Abstract: Mary L. Woods was an African American woman from Smithfield, Va. The collection is a photograph album belonging to Mary L. Woods containing 69 snapshots of friends and family members, labeled with names, dates, and comments. The images are posed portraits of African Americans, including a few children; they were taken outdoors in rural settings, urban settings, and at the beach. Locations mentioned include Smithfield, Va., Yorktown, Va., Portsmouth, Va., and Washington, D.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The collection is a bill of sale, dated 11 January 1841, from Anson County, N.C., for a 20-year-old male slave named Sam. The seller was John A. Watkins, and the buyer was Mumford D. Watkins.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The Otey family of Meridianville, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss., included William Madison Otey (1818-1865), merchant and cotton planter; his wife, Octavia Wyche Otey (fl. 1841-1891); and their children, Imogene Otey Fields, Mollie Otey Hampton; William Walter Otey; Lucille Otey Walker; Matt Otey, and Elliese Otey. The collection includes family and business correspondence, financial and legal papers and volumes, and personal items. Family correspondence is with members of the Wyche, Horton, Kirkland, Pruit, Landidge, and Robinson families in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee. A few letters from Confederate soldiers in the field appear as do some letters relating to difficulties on the homefront. There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from a slave in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master about building a stockade. Business papers pertain mostly to William Madison Otey’s merchant activities in Meridianville, Ala., especially with Chickasaw Indians in the 1830s, and to the Oteys’ cotton plantations in Madison County, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss. Others concern the financial affairs of the Wyche, Horton, and Kirkland families. Included are accounts with cotton factors and merchants, estate papers, deeds, loan notes, summonses, receipts, agreements for hiring out slaves, and work contracts with freedmen. Volumes include account books, plantation daybooks, a receipt book, and a diary of Octavia Wyche Otey that covers the years 1849-1888. The diary and other papers offer detailed descriptions of women’s lives, especially in nineteenth-century Alabama.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters from Rebecca Wyche in 1835 and Rodah Horton in 1832, as well as other family members throughout the 1820s and 1830s,  discuss buying and selling enslaved individuals (Folder 1).

Correspondence from William Otey to his wife in the 1850s and 1860s discuss the management of their property in Yazoo County, as well as the welfare of enslaved people on the property (Folders 4-17).  There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from an enslaved man named Thomas, in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master, J. M. Oaty, asking him to get a substitute for him in the building of a stockade (Folder 17).

Financial and legal papers in Series 2 contain several references to enslaved persons. William Wyche’s 1829 papers concern hiring out slaves to the firm Otey Kinkle (Folder 30). There is also an order issued in 1838 for the delivery of a enslaved woman named Eliza, who had belonged to Dr. A. A. Wyche, deceased, to Joseph Leeman. Also included is a receipt for Eliza signed by Leeman in 1838. There is also agreement dated 1849 for the hire of an enslaved woman and three children belonging to the estate of Jackston Lightfoot, which John Wyche was executor of (Folder 31).

Octavia Wyche’s antebellum diary (Folders 39-42) contains frequent mentions of managing and punishing enslaved people on her property, as well as instances of illnesses.

After the Civil War, Octavia wrote in a large volume about interacting with free people of color on her plantation, as well as copies of contracts in 1866 for Maria, Nina, and Anderson, former slaves at Green Lawn plantation. (Folder 38 also contains a contract Octavia Otey signed in 1866 with Maria, who worked as a laundress and cook). Of particular note in the diary are descriptions, dated 29 November and 6 December 1868 and 19 January and 1 February 1869, of visits to Green Lawn by the Ku Klux Klan.Also included is an entry for 22 November describing wedding preparations for the daughter of a former slave, Maria, and another for 12 January 1880, in which Octavia complains that local blacks “will not work for white people if they can help it.” (Folders 43-63).

A merchant’s account book of William Madison Otey contains an account from at least one customer, Sally Shochoty, is listed as a Negro; the spelling of her name as Shock.ho.ty at one point suggests that she may have intermarried with the Chickasaws (Folder 64).

The daybook from 1857 in Series 4.2 contains records of cotton picked by enslaved individuals on Otey’s plantation, listed by name (Folder 65). Folders 67 & 68 also contain daybooks from the Civil War era.

Folder 74 contains an 1849 clipping related to the enslaved African American musician “Blind Tom” at Camp Davis. Tom Wiggins was born in Columbus, Ga., and was an extremely talented musician who composed a number of songs and could play music by ear. He was an autistic savant and was unfortunately exploited throughout his lifetime for his musical abilities. Click here to link to a website dedicated to preserving Blind Tom’s legacy.

After the war, Octavia Otey’s correspondence received from family in the late 1860s and mid 1870s discusses relations with free people of color (Folders 18 – 23).

 

 

Abstract: Stan Woodward is a southern auteur and documentary filmmaker. The Woodward Studio Limited produces documentaries on southern folk culture through the themes of American foodway and related traditions. In the 1980s, Woodward served as director of the Media Arts Center and the Communication Wing at the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C., where he got to know animator Chuck Jones. Woodward also worked as filmmaker-in-residence in Georgia, South Carolina, and other locations where he was involved in mentoring independent filmmakers and advising classroom teachers on how to teach students to create Super 8mm films. In the 1990s, Woodward worked on productions of Satellite Distance Learning Broadcasts for various television networks. The R. Stanley Woodward Collection consists of about 1400 items created or collected by Woodward, 1932-2004, including films, moving image materials, production notes, distribution and licensing contracts, and promotional and educational materials related to his films and other work promoting independent filmmaking. Films cover a wide range of topics, including southern food traditions; southern families, storytelling, folklore, and customs; African American dance and folk art; NASA, the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, the Skylab Program, and astronauts; media programs on the novel To Kill a Mockingbird ; educational films; teaching filmmaking to students; the Capital Children’s Museum; the University of South Carolina; serpents; and sharecroppers. Locations include South Carolina; Virginia; Georgia; North Carolina; Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; New York City; and Alabama. Some of the people associated with the films are food critic Craig Claiborne, John A. Burrison, filmmaker Frank Eastes, John Egerton, Harold Hausenfluck, Fred Wolfe, animator Chuck Jones, Richard Pillsbury, and folklorist Saddler Taylor. The moving image materials are in various media formats, including 16mm print film, DVCAM video, U-Matic video, Betacam SP video, Digital Betacam video, MiniDV video, VHS video, and DVDs. Descriptions have been derived from the original container, film, video, or notes.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains materials related to African American dance and folk art. In Series 1, about the tradition of Brunswick Stew in Georgia, Videotape VT-20446/262-267 contains an author’s note about meeting with an African American stewmaster.

Series 2 focuses on Southern Stews and Videotape VT-20446/35-37 depicts the cooking of Frogmore Stew by the African American Faulkenberry family and a neighboring chef in Saint Helena, S.C.

There is also a 1971 film in Subseries 6.1 (Video and Film) entitled Afro-American Dance: Establishing A Cultural Heritage (Film F-20446/17)

Abstract: Norvell Winsboro Wilson (1834-1878) was a Baptist minister in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Hillsborough, N.C., 1861-1867; Farmville, Va., and Richmond, Va., 1867-1875; and New Orleans, La., 1877-1878. The collection includes the intermittent diary, 1862-1878, recording pastoral visits, Baptist conventions, social news, and cash accounts of Norvell W. Wilson; a scrapbook of clippings relating to Wilson’s career and writings; miscellaneous family letters, 1842-1869, from members of the Scott and Pearman families of Virginia with no apparent relationship to the rest of this collection. Letters are from family members, possibly mulatto or part Indian, who had gone to Ohio and then Canada, describing their life and feelings to their relatives or friends in New Kent County, Va.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Wilson’s diary contains many references to attending “colored conferences” and preaching to enslaved and possibly free African Americans. Folder 2 also contains letters from the Scott and Pearman families, who are possibly mulatto or part Indian.

Abstract: Edward Augustus Wild (1825-1891) of Brookline, Mass., was a federal officer with the 1st Massachusetts Infantry, 1861-1862; 35th Massachusetts Infantry, 1862-1863; and with the African Brigade (1863-1865), a brigade formed from the 55th Massachusetts Regiment (colored) and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd North Carolina (colored) regiments. The collection includes correspondence, lists, and a military directive relating to African-American federal troops and Confederate guerillas in northeastern North Carolina, 1863-1864, and miscellaneous material relating to Company A, 1st Massachusetts Infantry. Union Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild is the central figure in the papers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: J. B. Willis (b. 1851), a native of Delaware, was a Methodist minister and teacher at New Orleans University, an African-American school in New Orleans, La., and at a normal school in Huntsville, Ala. Diary, 1874-1877, of J. B. Willis describes his daily activities while he was teaching at New Orleans University, an African-American school in New Orleans, La., and at a normal school in Huntsville, Ala., and also his activities and observations during trips to Texas and Mexico. Willis’s diary records his observations of New Orleans weather, social life, and public events, including parades, Mardi Gras, sessions of the Louisiana state legislature, and religious revivals.Willis described the evangelism in New Orleans of Maggie Newton Van Cott (b. 1830), the first woman licensed to preach by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. The diary also describes traveling by wagon, flatboat, steamer, and railroad to Texas in 1874, and people, animals, and landscape along the way. In Huntsville, Ala., Willis recorded his observations of the natural world as well as people, church services, and revivals during the year he administered a new normal school and taught a theological class.In Mexico, in December 1876, Willis described Tampico, Tuxpan, Vera Cruz, and Mexico City. In Mexico City, he reported on social occasions, tours, and day trips, including visits to Chapultepec, the Baths of Montezuma, the Guiterraz marble factory, the lava fields near Pedregal, “a very ancient pyramid of adobe bricks,” gardens, churches, private mansions, museums, and the unfinished public library.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Willis writes entries about preaching at African American Methodist and Baptist churches in New Orleans in the 1870s. This diary has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digital content.

Abstract: Edmonia Cabell Wilkins was a genealogist. Members of her family included Edmonia’s greatgrandfather, planter William Wyche Wilkins (1768-1840); William’s twin brother, planter and lawyer John Limbrey Wilkins (1768-1850); and William’s son, planter and lawyer Edmund Wilkins (1796-1867) The family lived chiefly in Greensville and Brunswick counties, Va., and Northampton County, N.C. Personal and business correspondence, financial and legal papers, genealogical materials, and other papers of several generations of the Wilkins family. Most of the letters are financial in nature. Financial and legal materials, 1782-1909, include bills and receipts concerning property, plantation affairs, and investments in several Virginia and North Carolina railroads; a few documents relating to the purchase and upkeep of slaves. Lawyers’ accounts and trial dockets from Halifax and Northampton counties, N.C.; and other legal and business papers. Plantation papers relate chiefly to the Belmont and Meadows plantations in Northampton County. Also included are account books for a shoemaker, a blacksmith, and the Gaston Hotel in Gaston, N.C. Other papers include notebooks of law students at the Litchfield Law Academy, Litchfield, Conn., ca. 1817-1819, and of a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, 1851-1860. About half the collection consists of items relating to the genealogical activities of Edmonia C. Wilkins, 1920-1949. There is little information on the Civil War or sectional tensions of the time.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Financial and legal materials make up the bulk of the collection, and contain documents concerning property, plantation affairs, and the purchase and upkeep of slaves. Volume 13 contains inventories of enslaved individuals between 1824-1841 (Folder 30 ) and a correspondence from Elijah Wilkins, a slave, on the condition of the Wilkins’ plantation in 1851 (Folders 5-7).

 

Abstract: John Walker was a cotton and wheat planter and silkworm grower of King and Queen County, Va. The son of Humphry and Frances (Temple) Walker, John married Margaret Watkins Shepherd in 1829, and had two surviving children, Watson (1834-1900) and Melville (1846-1904). Walker was an active member of the Methodist Church and held several public offices, including overseer of the poor and surveyor of roads for King and Queen County. The collection includes a journal, 1824-1867, kept by Walker for his Chatham Hill plantation, and a Walker family genealogical chart. The journal documents religious life, plantation finances, and slavery in and around King and Queen County. Information appears on camp meetings, church business, and Methodist preachers. Also documented are Walker’s income and expenditures from cotton and wheat planting and his silkworm business, and his legal actions as executor of his father’s and of other estates. The journal is particularly rich as a source on slave genealogy, activities, and slave/owner relations, as it often records vital statistics, family relationships, and the purchase and sale of slaves. Several entries provide information on slaves holding skilled positions outside the household or fields. Entries also provide many examples of slave resistance. Also documented is Samuel Thomson’s method of botanic medicine, which Walker adopted in the 1830s. Little information appears on family or community life. The family tree documents the Walker family from the mid-1660s through the 1950s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection is a source of slave genealogy, activities, and slave/owner relationship; it documents slave births, illnesses, marriages, medical treatments, purchases and sales, and describes the hierarchical nature of slavery in Tidewater Virginia (1832- 1837). In the plantation journals, Walker mentions skilled slaves and discusses several examples of slave resistance, including escape, stealing food, arson (21 March 1826) and poisoning owners (13 November 1832 and 30 April 1836). The journal also records Walker’s punishment of slaves and describes the death of a slave from venereal disease and Walker’s subsequent order to whip several slaves on the charge that they had acted as procurers of slave women for a local brothel catering to white men (2 July 1834).

Materials from this collection have been digitized are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Abstract: Chiefly papers of William Henry Wallace (1827-1901) of Union County, S.C., Confederate brigadier general and state legislator, pertaining to the estate of his father, Daniel Wallace (1801-1859), U.S. representative, 1848-1853, and to Reconstruction, including a letter, 1878, about the race question in South Carolina, from Samuel H. Bennett, a black politician. Also included are an undated circular regarding the trial of reputed members of the Ku Klux Klan under anti-Klan laws; a scrapbook containing clippings; and other items pertaining to Confederate veterans, to members of the Wallace and Gage families, and to other topics.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Also included is a letter from African-American politician Samuel H. Bennett which concerns issues of race (1878), as well as circular relating to the prosecution of KKK members (n.d.)