African-American Studies Collections

Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War. [Microfilm] Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985-. Davis Microforms Collection 1-3242

The far-reaching impact of antebellum plantations on both the American South and the nation is one of the most fascinating and controversial topics of 19th-century American history. Debates over such questions as the extent of the political dominance of the large planters or the survival of African culture under the plantation regime have engaged historians for decades.

Because the plantation was a commercial enterprise, record keeping was essential. Many planters kept journals, crop books, overseers’ journals, and account books in remarkable detail. Family members often kept personal diaries and corresponded extensively with friends and relatives near and far.

Drawn from major repositories throughout the South, these primary documents are rich resources for scholars. They open new directions for research on plantations as economic and social systems, values and culture among the southern elite, slavery and emancipation, women’s roles, life among the yeoman class, marketing of staple crops, national politics, southern politics, the Civil War, and myriad other aspects of the antebellum period.

Series A. Selections from the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina

Part 1 features the comprehensive papers of James Henry Hammond, a successful planter and a secessionist leader in the U.S. Senate.

Part 2 contains valuable records of plantation owners from every region of South Carolina, from the rice plantations of the coastal lowlands to the cotton plantations of the central "upcountry" and Piedmont, with selections highlighting the westward expansion of 19th-century plantations.

Series B. Selections from the South Carolina Historical Society

Papers of families and individuals from the South Carolina low country are included in this collection, with a concentration of materials from St. John’s Parish of the Charleston District. Also included are several outstanding plantation diaries including that of a low country minister, the Reverend Alexander Glennie.

Series C. Selections from the Library of Congress

Part 1 reproduces the correspondence and records of several Virginia planters, including William B. Randolph, Hill Carter, and James Bruce, which illustrate agricultural innovations, financial dealings, and details of plantation life.

Part 2 focuses on documents of two South Carolina attorneys. Edward Frost owned several plantations himself and represented other major planters. The Franklin Elmore papers document the use of slaves in antebellum industrial firms such as iron foundries.

Series D. Selections from the Maryland Historical Society

The Maryland Historical Society holdings are distinguished by several rich 18th-century collections and by materials from plantations on which there were fewer than 10 slaves. There are also significant antebellum women’s diaries.

Series E. Selections from the University of Virginia Library

Part 1 is remarkable for the age, variety, and abundant detail of its selections. Several collections permit study of plantation practices prior to the closing of the transatlantic slave trade.

Part 2 is dominated by the papers of the Berkeley family from 1653 to 1865. The collection is exceptionally comprehensive for both the 18th and 19th centuries on such matters as land and crop sales, slave and medical accounts, and family and overseers’ correspondence.

Part 3 contains two complementary collections from the southern border counties of Virginia—materials from the "Southside Virginia" families of Bedford, Campbell, Charlotte, Franklin, Pittsylvania, Halifax, and Mecklenburg counties, and materials from the Bruce family of Halifax, Pittsylvania, and Roanoke counties.

Part 4: Cocke Family Papers

Part 4 includes several related collections concerning the notable Cocke family of Fluvanna County, Virginia. The papers of the Cockes, with plantations in Virginia and Alabama, and the related Barraud family, Faulcon family, and other families, consist of ca. 25,000 items from the period 1725–1939.

The Cocke papers include correspondence; legal and financial papers; the diaries of John Hartwell Cocke, Louisa Maxwell Holmes Cocke, and Lucy Cocke; minutes of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia; diagrams and sketches concerning the university; bound volumes; drawings; college and school notes; poetry; orations, speeches, and essays; genealogy; and lists pertaining to agriculture, music, and other subjects.

Major topics covered in Part 4 include:

• The development of agriculture in Virginia, merino sheep, and horse breeding and purchases

• Slavery and the American Colonization Society

• Religion, the temperance movement, and other religious and reform groups

• Book dealers

• The War of 1812 and the Civil War

• Public education (including the Bremo Seminary) and public improvements

• The founding and development of the University of Virginia

Most of the papers were generated by General John Hartwell Cocke (1780–1866) and his immediate descendants. By the age of twenty-one, Cocke was the master of over 5,500 acres of land in Surry and Fluvanna counties.

He owned three large plantations along the James River, Bremo Recess, Upper Bremo, and Lower Bremo, each containing over a thousand acres of land. His first wife, Anne Blaws Barraud Cocke (1785–1816), did not live to see the completion of Bremo in 1820, but Cocke and his second wife, Louisa Maxwell Holmes (m. 1821), lived there until their deaths.

John Hartwell Cocke was greatly troubled by the issue of slavery. He devoted time and money to promoting the American Colonization Society and preparing his slaves for gradual emancipation through schooling and vocational training.

Noteworthy items include letters from former slaves returned to Africa under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. Correspondence from overseers and others documents the extensive Alabama cotton plantations started by members of the Cocke family and worked by their African American slaves. These papers are particularly rich for the 1840–1860 period.

Women’s correspondence and diaries document three generations of a Virginia family. Fascinating in their detail, these materials reveal courtship, marriage, intellectual and literary pursuits, and plantation and home routines and interactions with African American slaves. Changes in Virginia society unfold as westward migration and economic influences occur during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Part 5: Ambler Family Papers

This part concerns the related Ambler and Barbour families of Amherst and Orange counties, Virginia. Personal and business papers (largely of John Jaquelin Ambler and of his father-in-law, Philip Pendleton Barbour) deal with the estate Glen Ambler in Amherst.

Papers of other family members include scattered letters of statesmen and public figures; ledgers and plantation accounts of Philip P. Barbour; the journal of John J. Ambler’s tour of Europe, 1823–1826; and records of property settlements, marriages, and births in the Barbour family. A printed message by John C. Calhoun appears.

Correspondents include James Barbour, James Lawrence Cabell, Antonio Canova, John Hartwell Cocke, William Pope Duval, Francis Walker Gilmer, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, Uriah Phillips Levy, Thomas Ritchie, Moncoure Robinson, and Andrew Stevenson. Letters to John Jacquelin Ambler concern his education, the election of Andrew Jackson, social concerns (particularly temperance), politics, agriculture (wheat in particular), local and state politics, and the Louisa Railroad.

Legal papers of Philip Pendleton Barbour concern cases in which he acted as counsel and also include the wills of his clients: Matthew Miller, John Hopkins, David Rodes, Michael Carpenter, Thomas Payne, and others, plus documents concerning his judicial appointment.

Financial papers of Colonel John Ambler include property lists for crops and slaves and estate papers concerning plantation management. There are several volumes of inventories of the farms Cottage, Mill Farm, and Lakeland, in particular their livestock, tools, tobacco, and slaves. Letters from Richard Ambler to his sons, Edward and John, provide fatherly advice on their proper education at Wakefield Academy in England. Letters from the 1820s to Colonel John Ambler pertain mostly to agriculture, especially tobacco. Also of interest are letters on the corporal punishment of slaves.

Correspondence of Elizabeth Ambler (pre-1800), Catherine Bush Ambler, Mrs. F. T. Barbour, Laura Ambler and many other women relate to children’s education, plantation life, family news, health, personal matters, and other topics.

The John Ambler Papers, 1770–1860, document a related Jamestown, Virginia, planter and present very detailed correspondence from overseers at some of his estates, including an 1830 description of the treatment of a runaway slave.

Part 6: Virginia Plantations

Part 6 consists of over fifty collections documenting families and plantations in all parts of Virginia, as well as Alabama, Mississippi, and other states. Correspondence, plantation diaries, account books, and other records concern plantation life, slaves and slavery, family life, health and medicine, religion, and other aspects of life in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Journals of the Lightfoot family record personal and plantation finances at estates in Caroline County, Virginia. Daybooks covering the 1816–1865 period contain information on specific crops and plantation management. A slave record book, ca. 1850–1870, reveals the distribution of shoes and clothing to slaves and wages paid to freedmen and women.

The Floyd L. Whitehead Papers document a Nelson County, Virginia, resident and slave trader. Included is a letter, 14 March 1837, from Milo Morris, a slave of Whitehead’s with authority to buy and sell other slaves. A letter, 15 May 1839, from Robert Rives to Whitehead asked Whitehead to keep Morris away from Rives’s slaves.

Other collections concern plantations of the Carter, Carr, Latane, Lewis, Minor, Preston, Stuart, Wallace, Washington, and Wormeley families.

Series F. Selections from the Duke University Library

Part 1: The Deep South features records that depict the opening of the southern frontier in response to the cotton boom of the early 19th century. Among the exceptional collections included in Part 1 are the papers of Henry Watson and Clement Claiborne Clay of Alabama.

Among the highlights of Part 2: South Carolina and Georgia are materials from the low-country plantations of absentee "rice barons." These collections shed light on the condition of slaves as well as on the society and economy of Charleston and Savannah.

Part 3: North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia covers the upper South. It contains some of the most copious documentation on the interstate slave trade offered in the entire series. In addition, Part 3 reproduces several exceptionally rich 18th-century collections.

Series G. Selections from the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

UPA began its coverage of the holdings of the Center for American History, University of Texas in 1987 with documents from the Barker Texas History Center (Parts 1–2). The renowned Natchez Trace Collection, also from the University’s Center for American History continues Series G (Parts 3–5).

Foremost among the numerous Texas collections in Part 1 are the Perry family papers, which document the family’s migration to colonial Texas from Missouri as part of the Stephen F. Austin party and deal with such matters as land acquisition, sugar and cotton cultivation, plantation management, and slave ownership.

Part 2 contains the papers of William Massie. A compulsive record keeper, Massie carefully documented every aspect of his plantation affairs from 1820 through 1865 in 188 volumes of diverse records and letters.

The Natchez Trace Collection has sparked interest in the scholarly community ever since it was acquired by the University of Texas at Austin from a private collector in 1985. Now fully processed and living up to its early promise, the collection charts the growth of the plantation regime in Mississippi, Louisiana, and surrounding states from before the Louisiana Purchase into the glory days of "King Cotton" and sugar culture. UPA has compiled the best of these collections into a total of 88 microfilm reels (Parts 3–5).

Part 3: Bank of the State of Mississippi Records, 1804–1846 covers the voluminous papers of the Bank of the State of Mississippi. The bank, headquartered at Natchez and with branches at Port Gibson, Vicksburg, and Woodville, was chartered by area planters and conducted much of their financial business.

Documents in the collection include correspondence about the credit extended to planters for plantation operations and the purchase of land and slaves, with much discussion of the notes of individual planters. Letters from institutions in Baltimore, Louisville, Nashville, New Orleans, and Philadelphia show how cash, commodities, and credit flowed throughout the antebellum United States.

When times were flush, the system worked smoothly to support and strengthen the plantation regime. But when market corrections or other events, such as the Panic of 1819, strained the system, creditors were sometimes forced to call in credit. The result was plantations and slaves sacrificed at ruinous prices. The legal papers in the collection reveal the bank’s administration of the various plantations it held in receivership.

Correspondence received by the bank concerns commerce, trade, markets, credit, and other banking matters. There are discussions of slaves, slavery, plantations, and the plantation economy. Many letters relate to the business affairs of individual planters and the purchase and sale of slaves. Separate files of legal papers, correspondence, financial records, and other materials detail activities of the Winthrop Sargent estate, 1810–1833, and Rifle Point Plantation, 1827–1834.

Part 4: Winchester Family Papers, 1783–1906 consists of the records of a family of Natchez lawyers. George Winchester, a native of Massachusetts, moved to Mississippi around 1820. In partnership with Sturges Sprague and later on his own, Winchester developed a legal practice representing the prominent landowners and slaveholders of the Natchez area. He also developed political ties and served as a state supreme court justice and legislator. His nephew, Josiah Winchester, joined him in his Natchez practice in 1835. Josiah married Margaret Sprague, a daughter of George Winchester’s former partner, with whom he had 12 children. The younger Winchester later served as a judge.

Records in Part 4 include correspondence, financial papers, and legal documents relating to innumerable plantations, slavery, and estate fiduciary transactions. Clients and correspondents include John Minor, Archibald Dunbar, Stephen Duncan, Wade Hampton, John A. Quitman, and the Natchez Rail Road Co.

Among the many cases relating to slaves and slavery is the 1847 opinion of the Mississippi High Court of Errors and Appeals in the case of Lewis a Slave v. The State. Many other documents also relate to slaves and slavery and the transition to a free labor system in the postwar period.

Also particularly noteworthy are papers relating to the legal affairs of women. Letters from Frances Sprague concern the lot of her daughter, Fannie Sprague Pugh, the mistress of a remote sugar plantation and wife of an abusive husband who drank too much. Other legal records concern divorce and the property rights of women in the antebellum era.

The Winchester family papers also provide documentation on how the area grew between the 1820s and the end of the Civil War. Voluminous files chart various businesses, railroads, and the influence and contributions of several generations of prominent plantation families, including those listed above.

Part 5: Other Plantation Collections includes more than 70 separate collections that provide a panorama of the plantation society of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as documentation of emigration to Arkansas and Texas and immigration from South Carolina, Virginia, and other states.

One of the larger collections is the Richard Thompson Archer family papers concerning plantation life, agriculture, social life, education, medicine, family life, and slaves and slavery in Mississippi and Virginia. There is also family correspondence from a cousin, a leader in the Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas.

The Slaves and Slavery collection, 1793–1864, includes outstanding materials documenting African American slavery, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi. These legal documents and correspondence are arranged into topical series concerning runaway slaves, free blacks, individual emancipations, slave sales, slave hires, slave passes, and court cases involving slaves in criminal and civil proceedings.

The John Dutton papers, 1804–1883, include a wealth of documentation of slavery and plantations in Iberville Parish, Louisiana. Among the items are records of cotton and sugar sales and detailed mortgages on plantations and slaves. Also included are references to a duel Dutton witnessed in 1810, correspondence of an overseer on an Attakapas sugar plantation, and papers concerning patents for inventions related to sugar culture.

The Peregrine Sugg papers, 1847–1877, include the diary and papers of a plantation overseer, slave owner, brickmaker, and lumber hauler in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, and later in Rusk County, Texas.

The Chamberlain-Hyland-Gould family papers, 1805–1886, consist primarily of the correspondence of Marie Wheaton Chamberlain Hyland reflecting family life and business at Bogue Desh Plantation in Warren County, Mississippi. The Duncan family papers, 1826–1881, document the family of Stephen Duncan, who moved to Natchez shortly after graduation from Dickinson Medical College in 1808. He amassed a fortune in cotton and sugar plantations along with 1,000 slaves in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The James Campbell Wilkins papers, 1801–1852, document the life and career of a Natchez planter, merchant, cotton factor, financier, and banker and include an itemized accounting of the purchase of 50 slaves in an estate auction at Baltimore and their transportation to Mississippi.

The Basil Kiger papers, 1841–1885, relate to the operation of Buena Vista Plantation, located north of Vicksburg.

Many small collections in Part 5 provide insights into specific components of plantation life and culture. There are also new materials on many of the large planters featured in previously filmed collections, as well as the small planters and unheralded widows and orphans whose affairs are chronicled in this stellar material.

Series H. Selections from the Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, and the Louisiana State Museum

Series H contains several rich collections of sugar planters in southern Louisiana, including rare records of two free black slaveholders. The papers of John McDonough detail the commercial development of the New Orleans area, and the minute books of the Citizens Bank reveal the network between planters and "land banks." Also included are important Georgia and South Carolina plantation records of the Jones and Colcock families.

Series I. Louisiana State University

Among the holdings of Louisiana State University are voluminous quantities of records from cotton and sugar plantations in Louisiana and the lower Mississippi Valley. Now historians of the Old South can have access to new selections of rich and revealing documents from one of the premier sources of plantation records.

The collections in Part 1: Louisiana Sugar Plantations document the sugar barons’ regime at the turn of the 19th century and the spectacular growth in productivity and wealth under the slave labor system.

In Part 2: Louisiana and Miscellaneous Southern Cotton Plantations, several rich collections from East and West Feliciana Parishes chronicle Louisiana’s cotton kingdom. The largest collection in the group, the papers of Nathaniel Evans, offers a detailed record of life on the lower Mississippi River from the turn of the 19th century to the Civil War.

The records making up Part 3: The Natchez Area enable researchers to study this remarkable Mississippi locale, at one time home of more millionaires for its size than any other city in the country. Highlight collections include the papers of Lemuel P. Conner, William N. Mercer, and New Orleans factor and commission merchant William Kenner.

Part 4: Barrow, Bisland, Bowman, and Other Collections reproduces seven collections that focus on important cotton plantations along the east bank of the Mississippi River, especially between Natchez, Mississippi, and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Many of these planters also held extensive interests in sugar estates in southern Louisiana.

• The John Bisland and family papers, focusing on the period 1800–1859, document business and personal activities of three generations in Natchez and Washington, Mississippi; Concordia and Terrebonne parishes, Louisiana; North Carolina; and Scotland.

• The papers of James P. Bowman and family (1806–1937) relate chiefly to the history and operation of Rosedown Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. There is copious correspondence with factors, overseers, and family members and detailed records including a list of 450 former slaves liberated by Union soldiers.

• The William T. Johnson and family papers, centering on the period 1830–1870, document the anomalous life and career of an African American barber and landowner from Natchez. In 1851, Johnson was murdered by a white neighbor, but the crime was not prosecuted because the only witness, an African American, was prohibited by state law from testifying against a white person.

• Two large collections include the Turnbull-Allain family papers, focusing on the period 1820–1890, and the Turnbull-Bowman-Lyons family papers, focusing on the period 1820–1910. John Turnbull and Walter Turnbull came to Louisiana from England in the 1770s. Their diverse business interests included the slave trade; sugar culture; and cotton, furs, and other commodities. John Turnbull acquired numerous plantations near Bayou Sara, West Feliciana Parish, and his descendants’ management of these and other estates is documented to the third generation.

• The diary (1847–1874) and correspondence of W. M. Bowman concern plantation life.

• A manuscript by Robert Barrow relates to a quarrel between the Barrow and Butler families, whose papers are collected in Part 5.

Part 5: Butler Family Collections includes eight manuscript collections that document the family of Judge Thomas Butler and Ann (Ellis) Butler of The Cottage, a cotton plantation in West Feliciana Parish. Among the earliest Protestant immigrants to the region, the Butlers and their relations held massive sugar plantations in Terrebonne Parish. Their papers provide details of the lives of plantation owners and African American laborers from the antebellum era through the Civil War and postwar eras.

The sons of Judge Butler included Edward G. Butler and Pierce Butler, cotton and sugar planters of Terrebonne and West Feliciana parishes; Richard Ellis Butler, a sugar planter of Terrebonne Parish and fiduciary for family estates in Louisiana and Mississippi; and Dr. Robert O. Butler, a physician and sugar planter of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes and the city of New Orleans. Ledgers record the activities of the Ellis estate in Louisiana and Mississippi from 1848 through 1858, and include day-to-day records of sugar culture at LeCarpe Plantation, Terrebonne Parish, from 1852 through 1869.

The lives of the daughters of Judge Butler are documented in the correspondence (1838–1861) of Anna and Sarah Butler, consisting of letters received from family members and young women from socially prominent families. Papers (1847–1880) of another daughter, Margarett Butler, include correspondence, a cashbook, and a memorandum book.

Richard Butler, a brother of Judge Butler, was an army officer and sugar planter of Ormond Plantation, St. Charles Parish. Items in his papers (1795–1899) include cashbooks, a diary, and correspondence.

Poetry written by Robert Butler, another brother, during the period 1833–1853 sheds further light on the diverse activities of this family.

In Part 6: David Weeks and Family Collection, the echoes of a lost world reverberate in the records of the Weeks family. Their plantation, Shadows on the Teche, in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, remains an archetypal home visited by thousands each year.

David Weeks built the Shadows shortly before his death in 1834. His widow, Mary Clara Conrad Weeks, and their family continued to make a home there. The family’s personal letters and regular overseers’ correspondence chart the seasonal rhythms of a sugar plantation and the life cycles of people connected with it. Diet, health, clothing, family relations and activities, slave insurrections and rebellions, relations with overseers, and work regimens are among the topics of discussion and concern.

Correspondence from a far-flung extended family combines business and personal matters. Rachel (Weeks) O’Connor wrote long letters to her brother and sister-in-law from Evergreen Plantation, near St. Francisville. Her commentaries on debt, local news, slave conditions, and troubles with overseers are interspersed with family happenings.

The children of David and Mary Weeks wrote about education, social life, and travel in Louisiana and the eastern seaboard. Their papers chronicle New Orleans amusements and society before the Civil War.

Mary Conrad Weeks, David Weeks’s widow, married U.S. Representative John Moore in 1841. The political papers of John Moore document his involvement in many of the great debates and improvement projects of the era. William F. Weeks and Alfred C. Weeks formed a series of partnerships with the Moores for the management of Louisiana plantations at Franklin, New Iberia, Grand Cote, and Cypremort. Their business papers include agreements, letters from factors, reports from overseers, and sales reports.

During the Federal occupation of Louisiana in the Civil War, family members moved to Texas with their slaves. The slaves worked hauling supplies for the Confederate government, grew crops for their owners, or were hired out to farmers or merchants. Petitions by slaveowners concern slaves who escaped or who died while impressed by the army. Labor contracts with freedmen and letters relating the destruction of various Louisiana estates reveal the adjustments and difficulties faced by plantation families at the war’s end.

Series J: Selections from the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Part 1: The Cameron Family Papers charts the rise of a plantation family from 1770, when the family ran a country store along an Indian trail in central North Carolina, through the establishment of a plantation in 1778 followed by regular increases in land and slaves.

The Cameron papers document women’s success in managing large plantations during the men’s absences; complicated legal agreements in upper-class marriages; genealogies of slaves; and the material culture of the times.

Part 2: The Pettigrew Family Papers also begins in the 18th century and recounts the history of an influential coastal North Carolina family of planters, ministers, intellectuals, military officers, and politicians. The candor of the Pettigrew letters on slavery has been of enormous value to historians of the Old South for more than a generation.

Additional parts of Series J consist of records from South Carolina rice and cotton plantations (Part 3), Georgia and Florida rice and cotton plantations (Part 4), and sugar and cotton plantations in Louisiana (Part 5).

In Parts 3, 4, and 5, UPA has expanded the scope of its selections to include several major collections of cotton factors’ records, notably the collection of Maunsell White, Louisiana planter and factor, and the Gordon family, factors of Savannah, Georgia. As the financial fulcrum of the cotton trade, the factor served as the planters’ banker, supplier, sales agent, and sometimes even as a sort of social secretary. The inclusion of factors’ records adds an exciting new dimension to the Plantations series.

Other subject highlights of Parts 3, 4, and 5 include slave life, overseers’ records, social life of the planters, southern politics, and the settlement of the South’s frontier. As in preceding Plantations series, the majority of documents in the new parts date from the early 19th century through the Civil War. A few, however, date from colonial times.

In Part 3: South Carolina, the plantation records are especially rich sources for the study of lowland cotton and rice plantations in Georgetown, Charleston, Colleton, and Beaufort districts.

The pre-Revolutionary letterbook of a Charleston commission merchant and his correspondence with British merchants and absentee plantation owners is an exceptional source for the study of international commerce and plantation management.

Upland plantations of Abbeville, Chesterfield, Claremont, Clarendon, Darlington, Fairfield, Kershaw, Pendleton, Richland, and Sumter districts are also well represented in the new selections. Planters here often owned several separate estates managed by other family members or overseers.

In Part 4: Georgia and Florida, the cotton and rice plantation records of lowland Georgia come from Bryan, Chatham, Glynn, and Liberty counties. The Georgia upland cotton plantations represented were in Baker, Baldwin, Bibb, Burke, Cass, Clarke, Habersham, Jasper, Jones, Murray, Morgan, and Muscogee counties. Florida cotton plantation records are from Alachua and Leon counties.

As in South Carolina, Georgia Sea Island cotton and rice plantations were usually vast enterprises worked by huge slave forces. Upland Georgia and Florida cotton plantations often encompassed large acreages divided into several noncontiguous operating units and were managed by overseers. Plantation journals, correspondence, and diaries reveal telling minutiae of plantation life.

Louisiana plantation records in Part 5: Louisiana document sugar culture in the parishes of Ascension, Iberia, Iberville, Plaquemines, Point Coupée, St. Mary, and Terrebonne and cotton growing in Caldwell, Natchitoches, Rapides, St. Joseph, Tensas, and West Feliciana parishes.

In addition, the Louisiana selections include merchants’ extensive correspondence on the ever-changing cotton and sugar markets.

Part 6: Mississippi and Arkansas highlights Natchez, where so much of the cotton wealth became concentrated. Natchez is the origin of valuable family papers documenting the lives of Norton, Chilton, Dameron, Minor, Guion, and Quitman family members. Business records include the William Dunbar account book and the extensive George Washington Sargent letterbooks.

From throughout Mississippi there are also diaries in quantity, among them those of John Nevitt, Everard Green Baker, Mary Bateman, William Ethelbert Ervin, and James Fontaine Maury. All of the diaries centered on plantation life as the writers lived it.

Arkansas material features the James Trooper Armstrong papers with his long series of letters from Jefferson County to his wife in Tennessee. Because both Arkansas and Mississippi were settled later than the seaboard states, there are frequent descriptions of the immigration and settlement processes by newcomers seeking a share of the area’s rich cotton lands.

Every section of the state is represented in Part 7: Alabama, and, through business and family connections, activities in virtually every other southern state are often covered.

The Ernest Haywood collection is the largest, documenting a prominent North Carolina family’s plantations in Greene and Marengo counties with incidental material on life in Texas and Mexico.

Family papers, mostly multigenerational, include those from the Dorman, Walton, Johnston, McFaddin, Ruffin, Roulhac, Hamilton, Buchanan, Thompson, Wyche, Otey, and McClellan families. The Mobile area is well represented in plantation and commission merchant documents. Several collections are especially strong in slave records, and some diaries and letters extend into the period immediately after the Civil War.

Cotton, tobacco, and mixed farming enterprises in these border states dominate the economic aspects of records in Part 8: Tennessee and Kentucky. The migration of North Carolina and Virginia planters across the Blue Ridge mountains is a subtheme, with rich family correspondence from both sides of the divide.

Four large collections are from Tennessee plantations: the papers of Calvin Jones (Hardeman County), the papers of the Harding and Jackson families (Belle Meade Plantation), the papers of Lucius Junius Polk and family (Ashwood Plantation), and the nearly 30-year diary of John Houston Bills of Hardeman County.

The plantations and social life of Kentucky’s Jefferson and Woodford counties are documented in the Louis Marshall papers. Marshall, whose brother John was the Chief Justice, was from Virginia, and his correspondence with relatives there is supplemented by that of many women in the family.

In Part 9: Virginia, plantation records reflect the primacy of tobacco, always its chief commercial crop, though grain and livestock were also important. Documentation extends from the early 18th century (in the Charles William Dabney papers and Fredericks Hall Plantation books) through the Civil War.

Among several Ruffin family papers, the plantation diary of Edmund Ruffin Jr. records experiments conducted by that son of the noted agricultural reformer. Other Virginia family names represented include Burwell, Cox, Crenshaw, Miller, Cropper, Dickins, Randolph, Howerton, Jones, Matthews, Meade, Walker, and Whitehead.

Part 10 includes the Hubard Family Papers, 1741–1865. Spanning more than a century, the Hubard manuscript material centers on the family of Edmund Wilcox Hubard of Saratoga Plantation, Buckingham County, Virginia. The collection comprises business and personal papers of Hubard’s forebears, relatives, friends, and business associates.

In addition to correspondence, account books, and diaries, the Hubard papers include bills and receipts, personal notes, deeds and mortgages, wills, and records of land sales, estate settlements, and lawsuits.

There are also scattered papers of a number of relatives from the Bolling, Eppes, Jefferson, Jones, Littlejohn, Moseley, Page, Randolph, Thruston, Thweatt, Wilcox, Williamson, and other families.

Part 11 covers the Hairston and Wilson families. These related families of tobacco planters and merchants lived in Southside Virginia and Piedmont North Carolina.

Many of the Hairston and Wilson documents relate to slavery in Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi, where some family members had moved to raise cotton. In the account books there are slave birth records, clothing allotments, and work records. Numerous documents refer to the purchase and sale of slaves. There is also extensive documentation of the overseer system.

One extensive series of volumes documents the purchase of supplies and sales of tobacco in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.

In Part 12: Tidewater and Coastal Plains North Carolina, 29 collections from North Carolina’s tidewater region and coastal plains document life in the eastern third of the state. Included is material on rice culture in the Cape Fear area and cotton growing in the Roanoke River valley. Other material relates to corn, tobacco, wheat, garden crops, animal husbandry, lumbering, and fisheries. There are also papers on immigration from England and Ireland and emigration to and investments in cotton and sugar plantations in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Throughout Part 12, extensive slave lists, slave purchase and sale agreements, plantation diaries, account books, correspondence, and financial and legal papers tell details about slavery and the work of slaves. Many of the collections include agreements, correspondence, and other records of plantation overseers.

In Part 13: Piedmont North Carolina, 32 collections document the tobacco and cotton culture in the heart of Carolina. Correspondence, diaries, and financial and legal papers concern planters in the Old North State and relatives living elsewhere in the South. Some early records refer to the activities of the Transylvania Company in present-day Kentucky and Tennessee.

There are also slave birth records, slave lists, slave work records, and occasional letters from slaves.

Family correspondence and personal diaries supplement and enhance voluminous plantation business papers.

The five collections in Part 14: Western North Carolina are from plantations in Wilkes, Burke, and McDowell counties.

The Hamilton Brown Papers span three generations of a family in North Carolina and Tennessee. Relatives and business associates wrote regularly from locations in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia.

A massive diary covers 65 years in the life of planter James Hervey Greenlee. The business, family, and social records of James Gwyn, a merchant and court official as well as a planter, describe plantation life in western North Carolina.

Series K. Selections from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, The Shirley Plantation Collection, 1650–1888

The Shirley Plantation collection comprises the papers of several generations of a preeminent James River plantation family, the Carters of Shirley Plantation, in Charles City County, Virginia. The collection covers personal, family, and plantation life at Shirley, as well as naval history, the Civil War, religion, politics, agriculture, business, medicine, and more. Slavery is a prominent and recurring topic.

The collection consists of manuscripts that accumulated at Shirley over more than two centuries. The earliest papers, from 1650 through 1792, concern a variety of land sales or surveys for areas connected with Shirley. Included are scattered papers of Edward Hill, John Carter, and Charles Carter.

Manuscripts after 1792 document everyday plantation life until 1888, the year that Robert Randolph Carter died. These manuscripts include:

• The personal correspondence of Dr. Robert Carter (1774–1804) and his wife, Mary Nelson Carter (1774–1803)

• The naval, personal, and plantation papers of their son, Hill Carter (1796–1875), and his wife, Mary B. Carter (1800–1864)

• The naval, personal, and plantation papers of Hill and Mary Carter’s son, Robert Randolph Carter (1825–1888), and his wife, Louise Humphreys Carter (1832–1906)

• The childhoods of daughters of Robert Randolph Carter and Mary Louise Humphreys Carter, Alice Carter Bransford (1852–1926) and Marion Carter Oliver (1859–1953), and son-in-law James H. Oliver

Plantation diaries provide a wealth of detail on the slave force at Shirley. There are records of births, deaths, illnesses, and infractions, including running away. Financial records detail the changing markets for tobacco and other plantation products over 100 years. Estate records reveal patterns of transferring and retaining the family’s wealth from generation to generation. Other records document purchases ranging from plantation improvements to books and luxury items. There are notations of troop movements and military incidents along the James River during the Civil War. After the war, the same care in record taking continues with regard to free labor, agricultural products, and personal and plantation purchases.

Hill Carter’s records are particularly revealing of life at Shirley before and after the Civil War. With an expanding corps of slaves and a succession of overseers, Carter converted Shirley from a soil-depleting tobacco culture to a system of crop rotations based on small grains.

Complementing the plantation and financial records is a large body of personal family correspondence. There are letters from brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, parents, and friends residing at Shirley, in other areas of Virginia, in Maryland, and elsewhere. Correspondents include Robert E. Lee, George Washington, Bishop James Madison, landscape artist Frederic E. Church, generals George B. McClellan and Benjamin Butler, and others. Letters by Robert Randolph Carter written from China, Japan, South America, and the U.S. Pacific Coast during the 1840s and 1850s appear. There are also letters from Europe scattered throughout the collection, appearing most frequently in the 1850s.

The "peculiar institution" is a recurring theme in the Carter papers, documented in soul-searching letters from parents to children, between planters and their ministers, and in accounts of slave medical treatments and of runaways.

There is an 1848 essay by the Reverend Mr. N. A. Okeson about the sale of a slave woman to punish her for adultery, written for the guidance of Mrs. Hill (Mary B.) Carter. The slavery issue arose again in the 1850s when one of the Carter daughters brought suit for the ownership of slaves whom she intended to free and send to Liberia.

Records from Hill Carter’s years at Shirley cover such tragedies as a cholera epidemic in 1849. Twenty-eight slaves died in a two-week period, reducing the labor force by over half and forcing abandonment of the wheat crop for that year.

Other journals record facts about day-to-day slave labor over decades. Extensive material on freedmen’s labor covers the operation of the plantation from the Civil War through 1888.

Series B of Southern Women and Their Families in the 19th Century: Papers and Diaries also features papers from the Carter family.

Series L. Selections from the Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary

Part 1: Carter Papers, 1667–1862 centers on the Carters of Sabine Hall in Richmond County, in Virginia’s Northern Neck. These Carters were related to the Carters of Shirley Plantation.

Although the earliest documents concern Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman, ancestor of both families and one of the richest men in the colonies, most of this collection covers more than 100 years of life and labor at Sabine Hall.

Sabine Hall was home to Landon Carter; his son, Robert Wormeley Carter; his grandson, Landon Carter; and his great-grandson, Robert W. Carter.

Landon Carter (1710–1778). Papers of the first Landon Carter include correspondence, business, and political papers from 1729 through the settling of his estate in 1788.

Robert Wormeley Carter (1734–1797). Plantation diaries, memoranda, and correspondence of Robert Wormeley Carter trace his activities from 1762 to 1795. The plantation diaries are particularly strong sources for the study of slavery, tobacco planting, social matters, and family life in Virginia.

Landon Carter (1756–1820). These papers of Robert Wormeley’s son, Landon, begin in 1787 and continue through estate administration records to 1851, well beyond Landon’s death in 1820. Estate papers include copious documentation of the care and disposition of the many slaves, as well as letters and accounts concerning his widow, Mary, and the many lawsuits relating to the estate and massive landholdings in Frederick, Lancaster, Loudoun, and Richmond counties.

Robert W. Carter (1792–1861). He became a celebrated agricultural experimenter. Correspondence with his parents, siblings, children, friends, and neighbors documents family relations and social life. Particularly revealing are letters from his sisters and daughters. One letter in 1841 from a daughter describes the inauguration of his cousin, William Henry Harrison, as seen from inside the White House.

Correspondence of this period documents the close ties of business, friendship, and marriage between the Carters of Sabine Hall and the Tayloes of Mt. Airy, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. There are also records of family gatherings, horse races, barbecues, and other social events.

Documents relating to the migration of Virginia planters to the new plantation regions of Alabama and the Southwest augment the extensive material on life in the Northern Neck. Papers concerning slavery include estate inventories, medical papers, letters to and from overseers, and more.

Part 2: Jerdone Family Papers, 1736–1918 begins with business letters, letterbooks, and account books of immigrant Francis Jerdone (1721–1771), a Scottish factor who lived in Hanover County, Yorktown, and Louisa County, Virginia, and letters of his wife, Sarah Macon Jerdone. These early papers are among the finest extant sources for the study of the colonial plantation economy in Virginia and the tobacco trade with Europe.

Most of the collection consists of letters, accounts, and diaries of the next two generations of the Jerdone family, with the majority dating from 1771 to 1845. Family members include Francis Jerdone (1756–1841), a Louisa County planter; his brother, John Jerdone (1764–1786), a Spotsylvania County planter; Alexander McCauley of Yorktown, brother-in-law of Francis Jerdone; and Francis’s sons, John (b. 1800), Francis (b. 1802), and William (b. 1805).

The letters reflect the daily maintenance and operations of their four plantations: Jerdone Castle in Louisa County, Providence Forge in New Kent County, Mount Sterling in Charles City County, and Llangollen in Spotsylvania County.

The Jerdones were absentee owners of Providence Forge and Mount Sterling, and the correspondence with their overseers provides a wealth of information on the management of slaves and plantations. Subjects include agriculture, the commission merchant business, the daily routines of slaves and slave owners, education, plantation management, and various aspects of slavery. Other topics frequently mentioned in letters include family life, health, politics, and social events. Many letters are written to or by women. In addition, there is also a letterbook containing copies of letters written by Thomas Jett, a Virginia representative of London merchants.

Part 3: Skipwith Family Papers, 1760–1977 includes business records, correspondence, accounts, and farm notes of Sir Peyton Skipwith (1740–1805); his wife, Lady Jean Miller Skipwith (1748–1826); their son, Humberston Skipwith (1791–1863); and Humberston’s wives and children.

The papers detail the management of Prestwould Plantation in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, an area dominated by tobacco culture. The development of Lady Jean Skipwith’s outstanding library and the education and travel of various family members are well documented. Manuscript volumes relate to farm accounts, Lady Jean’s interest in gardening, and the education of family members. While there is material from the 20th century, most of the documents are from the 19th, including rich postbellum material and detailed agricultural records up to the 1880s.

Many items refer to the marketing of crops in England and in Petersburg, Virginia, over several decades. Another noteworthy aspect of the collection are the records of the material culture of the Skipwiths, as documented in lists of items purchased for the home, including books, household items, tools, luxury goods, and more. For construction projects there are lists of supplies and labor contracts with masons and carpenters.

Bills, receipts, accounts, correspondence, and lists record the purchase and sale of slaves, the amounts of food and clothing provided them, daily work assignments and occupations, and names of field hands, family groups, and young boys available for rolling hogsheads of tobacco to market.

The Skipwiths employed a succession of overseers, for whom there are articles of agreement and yearly accounts.

Part 4: Austin-Twyman Papers, 1765–1865 and Charles Brown Papers, 1792–1888 provides voluminous documentation of Piedmont Virginia in the 19th century. These collections are particularly valuable sources for the study of slavery and the medical treatment of slaves. One collection even includes an index of items referring to slaves and slavery.

The Austin-Twyman papers form the bulk of this part and are a rich but rarely explored source on slavery in 19th-century Virginia. There are seven slave letters in the collection, including one written by a woman to her son, Beverley. Other items tell more about Beverley’s life.

There are also documents on the care of a child while the mother, a slave, worked in the field; the sale of a child; slave hire agreements; permission for slaves to marry off the plantation; qualms about slave ownership; and profits or losses sustained through slavery in agriculture and industry.

Documentation on slave trading includes lists of slaves sold during estate settlements, records of the sale of slaves to pay off debts, accounts of the hiding of a forthcoming sale from the slaves about to be sold, and attempts to improve the appearance of slaves prior to sale. Letters from slave traders discuss markets in Virginia and further south.

A unique series of letters grants permission for slaves to join the Mulberry Grove Baptist Church. Acts of slave resistance documented include burglary, malingering, poisoning, and verbal abuse. Conflicting attitudes of slaveholders are revealed in letters about slave death and in discussions of slave treatment.

The collection begins with the political career and family life of planter and U.S. Congressman Archibald Austin and his wife, Grace R. Austin, in Buckingham County, Virginia.

Austin’s estate, including plantation and slaves, descended to the administration of his son-in-law, Dr. Iverson L. Twyman. Twyman’s records provide a detailed account of plantation management, periodic reductions in the slave force through sales, and the regular hiring out of slaves to construction projects and industry.

Letters among Twyman, his wife, Martha E. Austin Twyman, and other family members discuss living conditions, emigration from Virginia, and social matters. A controversial lawsuit, stemming from a courtship, marriage, and divorce between the daughter of an Austin family planter and a fortune-hunting suitor, reveals much about Virginia’s gender-biased property laws and the difficulties facing a woman of property in the 19th century.

Dozens of medical account books, prescriptions, and letters to planters document the medical practice of Dr. Twyman, providing an extraordinary picture of medical practices employed upon both slaves and whites. Letters refer to the treatment of gonorrhea and other illnesses, the use of chloride of lime to prevent fever, and the general health of slaves.

The Charles Brown papers, 1792–1888, complement this material. With a practice in nearby Albemarle County, Dr. Brown wrote extensive letters to planters in the region explaining the procedures and potions he administered to slaves. His letters often describe disease symptoms and injuries in details and terms that modern readers can recognize. These collections provide excellent sources for the study of slave health and medicine in the 19th century.

Series M. Selections from the Virginia Historical Society

Established in 1831, the Virginia Historical Society is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in America and a major repository of manuscript sources for Virginia’s antebellum history. Historical manuscripts from this archive document plantations throughout Virginia—where each region developed its own variation of the plantation system—and elsewhere in the South. The size and diversity of these scholarly collections are enormous.

While the chronological range of several of the collections from the Virginia Historical Society extends well beyond 1865 and into the 20th century, the vast majority of the documents in every collection date from the antebellum years.

Part 1: Tayloe Family, 1650–1970 contains voluminous records compiled by the Tayloe family on their vast land and slave holdings in Richmond County, King George County, and Prince William County, Virginia; Montgomery County and St. Mary’s County in Maryland; and Hale County and Marengo County in Alabama. The journals, account books, correspondence, and other papers that five generations of Tayloes produced over a period of two centuries shed light on the personal and professional or workday lives of family, friends, and slaves, as well as agricultural and business practices in the Old South. There is also correspondence that relates to social, political, and business affairs in the District of Columbia from family members who lived there.

Part 1 includes important details about slave labor at Mt. Airy Plantation in Richmond County, Virginia, and the Tayloes’ other estates, with material on slave labor in the Tayloes’ iron forges, blacksmith and shoe shops, and shipping operations. The transportation of slaves and freedmen from their Virginia holdings to Alabama is also covered.

Among the documents on slavery are detailed lists recording information about hundreds of slaves belonging to the Tayloes. Letters from overseers about crop and labor concerns provide daily accounts of the plantation regimen.

Part 2: Northern Neck of Virginia; also Maryland documents early colonial plantations in the Northern Neck region and adjacent areas of Maryland. Many prominent Virginia families, such as the Carters, the Custises, and the Lees, are included here.

The Carters. Several collections of Carter family materials document the lives of Robert "King" Carter (1663–1732), Landon Carter (1710–1778), Robert Carter of Nomini Hall (1728–1804), and their relatives, all residing primarily in Lancaster County, Richmond County, and Westmoreland County. Their archives cover slavery and the trade, tobacco culture, trade with England, personal and family life, and religious beliefs. In addition, there are records of Robert Carter’s plans for the emancipation of his slave force after his death.

The Custises. Custis family papers, spanning the period 1685–1858, cover plantations and slaves belonging to the Parke, Custis, and Washington families in Fairfax County, New Kent County, York County, and other areas in Virginia. Correspondence and accounts of George Washington and Martha (Dandridge) Custis Washington concern family life and plantation activities at Mount Vernon and other estates.

The Lees. Papers of the Lee family include those of colonial officials Thomas and Phillip Ludwell and their descendants, and politicians, merchants, and planters Phillip Ludwell Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, William Lee, Arthur Lee, and Henry Lee, all of James City County and Westmoreland County, from 1638 through 1867. Records of Hannah Lee Corbin are especially noteworthy.

Among the topics covered are the Virginia Colonial Council, the Revolutionary War, slavery, tobacco growing, trade, and family life.

The Mercers and Other Families. The Mercer Family Papers, 1656–1869, document a prominent planter and merchant family of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and Stafford County, Virginia, and include the records of the related Sprigg and Caile families.

Mercantile records of William Cunningham & Co. and of the Jenings family document links with European markets.

Part 3: Other Tidewater Virginia concerns plantations in Tidewater areas of Virginia other than the Northern Neck. Drawn from 21 collections, Part 3 covers areas near Norfolk, the lower James River, the Peninsula of Virginia, and the Rappahannock River. Records come from families in circumstances ranging from vast wealth and influence to a more hardscrabble existence.

Among the larger collections are the Bassett family papers (1650–1923), noteworthy for Betty Carter Brown Bassett’s instructions to her son regarding the treatment of slaves.

Records of the Hunter and Garnett families (1766–1918) of Essex County, another large collection, include documentation of women planters, female education, and visits to the Virginia springs.

Other documents in Part 3 include a drawing book with renderings of agricultural scenes of New Kent County in the 1850s, a personal diary from Prince George County, and documents relating to the Dismal Swamp Canal Company.

Part 4 covers Central Piedmont Virginia, a region that embraces an area of 18 counties in the heart of the Old Dominion, between the James and Rappahannock rivers and above the fall line.

The papers in Part 4 are drawn from 46 separate collections and concern tobacco and grain plantations, horse breeding, slaves and slavery, and the Central Piedmont’s rich social and political life. Among them are:

• The Barbour family papers, 1741–1890, including records kept by a woman planter and her family in Orange County

• The William Cabell commonplace books, 1769–1822, comprising 12 volumes about tobacco plantations and other concerns in Nelson County

• The Dabney family papers, 1742–1928, with accounts, correspondence, diaries, and other records documenting several generations of a plantation family in Hanover and Louisa counties

• The Hill family papers, 1787–1945, with slave records and other business and plantation papers from Culpeper and Madison counties

• The Holladay family papers, 1728–1961, including massive numbers of records concerning plantation life in Spotsylvania and Louisa counties

• The Massie family papers, 1698–1875, documenting several generations of tobacco and grain planters in Nelson County

• The Edmund Ruffin papers, 1818–1865, documenting the agricultural, journalistic, and political activities of the influential editor of the Farmer’s Register and political firebrand in Hanover and Prince George counties

• The Wickham family papers, 1754–1977, on life at Hickory Hill and other plantations in Hanover and Henrico counties, including extensive plantation journals and papers concerning the manumission of slaves and resettlement of freedmen in Ohio, as well as plantation activities in Louisiana and South Carolina

Two other noteworthy collections in Part 4 include volumes kept by the Virginia Branch of the American Colonization Society and Richmond City Sergeant. The Colonization Society records reveal efforts to promote the resettlement of African Americans in Liberia. The City Sergeant papers document the imprisonment of runaway slaves and other African American offenders in the city jail of Richmond.

Other collections in Part 4 provide special insights on the plantation regime in central Virginia. These documents concern business matters, commission merchants, inheritance matters, legal matters, military activities, overseers, personal diaries and observations, physicians, politics, religion, slave traders, and women’s roles.

Part 5: Southside Virginia covers the 15 counties south of the James River and above the fall line. The 46 collections in Part 5, drawn from this region, provide a comprehensive view of this distinctive area on the border of North Carolina. The remoteness of most of the plantations fostered particularly voluminous family correspondence. The suitable soils and large slave forces engendered strong business ties among area planters with the commercial centers of Virginia and the Atlantic seaboard. The papers and diaries strongly reflect the South’s religious and social practices and include much documentation of the lives of women.

Among the collections in Part 5 are:

• The Bailey family papers, 1802–1980, concerning grain and tobacco culture and slavery in Halifax County

• The Baskervill family papers, 1747–1928, including copious documentation of the planter class and African American life and labor in Mecklenburg County before and after the Civil War

• The papers of the Bolling family, who grew both tobacco and grains and compiled plantation diaries, slave registers, and other records, 1749–1956, concerning family estates in Buckingham, Cumberland, Goochland, Powhatan, and Prince George counties

• The Bruce family papers, 1665–1938, with details of life at Staunton Hill, Berry Hill, and other plantations in Charlotte and Halifax counties

• The Cocke family papers, 1742–1976, documenting several generations of men and women planters and their African American labor force at Woodland Plantation in Amelia County

• The Hannah family papers, 1760–1967, concerning Gravel Hill Plantation in Charlotte County and the westward movement of the plantation system to Arkansas

• The Harrison family papers, 1725–1931, consisting of several collections that document plantations in Chesterfield, Cumberland, Middlesex, and Spotsylvania counties

• The Mason family papers, 1789–1965, comprising a voluminous record of Fortsville Plantation in Southampton County, as well as cotton culture and slave management on other family estates in Brunswick and Greensville counties

Also in Part 5 are the records of two physicians serving plantations in Southside Virginia. The John Peter Mettauer papers, 1812–1858, concern the medical treatment of slaves in Prince Edward County. The Philip Turner Southall account books, 1815–1846, concern the practice of medicine in Amelia, Prince Edward, and surrounding counties.

Part 6 covers Northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Like other regions in the state, these areas developed their own unique variations of plantation agriculture. In both regions, agriculture was mixed, with significant grain cultivation and animal husbandry and limited cultivation of tobacco and hemp.

Northern Virginia, lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers and above the fall line, was tied to the Northern Neck and Piedmont regions by proximity and family connections. The Shenandoah Valley, lying between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, included a larger percentage of German and Scotch-Irish immigrants than the rest of the state.

Highlights of Part 6 include:

• The records of William Fitzhugh, from Stafford County, are the earliest in Part 6. Fitzhugh’s letterbook (1679–1699) contains correspondence with business associates, friends, and relatives in England and Virginia about grains, tobacco, and slavery.

• From the many collections centering on Fauquier County, there are the Clover Hill account books (1810–1822); a register of free African Americans (1817–1865); the Fiery Run Mills account books (1831–1834); the Keith family papers (1830–1979); the Richard Lewis account book (1859–1862); the Millford Mill account books (1822–1829); the Turner family papers (1740–1927); and the Thomas Thornton Withers account book (1844–1862).

• From Fairfax County, there are the John Augustine Washington papers (1824–1860) and the Edmund Berkeley accounts (1848–1860).

• Loudoun County collections include the George Carter letterbook (1807–1819) and the William Hill Gray diary (1846–1880).

• From Jefferson County, Virginia [now West Virginia], there are the Franklin Osburn papers (1849–1875), with extensive account books for a farm and general store; and the Blackford family papers (1836–1858), featuring documentation of the family’s slave-operated ferry to Jefferson County, as well as diaries and accounting records for the family home at Ferry Hill Plantation in Washington County, Maryland.

• The McDowell family papers (1777–1963), from Rockbridge County, include the correspondence and plantation records of Governor James McDowell.

• The Lewis family papers (1749–1920) center on Augusta and Rockingham counties and include material about land in Kentucky.

Series N. Selections from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Mississippi’s Department of Archives and History in Jackson holds significant materials on Natchez and antebellum plantation culture in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The Aventine Plantation diary, 1857–1860, documents slavery practices on an Adams County, Mississippi, estate owned by Thomas R. Shields. There are records on slave work, punishment and other treatment, food, clothing, births, illnesses, deaths, general welfare, plus amounts of cotton picked by individuals, total amounts of cotton and corn produced on the estate, and management by overseers.

A journal kept by Leonora Bisland about her term at Pine Ridge Female High School in Adams County from 1856 to 1857 and the courtship correspondence of William A. Bisland and Caroline Pride during the Civil War appear in the Bisland-Shields family papers, 1773–1865. The Bisland-Shield papers also include copious documentation of life on a Louisiana sugar plantation, Hope Farm, in Terrebonne Parish, as well as extensive cotton estates in Adams County.

James T. Magruder’s journal, 1796–1818, concerns this prominent planter’s extensive farming and social activities at Mt. Ararat Plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

The Benjamin Drake collection, 1805–1914, includes the papers of a Methodist minister riding circuit in the Natchez and Washington, Mississippi, areas who was later president of the Elizabeth Female Academy and founder and later president of the Centenary College. The collection includes material on the American Colonization Society and the activities of freed slaves in Monrovia, Liberia. Because Drake married the daughter of James T. Magruder, there is much correspondence about Mt. Ararat.

Several collections concern John A. Quitman and family, who resided in Natchez and at Springfield Plantation in Adams County. Quitman was a colorful lawyer, planter, politician, and general. His plantation account books record ferry runs, supply and livestock inventories, slave lists, sales of wood, and the general management of Springfield. There is also correspondence in the papers about an 1853 yellow fever epidemic that devastated the area.

The Lettie Downs diary and notebook, 1859–1866, concern the life of Letitia "Lettie" Frances Booker Vick Downs while staying at her father’s plantation at Anuilla before, during, and after the siege of Vicksburg. Her entries record the life style of the Vick family during the tumult of the Civil War.

Two collections of John C. Burrus family papers, 1831–1865, concern activities of family members on plantations in Hinds and Bolivar counties, Mississippi.

The Charles Clark and family papers, 1810–1865, include extensive account books and day books kept by overseers at Doro Plantation and correspondence and other papers concerning family members in Jefferson and Bolivar counties, Mississippi.

The Levin Covington diary, 1825–1845, includes minutes of the Adams Athenaeum and a plantation diary from Adams County.

The Darden family papers, 1820–1899, include correspondence and business papers of male family members and diaries of Mrs. Susan Sillers Darden while living on a plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

Two collections of William Dunbar’s papers, 1776–1842, include correspondence, account books, and diaries of the prominent early planter, explorer, and trader in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

The William R. Elley plantation book, 1855–1856, details events on his Washington County, Mississippi, estate, including daily records of cotton picked by individual slaves.

The Alden Spoon Forbes account book, 1856–1857, concerns a merchant and planter of Port Gibson and Claiborne County, Mississippi.

The Killona plantation journals, 1836–1886, document the activities of Jorden Bailey as overseer of the estate in the hill area of Holmes County, Mississippi.

Other collections include the McNutt plantation papers, the Nancy Robinson collection, the Water Wade plantation journal, the Benjamin Leonard Covington Wailes diaries, the Wallace plantation book, and an unidentified plantation journal.