Creator: Holmes, Wilmot Stuart.
Collection number: 1525
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Abstract: Family correspondence, chiefly 1840-1854, and other papers of Henry McCall Holmes (1790-1854), a physician of Charleston and Greenville districts, S.C.; of his wife, Eliza Ford (Gibbes) Holmes; of their daughter, Emma Edwards Holmes (1838-1910); and of their sons, Wilmot Stuart Holmes and Henry M. Holmes. Included are Mrs. Holmes’s business papers, 1854-1876, and estate book, 1854-1857, as executrix of her husband’s estate, and correspondence with her father W. S. Gibbes, with her King and DeSaussure family relatives, and with Daniel Heyward; correspondence, chiefly 1864-1875, between brothers Wilmot, a commission merchant in Charleston, S.C., and Henry, a physician in Silver Springs, Fla., and Limestone Springs, S.C.; pocket account books, 1861-1874; journal, 1850, of a trip from Charleston to Wilmington, N.C., Washington, D.C., and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia; notebook, 1876, and diary, 1861-1866, of Emma Holmes while she was in Charleston (microfilm); and recollections of the Gibbes family of Charleston during the Revolution, and of the Garden family during the early Republic. Earliest papers consist of deeds, indentures, bills, and receipts. Later material consists of scattered Holmes and Pasteur family items. Also included is a letter, 1912, on the phonetics of the Cherokee language.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Includes correspondence in Series 1 on a bond given by Daniel Heyward before the Civil War for payment for a group of slaves, and subsequent discussions bout dealing with this debt.
Reminisces by Emma Holmes also discusses the tornado in Charleston, 1811, which tore down a whole corner of the DeSaussure house, pinning Anna under furniture close to the spot where a enslaved maid was completely crushed (See Folder 15).
Volume 3 contains an inventory of enslaved people owned by Henry Holmes, as well as other possessions (Folder 17).