Abstract: Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks photographed life in Columbus, Miss., between the 1920s and 1980s. Pruitt, born in Mississippi in 1891, became interested in photography while photographing his children. He moved to Columbus to work in Henry Hoffmeister’s photography studio, also attending the Illinois School of Photography early in his career. In or around 1920, Pruitt bought out Hoffmeister, becoming the sole photographer in Columbus. Pruitt ran the studio until around 1960, when he sold the business to his assistant, Calvin Shanks. Pruitt died in 1967, and Shanks continued to run the studio until his death in 1981, but the studio remained in operation until about 1986. The collection includes images taken by Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks between the 1920s and 1980s chiefly in Lowndes County, Miss. Most of the images were created by Pruitt circa 1920s-1950s. They document his work as a commercial (for-hire) and studio photographer in Columbus. Images primarily depict the town and people, including local businesses, churches, residential areas, schools, events, and people. Of particular interest are images of visits by Mississippi state politicians, historic homes, the African American community, and civic groups. The collection also includes images from outside Columbus, including other locations within Mississippi, as well as in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Quite a number of the photographs document African American individuals and groups in Mississippi, from churches to fraternal organizations to social clubs. A few examples included an African American family working in agriculture (Sheet Film 05463/00031), Cedar Grove M.B. Church (Folder 05463/01254), and the Colored Young Mens Christian Association (Sheet Film 05463/01531).

A number of images from this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized material.

Abstract: John Kenyon Chapman (1947-2009), known as Yonni, was a life-long social justice activist, organizer, and historian who focused his academic and social efforts on workers rights and African American empowerment in central North Carolina. Chapman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1947; graduated from Harvard University in 1969; and then moved to Atlanta, Ga., to join the fight for African American equality. He relocated to North Carolina in 1975 and worked as a laboratory technician at the North Carolina Memorial Hospital for about ten years. During this time, Chapman became active in local social justice struggles and community organizations. He helped organize his coworkers against unfair working conditions, became involved with the Communist Workers Party, and participated in African liberation and anti-apartheid struggles. Chapman was a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979. Throughout the 1980s, he was active in progressive social justice campaigns. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chapman was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he focused his activism and academic work on historical accuracy, African American empowerment, and civil rights education in and around Chapel Hill. During this time, Chapman founded and directed two racial and social justice organizations: the Freedom Legacy Project in 1995 and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth in 2005. From 2002 to 2005, Chapman ran a successful campaign to abolish the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, an action that opened a dialogue about the history of slavery and racism on campus. After a 30-year battle with cancer, Chapman died on 22 October 2009 in Chapel Hill. The collection documents Yonni Chapman’s social activism and academic activities, covering nearly four decades of progressive racial, social, and economic justice struggles in central North Carolina. Organizational correspondence, notes, newsletters, and reports document the activities of the Communist Workers Party, the Federation for Progress, the Orange County Rainbow Coalition of Conscience, the New Democratic Movement, the Freedom Legacy Project, and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth, among other organizations on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus and in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro. Workers rights and racial justice campaigns and commemorations, including the Greensboro Massacre and the campaign to end the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, are documented in paper, audio, visual, and photographic formats. Photographs, slides, contact prints, photographic negatives, posters, banners, signs, and screen-printed t-shirts, chiefly created by Chapman, document a variety of demonstrations, meetings, and social justice events. Audio and video materials, largely created by Chapman include documentaries, meetings, speeches, and demonstrations captured on audio cassettes, VHS tapes, 8mm video cassettes, and DVDs. Research materials for Chapman’s graduate doctoral work include audio and paper files of interviews with participants in the Chapel Hill civil rights movement. There are also audio files recorded by Chapman on a digital voice recorder in the year leading up to his death that contain lengthy discussions with local activists about continuing his social justice work after his death; audio recordings and a video photograph montage from Chapman’s 2009 memorial service; photographs of Chapman with friends and family; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular note are the materials related to the Communist Party in Series 1, as well as materials documenting the Greensboro Massacre that took place at an anti-Klan Rally in 1970. Series 6 also contains materials related to numerous social justice and civil rights organizations that Yonni Chapman was involved in, including the Chapel Hill- Carrboro chapter of the NAACP. Subseries 7.1 contains audio recordings of oral histories interviews Yonni conducted with participants in the black freedom struggle and civil rights movement in Chapel Hill. There are also photographs and audio of numerous civil rights demonstrations, events, and programs.

Abstract: Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, married sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates in 1843 and established homes and families in Wilkes County and later Surry County, N.C. The collection includes correspondence, bills, and receipts, including slave bills of sale, of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker relating to their North Carolina property, planting interests, family matters, and arrangements for exhibition tours. Also included are an account book, 1833-1839, showing income from public appearances and itinerary; clippings; photographs; articles about the twins by Worth B. Daniels and Jonathan Daniels and related material; and Joined at Birth, a 1998 videotape about the twins that was made by Advanced Medical Productions of Chapel Hill, N.C., for the Discovery Channel. The Addition of November 2011 is a ledger with entries presumably penned by Chang and Eng’s business manager Charles Harris detailing the business-related and personal expenses of Chang and Eng during exhibition tours of Cuba, Europe, and the United States and for a period after they settled in North Carolina in 1839.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection highlights: Portions of this collection has been digitized and is part of the online exhibition “Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins”. Click here to link to the exhibit and to access the digitized material.

Folder 2 contains bills of sale for enslaved persons for the Bunkers property in North Carolina. There is also a photograph of a formerly enslaved woman who belonged to the Bunker Family.

Abstract: The Otey family of Meridianville, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss., included William Madison Otey (1818-1865), merchant and cotton planter; his wife, Octavia Wyche Otey (fl. 1841-1891); and their children, Imogene Otey Fields, Mollie Otey Hampton; William Walter Otey; Lucille Otey Walker; Matt Otey, and Elliese Otey. The collection includes family and business correspondence, financial and legal papers and volumes, and personal items. Family correspondence is with members of the Wyche, Horton, Kirkland, Pruit, Landidge, and Robinson families in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee. A few letters from Confederate soldiers in the field appear as do some letters relating to difficulties on the homefront. There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from a slave in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master about building a stockade. Business papers pertain mostly to William Madison Otey’s merchant activities in Meridianville, Ala., especially with Chickasaw Indians in the 1830s, and to the Oteys’ cotton plantations in Madison County, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss. Others concern the financial affairs of the Wyche, Horton, and Kirkland families. Included are accounts with cotton factors and merchants, estate papers, deeds, loan notes, summonses, receipts, agreements for hiring out slaves, and work contracts with freedmen. Volumes include account books, plantation daybooks, a receipt book, and a diary of Octavia Wyche Otey that covers the years 1849-1888. The diary and other papers offer detailed descriptions of women’s lives, especially in nineteenth-century Alabama.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters from Rebecca Wyche in 1835 and Rodah Horton in 1832, as well as other family members throughout the 1820s and 1830s,  discuss buying and selling enslaved individuals (Folder 1).

Correspondence from William Otey to his wife in the 1850s and 1860s discuss the management of their property in Yazoo County, as well as the welfare of enslaved people on the property (Folders 4-17).  There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from an enslaved man named Thomas, in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master, J. M. Oaty, asking him to get a substitute for him in the building of a stockade (Folder 17).

Financial and legal papers in Series 2 contain several references to enslaved persons. William Wyche’s 1829 papers concern hiring out slaves to the firm Otey Kinkle (Folder 30). There is also an order issued in 1838 for the delivery of a enslaved woman named Eliza, who had belonged to Dr. A. A. Wyche, deceased, to Joseph Leeman. Also included is a receipt for Eliza signed by Leeman in 1838. There is also agreement dated 1849 for the hire of an enslaved woman and three children belonging to the estate of Jackston Lightfoot, which John Wyche was executor of (Folder 31).

Octavia Wyche’s antebellum diary (Folders 39-42) contains frequent mentions of managing and punishing enslaved people on her property, as well as instances of illnesses.

After the Civil War, Octavia wrote in a large volume about interacting with free people of color on her plantation, as well as copies of contracts in 1866 for Maria, Nina, and Anderson, former slaves at Green Lawn plantation. (Folder 38 also contains a contract Octavia Otey signed in 1866 with Maria, who worked as a laundress and cook). Of particular note in the diary are descriptions, dated 29 November and 6 December 1868 and 19 January and 1 February 1869, of visits to Green Lawn by the Ku Klux Klan.Also included is an entry for 22 November describing wedding preparations for the daughter of a former slave, Maria, and another for 12 January 1880, in which Octavia complains that local blacks “will not work for white people if they can help it.” (Folders 43-63).

A merchant’s account book of William Madison Otey contains an account from at least one customer, Sally Shochoty, is listed as a Negro; the spelling of her name as Shock.ho.ty at one point suggests that she may have intermarried with the Chickasaws (Folder 64).

The daybook from 1857 in Series 4.2 contains records of cotton picked by enslaved individuals on Otey’s plantation, listed by name (Folder 65). Folders 67 & 68 also contain daybooks from the Civil War era.

Folder 74 contains an 1849 clipping related to the enslaved African American musician “Blind Tom” at Camp Davis. Tom Wiggins was born in Columbus, Ga., and was an extremely talented musician who composed a number of songs and could play music by ear. He was an autistic savant and was unfortunately exploited throughout his lifetime for his musical abilities. Click here to link to a website dedicated to preserving Blind Tom’s legacy.

After the war, Octavia Otey’s correspondence received from family in the late 1860s and mid 1870s discusses relations with free people of color (Folders 18 – 23).

 

 

Abstract: Digby Gordon Seymour (1855-1927) was a railroad engineer who lived and worked in the southeastern United States. He was the father of Knoxville, Tenn., lawyer and businessman Charles Milne Seymour (1882-1958), who was the father of Tennessee medical doctor and historian Digby Gordon Seymour (1923- ). The collection chiefly includes letters, 1893-1902, written by Digby Gordon Seymour at his work locations in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee to his oldest son, Charles Milne Seymour. Also included are telegrams from Digby Seymour and a letter from him to another son, James. These communications contain fatherly advice, especially comments on and encouragement of Charles Seymour’s studies. Digby Seymour wrote of borrowing money to pay for Charles Seymour’s attendance at Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee and at the University of Tennessee and for his family’s monthly expenses; expenditures for rent, food, clothing, shoes, and travel; and a lawsuit with R. M. Quigley & Co., a Saint Louis contractor for which he had previously worked. In later letters, he discussed his political opinions, especially his support for Republican politicians. Items of note include a 22 March 1900 letter that provides directions for staging an eleven-act minstrel show.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

 Collection Highlights: Folder 4 contains a a 22 March 1900 letter that provides directions for staging an eleven-act minstrel show, which also discusses actors performing in blackface.

Materials from this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Abstract: In 1815, Bryan Grimes (1793-1860) of Pitt County, N.C., married Nancy Grist. Three of their children reached maturity: Susan, William (1823-1884), and Bryan Grimes Jr. (1828-1880). The elder Grimes gave his two sons plantations along the Tar River. The brothers prospered as slave owners, cotton growers, and real estate investors. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bryan became a major in the 4th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He rose to the rank of major general. William remained in North Carolina. After the conflict, Bryan returned to his plantation Grimesland. William resided in Raleigh, where he became an absentee landlord in the tenant farming system, cattle breeder, and hotel owner. In 1880, Bryan became embroiled in a feud with the Paramore brothers and was killed by their hired assassin. William died four years later. The collection includes correspondence, financial and legal items, military papers, estate papers, account books, genealogical material, and other items relating to the Grimes family of North Carolina and the related Hanraham, Kennedy, and Singeltary families, chiefly 1830-1880. Among the topics documented are daily routines, the Civil War both in the military arena and on the home front, education at the University of North Carolina and other institutions, plantation management, slavery, sharecropping, livestock breeding, and cotton growing. Some materials relate to the buying and selling of slaves, and there are a few post-Civil War letters from ex-slaves. Besides members of the principal families, people important in the collection include Asa Biggs, John Gray Blount, William Boyd, William Cherry, Pulaski Cowper, James R. Hoyle, W.W. Meyers, James O’K Williams, and Charles Clements Yellowley. Significant locations include Beaufort County, Hyde County, Pitt County, and Raleigh (including information about the Exchange Hotel and the Yarborough House, both owned by family members), all in North Carolina, and Charleston, S.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains material that has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid and to access the digital content.

Folder 5 contains mention of Grimes Family businesses, including selling of enslaved individuals in 1865.

Folders 7-14 and 17 include Overseer’s Reports at Avon Plantation mentions of the labor of enslaved individuals as well as free people of color.

Folder 53 contains 1844 receipts from the estate of John Singletary concerning the purchase and hiring out of slaves, as well as medical receipts for treatment.

Folders 72-76 contains bills and receipts from the estate of John Kennedy, concerning the hiring out of slaves as well as lists of enslaved individuals as well as their value, from 1825-1830. Folders 85,  87, and 90 also contain lists of enslaved persons.

Several folders in Subseries 2.3 relating to the estate of Thomas and Walter Hanrahan contains deeds of sale and receipts for enslaved individuals (Folder 91-96, etc.). Folder 105 also contains records related to the financial support and clothing of an African American woman and her children.

Folders in Subseries 2.5 (Estate of William Cherry) and Subseries 2.6 (Estate of James O’K. Williams) also contains lists, bills, and receipts for enslaved individuals.

Subseries 3.1 (Financial and Legal Items) contain several folders with deeds of sale and receipts for enslaved individuals (Folders 145-152, 155-158, etc). Folder 171 also contains a deed of sale for an eight year old boy without his mother. Folder 197 contains a list of slaves “who went to the Yankees” in Washington, N.C., in 1862.

Folder 205 and 210 in Subseries 3.2 contain sharecropping agreements from 1867 and 1868, including agreements with freedman.

The W.W. Myers material in Subseries 4.1 contains materials related to his work as a surgeon for the Freedman’s Bureau. Folder 315-316 contains correspondence between Dr. Myers and Rufus Craig, an African American man who worked with Myers. Also included are reports about Craig’s employment and salary. Folder 317-318 also contain reports about sick freedmen.

Volume 52 in Subseries 5.2 is an account book for laborers at one of the Grimes Family’s plantations with separate notations for African American workers (This volume has been digitized and is available online, click here to access the volume.)

Folder 415 contains correspondence among Grimes Family members about the purchasing and loaning of slaves.

Folder 417 contains a letter from William Grimes, formerly enslaved by the Grimes Family, who was now a Methodist circuit preacher. There is also a letter in Folder 418 from a formerly enslaved woman named Phyllis about visiting and obtaining employment.

Abstract: David Irvin Craig was born in Orange County, N.C., in 1849. He received his early education at the old Hughes Academy at Cedar Grove, N.C.; was a student at Davidson College, 1874-1875; and, in 1878, graduated from the Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C. He was licensed to preach in May 1878 in Greensboro, N.C., and served as pastor at the Reidsville Presbyterian Church in Reidsville, N.C., until 1925. In 1881, Craig married Isabel Gertrude Newman of Columbia, S.C., with whom he had four children. Craig was elected as a representative of Orange Presbytery in the General Assembly, served as Moderator of Synod and the Presbytery, was one of ten original regents of Barium Springs Orphanage, held the Stated Clerk position for both the Orange Presbytery and the Synod, and was a trustee of Davidson College and Union Theological Seminary. He wrote historical works on Presbyterianism. Craig died in 1925. The collection includes one account book, one day book, 14 diaries, and some loose papers. The account book, 1878-1924, includes information about marriages, baptisms, and burials performed by D.I. Craig. It also contains insurance information and lists new members of Reidsville Presbyterian Church, 1878-1897, with some gaps. The day book, 1912-1923, contains salary, expenditure, and debt information for D.I. Craig and his family. The diaries, 1884-1925, include stories of his experiences on the Craig family “plantation,” which was established in Orange County, N.C., during the 1750s. Craig also recorded a short history of the Craig and Strayhorn families in the 1884 diary and discussed family history in other diaries. Entries discuss President Grover Cleveland’s appearance at the Great Centennial Celebration of the Presbyterian General Assembly in May 1888, local and national elections, his experiences with African Americans at the polls on election days, thoughts on Prohibition, meetings with the Synod and Presbytery, his perspective on racial issues, farm life, family members, and the local gossip. Also included are entries describing the Wilmington race riots of 1898 and race riots across the country that followed first black Heavyweight Champion of the World (1908-1915) Jack Johnson’s defeat of Jim Jeffries, a white boxer and former world heavyweight champion who came out of retirement to fight Johnson on 4 July 1910. Loose papers, 1878-1925, include clippings mentioning D.I. Craig’s life and work, a program for Reidsville Presbyterian Church, and photographs of New Hope Cemetery in the 1920s. The cash book, 1914-1929, contains information on sermons preached and prayer meetings held at Reidsville Presbyterian Church as well as a list of baptisms, marriages, and funerals performed by D.I. Craig. There are also loose papers throughout the book primarily addressed to D.I. Craig’s son, Carl B. Craig. The notebooks, 1876-1878, consist of a collection of writings, sermons, and lectures given by educators at the Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C., and they also include some written thoughts and reflections of D.I. Craig. The Addition of August 2010 consists of a single volume providing genealogical information about the Craig family written by D.I. Craig in 1899. Other information in the volume is written in another hand and includes a transcription of an obituary of a relative who died in the Civil War during the Battle of Bean’s Station (14 December 1863) and a transcription of a letter purported to have been found by a servant at a federal army camp near Camden, S.C. Dated 26 February 1865, the letter from Thomas J. Myers to his wife in Boston, Mass., recounts the looting and pillaging that occurred, likely in Camden, S.C., as General William T. Sherman’s army travelled north through the state.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection highlights: Some of the material in this collection has been digitized. Click here to access the finding aid to link to the digital material.

The diaries (1884-1925) contain entries describing Craig’s interactions with African Americans at the polls during election day, as well as his views on race relations.

The Diary from August 1897-1900 (Oversize Volume SV-5399/4) contains an entry describing the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898.

The Diary from 1908-1910 (Oversize Volume SV-5399/7) includes an entry about the 4 July 1910 fight between Jack Johnson, an African-American man, who defeated Jim Jeffries, a white man. The event provoked race riots across the country.

Abstract: Eli West Hall was a lawyer and North Carolina state senator. Papers of Hall consist of compositions and speeches written by him in Fayetteville, N.C., where he was a student in the early 1840s and at Chapel Hill, where he received his A.B. from the University of North Carolina in 1847, and letters from him while he was studying law in Hillsborough, N.C. Included are letters, 1856-1868, from Hall and his wife, Margaret Dawson Hall, from Wilmington, N.C., where he was a lawyer, to his brother William, who was studying medicine in New York; a few letters, 1860-1861, from Hall while he was a state senator; and some civilian letters during the Civil War from members of the Hall family. Topics discussed include family matters, slavery, local and national politics, the University of North Carolina in 1853, and practicing law. Postwar items consist of a few scattered family letters.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Chiefly personal correspondence of Hall, lawyer and state senator of Wilmington, North Carolina. Letters discuss family matters, slavery, local and national politics, the University of North Carolina, and the practice of law. Included are discussions of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850).

Two speeches from the collection are available digitally through the Documenting The American South website. Click here to access the digitized materials through the finding aid.

Abstract: William P. Hill was an itinerant Baptist preacher who travelled through South Carolina in the 1840s. Diary of Hill, recording his constant movement through South Carolina, preaching at various churches, meeting places, conferences, and conventions, and competition from other sects, with occasional comments on national events and mention of white and black congregations and temperance societies, and his accounts with the Domestic Mission Board, 1846-1849.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Hill’s diary records his activities as an itinerant Baptist preacher in South Carolina, including scattered references to white and African-American congregations. Some of the places he preached include: Mabynton, Camden, Darlington, Society Hill, Cheraw, Spartanburg Court House, Orangeburg, Savannah River Association Meeting, Hamburg, Aiken, Columbia, Stateburg, and Chester.

This diary has been digitized. Click here to link to the finding aid and to access the digital material.

Abstract: Edward C. Anderson (1815-1883) of Savannah, Ga., was a United States Navy officer, planter, Confederate Army officer, mayor of Savannah, insurance company representative, and railroad director. He was married to Sarah McQueen Williamson (1816-1884). Family letters and volumes of Edward C. Anderson and Sarah McQueen Williamson Anderson of Savannah, Ga. Most of the letters, 1837-1882, are to Sarah Anderson from female friends and relatives, and her husband. Topics include social life in various northern and southern cities, family news, and wartime conditions in Savannah and in Charleston, S.C. Eight volumes of notes and diaries of Anderson record his experiences as a United States naval officer, 1835-1839 and 1842-1846, serving in the Mediterranean, in Florida coastal waters, and with the United States Coast Survey; as a Confederate Army officer traveling to England, 1861-1864, trying to purchase military supplies there, and later serving with the Savannah River defenses; and as a resident of Savannah, 1869-1875 and 1877-1882, active as mayor, insurance agent, and director of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad Company and the Central Railroad and Canal Company of Georgia. Anderson’s interests in family, social, economic, racial, and civic affairs during Reconstruction and later are also represented. Other materials include the minutes, 1813-1868, of the Chatham Academy of Savannah and miscellaneous plantation and slave records.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collections contains materials that have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Correspondence covers various topics including black Union soldiers (1863) and African Americans living in Savannah (1868). Manuscript volumes include slave papers which document slave births and deaths (1817-1866) and blankets and shoes distributed to slaves (1853-1866). Anderson’s diary mentions conferences to establish an African-American hospital (1870), a riot connected with segregation on street cars, African-American education in Savannah, and national race relations (1872). Microfilm available.