Inventory of the Lenoir Family Papers, 1763-1940, 1969-1975

These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.

Related Collections

Biographical Note

An overview of Lenoir family history may be gathered from the series descriptions appearing in this inventory. Many sources offer biographical information on particular members of the Lenoir family. These include the Dictionary of American Biography; the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography; and "William Lenoir, 1751-1839" by Richard Alexander Shrader (Ph.D. Dissertation, UNC-CH, 1978).

What appears below is an incomplete outline of the Lenoir family as derived from the collection and other sources. Note that family members tended to name their children after other family members so that first names are repeated over the generations, surnames become first and middle names, and even nick names are repeated from generation to generation.

Other more distantly related persons who contributed significantly to the collection include William Bingham (d. 1873) of the Bingham School in Orange County, N.C.; Eliza (Shie) Bingham Penick; and Julia Adelaide Torrey Oertel (d. 1907), who appears to have been related to Sarah Leonora (Sallie) Gwyn Lenoir and was the wife of Johannes Adam Simon Oertel (1823-1909), religious painter and Episcopal clergyman in Lenoir, N.C., during the 1870s.

Collection Overview

Correspondence tends to focus around whichever male members of the Lenoir family are most active at a given time: William Lenoir (1751-1839), William Ballard Lenoir (1775-1852), Thomas Lenoir (1780-1861), William Avery Lenoir (1808-1861), Walter Waightstill Lenoir (1823-1890), Rufus Theodore Lenoir (1825-1912), and Thomas Isaac Lenoir (1817-1882). Wives and other relatives, particularly members of the Avery, Bingham, Norwood, and Pickens families, also heavily contributed to the volume of correspondence, especially when they were active in Lenoir family business.

Note that the numbers for many volumes have been changed; when this is the case, the old volume number is found in parentheses following the volume description.

Arrangement of Collection

Items Separated

Separated items include oversize volumes (S-426/248; S-426/249; S-426/262; S-426/263; S-246/264; S-246/265; S-246/294), oversize papers (OP-426/1-47), and pictures (P-426/1-12).

Detailed Description of the Collection

Correspondence in this period revolves chiefly around Colonel Thomas Lenoir (1741-1816), his brother General William Lenoir (1751-1839) of Fort Defiance, N.C., William's wife Ann Ballard (1751-1833), and William and Ann's children. Among these children, materials relate chiefly to William Ballard (1775-1852) and his wife Elizabeth Avery (1781-1855) of Roane County, Tenn.; Ann (1778-1838) and her husband General Edmund Jones (1771-1855); Thomas (1780-1861) and his wife Selina Louisa Avery (1783-1864), who first lived in Asheville, but later took charge of Fort Defiance, and their children; Walter Raleigh (1786-1843) and his first wife Polly Elvira Bouchelle (1795-1818) and second wife Sarah Eveline Bouchelle (1798-1877), who settled in Boone County, Mo.; Eliza Mira (1789-1835), who remained at Fort Defiance, and her niece and ward Julia A. M. Pickens (1815-1898), who married Chiliab Howe (1809-1875) and lived in Alabama and Mississippi.

Another daughter was Martha (Patsy) Orilla (1792-1823), mother of Julia Pickens and wife of Israel Pickens (1780-1827). Israel Pickens's correspondence from Washington, D.C., when he was a member of Congress from North Carolina, 1811-1817, and later from Greene County, Ala., where he was elected governor of Alabama in 1821, figures prominently in this series. There are also occasional letters from another daughter, Sarah Joyce (1796-1820), who married Judge Thomas F. Jones and settled in South Carolina.

Towards the end of this period, there is correspondence of Thomas and Selina's children: William Avery (1808-1861), who married Jane K. Derr (d. 1850); Selina Louise (1813-1836), who married Samuel Pickens and settled in Greensboro, Ala.; Laura Leah Carolina, who married Joseph Caldwell Norwood (1815-1889) and lived in Hillsborough, N.C.; Mary Ann (Annie) (1819-1899), who married James Gwyn (1812-1888); Sarah (Sade) Jones (d. 1899), who lived at Fort Defiance; Walter Waightstill (Wat) (1823-1890), who married Cornelia Isabella Christian (1827-1859) and lived in Lenoir, N.C.; Thomas Isaac (Tom) (1817-1882), who married Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie) Garrett (1844-1880) and lived at East Fork of Pigeon, his father's property at the east fork of the Pigeon River in Haywood County, N.C.; and Rufus Theodore (1825-1912), who married Richard Gwyn's daughter Sarah Leonora (Sallie) (1833-1913) and lived at Fort Defiance. Richard Gwyn was the husband of Colonel Thomas Lenoir's daughter Martha. To a lesser degree, there is also correspondence of William Ballard and Elizabeth's children: Isaac T.; Albert S.; Tommy; and Mira A. There is also correspondence of members of the related Avery, Norwood, and Pickens families.

Letters relating to politics begin in the 1790s and are chiefly from or to William Lenoir at Fort Defiance. Many of the letters relate to local and state politics. These include:

--a letter of 26 November 1791 from William Norwood to William Lenoir about politics and lawyering;

--letters of 1 February and 5 June 1802 to William Lenoir about lottery ticket sales in support of the University of North Carolina;

--a letter of 22 December 1804 from W. Winston to William Lenoir about a trouble along the North Carolina-Georgia border;

--letters of 5 August 1806, 2 July 1809, and 17 September 1815 to William Lenoir from brother Thomas about the latter's chances in local elections;

--letters of 29 April, 22 May, and 9 October 1812 about William Lenoir's raising troops for a local militia unit under orders from Governor William Hawkins and William Lenoir's resignation as Major General in the militia;

--a letter of 16 February 1820 to William Lenoir's nephew Thomas informing him of his selection as commissioner to lay out a road in Haywood County;

--letters of 12 and 27 November 1824 relating to William Lenoir's name being mentioned as candidate for governor and his rejection of the idea;

--a 27 November 1824 letter of William Lenoir to John Stanley, member of the General Assembly in Raleigh, about William Lenoir's opposition to the location of the Wilkes Court House and to its "elegant" design; Letters of 14 March 1825, 18 June 1833, and 10 August 1834, and 8 August 1837 about Revolutionary War pensions from the state;

--occasional letters, beginning in 1822, from Samuel F. Patterson in Raleigh to Walter Raleigh Lenoir about state politics.

There are also many letters about national politics. These include:

--a letter of 22 December 1794 from Joseph McDowell of Philadelphia to William Lenoir on the Jay and Pinckney treaties;

--a letter of 4 February 1894 from Senator Alexander Martin in Philadelphia to William Lenoir about trade with France and problems with Algerian pirates;

--letters from Jesse Franklin in Philadelphia to William Lenoir including the following: 5 April 1796 about Ohio land sales; 25 December 1801 about Jefferson and the war in the Bay of Tripoli; 4 November 1803 and 29 January 1804 about the Louisiana Purchase and the exclusion of slaves from foreign countries there; and 20 June 1812 about the declaration of war against Great Britain;

--letters of 28 March and 20 April 1800 from General Joseph Dickson in Philadelphia to William Lenoir about Napoleon and Dickson's belief that Adams will defeat Jefferson, and 27 January and 24 February 1801 about Burr and Jefferson being equals in the presidential race;

--letter of 5 January 1807 from Joseph Winston in Washington, D.C., to William Lenoir about the Burr conspiracy; ¢a letter of 24 February 1808 from Washington Norwood in Granville County, N.C., to William Lenoir about becoming involved in the European war;

--many letters, beginning in April 1812, from Israel Pickens to William Lenoir about his activities as a member of Congress with particular emphasis on the War of 1812; about life in Washington, D.C., 1812-1817; and from Pickens after 1817 where he served as governor, 1821-1825, including one, dated 18 April 1825, in which Pickens described Lafayette's tour through Alabama;

--fairly frequent letters, beginning in March 1819, from Lewis Williams (1782-1842), North Carolina congressman from 1814