Creator: Scott family.
Collection number: 4638
View finding aid.
Abstract: Letters and a few other items, 1839-1867, chiefly relating to the members of the Scott family of New Hampshire and Vermont. The earliest papers are deeds, 1839 an 1849 copies of 1830 deeds, dealing with property of the Scotts’ Warren family relatives in Fairfax and Chittenden counties, Vt. Letters begin in 1857, with those of Rogene A. Scott Bailey (b. 1840), daughter of Hanah Scott Warren, attending a private music school in Burlington, Vt. 1858 letters also relate to Rogene, who was then employed as a teacher in Grayson, Ky. Letters 1859-June 1860 find Rogene teaching on a plantation near Cheneyville, La., and those of August 1960-June 1862 document her teaching in Nashville. During her stay in the South, Rogene wrote frequently about race relations, especially attitudes of slaves and slaveholders towards each other and towards northerners like herself. In 1862, she wrote graphically about her work with wounded soldiers. Letters show that, in 1863, Rogene moved to Hyde Park, Vt., where, with her new husband John Bailey, apparently a Presbyterian minister, and her sister-in- law, Rogene operated a fairly successful school. There are also letters relating to Rogene’s brother Don E. Scott, who served with the 11th New Hampshire Volunteers. In letters, 1862-1865, to his mother, sister, and future wife Nancy Smith, Scott described military life and his unit’s involvement at the battles of Fredricksburg, Vicksburg, and Petersburg. From March 1863 to January 1867, there are also other letters to Nancy, including one from a friend who assisted freedmen in Wilmington, N.C.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Rogene A. Scott Bailey, an avid abolitionist, discusses slavery in many letters sent home during her extensive stay in various southern states.
She expresses her sympathy for enslaved house servants in Carter County, Kentucky (13 January 1858). See Folder 3.
She also writes correspondence Southern opposition to Northern abolitionists and the imagined consequences of a hypothetical slave insurrection (3 April 1859); her own ostracism due to her antislavery sentiments (1860-1861); and rumors of slave insurrections in the Tennessee countryside (28 May 1861). See Folders 5-6.
The collection also contains one letter to Nancy (Smith) Scott from a family friend who worked with freedmen in Wilmington, North Carolina (1864). See Folder 9.