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Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the George J. Kollock Plantation Journals #407, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Microfilm copy available.

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.

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Processed by: Shonra Newman, June 1990

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated by: Nancy Kaiser, November 2020

Conscious Editing Work by: Nancy Kaiser, July 2020. Updated abstract, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content note, and container list.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

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--Georgia.
• Corn--Georgia.
• Cotton gins and ginning--Georgia.
• Cotton growing--Georgia.
• Enslaved persons--Georgia--Registers.
• Kollock, George Jones, 1810-1894.
• Ossabaw Island Plantation (Ga.)
• Plantations--Georgia.
• Retreat Plantation (Ga.)
• Rosedew Plantation (Ga.)
• Slavery--Georgia.
• Slavery--United States--History--19th century--Sources.

George Jones Kollock (1810-1894) was born 20 April 1810 in Savannah, Georgia, the son of Dr. Lemuel and Maria Campbell Kollock. He attended schools in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Yale University although he had no known degrees. He married Priscilla Augusta Johnston (d. 1836) in 1836 and had one child, Augusta Johnston. In 1840 he married Susan Marion Johnston and had seven children: George Jones, John Fenwick, William Waring, Susan Marion, Mary Fenwick, Annie Houstoun, and Louisa Belle.

George Kollock practiced law in Savannah from 1832 to 1836. After the death of his first wife, Priscilla, he moved to Retreat Plantation, located near Savannah on the Little Ogeechee River at Coffee Bluff. Retreat was a 309-acre tract which his infant daughter, Augusta, had inherited from her aunt, Priscilla Houstoun. Kollock purchased thirteen enslaved people and hired six, and also hired an overseer to commence planting Sea Island cotton at this site. The following year (1838), Kollock came into possession of Rose Dhu (Rosedew), an adjoining 550-acre tract which, like Retreat, was land originally granted to Priscilla Houstoun's grandfather Sir Patrick Houstoun. In 1848 Kollock sold the Coffee Bluff and Rose Dhu tracts. He then purchased 800 acres on the south end of Ossabaw Island and moved his enslaved people to this new site, where they again cultivated Sea Island cotton. Kollock estimated the value of his cotton crop for the year 1850 at six thousand dollars. At this point Kollock enslaved 72 people. By 1860 Kollock was an absentee coastal Georgia plantation owner who visited Ossabaw Island at regular intervals; however, most of his time was spent at his permanent home, Woodlands, near Clarkesville, Habersham County, Georgia, where his family resided. He made regular trips to Savannah and his plantation to appraise the value of his crops and the condition of the enslaved people and to check over the journals kept by his overseers.

The staple crops produced on Kollock's plantation were cotton and corn. Rice, sugar cane, peas, potatoes, and oranges were grown as subsistence crops for the enslaved; also cattle and hogs were raised for this purpose. A portion of these foods was sent to the Kollock family for home use in Habersham County.

(Excerpts taken from the sketch of George Jones Kollock in the Dictionary of Georgia Biography, pages 585-586)

George Jones Kollock (1810-1894) of Savannah, Ossabaw Island, and Clarksville, Ga., was a white enslaver, cotton plantation owner, and lawyer. The enslaved people who provided the labor at Kollock's three Georgia plantations--Retreat, Rosedew, and Ossabaw Island--are documented in plantation journals that include births, deaths, sick days, tools given out, articles received, articles delivered, and records of their daily work. The journals, 1837-1861, contain detailed information about planting and farming using forced labor and overseers, and are mostly devoted to Ossabaw Island. Kollock's cash crop was Sea Island cotton, and he also planted corn.

Microfilm (M-407/1)