Creator: Speight, John Francis, 1804-1860.
Collection number: 3914
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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