Abstract: Thomas L. Clayton (1934-1905) of Asheville, N.C., was the son of Ephraim Clayton (1804-1892) and Nancy McElroy Clayton (d. 1892). He married Emma A. Clayton (1829-1887). During the Civil War, Clayton served in the Confederate army, stationed in Georgia during the Atlanta campaign in 1864, and later in Alabama. After the war, Clayton became a contractor with the Western North Carolina Railroad. Chiefly letters between Thomas L. Clayton and his wife Emma, many written while he was serving in the Confederate army. Other correspondents include Clayton’s father, mother, brother, and friends in the Confederate army. Topics include the election of Abraham Lincoln and the southern reaction, fears of possible slave uprisings, and feelings in Asheville about secession. After Thomas Clayton joined the Confederate army, there are letters relating to Thomas’s war experiences, including reports of battles around Atlanta, Ga., and Emma’s trials on the homefront. Post-war letters are chiefly about routine personal and business affairs. Also included are a few items relating to railroad surveying, damage caused by federal troops, and other matters.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Nancy Clayton wrote to her son Thomas Clayton on 7 December 1860, mentioning “frequently hearing of plans for insurrection among the negroes..”

Abstract: Blackford family members lived in Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, and Alexandria, Va. Chiefly correspondence of three generations of the Blackford family. Included are letters relating to the involvement of Mary Berkeley (Minor) Blackford (1802-1896) in the American Colonization Society; diaries, 1842-1844, kept by William Matthews Blackford (1801-1864) while serving as United States charge d’affaires in Bogota, New Granada (now Columbia); Civil War letters from Launcelot Minor Blackford (1837-1914) and his brothers; scattered correspondence from missionaries and former slaves in Liberia; three issues of a newspaper, 1854, published in Cavalla, West Africa; Blackford family history information (typed transcriptions), including microfilm of a scrapbook of Launcelot Minor Blackford containing genealogical sketches of the Blackford, Minor, Byrd, Willis, Washington, Ambler, Mason, Jacquelin, and Gray families.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Much of the correspondence relates to the activities of the American Colonization Society and its counterpart in Great Britain, and documents the Blackford family’s antislavery sentiments and their attempts to organize a colonization society in Fredericksburg. The collection includes discussion of fears of a large-scale slave insurrection in the slave states (1831); difficulties in educating black women to be teachers; the life of missionaries in Liberia (1836, 1843, 1845, 1852, 1855); freeing slaves to send to Liberia (1841); observations of South American slavery (1842-1843); antislavery views in Richmond, Virginia; and opposition to the annexation of Texas as a proslavery plot to enable the South to secede (1844); the outfitting with tools of a slave manumitted by the Blackfords (1844); letters written by the slave Maria West for her blind owner and occasional personal notes from West herself (1846-1847); news of Abraham, a manumitted Blackford slave who joined a colony in Liberia (1845); opposition faced by abolitionists in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and nationally (1849); views on slavery and colonization (1850); response to a plan to send slaves to the Amazon Valley (1851); Charles Blackford’s opinion of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853); a proslavery argument and description of the treatment of slaves written by V. M. Randolph of Forkland, Alabama (1859); an account of the life, death, and philosophies of Richard Randolph, a Virginian who freed his slaves and moved to Ohio (1859); reaction to John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry (1860); the Northern working-class view of the war and slavery (1862); the secession crisis and Confederate army life (1861-1865); problems with freed slaves (1865); news of Liberia and the hope that emancipated slaves would join the African colony (1865); the idleness of freedmen and thievery among blacks and whites (1866); experiences of the white M. Payne in teaching black children (n.d.); and a description of a Danville, Virginia, race riot (1883).

Abstract: Nathaniel Russell Middleton of Charleston, S.C., was a plantation owner, treasurer of the Northeastern Railroad Company, and treasurer of the city of Charleston. Other family members represented include Annie DeWolf Middleton (1815-1908) of Bristol, R.I., N. R. Middleton’s second wife; and the children bythis second marriage: Maria Louisa Middleton (b. 1844), Annie Elizabeth Middleton (b. 1847), Alicia Hopton Middleton (b. 1849), Nathaniel Russell Middleton, Jr. (1851-1896), and Charlotte Helen Middleton (b. 1854). The bulk of the collection consists of Middleton and DeWolf family letters, many between family members in Bristol, R.I., and Charleston, S.C. In addition to standard family matters and the peculiarities of life in a family divided between the North and South, these letters and the other papers deal with such topics as Middleton’s plantation, Bolton-on-the-Stono (apparently near Charleston), an 1849 slave insurrection, the College of Charleston, supply shortages during the Civil War, and selling rice and phosphate fertilizer during Reconstruction. Also included is “Narrative of his own Conversion” by Rev. John Joice, Darien, Ga., 1824.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In addition to standard family matters and the tensions of family life divided between North and South, letters and papers discuss managing the Middleton plantation, “Bolton-on-the-Stono”, particularly in 1842 (Folder 11 and 12);

In a letter dated 9 June 1845 Annie wrote to Russell about the death of a slave who was a carpenter at -Stono and the question of who would be trained to replace him (Folder 14).

Correspondence in 1849 discusses a slave revolt in Charleston.  In a letter dated 16 July 1849, Lesesne described a revolt of slaves who were in the Charleston work house. They beat several white men with sledge hammers before they were overpowered; several were tried and sentenced to death (Folder 16).

In a letter dated 6 August 1852, Annie described reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and feeling she ought to give up her rights to slaves (Folder 18) In a letter dated 1 October 1860 Russell wrote that he did not think that the South could be united over the issue of Lincoln’s election to the presidency and that efforts to unite it should wait for some larger issue (Folder 25).

Abstract: Moses Ashley Curtis was born in Stockbridge, Mass., and educated at Williams College in Massachusetts. After graduating, he became a tutor for the children of former Governor Edward Bishop Dudley in Wilmington, N.C., returning to Massachusetts in 1833 to study theology. He married Mary de Rosset in 1834, was ordained in 1835, and obtained a post to teach at the Episcopal school at Raleigh, N.C. He became rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Hillsborough, N.C., in 1841 and in charge of a parish at Society Hill, S.C., in 1847 before returning to the Protestant Episcopal Church at Hillsborough in 1857. He died in Hillsborough, in 1872. Besides his clerical and teaching duties, Curtis was also a noted mycologist. The collection contains the correspondence, papers, journals and notebooks, and scientific materials of M.A. Curtis, along with the correspondence of his wife Mary Jane DeRosset Curtis, their children, and members of the Curtis and DeRosset families, chiefly in North Carolina and South Carolina. Correspondence primarily consists of early DeRosset papers; letters from M.A. Curtis’s parents, Reverend Jared Curtis and Thankful Curtis, and his daughter, Caroline, to M.A. Curtis while at Williams College; correspondence between M.A. Curtis and Mary Jane DeRosset; letters from relatives of Mary Jane DeRosset Curtis of Wilmington, N.C., and Charleston, S.C.; letters from the Curtis childen while they were at school and as adults; letters from John H. Curtis while he was serving in the Confederate army; and scattered letters about activities of the Episcopal Church; letters to Curtis from other botanists, including Henry William Ravenel, Asa Gray, and M.J. Berkeley, primarily regarding fungi and related scientific topics. Topics are generally related to family news and daily life, along with some discussions of news and politics. Some letters mention slavery and particular slaves belonging to Curtis and DeRosset family members. Included is an 1841 letter discussing the trial of a man accused of murdering a slave, and letters, 1859-1860, discussing the dispersal of DeRosset family slaves after the death of Armand DeRosset. Later papers, 1873-1929, are family correspondence, papers relating to the disposition of Curtis’s scientific materials, and letters from Catherine Fullerton describing her travels and teaching experiences in Cuba, 1910-1919. Also included are diaries, botanical notes, school notebooks, sermons, photographs, and church music, as well as Curtis’s diary, 1830-1836 and undated, that contains descriptions of his life in Wilmington, N.C., and his employment as a tutor for the children of former Governor Edward Bishop Dudley.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes comments on Dearest family slaves (1841-1842); a receipt for the sale of a slave (1846); letters discussing a Dearest family neighbor charged with murdering a slave and the white community’s outrage at the accused (1811); the acquisition of a preacher to minister to slaves (described as “a godless set”) (1841); and the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in England (1853). Curtis’s personal diary contains entries that describe the panic and activities relating to the Nat Turner insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, and the threat of an uprising in the vicinity of Wilmington, North Carolina (1831).

Abstract: Family of Joseph Hoomes Davis (1809-1879), Methodist minister and educator of Virginia and North Carolina, and Anne Turberville Beale Davis (1809-1894). Principal family members included Robert Beale Davis (1835- 1864), son of Joseph Davis and his first wife, Martha Beale; Richard L.T. Beale (1819-1893), brother of Anne Davis; and the four children of Joseph and Anne, Wilbur Fisk (b. 1839), John W.C. (b. 1840), Olin (b. 1844), and Martha Anne (b. 1846). Correspondence, diaries, and other family and business papers of the Davises and their children, with scattered business items for other relatives. The letters document home and religious life; Methodist church affairs on several North Carolina and Virginia circuits; college life at Randolph-Macon College, the University of Virginia, Wesleyan Female College, and Petersburg Female College from the late 1840s through the 1850s; a rumored slave insurrection in Murfreesboro, N.C., 1856-1857; secession politics in North Carolina and Virginia; Civil War preparations and camp life, especially with the Potomac Rifles and the Topographical Engineers; teaching in the postwar period in private schools and at the University of Virginia and Virginia A & M College (now Virginia Polytechnic Institute) in Blacksburg; and farming in Westmoreland County, Va. The diaries (53 v.) provide extensive information on the daily family and religious life of Joseph and Anne Davis, 1838-1883, and the farming, social, religious, financial, school, and family affairs of their children, 1856-1860 and 1881-1920. Diaries appear for Joseph and Anne Davis; Robert Beale Davis, John W.C. Davis, and Martha (“Nannie”) Davis Beale. Locations documented in the collection include Murfreesboro, N.C., and Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Boydton, Charlottesville, and Hague, Va. Scattered business items include letters, 1855-1860, from tobacco factors to James Thomas, Jr., relationship unknown, of Richmond, Va., and to John and William Murphy, cousins of Anne Davis, of Westmoreland County.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included is a letter, dated 6 March 1855, from Joseph Davis to his son, Robert, telling him about missionary work among South Carolina enslaved people organized by Bishop Capers and judge C. C. Pinckney. There is another letter from dated 5 January 1857 written by Anne Davis, giving a detailed and graphic account of a rumored slave insurrection and the fear and unrest attending it around Murfreesboro (See Folders 8 and 16).

Folder 29 contains a letter letter of 16 January 1861 from S. C. Brickenstein, a law student in Baltimore, to Robert Davis, discussing various topics including Maryland’s position in the secession crisis, and slavery.

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: 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: Prominent members of the Elliott and Gonzales families of Beaufort and Colleton districts, S.C., included William Elliott (1788-1863), planter, state legislator, and writer; Phoebe Waight Elliott (d. 1855); Ann Elliott Johnstone (1824-1900); Ralph Emms Elliott (1834-1902); Harriett Rutledge Elliott (1838-1869); Ambrosio Jos? Gonzales (b. 1818); Ambrose Elliott Gonzales (1857-1926); Narciso Gener Gonzales (1858-1903); and William Elliott Gonzales (1866-1937). The Elliotts owned cotton and rice plantations, houses in Beaufort and Adams Run, S.C., as well as a summer home in Flat Rock, N.C. Ambrose Elliott Gonzales, Narciso Gener Gonzales, and William Elliott Gonzales founded “The State,” a newspaper published in Columbia, S.C. The collection is chiefly correspondence, but also financial and legal papers, account books, maps and plats, a few writings of William Elliott and others, and a small amount of other material. The bulk of the material before the Civil War is correspondence of William Elliott Gonzales about South Carolina politics; sectional differences; his travels to Saratoga Springs and other health resorts, the northern states, and Europe; plantation management; rice and cotton crops; slaves; the education of children; summer at Flat Rock, N.C.; and various family matters. Only a few letters document William Elliott’s career as a writer; four are from William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870). Correspondence during the Civi War years discusses the lives of civilians and soldiers in South Carolina and in western North Carolina. Post-Civil War correspondence reveals the Elliott’s financial difficulties, their struggles to educate the Gonzales children, and their efforts to rebuild their plantations. It also documents the education and early professional lives of Ambrose and Narciso Gonzales. There are a few letters about the early years of their newspaper, “The State.”

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence covers various topics, including a slave rebellion (22 July 1822); buying and selling of slaves (8 February 1827); ; attitudes of Northerners and Southerners toward slavery and slaveholders (25 January 1847 and 15 April 1847, ? April 1847); the refusal of slaves to work, concern that slaves would run away to the Union Army, and efforts to recapture runaway slaves (1861); and a comparison of the black and white work ethic (9 March 1867). See Folders 8, 12-13, 32-33, 63-65, and 84-89).

A letter from Ann Elliott to her mother, Ann R. Smith, dated 12 October 1829, advised her mother that the crop at Social Hall plantation would probably not be a good one and that her mother should make only necessary expenditures, hire out some slaves, or cut wood to sell.

Letters from Letters from Ben (11 November 1848) and Isaac (22 October 1849) to William Elliott appear to indicate that they were slaves who were drivers on Elliott’s plantations (See Folders 34-37).

Financial and legal papers contain slave bills of sale and slave lists from 1855 and 1863 (See Folder 275). The collection also includes a memorandum book listing names, probably of slaves in 1857 (Folder 283); a plantation journal listing slaves bought with the plantation between 1840 and 1851 (Folder 301).

Abstract: Members of the Neal family and related Fox and Timberlake families, were planters, businessmen, and farmers in Franklin, N.C.; Fayette and Henderson counties, Tenn.; Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Hinds County, Miss.; Waxahachie, Tex.; and other areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them was Aaron Neal of Franklin County, N.C., who died in 1869. Correspondence and financial, legal, and other papers of Aaron Neal, his siblings, in-laws, and children, and other members of the Neal family. Most of the correspondence is from the antebellum era and consists primarily of letters from family members in the Old Southwest that describe to relatives in North Carolina the everyday problems associated with moving west, buying land and slaves, and establishing profitable cotton plantations. There are also letters from slaves in 1824 and 1834; an 1835 letter about a Mississippi slave uprising; and letters, 1857, to and from Nathan Neal, a student at the University of North Carolina. There are twelve letters from the Civil War years that describe camp life and combat experiences, mainly in the Virginia theater. Most postbellum letters pertain to late 19th-century farm life in North Carolina and to small-town life in Texas. Financial, legal, and other items date from both before and after the Civil War.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In a letter dated 29 December 1826, written after he had moved to Fayette County, Tenn., James noted that his slaves sent their love to their mother and other family members back home in Franklin County (Folder 3).

An item of note is a letter dated 3 September 1827, from Sim Neal, who came to Tennessee as a slave of James, to his mother, brother, and sisters at the Aaron Neal plantation near Louisburg (Folder 4 ). Also included is a January 1827 letter Mary Timberlake wrote from Henderson County, Tenn., to her relatives in North Carolina about the trip west, the trials of homesteading, the construction of a house and barns, the condition of their family’s slaves, religion and camp meetings (Baptist and Presbyterian), local schools, and planting cotton and other crops (Folder 4) .

In a letter dated 15 April 1829, James told of his experiences while on a trip to New Orleans during the preceding several months; he mentioned observing blacks “much better treated … than I had expected”; selling a slave of “bad character”; and working as a clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat for a few months. James also discussed in his letter courtship among his slaves, unofficial slave marriages and a divorce, and the market prices of cotton and other crops (Folder 5 ).

In a letter dated 25 September 1835, Burrell Fox told of an uprising of slaves in Mississippi that ended with the hanging of five white men and three blacks in the town of Lexington. In other letters, Burrell wrote of flush times in Mississippi where land, slaves, and cotton crops brought premium prices. He also mentioned the effect of the environment in Mississippi on the health of whites and blacks; slave trading; and Texas and Santa Anna (Folder 8 )

An item of interest from this period is a letter dated 22 June 1834, from one of Burrell Fox’s slaves, Foxes Peney, to her ex-North Carolina master (Elizabeth Neal) and relatives. She was happy in Mississippi, but, nonetheless, was homesick for her former master and her relatives (Folder 7)

On 9 September 1857, Aaron wrote in detail about catching a neighbor’s slave stealing watermelons from his patch and punishing him on the spot by whipping him.Also in 1857, Nathan Neal wrote about the murder of one slave by another in Chapel Hill (Folder 13)

Among letters of note is one dated 27 September 1878, in which an African American religious revival in the neighborhood were mentioned (Folder 16 ).

A letter sent on 31 October 1885, briefly mentioned a relative seeking “radical office” who believed that the stock laws were “for nothing, but to oppress the poor whites peoples and negroes” (Folder 18)

In a letter dated 29 April 1889, the activities of a young black female pyromaniac were detailed and the existence of racial antipathies of Indians for blacks was noted (Folder 19).

A letter dated 4 December 1903 mentioned the yield of a African American sharecropper to a landowner and the leasing of farmland (Folder 20).

Abstract: Alexander Elliot, lumberman of Fayetteville, Cumberland County, N.C., who also served as a colonel in the militia, was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons, 1824-1825, and the North Carolina Senate, 1826. Chiefly letters documenting Elliot’s lumbering business. Many items are from agents in Wilmington, N.C., who handled the timber that Elliot rafted to them via the Cape Fear River. These letters typically include financial statements relating to the shipment and sale of Elliot’s lumber. There are also many bills and receipts, some relating to buying and selling slaves. Also included are family letters. Some of these letters are from Elliot’s sister, Jane Boylan, who lived in Raleigh, N.C., and wrote in the early 1840s chiefly about family matters. Others are from William Wilkshire Whitfield, Elliot’s nephew, who, in the mid-1840s, wrote to his uncle from Chapel Hill where he was a student at the University of North Carolina. Other family letters, written in the mid- to late-1840s, are from family members who had moved to Columbus, Lowndes County, Miss., to farm. These letters mostly discuss family and agricultural matters, but also include mention of other topics, such as the possibility of slave insurrections in Mississippi and North Carolina. In 1864 and 1865, there are letters to Elliot from a teacher he had hired to provide an education for his children during the Civil War. The volume of materials drops off after the 1860s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Contained in the collection are bills and receipts documenting the purchase and sale of slaves. Correspondence covers various topics including the possibility of slave insurrections in Mississippi and North Carolina (1840s).