Abstract: Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks photographed life in Columbus, Miss., between the 1920s and 1980s. Pruitt, born in Mississippi in 1891, became interested in photography while photographing his children. He moved to Columbus to work in Henry Hoffmeister’s photography studio, also attending the Illinois School of Photography early in his career. In or around 1920, Pruitt bought out Hoffmeister, becoming the sole photographer in Columbus. Pruitt ran the studio until around 1960, when he sold the business to his assistant, Calvin Shanks. Pruitt died in 1967, and Shanks continued to run the studio until his death in 1981, but the studio remained in operation until about 1986. The collection includes images taken by Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks between the 1920s and 1980s chiefly in Lowndes County, Miss. Most of the images were created by Pruitt circa 1920s-1950s. They document his work as a commercial (for-hire) and studio photographer in Columbus. Images primarily depict the town and people, including local businesses, churches, residential areas, schools, events, and people. Of particular interest are images of visits by Mississippi state politicians, historic homes, the African American community, and civic groups. The collection also includes images from outside Columbus, including other locations within Mississippi, as well as in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Quite a number of the photographs document African American individuals and groups in Mississippi, from churches to fraternal organizations to social clubs. A few examples included an African American family working in agriculture (Sheet Film 05463/00031), Cedar Grove M.B. Church (Folder 05463/01254), and the Colored Young Mens Christian Association (Sheet Film 05463/01531).

A number of images from this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized material.

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: Chiefly unrelated 19th-century letters from several different states collected by James Baylor Blackford of Richmond, Va. Topics include politics, military affairs, education, travel, migration within the United States, home life, religion, business, and agriculture. Included are letters referring to political events in Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and North Carolina; preparations for war with Mexico; employment of slaves in Mississippi and discipline of slaves in Texas; the education and social lives of teachers and students in Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina; travel experiences of visitors to Mississippi, Tennesee, North Carolina, and South Carolina; experiences of men and women who migrated to Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and California; domestic and family news from people in North Carolina, Kentucky, Maryland, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia; and business and agricultural activities and prospects in Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and California.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Writers and topics include a traveler in Mississippi who refers to the rental of several of his slaves to pick cotton during a temporary layover caused by a local yellow fever epidemic (1833); a slave owner in Shackleford, North Carolina, concerning possible charges brought against a slave for beating a slave owned by the writer (1835); and a Baptist minister in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to a minister in New York, expressing concern over the impact of the abolition movement on missionary efforts (1844).

Abstract: Single or small groupings of items arranged in units by provenance. Included are tax forms, records of accounts, slave lists and bills of sale, land patents, schedules of debt, wills, marriage licenses, naturalization papers, invitations, proclamations, commissions, sermons, speeches, and reminiscences, predominantly from North Carolina, Virginia, and other southern states. There is little correspondence. Some units are cataloged separately.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Some of the materials in this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and access the digital items.

Folder 1 (Unit 1) contains a message of the General Assembly of North Carolina to Governor Arthur Dobbs (1689-1765), concerning the disposition of an African-American man in jail under sentence of death in Wilmington, N.C

Folder 9 (Unit 9) contains a letter (c. 1816 or a little later) written by Robert Ratcliffe, Clerk of Court, Fairfax County, Va., listing the value of slaves and other property from the estate of Ann Fox.

Folder 14 (Unit 14) contains two documents relating to slaves and slave trading. One, 2 May 1831, is between William Townes, Mecklenburg County, Va., and Alfred Townes, Hopkins County, Ky., regarding Alfred’s dealings in the slave market. The other, 20 September 1831, is among William, Alfred, and Joseph H. Townes, establishing a partnership concerning the buying and selling of slaves.

Folder 21 (Unit 21) contains a Deposition (22 May 1855), of William H. Adams and Eliza Jane Adams of Lyons, Wayne County, N.Y., that they believe Alfred Moby (or Woby), an African American, to be “feeble minded”.

Folder 61 (Unit 61) consists of three letters (6 December 1869, 25 April 1871, and undated )from Zacharias W. Haynes of Raleigh, N.C., to his parents in Yadkin County, N.C., and one letter, 19 March 1868, from Haynes’s father John to his son. Zacharias W. Haynes was a teacher at the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind, apparently in charge of the Colored Department of the school for 20 years. In the 1874 letter, Haynes briefly described conditions at the school; in the 1869 letter, he mentioned that the state owed him $80.00, which he could not hope to collect before the next year since the treasury had “gone dry”. Other letters deal chiefly with family matters.

Folder 62 (Unit 62) consists of a volume of information on Greer Cemetery in Durham, N.C.  compiled by R. Kelly Bryant. The purpose of the volume was to raise support for a project aimed at ensuring maintenance of the cemetery and reseaching its history. Geer Cemetery was a principal burial ground for the city’s African-American population from the 1870s through the 1930s. It apparently had ties to the White Rock Baptist Church.

Folder 67 (Unit 67) contains a volume of Samuel J. Brim, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives from Surry County in 1901. The volume contains notes for Brim’s political speeches, most of which concern the possibility that African-Americans might gain control of the government through their right to vote.

Folder 68 (Unit 68) Photocopy of the diary kept by Richard N.L. (Pete) Andrews in 1963 while he worked on Aaron Henry’s Mississippi gubernatorial campaign. (Aaron Henry was an African American civil rights activist, politician, and head of Mississippi’s NAACP chapters). The diary records activities of Andrews, a student at Yale at the time, and others as they staged a “mock voter registration” aimed at assessing how many people would vote in the election if they were not blocked from doing so by the state’s restrictive voter registration practices. Students from Yale were recruited and led by Allard Lowenstein.

Folder 84 (Unit 84) contains from five notes from 1851-1855 relating to James and Thomas Graham’s purchases of farm machinery, land, guano, and a slave.

Folder 92 (Unit 92) contains a slave bill of sale from Orange County, N.C. (1824).

Folders 95a and 95b (Unit 95) includes a few bills of sales for slaves in Nash County, N.C.

Folder 96 (Unit 96) contain relating to slaves in antebellum North Carolina and Tennessee. Included are the John McClatchy vs. Carter Markam judgement from Buncombe County, N.C., 22 October 1807, with an attached warrant, 4 September 1809; a deed relating to Richard Burkes, Warren County, Tenn., June 1813; bills of sale for slaves, Richard Burkes, seller, Warren County, Tenn., 19 September 1813, 23 July 1833, and 31 August 1833; and an account for smith work from R.P. Burkes, 1839

Folders 101a and 101b (Unit 101) also have documentation related to enslaved individuals in North Carolina. Includes a report of the division of slaves belonging to the estate of Thomas Mashborne, 10 December 1846; a settlement of account of James M. Mashborne with his guardian Gardner Shepard with amounts of slave hire and sales, 1847; a bill of sale for slaves of George W. Mashborne, Owen Jarratt, seller, 3 June 1850; and a bill of sale for a slave named Dave belonging to Gardner Shepard, guardian to James Mashborne, 1855. There are also other slave documents, including an inventory of the estate of William Mills with a list of slaves and other property, November 1772; a reward notice for apprehension and return of slave named Nancy Elliot, about twelve years old, 23 August 1848; an audit of the accounts of William Herring, guardian of Charity Carter, 18 January 1851; and bill of sale for slaves to F.D. Thomas, 26 April 1858.

Folder 103 (Unit 103) contains two slave bills of sale. One bill of sale, 12 February 1816, is from Bertie County, N.C., for Jeffery, a male slave about 30 years old, for the sum of $450. The other bill of sale, 26 November 1860, is from Orange County, N.C., for Caroline, a female slave about 20 years old, and Lewis, a male slave, about two years old, for the sum of $1001.

Folder 104 (Unit 104) is a 1954 undergraduate thesis by Ana Pliscz entitled “Marcus Garvey and the Negro in the United States”.

Abstract: Native of Mississippi, Confederate officer, and California lawyer. Personal correspondence and diaries of Dixon, consisting chiefly of correspondence between Dixon and his parents while he was a student at the University of Virginia,

1860-1861; a Confederate officer with the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in Virginia; and after the war, when he was a lawyer and rancher in California. His parents lived near Greenville, Miss., and, during part of the Civil War, in Demopolis, Ala. Correspondence concerns family affairs, experiences at the University of Virginia, effects of the war in Mississippi, Dixon’s war experiences, and other matters. Also included is Dixon’s diary, 1858-1865, kept while he was at Greenville, at the University of Virginia, and during the war. Among other items are letters, 1868-1869, to Dixon’s wife, Constance Maynard Dixon, from her grandfather, Duff Green (1791-1875); letters from Dixon’s friend, Henry Ewing, Confederate officer in Tennessee and newspaperman in St. Louis; and photographs of fellow soldiers and students and of others.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes correspondence discussing the Fugitive Slave Act (1860); the “fate of negroes who followed enemy’s columns,” (1862); the faithfulness of slaves during the war (1863); the disinclination of former slaves to sign unspecified “contracts” in Alabama (1867); the refusal of former slaves to work for former slaveholders (1867); former slaves as sharecroppers (1869); blacks wearing Union Army uniforms (1869); and the opinions of whites toward blacks following the war (1869). Microfilm available.

Abstract: Minor family members included Stephen Minor (fl. 1786-1816), cotton planter near Natchez, Miss.; his wife, Katharine Lintot Minor (fl. 1815-1843); their son, William J. Minor (fl. 1815-1868), sugar planter at Waterloo Plantation, possibly in Iberville Parish, La.; and Stephen’s brother, John Minor (fl. 812-1831), also a cotton planter near Natchez. Business and other papers of three generations of the Minor family of Mississippi and the related Lintot family. Included is business correspondence from cotton factors in Liverpool, describing market conditions in England, and from factors in New Orleans. Also included are many estate papers and deeds for purchases of land in the vicinity of Natchez, Miss., and lists of slaves. There are also some letters to Katherine Minor from her children and friends.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included are a few documents pertaining to Stephen Minor’s ownership and use of slaves in 1815 (Folder 13), and several undated slave lists (Folders 39-41).  Also included is an 1853 receipt for payment to an individual who had captured and returned a runaway slave to him (Folder 38).

Abstract: James Allen was a planter of Warren County, Miss. Charles B. Allen was his son. Personal, family, and business correspondence of James Allen and Charles B. Allen, including European correspondence in the 1850s, mostly from Paris and the Hague, where James was apparently conducting business, and from European schools Charles attended; Civil War letters from Charles while a Confederate soldier in Mississippi and Alabama and from James in Richmond, Mobile, and other places, while he was involved in a variety of enterprises, including salt manufacture; James’s official correspondence as provost marshall of freedmen in Warren County, 1865-1866; and some post- war plantation papers, mainly concerning land transactions and the sale of cotton. Also included is a notebook, 1788-1796, of Garret Rapalje of Alabama, containing accounts, records of Indian words, etc. (incomplete typed transcription of an original manuscript at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History).

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers of the family of Colonel James Allen of Warren, Mississippi, Provost Marshal of Freedmen. Includes a notebook containing records of accounts with “Indians and Negroes” (1788- 1796). Microfilm available.

Abstract: Thomas Butler King of Retreat Plantation, Saint Simons Island, Ga., was a Georgia and United States legislator, collector of the port of San Francisco, and Georgia representative to various courts in Europe during the Civil War, with special interests in internal improvements and naval affairs. Papers of King and his wife Anna Matilda Page King, 1835-1840, deal primarily with King’s business, managerial, and legislative activities on behalf of the Brunswick and Altamaha Canal Company, the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company, and the Brunswick Land Company. Papers, 1841-1848, document King’s political career as U.S. representative from Georgia’s First Congressional District, which included Glynn County and the cities of Brunswick and Savannah. Among these are papers about his activities as member and chair of the U.S. House Naval Affairs Committee and about Whig political activities in Georgia, the South, and the nation. Materials, 1849-1852, deal with King’s work in California, first as the personal adviser of President Zachary Taylor and then as the first collector of the port of San Francisco under Millard Fillmore. Between 1853 and 1859, papers deal with family matters and King’s investments in and promotion of a transcontinental railroad through Texas. Papers, 1860-1864, relate to his promotion of railroads in south Georgia, his association with the secession crisis, and his activities on behalf of the state of Georgia and the Confederacy in various European capitals during the first years of the Civil War. There also are letters, diaries, and other materials relating to the King sons at various locations during the war and other family letters that reflect the effects of the war. Letters discussing plantation and family matters account for almost half of the collection. Most of these were written between 1850 and 1859 by Anna Matilda Page King, who chiefly discussed agricultural matters, including the treatment of slaves, but also expressed a certain amount of anti-semitism and wrote of her experimentation with the occult.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence and records of King, a planter on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. Family correspondence pertains to plantation affairs, including issues such as punishing a runaway slave, taking care of sick slaves, and the difficulties of raising children around slavery (1809-1859). Post-Civil War letters refer to running plantations with German and black labor in Mississippi and Louisiana (1866-1868).

Abstract: Mississippi Freelance was begun in Greenville, Miss., in April 1969 as a “non-profitable sideline” for its editors, Lew Powell and Ed Williams who, then in their twenties, were reporters for the “Delta Democrat-Times” in Greenville. “Mississippi Freelance” was a liberal monthly newspaper, dedicated to “reporting the otherwise unreported.” All of its writers worked on a volunteer basis. The paper had about 700 subscribers in and out of Mississippi. “Mississippi Freelance” ceased publication in March 1970, after twelve issues. As of April 1983, Powell and Williams were writing for “The Charlotte Observer.” Business correspondence, financial material, writings and research material, distribution material, printed material (including a copy of each issue of “Mississippi Freelance”), and other material. The correspondence includes comments on contemporary social and political issues, especially race relations and civil rights, chiefly in Mississippi.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The correspondence contains views on issues such as race relations and civil rights, predominantly in Mississippi.

This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Abstract: Elizabeth Amis Cameron Hooper Blanchard (1873-1956), author, art collector, and interior decorator, was related by birth and marriage to the Amis, Hooper, Blanchard, and Butterworth families. Prominent persons represented in the collection include her husband, John Osgood Blanchard (d. ca. 1912); her mother, Mary (“Mamie”) Amis Hooper (b. 1843); and her mother’s three sisters, Elizabeth (“Bettie”) Amis (1837-1872), Sallie Amis Nowland (b. 1841), and Julia Amis (1848-1876). Other prominent family members included the Amis sisters’ parents, Thomas Amis (fl. 1834-1876) and Sarah Davis Amis (d. 1852), and their aunt, Mary Amis Butterworth (fl. 1855-1880), and uncle, Samuel F. Butterworth (fl. 1855-1866). This collection is divided into two parts. Subcollection 3367(A) contains correspondence, notes, memoranda, diary entries, clippings, pictures, and breeding and racing records, all relating to Elizabeth Blanchard’s book, “The Life and Times of Sir Archie: The Story of America’s Greatest Thoroughbred,” as well as a typed draft of the book. Also included in 3367(A) are genealogical materials on the Amis and Dulany families and copies of Amis and Cameron family wills. Subcollection 3367(B) contains family letters of the Amis, Butterworth, and Blanchard families. Included are letters from Sarah Davis Amis while she was living on a plantation near Columbus, Miss., in the 1830s and 1840s, to her grandmother in Warrenton, N.C.; letters to and from the four Amis sisters after their mother’s death in 1852, while they travelled in Europe and lived with their Butterworth relatives in New York and Morristown, N.J.; letters among the Amises and Butterworths after the latter moved, in 1864, to California, where Samuel Butterworth was managing a mine at Almaden; letters from Thomas Amis, who went to live with relatives in Madison Parish, La., in 1870; and correspondence to and from the Blanchards after their marriage when they travelled to Japan, 1906.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains family letters written from a plantation near Columbus, Mississippi. The correspondence contains plantation letters from Sarah Amis that routinely mention the welfare of two slaves named Lethe and Sophia, including an 1840 note stating that Lethe gave birth to a child who was “right good looking and not black of course”; a letter from Sophia to Bettie and Sallie Amis (1858); a North Carolina letter referring to “old negroes” at the end of the Civil War (1867); a comment from Sallie Amis in Petersburg, Virginia that “the niggas are as impudent as they can be” (1867); a report from Mamie Amis in San Francisco of Irish prejudice against free blacks (1869); and discussion of the political actions of blacks in Louisiana (1870-1876).