Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

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

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the James Hervey Greenlee Diary #1735, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

All or part of this collection available on microfilm. Additional microfilm: All or part of this collection is also available on microfilm from University Publications of America as part of the Records of ante-bellum southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, Series J.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Mrs. B. F. Pollard of Marion, N.C., in June 1950 and from J. Harvey Greenlee of Morganton, N.C., in June 1950.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Patrick Huber, with the assistance of Angela Dickerson, Julia Smith, Doug Stenberg, and Tim West, October 1992

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

This collection was rehoused under the sponsorship of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1992.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Agriculture--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Alabama--Description and travel.
• Burke County (N.C.)--Religious life.
• Burke County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Camp meetings--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Diaries (Blank-books)
• Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Florida--Description and travel.
• Georgia--Description and travel.
• Greenlee, James Hervey, 1811-1902.
• Grief--Religious aspects.
• Kentucky--Description and travel.
• McDowell County (N.C.)--Religious life.
• McDowell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Plantation life--North Carolina--Burke County.
• Plantation life--North Carolina--McDowell County.
• Plantation owners--North Carolina--Burke County.
• Plantation owners--North Carolina--McDowell County.
• Presbyterians--North Carolina--History.
• Slavery--North Carolina.
• South Carolina--Description and travel.
• Travelers--Southern States--Diaries.
• Women--Southern States--Diaries.

James Hervey Greenlee (1811-1902) was a planter, slave holder, and Presbyterian evangelical of Burke and McDowell counties, N.C. Sometime in the 1830s or early 1840s, he assumed control of Turkey Cove, his father's Burke County farm (in present-day McDowell County), on which he raised wheat, corn, cotton, oats, and a variety of other crops, and hogs and cattle. According to U.S. census records, the 38-year-old Greenlee owned 26 slaves and more than $16,000 of real property in 1850.

Sometime before 1843 Greenlee married his first cousin, Mary Jane Greenlee (1822?-1857). The couple had at least four children, two boys and two girls, between 1844 and 1850. In 1845, Greenlee and his wife changed their membership from the Morganton Presbyterian Church to the newly established Marion Presbyterian Church of which he and his wife were charter members. He also served as a church elder between 1845 and 1886.

After his first wife's death in June 1857, Greenlee married a woman named whose last name was Morrison. In 1859, Greenlee served as a delegate to the Old School Presbyterian Synod in Charleston, S.C., and, two years later, he served as a delegate to the North Carolina convention that voted to secede from the Union in May 1861.

He died in 1902.

Series 1 consists of the manuscript of James Hervey Greenlee's diary, which he kept on a daily basis for nearly 55 years. The diary comments chiefly on the weather, a variety of his farming and business activities, his family's social visits to neighbors and relatives, and his personal and religious thoughts. He recorded the daily tasks that he assigned to his slaves, some of whom apparently were skilled as coopers, cobblers, and tanners. He discussed his guarded support for abolition and the religious instruction of slaves. Also included are expense accounts and notes from various journeys through South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky, where the Greenlees visited the Lexington Exposition in 1883. In addition, shorter trips to nearby Salem, Salisbury, Statesville, Charlotte, Morganton, and Marion are mentioned.

Aspects of Greenlee's religious and spiritual life are extensively documented, including numerous references to church sermons, reading from the Bible and various religious tracts, camp meetings, religious instruction for his slaves, his contributions to religious organizations, circuit riders, and confronting a fellow church member, John H. Greenlee (perhaps his brother), in 1853 about his excessive drinking. In addition, he recorded his grief over the deaths of his first wife in 1857, of his baby son in June 1854, and of his adult daughter in July 1866. The diary, however, only briefly comments on Greenlee's service as a delegate to the Old School Presbyterian Synod at Charleston, S.C. in 1859, and later as a delegate to the North Carolina state convention that voted to secede from the Union in 1861. Similarly, there is disappointingly little information in the diary about the Civil War. In May 1865, however, he did briefly record his and his slaves' reactions to their emancipation.

Greenlee's diary also includes scattered entries written by his first and second wives, an extract from an 1882 Richmond & Danville Railroad prospectus, and his second wife's accounts of travel throughout the South in 1883. Her accounts are fuller than those of her husband. Folder 20 contains three items, consisting of diary notes for late 1858 and expense accounts for 1858, 1859, and 1862; and two enclosures, one from March 1879 and another undated, which had been inserted in the diary.

Series 2 consists of seven volumes of typed transcription of the diary through 1867. Volume 7 contains two plates of photographs, of James H. Greenlee, circa 1861, and of Turkey Cove, his family home at Marion, N.C.