James W. Patton Papers Inventory (#1739)

unc seal
Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Collection Information
block Descriptive Summary Including Abstract
block Administrative Information
block Online Catalog Terms
block Biographical Note
block Collection Overview
plus Description
block Items Separated
Contact Information:
Manuscripts Department
CB#3926, Wilson Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890
Phone: 919/962-1345
Fax: 919/962-3594
Email: mss@email.unc.edu
URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/
Processed by
SHC Staff
Date Completed
October 1999
Encoded by
Linda Sellars
Back to Top

Descriptive Summary Including Abstract

Title
James W. Patton Papers (#1739) 1798-1923, 1999
Creator
Patton, James W., 1803-1861.
Extent
About 250 items (1.0 linear feet)
Repository
Southern Historical Collection
Abstract
Papers of a 19th-century Asheville, N.C., family and their relatives in South Carolina and Maryland. The collection consists chiefly of personal correspondence, including antebellum letters received by Asheville merchant James W. Patton (1803-1861) and his wife, Henrietta Kerr Patton, mostly from Kerr relatives in Charleston, S.C., about family matters; letters of their son, Thomas Walton Patton (1841-1907), politician and mayor of Asheville, while he was a captain in the 60th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War in Tennessee and Georgia, and while he was a volunteer officer in the Spanish-American War; and letters from Fannie Patton, a student at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C., 1862. There are also letters exchanged, 1798-1808, by James Calder (d. 1808), Maryland planter, and his son George Calder (1778-1809), United States Navy officer, relatives of Martha Turner Patton, wife of Thomas Walton Patton, concerning the Calders' Maryland plantation, naval affairs, yellow fever, and other matters. Also included are newspaper clippings of articles about members of the Patton, Turner, and Parker families; an account and notebook, 1892, of Thomas Walton Patton on a European trip; a memorial volume, 1918-1923, by the Asheville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy; a photograph, ca. 1886, of the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity at the University of North Carolina, one of whose members was Haywood Parker, husband of Thomas Walton Patton's daughter Josie; and a videotape, Thomas Walton Patton: Asheville's Citizen and Soldier.
Back to Top

Administrative Information

Access
No restrictions.
Usage Restrictions
Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Provenance
Received from the Haywood Parker family in 1950 and from Phyllis Lang of Asheville, N.C, in June 1999 (Acc. 98393).
Back to Top

Online Catalog Terms

Asheville (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
Calder, George, 1778-1809.
Calder, James, d. 1808.
Charleston (S.C.)--Social life and customs.
Confederate States of America--Social conditions.
Confederate States of America. Army--Military life.
Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 60th.
Europe--Description and travel.
Family--Maryland--Social life and customs--19th century.
Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
Family--South Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
Georgia--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
Kerr family.
Merchants--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Patton, Fannie.
Patton, Henrietta Kerr.
Patton, James W., 1803-1861.
Patton, Thomas Walton, 1841-1907.
Patton family.
Plantations--Maryland.
Politicians--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Saint Mary's School (Raleigh, N.C.).
Spanish-American War, 1898.
Tennessee--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
United States. Navy--Officers--Correspondence--History.
Women--Education--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Back to Top

Biographical Note

James W. Patton (1803-1861), contractor and merchant of Asheville, N.C., was born in Wilkes County, N.C., to James, an Irish immigrant, and Anne Reynolds Patton of Wilkes County. The family moved to Buncombe County in about 1807, and James lived in and around Asheville for the remainder of his life.

Patton was active in development and government in the Asheville area. He proposed and helped complete an east-west thoroughfare in Asheville. He inherited the Eagle Hotel, one of the first hotels in Asheville, from his father. He later built a hotel in Warm Springs. Patton was a member of Asheville's first board of commissioners (1841) and served as the presiding justice in the Buncombe County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for many years. Patton donated the land for Trinity Episcopal Church and helped open the church in 1841, serving on the first vestry.

Patton's first wife was Clara Walton of Burke County. With her, he had two sons, James Alfred and William Augustus, both of whom died of disease while serving in the Confederate Army. His second wife was Henrietta Kerr of Charleston, S.C. Their two children were Fannie Louisa and Thomas Walton Patton.

Thomas Walton Patton (1841-1907) served in the Buncombe Rifles and then with the 60th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War. The 60th Regiment fought at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. Following the war, Patton returned to Asheville. He held numerous political offices in Asheville, including two terms as mayor, in 1893 and 1894. In 1898, Thomas Walton Patton enlisted as a private in the 1st North Carolina Volunteers to serve in the War of 1898. He was made adjutant and went with the battalion to Florida and Cuba.

Thomas Walton Patton married first, in 1863 or 1864, Anna B. Pearson of Alabama and second, in 1871, Martha Bell Turner (b. 1841). Thomas Walton Patton and Martha Turner Patton had two children, Josie B. and F. M. Patton. On 15 November 1899, Josie B. Patton married Haywood Parker, a lawyer who had graduated in 1887 from the University of North Carolina.

Back to Top

Collection Overview

Papers of a 19th-century Asheville, N.C., family and their relatives in South Carolina and Maryland. The collection consists chiefly of personal correspondence, including antebellum letters received by Asheville merchant James W. Patton (1803-1861) and his wife, Henrietta Kerr Patton, mostly from Kerr relatives in Charleston, S.C., about family matters; letters of their son, Thomas Walton Patton (1841-1907), politician and mayor of Asheville, while he was a captain in the 60th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War in Tennessee and Georgia, and while he was a volunteer officer in the Spanish-American War; and letters from Fannie Patton, a student at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C., 1862. There are also letters exchanged, 1798-1808, by James Calder (d. 1808), Maryland planter, and his son George Calder (1778-1809), United States Navy officer, relatives of Martha Turner Patton, wife of Thomas Walton Patton, concerning the Calders' Maryland plantation, naval affairs, yellow fever, and other matters.

Also included are newspaper clippings of articles about members of the Patton, Turner, and Parker families; an account and notebook, 1892, of Thomas Walton Patton on a European trip; a memorial volume, 1918-1923, by the Asheville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy; a photograph, ca. 1886, of the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity at the University of North Carolina, one of whose members was Haywood Parker, husband of Thomas Walton Patton's daughter Josie; and a videotape, Thomas Walton Patton: Asheville's Citizen and Soldier.

Back to Top

Description

Papers, 1798-1923, 1999, and undated.
About 250 items (1.0 linear ft.)
Arrangement: by type of document, then chronological.
Papers of a 19th-century Asheville, N.C., family and their relatives in South Carolina and Maryland. The collection consists chiefly of personal correspondence, including antebellum letters received by Asheville merchant James W. Patton (1803-1861) and his wife, Henrietta Kerr Patton, mostly from Kerr relatives in Charleston, S.C., about family matters; letters of their son, Thomas Walton Patton (1841-1907), politician and mayor of Asheville, while he was a captain in the 60th North Carolina Regiment, C.S.A., in Tennessee and Georgia, and while he was a volunteer officer in the Spanish-American War; and letters from Fannie Patton, a student at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C., 1862.
Most of the letters, 1798-1808, were exchanged by James Calder (d. 1808), Maryland planter, and his son, George Calder (1778-1809), United States Navy officer, who were relatives of Martha Turner Patton, wife of Thomas Walton Patton. These letters concern the Calders' plantations. Letters from the son to his father tell of naval affairs, yellow fever, politics, and Saratoga Springs.
Also included are newspaper clippings of articles about the members of the Patton, Turner, and Parker families; an account and notebook, 1892, of Thomas Walton Patton on a European trip; a volume, 1918-1923, "In Memoriam," by the Asheville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy; and an oversized photograph, ca. 1886, of the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity at the University of North Carolina, one of whose members was Haywood Parker; and a videotape, Thomas Walton Patton: Asheville's Citizen and Soldier.
OP-P-1739/1. Photograph of Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity, University of North Carolina, ca. 1886. Eight members, including Haywood Parker.
VT-1739/1. Videotape, 1999. Thomas Walton Patton: Asheville's Citizen and Soldier (VHS, length 26:46), produced by Phyllis Lang and Chanse Simpson.
   Folder 1
1798-1808. Chiefly letters of James Calder and George Calder.
   Folder 2
1826-1849. Chiefly letters between George Kerr and his niece, Elizabeth Patton. George Kerr wrote from Charleston, S.C.; New York City; and several watering places in the Carolinas. His letters frequently mention the Waltons of Morganton, especially Elizabeth Walton Avery.
   Folder 3
1850-1856. Letters from members of the Kerr family in Charleston and Henrietta Kerr Patton in Asheville about family and neighborhood news, especially news of health. One long and detailed letter from Charleston describes the funeral of John C. Calhoun.
   Folder 4
1860-1862. Correspondence of the James W. Patton family with relatives in Charleston and with a son, William Augustus Patton in Morristown, Tenn.; correspondence of Fannie Patton at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C., with family and friends; and letters from Thomas Walton Patton with the 60th North Carolina Regiment in Confederate Army camps in Tennessee to his mother and other family and friends during the Civil War.
   Folder 5-6
1863. Letters from Thomas Walton Patton in Confederate Army camps in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, mostly about camp life and about his attempts to resign his position as captain of Company C, 60th North Carolina Regiment, citing the death of his father and brother, his own poor health, and his provision of a substitute; letters to Fannie Patton from Charles H. Kerr in Charleston and from other friends and family; and scattered other letters.
   Folder 7
1864-1866. Letters from Thomas Walton Patton to his wife and his mother from army camps in Georgia, letters to Henrietta Patton and Fannie Patton from Kerr family members, a few Turner family letters, and other letters.
   Folder 8
1871-1895. Letters from scattered members of the family, including notes to Josie Patton; a letter, 28 November 1881, from Joseph Blount Cheshire to Sally T. Parker; letters, 1894, about genealogy from Marshall DeLancey Haywood to Haywood Parker, carbon copy of a typescript, "A Sketch of the Sixtieth N.C. Regiment Infantry."
   Folder 9
1896-1909. A few papers about the Spanish-American War, including a letter from Josie Patton in Havana, Cuba, describing the countryside and social life in Havana; a few letters about the marriage of Josie Patton to Haywood Parker; condolence letters and memorials on the death of Thomas Walton Patton.
   Folder 10-11
Undated. Civil War letters from Thomas Walton Patton; other undated letters and papers, including a typed speech apparently to students at the University of North Carolina; typed sketch of James W. Patton; manuscript copy of extracts from a book entitled The City of Baltimore, containing the history of the Turner family; a "History of the Turner family as far as I know it," including Calders and McLeods; sketches of the 60th North Carolina Regiment.
   Folder 12-13
Clippings of newspapers articles, most from the Asheville Daily Citizen, about members of the Patton, Turner, and Parker families.
   Folder 14
Account and notebook of Thomas Walton Patton, 1892, on a European trip.
   Folder 15
"In Memoriam," Asheville Chapter, U.D.C., 1918-1923, sketches of and tributes to members who had died, including Fannie Patton, and newspaper clippings about Confederate veterans.

Back to Top
Back to Top

Items Separated

Items separated include an oversized picture (OP-P-1739) and a videotape (VT-1739).