Manuscripts Department
           Library of the University of North Carolina
                         at Chapel Hill

                 SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION

                              #4411
                       YOUNG ALLEN PAPERS
                            Inventory

Abstract:      Chiefly deeds, estate records, and other financial
           and legal items, including slave bills of sale,
           relating to Young Allen of Wake County, N.C., and to
           members of his family.  Also included are some
           correspondence of the Allen family with relatives and
           others, some of which relates to settling the frontier
           in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi in the 1820s
           and 1830s, and a bawdy poem about a parson and a black
           woman..

Online Catalog Terms:
   Alabama--Social conditions--19th century.
   Allen family.
   Allen, Young, d. 1835.
   Bawdy poetry--North Carolina.
   Estates (Law)--North Carolina.
   Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
   Frontier and pioneer life--Southern States.
   Migration, Internal--Southern States.
   Miscegenation--Southern States--Poetry.
   Mississippi--Social conditions--19th century.
   North Carolina--Economic conditions--19th century.
   Slave bills of sale--North Carolina.
   Tennessee--Social conditions--19th century.

Size:      About 125 items (0.5 feet).

Provenance:    Received from Carrie P. Arnold of Raleigh, N.C.,
               in June 1985.

Access:        No restrictions.

Copyright: Retained by the authors of items in these papers, or
           their descendants, as stipulated by United States
           copyright law.

Table of Contents:
            Biographical Note
            Series Descriptions
              Series 1. Correspondence
              Series 2. Legal and Financial Items
              Series 3. Writings
            Shelf List

                        BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

   Young Allen was a farmer and slave owner in Wake County, N.C.,
active from the 1780s until his death in 1835.  He probably also
operated a saw mill.

   A number of members of Allen's family migrated west into the
Mississippi River Valley in the 1820s and 1830s.  Apparently, not
all of them intended to move permanently.  However, one of
Allen's sons, Young W. Allen, settled and started a family in
western Tennessee.

   When Young Allen died in 1835, his son John Allen, also of
Wake County, appears to have taken over much of his father's
property.  John Allen lived at least until the 1840s.

                       SERIES DESCRIPTIONS

Series 1.  Correspondence
   1813-1864.  About 25 items. 
   Arrangement:  chronological.

   Correspondence of the Allen family of Wake County, N.C., and
of relatives elsewhere in North Carolina and in Alabama,
Tennessee, and Mississippi.

   The earliest item is a letter written in 1813 in Wake County
that discusses Senate candidates.

   A number of letters were written in Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi between 1822 and 1834.  These letters include
descriptions of conditions and attitudes of settlers along the
Mississippi frontier in the 1820s and 1830s.

   There are four letters from 1836 to 1839, all of which were
written in Wake County.  Two of these letters deal with social
functions:  one is an invitation to a member of the Allen family,
and the other describes a sermon, dinner, and dance.  The other
two are more personal:  one is a pledge to redeem a lady's honor
from an unnamed rumor; the other is a marriage proposal.

   Finally, there are two letters from the 1860s:  an 1862 letter
from a member of the Allen family in the Confederate army
describes camp conditions, and an 1864 letter describes a
smallpox outbreak and efforts to avoid military service.

   Undated letters are chiefly of the same sort as the dated Wake
County letters and are probably from around 1830.  One letter,
addressed to "Dear Sister," describes the care given a person
dying of typhoid and that person's funeral.

Folder  1          1813-1839
        2          1862-1864 and undated

Series 2.  Legal and Financial Items
   1783-1927.  About 100 items.
   Arrangement:  chronological.

   Legal and financial items relating to the families of Young
Allen and John Allen, probably father and son, both of Wake
County, N.C.  Items prior to 1810 are deeds, records of slave
sales, and an account sheet, all relating to Young Allen. 
Material from 1810 to 1859 consists of deeds, receipts, summons,
records of slave sales, account sheets, and other items, chiefly
of John Allen.  Also included are items from 1835 that relate to
the estate of Young Allen.  Items dated 1860-1879 are chiefly tax
records of Anderson H. Allen.

Five deeds of members of the Allen and Arnold families,
1926-1927, also appear.  Undated items are chiefly fragments of
19th century deeds, account sheets, and other records.

Folder  3          1783-1809
        4          1810-1834
        5          1835-1839
        6          1840-1859
        7          1860-1879
        8          1926-1927
        9          Undated

Series 3.  Writings
   Before 1865.  1 item.

   A single-page poem, signed on the back "Y.W. Young" (probably
Young Allen or his son Young W. Allen).  The poem is an obscene,
comic poem about a parson and a black woman.

Folder     10

                           SHELF LIST

Box 1 (only)