Creator: Heyward and Ferguson family.
Collection number: 2754-z
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Abstract: Heyward and Ferguson family members included Nathaniel Heyward (1766-1851) of South Carolina, whose estate included 45,000 acres of Low Country plantations and over 2,000 slaves; his sons, Nathaniel J. and William H. Heyward; his grandson, James Barnwell Heyward (1817-1886); Confederate brigadier general Samuel Wragg Ferguson (1834-1917); and others. Family correspondence, plantation records and other materials of Nathaniel Heyward; of his sons, Nathaniel J. and William H. Heyward; his grandson, James Barnwell Heyward; and other relations. Letters concern many topics including the sons’ education at Princeton and Harvard; lands and slaves; travels in Europe; emigration from South Carolina to the old Southwest; northern interference with slavery; post Civil War conditions; relations with freedmen and tenants; and family and social life. Volumes include J. B. Heyward’s records of four South Carolina plantations, including Copenhagen, Hamburgh, Myrtle Grove, and Rotterdam, 1845-1868. Miscellaneous papers include the recollections (typed transcription, 134 p.) of Samuel Wragg Ferguson as a child in Charleston, S.C., a cadet at West Point, a soldier with the U.S. Army Mormon expedition, 1857- 1858, and a Confederate brigadier general.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Miscellaneous family papers, including recollections of Samuel Wragg Ferguson (1834-1917) and the family correspondence and plantation records of Nathanial Heyward (1766-1851), whose estate included 45,000 acres of low country plantations and over 2,000 slaves. Letters discuss whites and blacks emigrating to the old Southwest, to the detriment of South Carolina (1837); the South Carolina legislature and difficulties caused by the interference of northern abolitionists (1844); the shooting of a slave (1855); moving slaves from Wateree, South Carolina, to Charleston, South Carolina, for safekeeping (1861); a slave who accompanied Nathaniel Heyward to the Civil War (1862); and the hiring of freedmen as sharecroppers and labor conditions (1865). The collection also includes slave lists and bills of sale (1851- 1858); a physicians bill for the care of slaves (1862); and contracts with freedmen (1865). [Note: much of these materials are on microfilm]
Some materials 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 content.