Abstract:  Helen Laura Ruth was a teacher at Leland University in New Orleans, La., a private institution of higher learning for African Americans founded in 1870. It closed in 1915; was re-named Leland College and re-opened in Baker, La., in 1923; and finally closed in 1960. The collection includes two scrapbooks of Helen Laura Ruth and a student essay. The 1913 scrapbook contains photographs of Ruth’s family and Leland students, some taken on the Leland University campus, and pictures, postcards, and brochures relating to her travels to Washington, D.C.; around New Orleans; Altlanta, Ga.; and other locations. Most of the scrapbook items have diary-like annotations. The 1940 scrapbook documents travel with friend Jenny Feiser around the western half of the United States, including Los Angeles, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle, Wash. The undated and unascribed essay, “School in the Year 2000,” appears to have been written by a Leland student.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Before her marriage to Dub White, Grace McSpadden Overholser was married to James Overholser and, at some point, worked as a reporter. Later in life, she taught English and African American studies and served as dean at Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, N.C. The collection contains memoranda, letters, notes, writings, course syllabi, and other items chiefly relating to Grace McSpadden Overholser’s tenure at Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian College. Materials include an article that Overholser wrote regarding Richard Wright; letters to the editor of New Letters, a journal at the University of Missouri in which Overholser’s Richard Wright article was published; a schedule and participant list of the 1971 Afro-American Institute at the University of Iowa; letters to the director of the Afro-American Institute; an essay regarding the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University; several pages of Overholser’s notes and course syllabi; and other materials.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 1 contains items related to Overholser’s tenure at Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian College as well as letters, memos, and other materials. Included is a University of Missouri journal article Overholser wrote on novelist Richard Right, and correspondence from the Afro-American Institute at the University of Iowa.

Abstract: Hardware merchant and banker of New Orleans and Confederate veteran. Military and business papers of John G. Devereux, and correspondence and financial and legal papers of Stephen and J. C. Van Winkle. An account book and other volumes from Wexford and Dublin, Ireland, appear to belong to John Devereux’s father, John Devereux (fl. 1822), merchant and shipper. J. G. Devereux’s Civil War records relate chiefly to the Siege of Vicksburg and consist of military correspondence, including letters from Ulysses S. Grant; muster rolls; items relating to Confederate prisoners; a list of slaves used as laborers; and other items. Business papers relate chiefly to Devereux’s banking career. Stephen Van Wickle was sheriff of Pointe Coupee Parish, La., ca. 1819-1835. He was also business and legal agent for Valerien Ledoux (d. 1853), a Pointe Coupee sugar planter. In 1835 J. C. Van Wickle, a sugar planter and possibly Stephen’s son, took over the position of sheriff as well as the management of the Ledoux estate. Financial and legal materials of the Van Wickles comprise sheriff’s plantation, personal, and merchant accounts, and include account books, deeds, warrants, judgements and court orders. An 1842 bill of sale for slaves and a list of slaves are included. Miscellaneous items of interest are a transcription of a speech by Louisiana governor Henry W. Allen, 1863; a ledger of a cotton press and cotton press association, presumably in Pointe Coupee parish, 1880-1883; and a biographical sketch of Confederate chief of engineers Martin Luther Smith.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes a letter (1829) authorizing the hiring out of slaves, slave treatment, and the inappropriateness of a woman’s handling the hiring out of slaves. Financial and legal papers include a slave bill of sale (1842). A volume of sheriff’s accounts includes a clipping concerning the legality of a free black manumitting a slave and her three children (1827) and another volume lists slaves purchased and amount paid. Among the Civil War records is a list of slaves conscripted to work on the fortification of Fort Pemberton, Mississippi, and a provision return form for slaves transporting ammunition and guns from Greenwood to Wenona, Mississippi (1863). Microfilm available.

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 Brownson Ker (1860-1916) was an attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y. He and his wife, Ellen Burke Ker, were both from Louisiana planter families. They were married in 1892. Their son David (1893-1918) served overseas in World War I. Their daughter Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn (d. 1960) was a volunteer leader in social welfare and mental health projects in the New York City area; organizer of a community development and aid to children project in Jacmel, Haiti, 1956-1959; and a press correspondent in Haiti. Correspondence and other papers of the family of John Brownson Ker and his wife Ellen Burke Ker. Early letters, 1779-1882, are of John Brownson Ker’s parents and other Ker and Brownson relatives, most of whom were planters in Louisiana. Most of the earliest letters concern the lower Mississippi River area while it was under Spanish and British control. Papers, 1834-1882, are mainly correspondence of John Brownson’s Ker’s father, David Ker (1825-1884). Among the papers of the 1850s are bills of sale for slaves, bills for dry-goods, and bills for physician’s fees. Correspondence, 1911-1959, includes a items relating to John Brownson Ker and Ellen Burke Ker and their son David Ker and daughter Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn. Many of these letters document David Ker’s life, military service in France, and death in World War I. Much of Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn’s correspondence concerns her views, 1957-1959, on politics and social conditions in Haiti, and her interest in psychoanalysis. Included are more than 30 items of Carl Alfred Meier, with whom she underwent analysis in Switzerland in the 1930s. There are also psychological and sociological writings of Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn, including reports on the situation in Haiti, 1957-1959; a few financial papers; six notebooks, 1901-1954, containing poems and thoughts of Ellen Burke Ker; clippings; and family photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Materials from the 1850s include slave bills of sale (See Folders 3 & 4). Folder 22 also contains reports on Haiti from the late 1950s gathered by Elizabeth Ker Schermerhorn.

Abstract: Shaffer family of Terrebonne Parish, La., included William A. Shaffer, sugar planter; his sons Thomas J. (1843-1915) and John J. (fl. 1876-1906), sugar planters and Confederate veterans; and John Dalton Shaffer (fl. 1875-1919), sugar planter, lawyer, and state senator. The Shaffers’ plantations, all in Terrebonne Parish, were Crescent Farm, Magnolia, Anna, and Ardoyne. The collection includes plantation journals, account books, scrapbooks, and financial and legal papers, chiefly documenting Shaffer family sugar plantations. The journals contain brief daily records of agricultural activities, business transactions, and personal events, 1825-1846 and 1876-1918 (with occasional gaps). A diary of John Dalton Shaffer includes records of treatment of sick Italian workers in 1905. The scrapbooks provide some information on family members, particularly on John Dalton Shaffer’s career as a state senator and Democratic Party leader, 1906-1918, and on Thomas J. and John J. Shaffer’s involvement in Confederate veterans associations, 1905-1911. The financial and legal papers date chiefly from the 1830s to the 1850s and include bills of sale for land and slaves.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The financial and legal papers contain slave bills of sale from 1818-1857 (See Folders 1-4). There is also a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings relating to sugar legislation and race relations between 1884- 1919 (See Folder 44)

Abstract: The documentary film “Shalom Y’all,” directed by third-generation southern Jew and New Orleans, La., native Brian Bain, details Jewish culture and identity in the American South. In the film, Bain travels 4,200 miles by car across the same route his grandfather took as a traveling salesman. Bain interviews a variety of southern Jews, including a Jewish African American police chief, a kosher butcher, a Golden Gloves boxer, and a former congressman. He also explores the role played by southern Jews in a variety of historical settings, such as the American Civil War, the civil rights movement, and the Ku Klux Klan. The collection consists of elements involved in the making of the film “Shalom Y’all,” research files, business files, and promotional materials. Elements of the film include video footage, photographic stills, audio materials, scripts, and other documents. There are also photographs of interviewees and locations featured in the film, the cast and crew while traveling and filming, and openings and other events. Research materials consist of images of southern Jewish businesses, homes, temples, celebrations, religious ceremonies, other gatherings, civil rights activities, individual and family portraits, and other subjects, and video materials covering a range of topics from Mardi Gras to civil rights. There are also Shalom Y’all scout videos. Business files consist of correspondence and other items related to grants, loans, film logos and posters, copyright, and other topics. Promotional materials include newspaper clippings, film festival schedules, and other materials.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Range of topics includes civil rights and African Americans practicing Judaism.

Abstract: J. B. Willis (b. 1851), a native of Delaware, was a Methodist minister and teacher at New Orleans University, an African-American school in New Orleans, La., and at a normal school in Huntsville, Ala. Diary, 1874-1877, of J. B. Willis describes his daily activities while he was teaching at New Orleans University, an African-American school in New Orleans, La., and at a normal school in Huntsville, Ala., and also his activities and observations during trips to Texas and Mexico. Willis’s diary records his observations of New Orleans weather, social life, and public events, including parades, Mardi Gras, sessions of the Louisiana state legislature, and religious revivals.Willis described the evangelism in New Orleans of Maggie Newton Van Cott (b. 1830), the first woman licensed to preach by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. The diary also describes traveling by wagon, flatboat, steamer, and railroad to Texas in 1874, and people, animals, and landscape along the way. In Huntsville, Ala., Willis recorded his observations of the natural world as well as people, church services, and revivals during the year he administered a new normal school and taught a theological class.In Mexico, in December 1876, Willis described Tampico, Tuxpan, Vera Cruz, and Mexico City. In Mexico City, he reported on social occasions, tours, and day trips, including visits to Chapultepec, the Baths of Montezuma, the Guiterraz marble factory, the lava fields near Pedregal, “a very ancient pyramid of adobe bricks,” gardens, churches, private mansions, museums, and the unfinished public library.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Willis writes entries about preaching at African American Methodist and Baptist churches in New Orleans in the 1870s. This diary has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digital content.

Abstract: Commonplace book, chiefly 1843-1855, of Henry L. Duffel, an Ascension Parish, La., lawyer, containing thoughts on life and society; bits of diary concerning family events, politics, and neighbors; and miscellany.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Manuscript notebook of an Ascension Parish, Louisiana, lawyer contains notes and dates of family events (chiefly 1843-1855), including a trip taken on the Mississippi River on a boat carrying a cargo of slaves.

Abstract: Memoirs of the Reconstruction era in the area around Port Hudson, Clinton, and Jackson, La., with particular attention to efforts to re- establish white supremacy.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The document relates Jones’s perception of the aristocratic and cultured plantation society and the efforts of Louisiana whites to reestablish white supremacy during Reconstruction. Microfilm only.