Abstract: Edward Augustus Wild (1825-1891) of Brookline, Mass., was a federal officer with the 1st Massachusetts Infantry, 1861-1862; 35th Massachusetts Infantry, 1862-1863; and with the African Brigade (1863-1865), a brigade formed from the 55th Massachusetts Regiment (colored) and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd North Carolina (colored) regiments. The collection includes correspondence, lists, and a military directive relating to African-American federal troops and Confederate guerillas in northeastern North Carolina, 1863-1864, and miscellaneous material relating to Company A, 1st Massachusetts Infantry. Union Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild is the central figure in the papers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Diaries, 1864 and 1867-1871, and a sketchbook of Robert G. Fitzgerald (1840-1919); copies of his pension record and marriage certificate and of the manumission certificate of Thomas Fitzgerald (father of Robert G.); two letters; and articles about members of the Fitzgerald family, including Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Pauli Murray. Fitzgerald’s diary, 1864, describes his trip from Boston to Virginia; life in the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment; war news, especially the activities of other black regiments; and his feelings about the war and the future of blacks. His later diary describes his work in freedmen’s schools in Amelia County, Va., and in Hillsborough, Orange County, N.C.; church affairs and social life; and his political activities, including a description, 31 July-2 August 1867, of the Virginia state Republican convention, to which he was a delegate. Some entries in 1867 describe Fitzgerald’s studies at Lincoln University (originally Ashmun Institute), life at the college, and church and social life. Entries, 1868-1871, describe in detail Fizgerald’s school in North Carolina; the Ku-Klux Klan; Republican politics; the Union League; Fitzgerald’s tanning business; a brick kiln established with his brother; building his house; and his farm and family life, including his new wife, Cornelia Smith. Fitzgerald’s undated sketchbook includes portraits of soldiers, a sketch of Ashmun Institute (later Lincoln University), and other scenes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Microfilm Only. The collection includes copies of Fitzgerald’s pension record, his marriage certificate, and his father’s manumission certificate. Fitzgerald’s diary entries record the activities of black regiments and personal thoughts on the future for blacks in America; employment at a freedman’s school in Amelia Court House, Virginia; views of the local African-American community; political activities; attendance at Lincoln University; and personal and professional affairs as well as those of the African-American community in Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina.

Abstract: Fletcher Melvin Green (1895-1978) was a member of the faculty of the History Department at the University of North Carolina, 1936-1960. Green directed the graduate studies of more than 200 students, held a Kenan professorship, and served as department chair. Correspondence, writings, speeches, course materials, and other papers relating to the professional career and family life of Fletcher Melvin Green. The bulk of the collection consists of professional and personal letters, 1935-1965. These letters chiefly document Green’s tenure at the University of North Carolina and his involvement in professional and social organizations, but there is also material related to his teaching at Emory, Harvard, Columbia, and Oxford universities. Other items include extensive family correspondence between Green and other family members. Correspondents include Howard K. Beale, J. Isaac Copeland, E. Merton Coulter, Frank Porter Graham , J. G. deRoulhac Hamilton, Arthur Stanley Link, James Welch Patton, Rembert Patrick, J. Carlyle Sitterson, George Brown Tindall, and C. Vann Woodward.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 554 contains some of Green’s remarks about African Americans at Harvard. In Folder 86, there is a copy of W. E. B DuBois’s letter of resignation from the Southern Historical Association. Folder 115 contains a letter from Arthur Link commenting on race relations in Chapel Hill. There is also correspondence with noted historians such as C. Vann Woodward (folders 137, 147, 162, 171, 197, 216).

Abstract: Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin (1897-1988) was YWCA national student secretary, southern region, 1920-1925; research director at the Council of Industrial Studies, Smith College, 1932-1939, and at the Institute of Labor Studies, Northampton, Mass., 1940-1953; professor of sociology at Wells College, Aurora, N.Y., 1957-1967; and an author. Correspondence, writings (mainly unpublished), research materials, lecture notes and drafts, photographs, and other papers of Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin. Most of the material relates to Lumpkin’s primary research interests–race relations, criminology, labor, and southern history. Also included is material concerning Lumpkin’s work as YWCA national student secretary and her extensive involvement in community activities in Charlottesville, Va., 1967-1978, some family letters, and some genealogical material.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence, writings, research materials, lecture notes and drafts, and other papers of Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, YWCA national student secretary; research director at the Council of Industrial Studies, Smith College, and at the Institute of Labor Studies, Northampton, Massachusetts; professor of Sociology at Wells College, Aurora, New York; and author. The majority of the material relates to research interests, including race relations and southern history. Correspondence chiefly pertains to Lumpkin’s writing projects, but also includes letters relating to her involvement with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Writings include articles on the Civil Rights Movement and the Underground Railroad. A number of the lectures in Series 3 discuss race relations and segregation, including black student protest in 1963 . Microfilm available.

Abstract: George Coffin Taylor was born in Charleston, S.C., in 1877. He was a gentleman farmer, lawyer, and Shakespeare scholar. He served for 27 years on the faculty of the English Department at the University of North Carolina until retiring in 1949 to Columbia, S.C. Coffin died in 1961. The collection consists of scattered items, chiefly 1808-1867, unrelated or in small groups, documenting horse racing and horse breeding, slavery, the Civil War, and family and social life. Most items relate to South Carolina, though some concern North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, and Massachusetts. Many of the horse racing and horse breeding papers, especially 1808-1834, are photostats. Slave records include a letter, 1823, concerning a mortgage on a slave child from the George Taylor estate; a letter, 1847, regarding slave sales in Montgomery, Ala.; and a letter, 1864, expressing interest in hiring out slaves to work on a railroad. Civil War materials include letters, 1861, from John H. Slaughter with Confederate Army forces in Bath County, Va., and Pocahontas County, W. Va., describing camp life, marches, and soldiers’ health. In addition there are miscellaneous letters, 1861-1865, that describe similar conditions, as well as military activities; soldiers’ morale; Confederate bonds and debts; cotton; medical care for soldiers; and other matters. Postwar materials include a July 1865 plea from an ex-slave in Liberty, Va., to be brought home and a report, 1866, of the murder of a black man allegedly by two white men. Family and social life materials are found throughout the collection and include miscellaneous family letters describing finances, health, vacations, sightseeing, school life, and estate settlement. There are several letters, 1839-1840, from Anna Motte Lindsay of Huntsville, Ala., a widow, to her brother, Jacob Rhett Motte, a United States Army surgeon, some about the status of a slave she brought with her to Boston. All of the materials were collected by George Coffin Taylor, except for a letter, 1943, from James A. Hoyt Jr. to Taylor, enclosing photostats of correspondence, 1879-1880, concerning the presidential election of 1876, and Taylor’s typescript manuscript, circa 1950, of the posthumously published “So This Is Education.”

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters in Folder 1 discuss a mortgage on a young enslaved child named Anthony from the George Taylor estate (29 February 1823). Correspondence in Folder 2 discusses trouble concerning a Mrs. “L” ‘s enslaved woman in Boston (1839-1840). Folder 3 contains a letter describing the sale of five enslaved individuals in Alabama (10 May 1847).  Folder 5 includes and  letter in 1864 expressing interest in hiring out slaves to work on the railroad in Charleston, S.C.. In Folder 5, there is correspondence about the investigation of James Sheppard and Lambert J Irons(?) for the killing of Jack, a freedman (27 January1866). Of particular interest is a10 July 1865 letter from Isabella Soustan(?), a former slave in Liberty, Va., writing to her former master describing difficult conditions and asking him to send for her (See Folder 5).

Abstract: John Steele Henderson, member of the North Carolina General Assembly, United States congressman, lawyer, and a founder of rural free delivery of the mail, was born 6 January 1846 in Salisbury, N.C., the son of Archibald II and Mary Ferrand Henderson, a descendant of General John Steele, comptroller of the United States Treasury. In October 1874, Henderson married Elizabeth Brownrigg Cain (1850-1929). They were the parents of Elizabeth Brownrigg Henderson, who married United States Navy Captain Lyman A. Cotten; Archibald Henderson, professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, who married Barbara Curtis Bynum; John Steele Henderson Jr., electrical engineer for Westinghouse, who married Ruth King; and Mary Ferrand Henderson, who was active in the Democratic Party and in the Episcopal Church in North Carolina. Letters, financial and legal papers, and other items of John Steele Henderson and members of the Henderson and related families. Earliest items are deeds, indentures, wills, and other legal documents. Items from the 1820s and 1830s chiefly relate to Archibald Henderson’s plantation business dealings. In the 1840s-1850s, most letters deal with family activities, especially those of John S. Henderson and his brother Leonard at school in Asheville, N.C., at the University of North Carolina, and at the University of Virginia. There are also items relating to slavery, including lists of slaves hired out, slave bills of sale, and at least four letters from slaves. During the Civil War, there are many letters from John S. Henderson at the University of North Carolina and from Leonard, an officer serving chiefly with the 8th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. After the Civil War, most of the items relate to activities of John S. Henderson, including his political career, and of his family. Included is material about Reconstruction; the United Daughters of the Confederacy; the women’s suffrage movement; Democratic Party politics; literature and the performing arts; and travel, especially that of Lyman and Elizabeth Cotten in Japan, where Lyman served two tours of duty as naval attache with the United States embassy in Tokyo before World War I. Other family members in the post-Civil War correspondence include John S. Henderson’s brother, Richard; his brother-in-law, William Cain; and his mother-in-law, Sarah Jane Bailey Cain. Volumes include several diaries, most notably that of Mary Ferrand Henderson, 1854-1861, in which she documented family activities.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Slave bills of sale (especially prevalent in 1807); receipts, mercantile account statements, and other business papers constitute the bulk of the material before the 1840s, while personal correspondence makes up the bulk of the collection by the 1860s. (See Folder 3 for slave bills of sale).

Included are a list documenting the hiring of slaves in1850 (Folder 18) and a copy of a will discussing sending freed slaves to Liberia in 1841 (See Folder 12).

Letters from Anderson Henderson, a slave who was hired out to another family (1849, 1857, 1865) and a letter from Isabella, (n.d.), a slave complaining about being hired out to a black mistress (See Folders 17, 23, 37-38).

Other letters discuss Archibald Henderson’s attempts to recover runaway slaves in 1847 (Folder 17); a proslavery speech delivered by Georgia senator Robert Toombs in Boston  in 1856 (Folder 22); Reconstruction politics  in the 1860s (Folders 40-45); and an attack on two whites by a “drunken infuriated negro” in 1890 (Folders 123-132);

Correspondence also includes discussions of accusations that three black men had murdered a white man near Salisbury and the possibility that troops would be required to prevent a lynching in1906 (Folders 274-279); and the movement of white women in Massachusetts from domestic to munitions factory positions, a move which left maid positions open to black women in 1916 (Folders 334-341).

Abstract: Reminiscences, written about 1910, of the children of Charles Howard of Springfield, Mass., and edited by Elizabeth H. Andrews in 1956. Represented are Thomas Dwight Howard (1826-1910), who wrote of his youth and education in Masschusetts and attendance at Harvard University Divinity School; service as a Unitarian minister at Perry, Me.; experiences as a teacher and minister among Sea Island blacks in South Carolina, 1860-1864, and with black U.S. Army troops in Louisiana, 1864-1866, and in Wisconsin, 1866-1869; preaching in Petersham, Mass, 1870-1874; work as secretary to the Commissioner of Prisons in Masachusetts, 1874-1879; ministry at Charleston, N.H., 1880-1891; and of making a return visit to Hilton Head, S.C., twenty-five years after his Civil War experiences. Also included are the reminiscences of his sisters, Sophia Worthington Howard (1836-1920), of her childhood and education in Massachusetts, and work as a teacher at Fort Laramie, Wyo., in the 1860s; and Sarah (“Sally”) Bancroft Howard Haywood (1838-1922) of her childhood. In addition, the volume contains genealogical information relating to the Howard, Worthington, Haywood, and Andrews families.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This single volume includes accounts of Thomas Dwight Howard (1826-1910), white chaplain to blacks in the Sea Islands of South Carolina (1860-1864) and to black army troops in Louisiana (1864-1866), Wisconsin (1866-1869), and Massachusetts (1870-1874).

Abstract: Articulate, analytical, lengthy letters from Daniel H. Baldwin, merchant of Savannah, Ga., 1860-1861, and New York City, 1867-1869, to William Baldwin in Massachusetts, commenting on the secession crisis, the Republican Party, the economy, Reconstruction, and race relations; and a receipt, 1859.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A group of letters written from 1860 to 1861 discuss the secession crisis; the role of slavery and the Republican party in precipitating the crisis; the South’s determination to achieve independence; and Baldwin’s own opinions on the South. Later letters (1867-1869) analyze Reconstruction and race relations, and include a proposal by Baldwin to import laborers from Africa for Southern planters.

Abstract: Chiefly Civil War correspondence of Fales, a federal soldier with the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry. Most items are letters received by Fales from his relatives in Massachusetts, discussing attitudes toward the war and slavery, and business conditions in Massachusetts. Also included are letters from Fales, written near New Orleans, La., with comments on blacks, local conditions, and army life.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters from his family discuss attitudes toward the Civil War and slavery, including comments on black regiments (1863). Fales’ letters mention mulattoes and black regiments.