Abstract: Bedford Brown was a state legislator and United States senator from Caswell County, N.C. The collection includes scattered papers of the family of Bedford Brown and of his son, Livingston Brown, whose wife was a daughter of John Bullock Clark (1802-1885), United States and Confederate congressman of Fayette, Mo. Papers include Brown and Clark family letters, beginning in 1836; political correspondence of Bedford Brown only in 1860, and of Livingston Brown, 1866-1876; and Caswell County deeds and miscellaneous papers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 3 contains a 12 May 1860 letter from an enslaved man in Arkansas (name unknown) to his Uncle Ned on another plantation. There is also a bill of sale dated 31 August 1863 for an enslaved woman named Lucy.

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 collection is a bill of sale, dated 11 January 1841, from Anson County, N.C., for a 20-year-old male slave named Sam. The seller was John A. Watkins, and the buyer was Mumford D. Watkins.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Benjamin Watkins Leigh was born in 1831 in Richmond, Va. Leigh practiced law until he enlisted as a captain in the Confederate army on 21 May 1861, receiving a commission in the 1st Batallion, Virginia Infantry Regiment. By June 1863, he had been transferred to the 42nd Virginia Infantry Regiment and promoted to full major. Leigh died in the Battle of Gettysburg on 3 July 1863. The collection consists of a highly detailed travel diary kept by Benjamin Watkins Leigh in April 1861 during a trip through the South, taken with his brother a month before Leigh enlisted in the Confederate Army. The brothers began their trip in Virginia and proceeded through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, before returning to Virginia through Mississippi and Tennessee. The diary contains lengthy, often block-by-block descriptions of the buildings and landmarks in the cities and towns Leigh visited, including Wilmington, N.C., Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans, La., among others. The diary details Leigh’s travel route, opinions on traveling by steamboat and rail, and observations on landscape and climate, as well as descriptions of meetings with family, friends, and other associates, including Abraham Minis and James Louis Petigru, as well as several encounters with slaves. Several entries mention local reaction to events in the Civil War, including the ratification of the Constitution of the Confederate States, the Battle of Fort Sumter, and the secession of Virginia from the Union.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Several of the entries contain descriptions of interactions with enslaved individuals.

Abstract: John Hughes was a Patrick County, Va., planter. The collection is chiefly court orders and debt settlements concerning John Hughes. Also included are several slave bills of sale.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Alfred Chapman (1813-1876), native of Orange County, Va., was an official of the United States and Confederate war departments. The collection includes scattered family and professional papers, chiefly 1845-1869, of Alfred Chapman. Included are early papers of Chapman’s ancestors in Orange County, Va.; payrolls of Virginia militia units during the Revolutionary War; family and business correspondence of Chapman at Staunton, Va.; about 40 letters from Chapman to his wife, Mary Edmunds Kinney Chapman, 1850-1852, while he was in Washington, D.C., working in the pension and Indian offices, about family matters, his work, and other topics. Among the letters is a brief recommendation letter, 23 June 1851, written by Daniel Webster on behalf of his former slave Paul Jennings, whom he had freed in 1847. Jennings had originally been owned by President James Madison. There are also very scattered papers pertaining to Chapman’s appointment in the Confederate government and to its operations; and letters, 1876, to Mrs. Bedford Brown, Alexandria, Va., from her son.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 3 includes a recommendation letter, dated 23 June 1851 written by Daniel Webster on behalf of Paul Jennings, an enslaved man Webster formerly owned. Jennings had been raised a slave under the ownership of President James Madison. He was later sold to Webster, from whom he purchased his freedom in 1847.

Abstract: George W. Robertson (fl. 1807-1855) of Caswell County, N.C., was a physician who also operated a tobacco warehouse and bought and sold slaves. He married Sarah Allen (1803-1871) and together they had eight children, including Willie P.M. Robertson, who enlisted with the Yanceyville Greys, Company A, 13th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, and died at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill in Virginia. The collection documents the slave and tobacco dealings of George W. Robertson and his business partners in Yanceyville, Caswell County, N.C., as well as the Civil War and Reconstruction experiences of other Robertson family members and friends. Financial papers consist of records with the names, ages, and prices of enslaved people purchased and sold by Robertson and his partners. The slave and tobacco ledger chiefly contains a record of purchase and sale of tobacco, but there are also numerous references to buying and selling slaves in North Carolina and Virginia and evidence of three separate trips to Alabama to sell slaves. Letters describe two of the slave sales trips; anticipation of the Civil War; courtship; the Yanceyville homefront during the war; the concerns of Eliza Baldwin Skidmore Carraway, a newlywed bride in Clinton, Miss., in 1860 and later in the aftermath of the fall of Vicksburg when her slaves departed and Union soldiers encamped on her land; and Mary Royal Robertson Alexander’s everyday concerns in 1870, including her fear of and frustration with African Americans. Other materials include clippings of recipes, housekeeping advice, and home remedies for illnesses and pests; a tintype of Willie P.M. Robertson in Confederate Army uniform; and several copies of the Bible and other volumes, some with marginal notes recording births, deaths, marriages, and thoughts of their owners. There is also a file of background information on curing yellow or bright leaf tobacco; family history; Willie P.M. Robertson’s death and the Battle of Gaines’ Mill; and transcriptions from the slave and tobacco ledger and of the marginal notes in Sallie Robertson’s Bible.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains numerous materials related to Robertson’s slave trading and tobacco enterprises. Of particular interest in Folder 1 in background information on the process of curing yellow leaf tobacco, discovered by an enslaved man named Stephen. Folder 3 contains bills of sale for enslaved men and women (which are noted in the ledger in Folder 4), as well as list of 45 free people of color in 1865 with notations about their health.

Correspondence in Folder 5 contains letters from Eliza Baldwin Skidmore Carraway to Eliza Ann Robertson describing the aftermath of the fall of Vicksburg when her slaves departed and Union soldiers encamped on her land, and from Mary Royal Robertson Alexander to her mother Sarah Allen Robertson, about everyday concerns, as well as her fear of and frustration with African Americans (1870).

 

Abstract: Harriet Jacobs was an escaped slave and abolitionist who wrote about her experiences in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Jean Fagan Yellin, head of the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers Project, is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Pace University in New York, N.Y., and author of The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers (2008), a two-volume collection of primary source material related to Jacobs and her family. The collection consists chiefly of materials collected by Jean Fagan Yellin in her work as the head of the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers Project. Included are several original letters by or about members of the Jacobs family; Yellin’s administrative files; email print-outs and correspondence with archives and research centers; photocopied primary source materials, including letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents; indexes of collected and consulted items; and background subject files compiled to supplement the research effort. Topics include the Jacobs family and the related Knox family; slavery and runaway slaves; abolition; Harriet Jacobs’s life in North Carolina, New York (with the Willis family), and Boston; her antislavery work during the Civil War; and other topics.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular interest are the original documents in Series 1, from the children and contemporaries of Harriet Jacobs, including letters to her daughter Louisa M. Jacobs (Folders 1 & 2).

Abstract: The Nash County Historical Association (NCHA), a non-profit group headquartered in Rocky Mount, N.C., was organized in 1970 to promote the study and preservation of local history and genealogy. Since 1975, NCHA has been responsible for the administration, restoration, and
preservation of Stonewall Manor, an antebellum plantation home in Rocky Mount. The collection consists of account books, 1806-1928; physicians’ ledgers, 1835-1874; a mathematical instruction book, 1827; Saint Anne’s Guild meeting minutes, 1919-1921; a log from the Claims Committee of the United States House of Representatives, 1892-1893; and other items. Most of the materials are from Rocky Mount or surrounding Nash and Edgecombe counties. Among the individuals mentioned in the materials are Bennett Bunn (1787-1849), a Nash County planter and builder in 1830 of Stonewall Manor; Redmond Bunn (1806-1883), builder of the Benvenue plantation; Redmond Bunn’s son, Benjamin Hickman Bunn (1844-1907), a Civil War veteran, mayor and postmaster of Rocky Mount, who served three terms in the United States House of Representatives; other Bunn family members; James Jones Philips (1798-1874), a physician and planter of Nash and Edgecombe counties; other Philips family members; and Thorp family members. A few items contain records of schools or church groups, and there are also some references to slaves owned and sold, as well as a few accounts of African American schools, field hands, and house workers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 5 contains a ledger from a grocery store, where the last few pages include the accounts of many African American schools from the Stoney Creek Township District (1873 and 1874)

Folder 20 contains a farm account book (1914-1926) from Rocky Mount, where the work of African American laborers is recorded.

Folder 24  contains the Benvenue account book (1906-1928), where the wages and meals of Benvenue farmhands, many of whom were African American, are also included.

Folder 32 includes the Frederick K. Philips account book (1806-1833), where purchases of enslaved individuals were also recorded.

Folder 34 contains an account book of the Bunn and Thorp (1853 – 1876), which includes a list of slaves owned by Redmun Bunn, as well as the accounts of African American field hands and house workers.

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).