Creator: Jackson and Prince family.
Collection number: 371
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Abstract: The Rootes family of Fredericksburg, Va., and the Cobb, Jackson, and Prince families of Athens, Macon, and other locations in Georgia belonged to the elite of the southern planter artistocracy. Henry Jackson(1778-1840) served as United States charge d’affaires in France (1812-1818) and taught at Franklin College in Athens, Ga. (1811-1813 and 1819-1828). His wife, Martha Jacquelin Rootes Cobb Jackson (1786-1853) operated her husband’s Halscot Plantation outside Athens, Ga., and Cookshay Plantation in Chatham County, Ala., for over a decade after his death. Jackson’s son, Henry Rootes Jackson, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, also served as minister to Austria (1853-1858) and to Mexico (1885-1886). Oliver Hillhouse Prince (1823-1875), Jackson’s son-in-law, was a Democratic Party newspaper editor deeply involved in Georgia politics in the 1840s, who became a large landholder and planter in Bibb and Baker counties. The papers consist of family, business, and political correspondence, financial and legal papers, and miscellaneous collected items. They include personal and plantation accounts; day books; slave records; deeds and indentures; diaries; scientific notes; and genealogical materials. The papers document the social and religious life of ante-bellum aristocratic women, including camp meetings and missionary activities, and offer insight into the economic and political life of Georgia. They also contain information on early American foreign affairs.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Papers consist of personal and plantation accounts and slave lists and records (Series 2). Correspondence includes discussing the treatment of slaves in Va. (1784-1811). See Folders 1-6.
Folders 103-105 also contain bills of sale for enslaved individuals.
Folder 134 also contains two letters from 1845 (5 May & 5 June) discussing Oliver Prince’s hiring of an enslaved man named Jefferson to work in his print shop. Folders 139-140 also contain correspondence from the late 1860s and 1870s discussing free people of color.
Folder 162B contains various clippings discussing issues around slavery from the Daily Georgian newspaper.