Abstract: Price family of Mecklenburg County, N.C., and Fayette and Giles counties, Tenn., where several members of the family moved to settle and where many of them owned land. Primarily business and financial papers, with some family letters, of several generations of the Price family. Papers are mainly those of Isaac Price, Isaac Price Jr., and Isaac Jasper Price, and deal with farming, estate settlement, lands and property, medical services, settlement in Tennessee, the Steele Creek Church in Mecklenburg County, and family matters.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included in are mentions of slaves bought, sold, and bequeathed (1792-1854). Includes a 1792 agreement between Isaac Price and Thomas Green about an enslaved (man/woman? Name?)

Abstract: Unrelated records from Fayetteville, N.C., including a library record, 1844-1877, of Cross Creek Lodge, Odd Fellows; two 19th-century daybooks for general merchandise; an 18th-century general account book; a physician’s ledger, chiefly 1863-1867; a ledger of Thomas H. Sutton, attorney, 1879-1903; and a 1953 pen-and-ink drawing of the State House in Fayetteville made from an 1814 wood engraving.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Charles Iverson Graves of Newton and Floyd counties, Ga., and Caswell County, N.C., attended the U.S. Naval Academy; served as a U.S. and Confederate naval officer; taught school and operated a farm near Rome, Ga.; spent 1875-1878 in Egypt as an officer in the Egyptian army; and worked as a civil engineer on construction of the Georgia Pacific and Memphis & Vicksburg railroads, 1881-1884. Charles and his wife, Margaret (Lea) Graves (fl. 1860-1898), had five children: Charles Iverson, Jr., William Lea, Mary Hinton, Robert William, and Anne Parke. The collection is chiefly correspondence of Charles Iverson and Margaret (Lea) Graves, especially documenting his military career in the U.S. and Confederate navies and his civil engineering career, particularly his service in Egypt, but also his work on the Georgia Pacific and Memphis & Vicksburg railroads. The pair exchanged several hundred letters from 1875 to 1878 detailing his experiences in Egypt and her life at Locust Hill, Caswell County, N.C., where she tried to raise five children with limited economic resources. There is also correspondence relating to Charles’s time at the U.S. Naval Academy; to the couple’s courtship; to the couples’ independent struggles–he on active duty and she on the the homefront at various places, including Mobile, Ala.–during the Civil War; and to the operation of the family farm in Rome, Ga. Other letters contain information about the experiences of other family members, particularly members of the Lea family, who moved to Alabama and Mississippi before the Civil War, and those of a relative in California after the war. Also included are genealogical materials about the Graves, Lea, and related families, reminiscences by Margaret (Lea) Graves, and Charles Iverson Graves’s writings on Egyptian culture. There are also other writings, notes, and pictures, including materials relating to a book on Civil War veterans in Egypt by William Best Hesseltine.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Image 2606/5 depicts an unidentified group of eight white children with three black women and one donkey. Subseries 1.5 also contains correspondence of Graves while working in Egypt, description the life and culture in various areas of North Africa.

Abstract: John Francis Speight was a Methodist clergyman, president of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, trustee of Jamestown Female College, and farmer of Edgecombe County, N.C. Family and professional correspondence, primarily 1822-1894, and bills, receipts, and other financial materials of the Reverend John Francis Speight, his wife Emma Lewis Speight, and their descendants, relatives, and Lewis family connections. Materials prior to 1893 include papers of Emma Lewis Speight’s father Exum Lewis II. John Francis Speight travelled extensively in central and eastern North Carolina, and his correspondence, 1832-1860, with his family and with fellow itinerant ministers reflects a variety of church affairs. Emma Lewis Speight’s extensive correspondence includes letters exchanged with her numerous relations, particularly her sisters and brothers, in Edgecombe and Halifax counties and other places in North Carolina and in Alabama, Mississippi, and Iowa. This correspondence relates to family events, trips, cotton planting, schooling, and civilian conditions during the Civil War. There are also letters from Confederate soldiers serving in Virginia and eastern North Carolina, 1861-1863. Postwar items include correspondence of students at the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia, and in medical training at the Baltimore Infirmary, 1867-1870. Also included are financial and legal materials, 1827-1906, and other items, among them two ciphering books, clippings, and a copy of a 1970s inventory of the papers that contains genealogical information about some of the correspondents in the papers and item-level description of selected materials.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Mackall, a West Point graduate, served in the United States Army from his graduation in 1837 until 1861, and in the Confederate Army, 1861- 1865, attaining the rank of brigadier general. After the war he lived at Langley, Va. He married Aminta Sorrel of Savannah, Ga., and had a son, W. W. Mackall (b. 1853), who was a lawyer in Savannah. Letters during the early period, 1839-1849, include those written from Florida while Mackall was on his way to Mexico, and from Mexico, discussing the military situation. Letters during the Civil War period include those written by Mackay to his family discussing skirmishes and battles and also the family’s welfare, and letters written to Mackay from other Confederate officers discussing army politics and military actions in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Correspondents include Joseph Eggleston Johnston (27 letters), Braxton Bragg, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, and Jeremy F. Gilmer. Post-war papers largely concern Confederate military history and recollections, and include also the papers of Mackall’s son, W. W. Mackall, who published privately “A Son’s Recollections of his Father.” Also available are scrapbooks and commissions and, on microfilm, genealogical and biographical data on the Mackall family.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Robert Briggs Watson (1903-1978), native of Clemson, S.C., was a physician who specialized in malaria research, parasitology, epidemiology, and public health administration.1942-1966. The collection consists of typed diaries Watson kept during his service with the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. The diaries concern his activities related to malaria studies in Memphis, Tenn., 1942-1945. From 1946-1954 his work centered on East Asia, traveling to China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan (formally Formosa), the Philippines, Thailand (formally Siam), India, Sri Lanka (formally Ceylon), Macau, and Pakistan. From 1955-1962 Watson’s work shifted to Brazil and other areas in that part of the world, traveling to Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Panama, and numerous other locations around the world. Entries dated 1963-1966 cover his work in St. Lucia, and he traveled to other areas as well. These entries also document Watson’s time in Chapel Hill, N.C. where he began teaching in 1966. The diaries are a record of his daily work, together with information related to traveling and living conditions, personal and family affairs, cultural and social occasions, and current events in the countries to which he was assigned. The first four volumes, 1942-1946, are not indexed, but beginning with volume 5 in 1949 there is an index of personal names for each year. For some years there is also a chronological list of subjects, events, and travels. Copies of Watson’s annual reports and occasional special reports to the Rockefeller Foundation are included in some volumes, and some of the later volumes also contain clippings and photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Pritchett of Greensboro, N.C., was a cabinetmaker, undertaker, active member of the Republican Party, and justice of the peace and legislator, 1881 and 1887. Miscellaneous deeds and financial and legal papers of Pritchett and of related members of the Matthews family of Chatham County, N.C.; four letters relating to teaching school in Greensboro, 1888-1889; and two small memoranda books of a Baptist preacher in Chatham County, 1868-1874.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The Harrison and Smith family of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina included Aristides Spyker Smith (1809-1892), an Presbyterian and Episcopal minister and principal of women’s schools in Virginia and Mississippi. Smith’s sons were Jonathan Reynolds (Johnnie) Smith (1836-1862) and Leonidas Wilkinson Smith (1835-1864). Also included was Smith’s daughter Ellen Alice Smith Harrison (b. 1840), her husband George Harrison (fl. 1852-1875), their daughter Sarah Walton Harrison (1868?-1891) and her husband Paul Garrett (1863-1940), and their son Aristides Smith Harrison (b. 1864) and his wife Katie Wilson Curtis, a daughter of George B. Curtis (1834-1920) of Biddeford, Maine, who traveled to Colorado in search of gold and adventure (ca. 1856), returning east and settling in Enfield, N.C. He opened a general store, and later a bank and a cotton business. The collection consists chiefly of letters. One letter from Johnnie Smith, who died at Malvern Hill, and several from Leonidas Wilkinson Smith, who died in Houston, Tex., are to their father during the Civil War discussing spiritual concerns; Leonidas’s work securing ordnance materials; fighting in April 1864 near DeSoto Parish, La.; and extensive observations on the inhabitants and customs of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. There are also letters, 1884-1896, from Sarah Walton Harrison and Paul Garrett to Ellen Harrison about Paul’s early business travels as a wine salesman, Sarah’s illness, and domestic concerns. Other items include a southern business directory used by Aristides Smith as a scrapbook; tax-in-kind receipts from the Confederate government; receipts for the rental and sale of slaves; notebooks of Aristides Smith on mathematics and astronomy; diaries, 1874-1875, of George Harrison containing brief entries concerning financial transactions and farming; a Garrett and Company catalog; and cabinet cards. Sixteen metal plates, ca. 1857, are engraved with scenes of both actual and planned Washington, D.C., landmarks. The addition of June 2006 includes Smith, Harrison, and Curtis family materials and a number of museum items. Smith family materials include correspondence of Aristides Spyker Smith; a diary and a journal belonging to Jonathan Reynolds Smith; about 300 sermons prepared by Aristides Spyker Smith; land surveys; unidentifed daguerreotypes; and an undated, extensively illustrated cipher book with mathematical content created by Benjamin Spyker, grandfather of Aristides Spyker Smith. Harrison family materials include two diaries, 1868 and 1869, belonging to George Harrison that document activities on the family’s farm; a minutes book of Enfield Graded School District, Enfield, N.C., documenting financial activities of the district, 1901-1909; land surveys; and annotated cabinet cards. Curtis family materials are primarily letters from George B. Curtis and Ann Curtis Dunn, sister of George and Wil

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Amos Henry Hawley (1910- ), demographer and teacher at the University of Michigan for thirty years. In 1966, he moved to the Sociology Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from whcih he retired in 1976 as Kenan Professor of Sociology with specialization in demography. Professional papers, 1938-1991, of Amos Henry Hawley, including correspondence, writings, and other papers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Civil engineer and good roads advocate of Alamance County, N.C. Personal and professional correspondence, writings, reports, blueprints, maps, and other papers of William Luther Spoon, his wife, Susan Addeline (Addie) Vernon Neville Spoon, their daughter, Nancy Miriam Spoon Alexander, and other members of the Shoffner, Spoon, and Neville families. Family correspondence includes letters between Spoon and his wife about their children, farm, saw and grist mill operations, and neighborhood affairs; letters from Spoon to his mother describing his work as a diamond drilling supervisor with the North Carolina Geological Survey, 1891-1892; and letters, 1916-1920, between the Spoons and their daughter, Nancy Miriam, when she was a student at Salem College. Spoon’s professional correspondence with his supervisors, J. A. Holmes and Joseph Hyde Pratt of the North Carolina Geological Survey, and Logan W. Page, Vernon M. Peirce, and E. W. James of the Office of Public Roads, concerns his assignments, administrative matters, and expenses. Other papers relating to Spoon’s career as an engineer include reports road crew supervisors made to him on road work and costs; Spoon’s reports to the Office of Public Roads, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, about trips he made promoting good roads; contractors’ estimates for costs of road construction; diagrams, sketches, and notes concerning road construction projects; blueprints; and maps of the North Carolina highway system. Also included in the collection are genealogical notes; household account books; a record book of the Woman’s Home Missionary Auxiliary, Mt. Pleasant Church, 1910; photographs and negatives; and other miscellaneous papers and volumes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection