Abstract: Manuscript draft of a speech or treatise on the aims, policies, activities, and effects of the American Colonization Society. The paper is unsigned but is attributed to Fendall, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and author.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Scattered business papers, commissions and army orders, and letters of Frederick Weedon (1784-1857), physician of St. Augustine, Fla.; his daughter, Henrietta Williams Weedon Whitehurst (1821-1885); and her husband, Daniel Winchester Whitehurst (1808-1872), newspaper editor, physician, and member of the American Colonization Society. The papers pertain to but do not give extensive information about Whitehurst’s activities in Liberia, 1831-1834; the Seminole Indian War and the Seminole leader Osceola (ca. 1804-1838); Dr. Weedon’s estate and the sale of his slaves; the Union occupation of Key West, Fla., during the Civil War; and Whitehurst’s service at Fort Jefferson, Fla., during the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. Letters from George St. Leger Grenfell and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, prisoners at the fort, are included, as are a note, 1857, from Louis Agassiz, and a letter, 1867, from Jefferson Davis sending money to aid Grenfell. Also included is a note from Varina Davis. Twentieth-century papers include papers about the military record of Frederick Weedon in the War of 1812 and two letters about relics of Osceola.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included are letters concerning the activities of the American Colonization Society, primarily between 1834-1835 (Folder 1) and slave bills of sale in1847, 1860, and 1861 (Folder 3).

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: Pendleton was a graduate of the United States Military Academy, an Episcopal clergyman and schoolmaster in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, a Confederate brigadier general, serving under Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee, and rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Lexington, Va., 1853-1883. Family letters to and from William Nelson Pendleton and his wife, and from his children and Page, Nelson, Pendleton, and other relatives, giving an extensive picture of the private and public life of Virginians through most of the 19th century. The 35 items dated earlier than 1837 are Nelson and Page family letters. Approximately 1,400 items were written during the Civil War years, including military communications among officers in the Virginia theatre of war, correspondence concerning promotions, personal rivalries and criticism among Confederate officers, letters to and from Mrs. Pendleton at Lexington, Va., and other members of the family. There is correspondence before, during, and after the war concerning the Episcopal Church and specifically the affairs of the Lexington church and threats to Pendleton’s tenure as rector, and (from 1870 onwards) Pendleton’s work in raising a Robert E. Lee memorial fund. There are also some papers relating to Pendleton’s life in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland before he came to Lexington in 1853.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters cover such topics as his opinions on slavery; slaves building Confederate fortifications (1861); thoughts of slaves on possible Yankee victory (1862); instructions on handling rebellious slaves (1863); the postwar situation with African Americans (1865); and justifications of the institution of slavery using passages from the Bible (1880). The collection also includes an Annual Report of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society (1881).

Abstract: Members of the Wilson and Hairston families were planters and merchants of Henry and Pittsylvania counties, Va., and Davie, Rockingham, and Stokes counties, N.C. Peter Hairston (1752-1832), of Pittsylvania, later Henry County, Va., was a merchant of Stokes and Rockingham counties, N.C., and owner of several plantations, including Royal Oak, Sauratown Hill, and Cooleemee Hill. His son-in-law, Peter Wilson (1770-1813), husband of Ruth Stoval Hairston (1783-1852), was a planter of Berry Hill, Brierfield, and Goose Pond, all in Pittsylvania County, Va., and partner in his father-in-law’s mercantile business. Ruth Stoval (Hairston) Wilson married second Robert Hairston (1783-1852), of Leatherwood Plantation in Henry County and who, circa 1837, moved to Mississippi to manage his properties there, leaving Ruth in Virginia. Robert’s brother, Samuel Hairston (1788-1875), of Oak Hill Plantation, Pittsylvania County, was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, owning plantations there and in North Carolina and approximately 1700 slaves. His eldest son, Peter Wilson Hairston (1819-1886), lived his adult life at Cooleemee Hill in Davie County, N.C. Peter Wilson Hairston’s niece, Ruth Hairston (1863-1936) married Alfred Varley Sims (1864-1944), civil engineer who worked for several railroads, taught engineering, and worked for the Knickerbocker Trust Company as general manager and chief engineer of the Cuba Eastern Railroad Company based in Guantanamo, Cuba, 1905-1908. Business correspondence, financial and legal papers and scattered personal correspondence of six generations of the Wilson and Hairston families. Among the activities represented are the sale of tobacco through Virginia commission merchants; the service of Peter Hairston (1752-1832) as a deputy sheriff in Henry County, Va., mainly 1751-1788; the manumission of six Hairston slaves in 1832 through the American Colonization Society; purchase of supplies for plantation and household use; and activities of the Sandy Creek, Mayo, County Line, and Staunton River Baptist associations, 1833-1868. Civil War materials are few and consist of scattered family letters and some receipts for foodstuffs sold to the Confederate Army. Throughout the collection there is material concerning the management of the various family plantations. Approximately one-fourth of the collection consists of the personal and professional correspondence of Alfred Varley Sims as a professor at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa), 1895-1904, and as a civil engineer, and includes materials related to his time in Cuba, 1905-1908, and to his connections with various southern and Cuban railroads and other businesses in Cuba and elsewhere.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The papers include bills of sale for an enslaved individual between 1751-1788 (Folders 1b-8); receipts for hiring out enslaved persons between 1789-1813 (Folders 8-75); jailors’ bills for keeping runaway enslaved persons; and doctors’ bills for attending enslaved people between 1814-1832 (Folders 76-128).

The collection also contains five letters  from 1832 about the American Colonization Society and the manumission of six formerly enslaved people who were sent to Liberia ; lists of clothing for slaves; work agreements with former slaves between 1833-1860; slave lists; an order to return a enslaved individual (1780- 1799).

There are letters discussing the legality of a will designating a “young mulatto child” sole heir to an estate and discussing arrangements for moving slaves from one plantation to another  between 1830-1860, and a letter written by a white man describing a fight with a African American man in 1892.

Several volumes (Volume 63 in Folder 458;  Volume 103 in Folder 508; con’t) contain information on the sale and purchase of enslaved individuals, as well as slaves lists  and lists of clothes and other items given out to slaves. A memorandum book also mentions runaway slaves  in 1800 (Volume 83 in Folder 479).

Volume 169 in Folder 58 also contains an accounting of money or goods paid to formerly enslaved individuals.

Abstract: John McKee Sharpe of Stateville, N.C. Papers of John McKee Sharpe, including his own genealogical correspondence, and correspondence, business papers, etc., of the Sharpe family and of John H. McKee. Series 1, Sharpe Family papers, 1793-1890 (510 items), concerns members of the family who moved from Cecil County, Md., to Rowan, later Iredell, County, N.C. Prominent family members included the sons of Thomas Sharpe, Jr., namely Amos, John, and William (member of the Continental Congress from North Carolina), and Ebenezer Franklin Sharpe, son of Amos, and his son, Silas Alexander, who married a McKee. The papers consist of bills, receipts, and business papers, and the papers of Silas Alexander Sharpe as a colonel in the North Carolina Home Guard, 1863-1865. Silas Sharpe’s papers deal with militia activities in Iredell and Alexander counties, especially with conscription, apprehension of deserters, slaves detailed to work at Fort Fisher, and local defenses; and his business papers in connection with the Atlantic, Tennessee, and Ohio Railroad. Series 2, John H. McKee papers, 1820-1870 (173 items), contains scattered business and legal papers and extensive family correspondence with relatives spread across the South. Topics of significance include the legal separation of John H. McKee and his second wife, and the successes and failures of son Thomas Jefferson McKee (d. 1855), who settled in Shelby County, Tex. Series 3, John McKee Sharpe papers, 1903- 1954 (117 items), consists almost entirely of correspondence relating to the history of the Sharpe and McKee families and members of the related Caldwell, Mills, Moore, and Murdock families, and to Iredell County history.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers belonging to Silas Alexander Sharpe, a colonel of the North Carolina Home Guard for Iredell and Alexander Counties, concern conscription, apprehension of deserters, and slaves detained to work at Ft. Fisher. The papers include in Folder 1 a Maryland bond to a North Carolina resident demanding the delivery of a slave (1793). Folder 5 contains letters concerning the purchase of slaves (1846, 1849). In Folder 15, there are letters describing race relations in Laurens District, South Carolina, during Reconstruction (1871). Also, in the early 1850s there is correspondence concerning the death of John Stevenson and the manumission of his slaves, who emigrated to Liberia (See Folders 20 and 21).

Abstract: Principal member of the Hughes family of Edgefield, S.C., are Dr. John Hughes (d. 1835) and his son, John H. Hughes (d. 1871), who were both cotton planters; John Hughes’s sister, Sophia Hughes Hunt (fl. 1825- 1864); his daughter, Jennie H. Hughes (fl. 1858-1879); his father-in-law, James Bones (fl. 1819-1836); his cousin, Lucy T. Butler Moore (d. 1857); his son-in-law, Cicero Adams (d. 1868); and wagon maker John Christie (fl. 1851). The collection includes family correspondence, legal, and financial papers, and miscellaneous items, dated chiefly between 1820 and 1898, and relating to Hughes family members and their Bones, Hunt, Christie, and Nicholson relatives. Papers relate primarily to plantation life, especially the daily routines and social and religious lives of plantation women. Other topics include army life during the Civil War and postwar antagonisms. South Carolina politics are also discussed in the early papers. Locations besides Edgefield for which considerable information appears are Augusta, Ga.; Grande Cane, La.; Woodville, Miss.; and various locations in Ireland. Financial and legal items of interest include wills, deeds, personal accounts, estate papers, and slave bills of sale. A few miscellaneous items include sermons, clippings, advertisements, and recipes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 1 contains a letter,  dated 6 January 1818, is from James Blocker to Col. Sampson Butler, and contains Butler’s reply of 17 January on the back page of the original. The letter concerns the legal status of a free black man named Joe, who had once belonged to Samuel Butler’s brother.

A receipt signed 22 September 1828 by Joel Spencer acknowledged his purchasing  of an enslaved individual named Nace, whom he promised to sell in Louisiana for John Hughes. A bill appears from Hughes to Spencer for Nace on 23 May 1831 (See Folders 3 and 6).

Folder 10 contains a a copy of a slave bill of sale (originally dated 18 December 1827; copy dated 21 January 1847) for a young girl named Pricilla.

Folder 14a contains undated letters discussing a cholera epidemic among slaves in South Carolina and Louisiana.

Folder 16 contains a letter from Emma Lenice, dated 3 May 1860, which discusses the travel of her brother and sister to Africa as missionaries with 80 freed slaves, who had been educated and manumitted by a Mr. Cuthbert of Savannah.

Folder 17 contains a letter from Sophia Hughes Hunt on 15 October 1861, discussing the 27 enslaved individuals near Natchez for suspected involvement in inciting an insurrection.

Folder 22 contains a letter dated 26 November 1867 from Robert Hughes discussed being “forced” by the Freedman’s Bureau to pay higher wages to African American laborers. There is also a letter from 14 October 1867 from Cicero Adams concerning a black woman named Edith, who had died in childbirth. Adams had arranged for her burial and described the kind treatment she received in her last hours from friends.

Abstract: John Kimberly was professor of chemistry and agriculture at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., 1857-1864 and 1875-1876, and farmer in Buncombe County, N.C., 1866-1874. Personal correspondence, lecture notes, laboratory notebooks, and accounts of John Kimberly. The bulk of the collection is the family correspondence of Kimberly’s second wife, Bettie Maney of Nashville, Tenn., and other members of the Maney, Southall, and Kimberly families. Included are young girls’ letters, 1850s, from Saint Mary’s School at Raleigh, N.C.; soldiers’ letters from the Mexican War; letters from American travelers and students in Europe, 1851-1852 and 1859-1860; and Civil War letters, mainly from civilians at Chapel Hill, Nashville, and Atlanta, Ga., discussing life on the homefront. Correspondents include James H. Otey, Charles Phillips, and James Woodrow. Antebellum letters are mainly concerned with daily life and family news, but also discuss current events, such as the slave market, runaway slaves, crop conditions prior to the Civil War, and life in Chapel Hill. Some wartime letters relate to the occupation of Chapel Hill. Most of the letters prior to 1930 are transcribed. Letters after 1930 (not transcribed) are primarily the correspondence of Rebecca Kimberly of Columbia, S.C., concerning genealogy. Also in the collection are notebooks containing financial records, class plans, and research materials of John Kimberly. Most of these notebooks combine various types of materials and several have overlapping dates. There are a few pictures, including prints of engraved portraits and scenes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:Correspondence includes discussion of plantation slaves  in 1835 (Folder 2); the sale of slaves in 1837 and 1864 (Folders 2, 44-46); and the difficulties of living under Reconstruction’s land policies. The collection also contains a letter from a former slave written from Africa giving news of her family and asking about her former owners and friends in North Carolina in 1859 (Folders 20-25).

Abstract: Head teacher at the Manual Labor School in Spring Hill, Tenn., and later president of Middlebury College, Vt. Letter from Labaree to James Gillespie Birney, Huntsville, Ala., discussing the Manual Labor School and the colonization of slaves; and notes made by Labaree’s grandson, Leonard, on Labaree’s meeting with Birney.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A letter from Benjamin Labaree, head teacher at the Manual Labor School at Springhill, Tennessee, to James G. Birney of Huntsville, Alabama, discussing the school and mentioning the cause of colonization. There is also a note added by Labaree’s grandson, Leonard, on Labaree’s meeting with Birney, reformer, legislator, and agent of the American Colonization Society, who advocated abolition by political action. Typed transcript.

Abstract: James McDowell was born 13 October 1795, son of Col. James McDowell and Sarah Preston. He married Susanna Smith Preston in 1818. McDowell was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1833. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates, 1831-1835 and 1837-1838, as governor of Virginia, 1842-1846, and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1847-1851. Among McDowell’s major political concerns were internal improvements, slavery, and public education. The collection includes correspondence, writings, financial and legal material, and other papers of James McDowell. Most of the papers are letters, addresses, and essays relating to affairs in Virginia and the nation, including slavery in the territories, internal improvements, temperance, nullification, Democratic party politics, colonization societies, collegiate and literary societies, and colleges in Virginia.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence covers topics such as McDowell’s involvement with colonization societies (1820-1851) and views on slavery in the territories (1831-1851). Of particular note is his correspondence in two letters from 1828 and 1830 with Ralph Gurley, Secretary of the American Colonization Society (Folders 12-13)

Financial and legal materials contain an inventory of McDowell’s slaves as well as an emancipation contract (c. 1831) between McDowell and his slave, Lewis James, requiring that Lewis both purchase his freedom and apply for emigration to Liberia (Folder 65).

McDowell’s writings contain several speeches and articles on slavery in the territories, colonization of Africa by slaves; the “Great Slavery Debate” in the Virginia General Assembly, 1831-1832; and miscellaneous notes on slavery (Folders 67-75).

Abstract: Robert Hall Morrison was a Presbyterian minister and educator from Lincoln County, N.C., and father of Mary Anna (Morrison) Jackson (1831- 1915), wife of Stonewall Jackson. The collection includes letters written to and from members of the Morrison family, financial papers of R. H. Morrison, and miscellaneous papers. The letters, chiefly from R. H. Morrison to his cousin, James Morrison, discuss family matters; business of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina; Robert Hall Morrison’s work in the establishment and administration of Davidson College; details of his congregations in Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties, N.C.; his religious convictions; his views against slavery and secession; and agricultural activities on his Cottage Home Plantation. Morrison’s financial papers consist of letters from agents managing his property in Tipton County, Tenn., and Lafayette and Sevier counties, Ark., detailing his business concerns; problems in conducting business during secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; and the construction of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad and the Memphis and Ohio Railroad. There are also receipts for his expenses and tax payments in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Miscellaneous papers include letters from members of the Morrison family in Dallas County, Ala., and two letters from a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia during the war.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  The bulk of the correspondence regards church matters and includes discussion of Morrison’s abhorrence of slavery and his support of the Colonization Society in Sierra Leone throughout the 1820s. Letters also discuss the low price of slaves in North Carolina and Morrison’s advocacy of cotton and woolen mills as a replacement for the slave-based cotton industry, particularly between 1837-1840 (Folder 4) and the buying and selling of slaves between 1820-1834 (Folders 1-4) .