Creator: Graves family.
Collection number: 2716
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Abstract: Members of the Graves family of New York and Georgia included Sarah Dutton Graves (fl. 1830-1883), educator and plantation owner, who grew up in Champion, Jefferson County, N.Y., and moved to Covington, Ga., to teach in 1832. She married local planter Iverson Lea Graves (1800-1864) in 1834. After Iverson’s death, she became active in the management of the family’s plantations in Newton County, Ga. One of her sons, Henry Lea Graves (1842- 1892), was a Confederate soldier and marine, cotton planter, school board member, Georgia state legislator, and member of the Georgia Farmers’ Alliance. Other family members include Sarah’s father, Nathaniel Dutton (d. 1852), her brother, Henry Dutton (fl. 1830-1857), her son, Iverson Dutton Graves (fl. 1859-1888), her sister, Eunice Dutton (fl. 1830-1839), and her daughter, Cornelia Graves (fl. 1860-1890). The collection is chiefly correspondence, 1830-1870, of Sarah Dutton Graves, Iverson Lea Graves, and Henry Dutton Graves, including letters from family and friends in Jefferson County and other locations in New York and in Georgia about plantation management and routine family matters. Correspondence of Sarah Dutton Graves includes letters to and from teachers and classmates at the Troy (N.Y.) Female Seminary and letters from her husband discussing his military service in the Creek War, 1836. Also included are political and Farmers’ Alliance papers of Henry Lea Graves; two physicians’ records books of John L. Graves (fl. 1844-1847), probably Iverson Lea Graves’s brother; sermon outlines and other religious papers, some of which probably belonged to Nathaniel Dutton; Civil War letters of Henry Lea Graves, serving with the Macon Volunteers and the Confederate Marines, and others that describe military life in Virginia and Georgia and the daily routine of family life at home; Graves family account books and business papers, including two volumes of blacksmith’s acounts; and a mid- 19th-century scrapbook.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Subseries 4.3 contains a church membership book from the 1880s where membership is broken down by race and gender.