holdings and postwar plantation and personal finances. There are also a few diaries, clippings, 19th- and early 20th-century pedagogical materials, and family photographs.Other papers include scattered records of John Ker’s work with the American Colonization Society and extensive records of the Natchez branches of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1924-1968, and the Colonial Dames of America, 1941-1967, in which both Tillie and Catharine were active, and letters and Mardi Gras invitations to Sue Percy Ker Hyams and other materials related to her.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence in subseries 1.1.1. discusses slaves of various members of the family. Correspondence in subseries 1.1.2 from George Potts in 1835 – 1849 discusses anti-slavery sentiments in the North.  A few letters, 1831-1835, mention Ker’s role in the American Colonization Society. Subseries 1.2.1 contains a will from Sarah Robinson, in which she manumits an enslaved individual.

Folder 66 contains an account book from Albert Dunbar, which includes slaves lists for various plantations.

Photograph Album PA 4656/9 contains an album of Susan Hyams started in the summer of 1946. It contains approximately sixty photographs of Susan and her friends from All Saint’s College, including trips to Cuba and Haiti, the University of Colorado, Mexico City, and Chicago.

Abstract: William Porcher Miles (1822-1899) was a South Carolina educator, mayor of Charleston, S.C. (1855-1857), United States Representative (1857-1860), member of the Confederate House of Representatives and chair of its Military Affairs Committee. After the Civil War, he was a planter in Virginia, then president of South Carolina College, then a planter again, this time in Louisiana. Miles married Betty Bierne (d. 1874), the daughter of Oliver Bierne, a wealthy Virginia and Louisiana planter, in 1863. Personal, political, and military correspondence; diaries; and a few business papers and clippings of William Porcher Miles. Correspondence with many leading political, military, and intellectual figures of the day discusses slavery and runaway slaves, Jews in Charleston, secession, foreign relations, patronage appointments, appropriations, financial and military preparations for war, defense of coastal and inland South Carolina, Reconstruction economic and social conditions in Charleston, S.C., and perceived effects of citizenship and wages on freedmen. Also included are materials relating to Miles and Warley family, friends, and social activities; Miles’s work at the College of Charleston; the 1855 yellow fever epidemic in Norfolk, Va.; improvements to the Charleston port, customs house, post office, canals, and statuary; Miles’s management of Oak Grove Plantation, Nelson County, Va., and Houmas Plantation, Ascension Parish, La.; his involvement in state and local Democratic Party politics in Louisiana, especially with regard to the lottery, sugar tariff, and sugar bounty; and flood control and levees in the lower Mississippi. The diaries, 1867-1897, contain brief but regular entries and give a general picture of Miles’s way of life, indebtedness, political and religious beliefs, and personal relations while running the Oak Grove and Houmas plantations and as college president at Columbia, S.C. Also documented is the 1874 death of Betty Bierne Miles in childbirth.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence include the dismissal of a teacher at Wilmington Academy, South Carolina, who advocated an immediate abolition of slavery in 1834 (Folder 1b); slavery in the South and Cuba in January 1858 (Folder 12); the climate toward slavery in California in an 3 April 1858 letter, as well as letters in March and February that claim that territory, not slavery, was the main issue in the secession crisis in 1858 (Folders 13,14, and 15).

Also included in the correspondence is a 22 February 1859 letter discussing the illegal importation and subsequent return of 305 Africans from Charleston (Folder 19). A 5 March letter mentions a “poor colored boy” who is under suspicion of being a runaway. (Folder 20)

Other letter talk about the murder of William J. Keitt by his slaves in 1860 (Folder 18). A letter from 17 February 1860 mentions  changing British opinions on the South and slavery and compares the situation of the enslaved population  in Haiti and the West Indies and Freedom settlements (Folder 26).

Correspondence continues with Miles dealing with runaway slaves in June 1861 (Folder 42). A letter dated 23 February 1862 cites the case of Rachel Johnson, a free black of Native American descent, who was involved with a number of Charleston men. Two letters (Feb 24) encourage Miles to help her pass through Confederate lines to New York. (Folder48).

Also included is 24 September 1867 letter from J.J. Pringle Smith containing a statement that the “gift” of citizenship and wages did not “change” African Americans (Folder 54). There is also correspondence from 21 April 1892 about the raising of money to pay for freedmen’s votes in the anti-lottery election (Folder 85). The collection also includes a copy of “Slavery and the Remedy” (1857).

There is a letter on 3 November 1864 from Miles to Gen. Robert E. Lee, replying to Lee’s mention about using African American troops. (Folder 52).

Another letter addresses this topic A letter from 14 January 1865 from Miles to Gen. G.T. Beauregard, discusses among other topics the question of whether or not to use enslaved men as soldiers in the Confederate Army (Folder 53).

Abstract: Christian Miltenberger, physician, was married to Marie Aim? Mersier (fl. 1803-1841), whose family owned coffee plantations in Saint Domingue on the island of Hispaniola. After their marriage in 1803, the Miltenbergers moved first to Cuba, where they owned property and slaves, and eventually to Louisiana. Miltenberger practiced medicine in New Orleans from about 1809 until his death. Business papers, estate papers, records of medical observations, and family correspondence of Christian Miltenberger and his family. Most are financial and legal papers relating to Miltenberger’s medical practice and to the estate of his father-in-law, Antoine Mersier (d. ca. 1795). In addition to his medical practice, Miltenberger also owned real estate, slaves, and other property in New Orleans and neighboring parishes. Included are bills, accounts, contracts, inventories, leases, receipts for the sale of property, and baptismal and marriage certificates. The small amount of correspondence relates chiefly to family affairs and includes letters from Miltenberger’s French relatives in Bordeaux, Mirambeau, and Alsace, who also discussed economic and political conditions in France. Some letters after 1825 relate to the question of indemnity for property losses of French residents of Saint-Domingue, which became Haiti in 1804. Also included are notes and observations on yellow fever and other diseases, accounts with patients in New Orleans, and some data on individual medical cases that Miltenberger treated.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Business papers, estate papers, records of medical observations, and family correspondence of physician Miltenberger of Louisiana, Santo Domingo, and Cuba. The majority of the material relates to Miltenberger’s medical practice and to the estate of his father-in-law, Antoine Mersier, who owned coffee plantations and slaves in Santo Domingo. Included are slave lists and records of slave sales between 1739-1794, 1802-1809, and through 1827 (folders 1-12; 29-30) ; records of rentals of slaves (folder 43); records of slave illnesses and deaths (folder 43, 44); and undated letters concerning the treatment of an ill female slave (folder 39).

Abstract: Represented are four generations of the Pettigrew family of Washington and Tyrrell counties, N.C. Prominent family members included James Pettigrew (d. 1784), who emigrated from Scotland, eventually settling in Charleston, S.C., where the family name was changed to Petigru; James’s son, Charles Pettigrew (1744-1807), Anglican minister, and Charles’s son, Ebenezer Pettigrew (1783-1848), state legislator, who established plantations in eastern North Carolina; and Ebenezer’s children, including Charles Lockhart Pettigrew (1816-1873), planter; William S. Pettigrew (1818-1900), politician and Episcopal minister; and James Johnston Pettigrew (1828-1863), lawyer and Confederate Army officer; and James Louis Petigru, lawyer of Charleston, S.C. Business and personal correspondence reflecting the varied interests and activities of Pettigrew family members, including the involvement of Charles and his grandson William in the Anglican and Episcopal churches; the development and management of Bonarva, Belgrade, and Magnolia plantations by Ebenezer Pettigrew, sometimes in cooperation with family friend James Cathcart Johnston of Edenton, N.C., including unsuccessful efforts by the family to hold onto the plantations after the Civil War; slavery, especially William’s use of slaves as overseers (some letters from slaves are included); Charles’s involvement in the founding of the University of North Carolina and his sons’ attendance there; family life, including the education of children at the University of North Carolina and elsewhere; the evacuation of the plantations after the capture of Roanoke Island in 1862; James Johnston Pettigrew’s travels to Charleston, Spain and elsewhere in Europe, and Cuba; reestablishment of ties with the Charleston Petigrus that was formalized with the marriage of Charles Lockhart Pettigrew and his cousin Jane Caroline North; and the general decline of family fortunes after the Civil War despite the efforts of Jane Caroline North Pettigrew to hold onto land and other assets. Included are letters of Henry Clay, 1841-1842. Financial records document purchases for family and plantation use and educational expenses and include slave lists. Writings consist mainly of travel diaries, especially of James Johnston Pettigrew; some religious works; poems and acrostics by slave poet George Moses Horton; and other items. School materials consist of notebooks and other items. Commonplace books concern women’s activities and current events. William’s Episcopal Church materials relate to his service at various North Carolina churches and include journals of parochial visits; registers of salary, offerings, baptisms, burials, etc.; records of sermons delivered; and records of church-related expenses. Genealogical materials include information

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  The correspondence series contains information on the slave trade from the late 1700s and throughout the mid-1800s. This includes Charles Pettigrew’s attitude towards slavery as well as the sale of enslaved people (1802-1804; see Folder 8 ) and views on using slaves as overseers  in a 9 January 1849 letter (Folder 131). William Pettigrew also wrote letters on behalf of enslaved individuals, including one such letter from 31 October 1850.

Some of the material in this collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to  link to the finding aid for the collection and to access the digitized content.

There are several letters beginning in 4 November 1852 that relate to the selling of a rebellious slave, as well other general letters  (Folders 152-159). There are also letters from enslaved overseers to William Pettigrew during the late 1850s, discussing conditions on the plantation, as well as a letter from June 1858 describing conditions in Liberia.

During the Civil War, there are numerous letters dealing with the Pettigrews moving their slaves from Chatham County into central North Carolina. There are also letters written or  dictated from enslaved individuals about being hired out as laborers in Raleigh during this time (Folders 238-273).

There are also legal and financial papers concerning the purchase of slaves, slave lists and accounts with slaves, and writings by slaves and on the topic of the slave trade. See Subseries 2.1.1 for information on the purchases of enslaved individuals, as well as 2.1.2.

Folders 474, 475, 479, 481-484, and 486 contains volumes that include lists of enslaved individuals as well as provisions. Subseries 2.2.2 also contains several volumes with slaves lists as well.

Folder 529 also contains a Minority report to the South Carolina General Assembly on the slave trade, 1857 (47 pp.), and includes a summary of arguments against the resumption of the foreign slave trade.

Folders 3 and 4 also contain discussion’s of Charles Pettigrew’s journey to Haiti to purchase enslaved individuals.

There are several letters that relate to Peter, an enslaved man owned by Charles Pettigrew. In October 1861, Peter was sent to serve Charle’s brother, Brigadier General James Johnson Pettigrew, in the Confederate Army. Letters from 1 October and 2 October 1861 describe Peter as being “well acquainted with horses, is a capable servant in many respects; he can make clothes and is a first rate nurse” (Folders 238-249).

For additional information on Peter see the online exhibition

“North Carolina and the Civil War: They Were There”: http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/exhibits/civilwar/explore_section4e.html.

The letters from October 1 and 2 have been digitized and are available on the Southern Historical Collection’s “Civil War Day by Day” blog:

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/civilwar/index.php/2011/10/01/1-october-1861/

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/civilwar/index.php/2011/10/02/

Abstract: Lawyer, planter, state official, Confederate general, Redeemer, Democratic United States senator from North Carolina, 1872-1895, and minister to Mexico, 1895-1897. Correspondence, chiefly 1868-1904, relating to the political, economic, and racial aspects of Reconstruction in North Carolina, particularly the machinations of George William Swepson; to Ransom’s plantations in northeastern North Carolina, particularly in regard to cotton marketing and labor; to national and state party politics, 1868- 1904; and to his diplomatic service in Mexico. Much of the collection is Ransom’s papers as a senator, including correspondence with politicians and constituents covering most of the major issues of the time: race relations; federal actions affecting southern agriculture and industry, including the tariff, the silver question, and agrarian unrest; women’s suffrage; and many others. Also included are papers relating to a variety of family and business concerns. Material on Ransom’s Civil War career and the first three years of Reconstruction is relatively slight and there is nothing about his prewar political career.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers relate to the political, economic, and racial aspects of the Reconstruction; management of plantation and former slaves (1880- 1885); the conduct of African-American plantation workers (1890- 1892, 1897); the political tide among African Americans in North Carolina (1894-5); a letter written by William Cawthorne, an African American lecturing to Good Templar lodges in Philadelphia, concerning the racial prejudices of the North versus the South (1874); the resignation of a student at West Point, in part induced by the necessity of close association with an African-American cadet (1875);

There is also correspondence related to the desire of John H. Collins, an African-American official, to become minister to Haiti (1877).

There is 10 December 1875 letter from former slave and former Union Army Chaplain Garland H. White of Virginia, requesting that Pierce Lafayette, an African American Democratic preacher, be appointed police officer in Washington, D.C. (Folders 13a – 13b). There is also a a 3 November 1893 letter from Garland H. White describing his work with the Democratic Party and requesting to confer with Matt W. Ransom on organizing local African American Democrats following the next election.

There is also a letter of 16 May 1887 from A. M. Noble of Johnston County, N.C., expressing outrage that the Democratic administration had not removed an African American mail agent serving on the Greensboro to Goldsboro route. More complaints can be found in the correspondence in 1893.

Also included in the correspondence is a  4 June 1891 letter from F. S. Faison of Garysburg, N.C., notifying Ransom that “the opposition” would be holding a meeting, at which several African Americans were going to speak, and asking if Ransom would join them in “capturing the meeting.”

Abstract: Papers of Schutte, a Haitian planter who emigrated to Portsmouth, Va., ca. 1793, including eight family letters exchanged between France and the West Indies, 1741-1753; Schutte’s bills, accounts, deeds, miscellaneous legal papers, and correspondence in Haiti, 1769-1789; and papers, 1825- 1832, of Schutte’s widow, chiefly concerning her attempt to secure compensation from France for property losses in the Haitian revolt in the 1790s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers include three petitions from shipowners to the official at Port au Prince in regard to collecting from Schutte money due for the transport of slaves (1767, 1786); a letter to Schutte relating to a slave patient (1783); slave bills of sale, including names and ages (1785); a widow’s claim to a slave named Fidele (1788); the division of slaves among inheritors and others (1818, 1822); a letter expressing the difficulties in selling a female slave (1825); and a copy of a letter written in St. Domingue at the beginning of the revolution, concerning the slaves there (1793).  Microfilm only.

Abstract: Papers, 1773-1845, chiefly of Richard Mendenhall of Guilford County, N.C., relating to the Manumission Society of North Carolina and other groups. Papers concern the emanicipation of slaves and emigration of free blacks to Haiti, sponsored by a branch of North Carolina Quakers, and include correspondence about arranging the voyage, legal papers liberating slaves, passenger lists, and agreements and accounts concerning the ship and voyage. Other papers include scattered minutes and other records, 1773-1845, of Quaker groups in North Carolina.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers of Richard Mendenhall of Guilford County, North Carolina, concerning the emancipation of slaves and the emigration of free blacks, sponsored by a branch of North Carolina Quakers, to Haiti. The papers contain correspondence arranging the voyage, legal papers freeing slaves, passenger lists, and agreements and accounts concerning the ship and voyage. Included in the papers are minutes, letterbooks, a daybook, accounts, and a pamphlet from committees dedicated to manumission and colonization.

This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.