Creator: Grimball family.
Collection number: 980
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Abstract: Grimball family members were owners of Pinebury and Grove plantations near Charleston, S.C. Prominent family members include John Berkley Grimball (1800-1892), Margaret Ann (Meta) Morris Grimball (1810-1881), and their children. The collection includes correspondence, plantation accounts, financial and legal papers, commonplace books, notebooks, scrapbooks, and other material, chiefly 1830 through 1900. Topics include the management of plantations before and after the Civil War; relations with slaves and freedmen; the careers of the Grimball sons in the Confederate Army, including William Grimball in the 1st South Carolina Artillery Regiment; and antebellum and postbellum family life in South Carolina and New York, through the Grimball’s connections with the Morris family of Morrisania, N.Y. Also included are papers relating to John Berkley Grimball’s interest in the Charleston Library Society.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Correspondence discusses attempts to locate former slaves (1865); leasing of Grimball plantations, including Pinebury, which was leased to Adam Deas, believed to be a former slave of the Grimball’s (1871); a Ku Klux Klan incident (1871); and the arrest of an African-American suspect in a shooting incident (1898). Financial materials contain bills of sale for slaves bought by Martin L. Wilkins and John Berkley Grimball (1826); lists of items purchased for slaves (1858); and a list of John Berkley Grimball’s slaves who deserted to the Union Army (1862). Legal materials include an agreement with Henry Jenkins, a freed slave, to cultivate rice (late 1860s), and a lease with Adam Deas (1871). Microfilm available.