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: 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: Wesley Critz George was professor of histology and embryology and chair of the Anatomy Department, University of North Carolina Medical School, and an internationally recognized researcher on the genetics of race. Early items relate to George’s family and early career. Materials relating to George’s theories on the genetic basis of racial inferiority begin in 1944. There are also letters documenting George’s disputes with religious leaders, particularly at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, N.C., about racial mixing in churches, and George’s disapproval of the liberal tendencies of Frank Porter Graham and Howard W. Odum at UNC. After the 1954 Brown decision, George’s fight against school integration escalated, reaching its height in 1955-1957, when George was active in the Patriots of North Carolina, Inc. Many materials, 1858-1963, relate to the North Carolina Defenders of States’ Rights, Inc., which picked up the anti-integration banner after the Patriots’ demise. George’s activities in I. Beverly Lake’s unsuccessful North Carolina gubernatorial campaign are reflected in materials dated 1958- 1960. Items, 1959-1963, document George’s interest in race problems in other countries and in the issue of academic freedom on college campuses. Correspondents include Carleton S. Coon, James P. Dees, Henry E. Garrett, Luther Hodges, R. Carter Pittman, Carleton Putnam, Clayton Rand, and Archibald Roosevelt. There are also a considerable number of letters and other items George received from individuals and organizations with extremist ideas on race relations. A scattering of family letters and a small number of items relating to George’s tenure at UNC are also included. Writings by George relate to academic freedom, civil rights, genetics and race, and communism. Also included are writings by others on race and other topics, notes, clippings, biographical materials, genealogical materials relating to the Critz and Dalton families, and a few family photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In Folder 1, there is a  1908 typed transcription of a letter from Roan Critz, former slave of Haman and Elizabeth Critz to Mrs. T. M. George about the death of her mother.

Subseries 1.2 (Correspondence from 1944 – 1954) contain 8 folders that deal mainly with George’s views on race relations, primarily arguing against racial mixing based on genetics. From the mid-1940s through the early 1950s, there are many letters from George to various church leaders, particularly Rev. Jones and Rev. David W. Yates, rector of the Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, N.C., about interracial activities, both documented and alleged, in Chapel Hill churches and elsewhere.

There are also letters George wrote to Frank Porter Graham (19 April 1947) and Howard Odum (24 May 1944) on topics of racial and education.

In 1954, there are several letters George wrote after the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, vehemently opposing school desegregation. Included are letters of support for a petition George circulated opposing school integration in Orange County, NC. Folders 10 and 11 contains these letters of support.

Throughout the rest of the correspondence in Subseries 1.3, there is also correspondence and documentation relating to groups such as Association for Preservation of the White Race, the Federation for Constitutional Government, the American Society for the Preservation of State Government and Racial Integrity, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, White Men Incorporated, and many states’ rights leagues and citizens’ councils. There is also some material from the American Eugenics Society

Series 2 (Writings) and Series 3 (notes) also contain George’s articles and notes about genetics, race, biology, and his issues with academic freedom.

Abstract: Microfilm only. Record kept by James P. Postell of Kelvin Grove Plantation, St. Simons Island, Ga., including lists of slaves and stock, diagrams of the plantation, and notations, 1853-1854, of daily work in growing cotton, corn, and potatoes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The collection includes scattered bills, receipts, and accounts for purchases, schooling, blacksmith work, and other business of Solomon Slatter, Scotland Neck, Halifax County, N.C.; and one family letter from Slatter, 1848.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Includes an 1849 receipt, which lists medical treatments and cost for enslaved African Americans. An 1848 letter from Slatter to Martha Nicholls asks her to treat “the Negroes with humanity and without rigor” as outlined in his will. Slatter’s will, dated 21 August 1843, includes twelve enslaved individuals.

Abstract: John Ewing Colhoun was a planter, lawyer, South Carolina legislator, and U.S. Senator. The collection is mostly papers and correspondence related to Colhoun’s law practice and to his plantations, including Santee, Bonneau’s Ferry, Pimlico, 12 Mile, Keowee, and Mount Prospect, in the St. Stephen’s and St. John’s parishes and the Charleston and Pendleton districts, S.C. There are also limited records, 1830s-1850s, for Midway and Millwood plantations in Abbeville District, owned by son James Edward Calhoun (who changed the spelling of his surname), and several letters, 1816-1820, addressed to William Moultrie Reid of Charleston (relation to Colhoun unknown). Financial and legal papers include plantation accounts, slave lists, overseer contracts, warrants, bonds, indentures, affidavits, deeds, estate papers, clippings, and miscellaneous items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers relate to plantation management and contain information on slave conditions, frequently mentioning runaways, their reasons for leaving, and their punishments, along with tasks assigned to particular slaves. The diary of James Edward Colhoun discusses the execution of two slaves for poisoning their master (1825-1826). Microfilm available.

Abstract: The collection includes accounts and business papers of Stephen Moore of New York, who moved to North Carolina during the Revolution, and of his son, PHillips (b. 1771), and grandsons Stephen and William, merchants in Hillsborough, N.C. Included are occasional letters from Stephen (1734-1799) to his father, Phillips, a New York City merchant, documenting their business affairs. Volumes include one shipping account book, New York City, 1767-1770; eighteen account books, 1781-1827, for farming operations, sales, and miscellany, at Mount Tirzah plantation in Person County, N.C.; thirteen account books, 1831-1867, of a general merchant at Hillsborough; and letters from William Moore to his father.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A letter from 1829 discusses how to sell a runaway slave who recently had been captured (Folder 1). Series 2: Financial and Legal Documents contains slave lists and an 1809 permit for a slave to sell cotton. Volume 16 in Folder 21A contains records of personal and farm finances, including records of the hiring of slaves.

Abstract: Family members included Maria Lowther Skinner (1786-1824), her husband, Joseph Blount Skinner (1781-1851), and their children–Tristrim Lowther Skinner (1820-1862) and Penelope Skinner Warren (1824-1841). Joseph Blount Skinner of Edenton, N.C., owned several plantations in Bertie, Perquimans, and Chowan counties and served in the North Carolina House of Commons in 1807 and 1814. After 1840, Tristrim Lowther Skinner managed his father’s plantations; served in the N.C. general assembly, 1846-1848; was a captain, 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment, C.S.A. He married Eliza Fisk Harwood Skinner (1827-1888) of Williamsburg, Va., in 1849. Chiefly family correspondence. Women wrote about their education and reading, courtship and marriage, pregnancy and child care, household and social activities, and political opinions, especially about the War of 1812. Of special interest are letters documenting the relationship of brother and sister, Tristrim Skinner and Penelope Skinner Warren, and Penelope’s 1840 pregnancy. Other letters describe trips to spas in North Carolina and elsewhere. Letters written by school-aged children show differences between male and female education. Letters of several male family members document their experiences at the College of William and Mary and at the University of North Carolina, 1813-1814. Correspondence, journals, and other papers document plantation management, including information about slaves, work routines, crops, and agricultural reform. Other subjects include North Carolina and Whig Party politics; life in the Confederate Army; life on the Confederate homefront; and social conditions in Edenton and Hillsborough, N.C., and Williamsburg and Norfolk, Va.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence documents management of the family’s plantations in Edenton, Bertie, Perquimans, and Chowan Counties, North Carolina, discusses problems with slaves and slave management in 1823, 1861, 1863 (Folders 11; 42-47; 52) and the family’s relationship with their slaves, particularly in 1849. Letters of 5 August 1849 and 3 July 1850 show that Tristrim was concerned that Joseph’s health would suffer without the attention of Annie, a slave nurse who tended her patients at Plantation House. A letter of 23 February 1849 shows that when Eliza arrived as Tristrim’s new bride in Edenton she was welcomed by “Annie and Harriet–the two principal members of the household. … After a while the washerwoman was presented–Aunt Eliza”.

Also included are wills that include a deed , dated 11 December 1816, documenting Joseph B. Skinner’s purchase of two town lots in Edenton and the slave Pegg and her two children (Folder 64); journals that contain slave lists that record the names, ages, skills, dates of birth, deaths, sales, and sometimes escapes, of family slaves between1843-1860 and a list of slave “women having children and annual increase” (Folder 68), and a journal kept by Eliza Skinner documenting work done by enslaved women and supposed insolence of enslaved individuals due to the Civil War.

Abstract: The Badger family of North Carolina included George E. Badger, superior court judge, secretary of the Navy, and United States senator, 1844-1855, of Raleigh, N.C.; his third wife, Delia Haywood Williams Badger; their children, Mary Badger Hale (b. 1836) and Thomas Badger (b. 1843); Badger’s daughter, Kate Badger Haigh (b. 1827); and his wife’s daughter Melissa Williams. Chiefly family letters, 1835-1867. Letters dated 1835-1836 are to Melissa Williams, Delia Badger’s daughter by a previous marriage, who was attending school in Philadelphia, from her mother and others in Raleigh, chiefly about family activities. Most of the later letters are to Badger’s daughter Kate Badger Haigh of Fayetteville, N.C., about family and neighborhood news. Included are an 1849 letter with a description of 50 drunken women and other rowdies at a cotillion in Raleigh; Civil War period letters with details of life on the homefront, including mention of sickly and pregnant slaves; and an 1867 letter discussing the possibility of an African American candidate for mayor of Raleigh. Also included are financial and legal papers, 1876-1888, of Thomas Badger and a few family photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In an 1863 letter to one of her sisters, Mary Badger Hale complains about the inability of her sickly and/or pregnant slaves to work. Two 1867 letters briefly mention military orders, the scarcity of money, the fear of land confiscation, and rumors of an African American candidate for mayor of Raleigh.

Abstract: Grimball family members were owners of Pinebury and Grove plantations near Charleston, S.C. Prominent family members include John Berkley Grimball (1800-1892), Margaret Ann (Meta) Morris Grimball (1810-1881), and their children. The collection includes correspondence, plantation accounts, financial and legal papers, commonplace books, notebooks, scrapbooks, and other material, chiefly 1830 through 1900. Topics include the management of plantations before and after the Civil War; relations with slaves and freedmen; the careers of the Grimball sons in the Confederate Army, including William Grimball in the 1st South Carolina Artillery Regiment; and antebellum and postbellum family life in South Carolina and New York, through the Grimball’s connections with the Morris family of Morrisania, N.Y. Also included are papers relating to John Berkley Grimball’s interest in the Charleston Library Society.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence discusses attempts to locate former slaves (1865); leasing of Grimball plantations, including Pinebury, which was leased to Adam Deas, believed to be a former slave of the Grimball’s (1871); a Ku Klux Klan incident (1871); and the arrest of an African-American suspect in a shooting incident (1898). Financial materials contain bills of sale for slaves bought by Martin L. Wilkins and John Berkley Grimball (1826); lists of items purchased for slaves (1858); and a list of John Berkley Grimball’s slaves who deserted to the Union Army (1862). Legal materials include an agreement with Henry Jenkins, a freed slave, to cultivate rice (late 1860s), and a lease with Adam Deas (1871).  Microfilm available.