Back to TopDescriptive Summary
- Repository
-
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
- Creator
-
Reynolds, Henry Lee, fl. 1852-1884.
- Title
- Henry Lee Reynolds Papers, 1802-1924
- Call Number
- 3520
- Language of Materials
- Materials in
English
- Extent
-
- Items: About 300
Abstract
Henry Lee Reynolds was a native of Norwich, Conn., merchant and cotton factor of Mobile, Ala., and New York City. Also represented
are members of his family, including his wife, Mary Wilson Hill Reynolds; his father-in- law, Reverend Stephen Prescott Hill,
Baptist minister of Washington, D.C.; and his son-in-law, Gardiner Greene (1851-1925), judge of the Connecticut superior court
and state legislator.
The collection includes business and personal correspondence, financial and legal papers, and other items of the Reynolds
family and relations, chiefly concerning H. L. Reynolds's companies: Reynolds, Witherspoon, & Co., a Mobile merchandizing
firm, and its successor, H. L. Reynolds & Co., cotton factors and merchants in Mobile and New York. There are also many letters
relating to family matters, especially since Reynolds was often in partnership with family members. During the Civil War,
there are documents relating to Reynolds's arrest and detention by federal agents. Letters, 1866-1868, chiefly concern getting
bales of cotton from Alabama and Mississippi planters to market in spite of federal agents' authorization to seize cotton
as reparation payments. Also included are four diaries, written by unidentified female family members in Pennsylvania and
Connecticut, recording daily life and family events, 1802-1840, with considerable gaps; papers relating to land warrants of
the Mobile firm of Harding and Redditt, 1858-1884; documents about Greene family history; an incomplete biographical sketch
of Hezekiah Smith (1737-1805), Baptist evangelist of Haverhill, Mass.; and a sketch book of Reynolds's son, Harry, containing
North Carolina scenes.
Back to TopAdministrative Information
- Restrictions to Access
- No restrictions.
- Alternate Form of Material
- All or part of this collection is 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 Jerome Schickler of Brooklyn, New York, in January 1961.
- Processing Information
- Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom, April 1991
- Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008
- This inventory is based on a previous inventory prepared by Brooke Allan in January 1961.
- Preferred Citation
- [Identification of item], in the Henry Lee Reynolds Papers #3520, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- Copyright Notice
- Retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Back to TopOnline Catalog Headings
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
- Baptists--Clergy--Biography.
- Commission merchants--Alabama--History--19th century.
- Commission merchants--New York (State)--New York--History--19th century.
- Cotton trade--Alabama--History--19th century.
- Diaries (Blank-books)
- Family--Connecticut--Social life and customs.
- Green family.
- Greene, Gardiner, 1851-1925.
- H.L. Reynolds & Co.
- Harding and Redditt (Mobile, Ala.)
- Hill, Stephen P. (Stephen Prescott), 1806-1884.
- Merchants--Alabama--History--19th century.
- Merchants--New York (State)--History--19th century.
- Mobile (Ala.)--Commerce--History--19th century.
- North Carolina--Pictorial works.
- Reynolds family.
- Reynolds, Harry Lee, b. 1861.
- Reynolds, Henry Lee, fl. 1852-1884.
- Reynolds, Mary Wilson Hill, fl. 1852-1900.
- Reynolds, Witherspoon, & Co. (Mobile, Ala.)
- Smith, Hezekiah, 1737-1805.
- United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Prisoners and prisons.
- United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Reparations.
- Women--Connecticut--Diaries.
- Women--Pennsylvania--Diaries.
Back to TopBiographical/Historical Note
Papers show that Henry Lee Reynolds of Norwich, Connecticut, was in business in Mobile, Alabama, as early as 1852, first with
William A. Witherspoon in Reynolds, Witherspoon, & Co., "importers, manufacturers, and dealers in hardware ...iron and nails ...cooking stoves ...cutlery ...tools ...and house furnishing
articles of every description." The firm also received cotton on its accounts and sold it on the market. By 1860, Reynolds's associates were Jack P. Richardson
and James C. Reynolds, Henry's nephew, and his firm was called H. L. Reynolds & Co.
In September 1861, Henry Lee Reynolds was arrested in the north by federal agents. After being detained at Fort Lafayette
for two weeks, he was paroled in Washington, D.C., but not permitted to return south. After the Civil War, Reynolds's base
of business operations was in New York, with his nephews William C., James C., and Alfred C. Reynolds, managing his affairs
in Mobile with his old partner, Jack P. Richardson and others. Sometime in 1865, Henry Lee Reynolds became associated with
L. Jacquelin Smith, forming Reynolds, Smith & Co., commission merchants, at New York, with interests in Mobile.
Henry Lee Reynolds's first wife, Martha Thomas Reynolds, died in June 1855, leaving a young son, Charles, who was cared for
by his mother's relatives in Norwich. Reynolds remarried around 1859, taking as his wife Mary Wilson Hill of Washington, D.C.
Mary was the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Prescott Hill, a Baptist minister. Among other children, the Reynoldses had
a son, Harry Lee (born 1861), and a daughter, Louise (born 1868). Harry Lee studied law and was admitted to the Washington,
D.C., bar in 1885. He may have died of tuberculosis at Asheville, North Carolina, in 1891. Louise married Gardiner Greene
(1851-1925) of Norwich, Connecticut, in 1894. Greene, the son of Gardiner (1822-1895) and Mary Ricketts Adams Greene, was
a judge of the Connecticut superior court and a state legislator.
Back to TopCollection Overview
Chiefly business and personal correspondence and financial and legal papers relating to Henry Lee Reynolds and other members
of the Reynolds family. Also included are a few diaries, probably written by Reynolds family members, and other papers including
documents relating to land warrants held by the Mobile firm of Harding and Redditt, papers about Greene family history, an
incomplete biographical sketch of Baptist evangelist Hezekiah Smith (1737-1805) of Massachusetts, and a sketch book belonging
to Harry L. Reynolds
Back to TopArrangement of Collection
Series 1. Correspondence and Financial and Legal Papers
Subseries 1.1. 1851-1864
Subseries 1.2. 1865-1924
Series 2. Diaries
Series 3. Other Papers
Detailed Description of the Collection
1. Correspondence and Financial and Legal Papers, 1851-1924.
About 230 items.
Arrangement: chronological.
Business and personal correspondence, accounts, legal papers, and other business records of Henry Lee Reynolds and other members
of his family. Materials relating to Harding and Redditt land warrants are filed in Series 3.
Back to Top
1.1. 1851-1864
Papers chiefly relating to the activities of Henry Lee Reynolds's successive companies in Mobile and in New York. Antebellum
papers are concerned with Reynolds, Witherspoon, & Co., the Mobile merchandizing company Reynolds ran in partnership with
William A. Witherspoon. Topics covered are securing supplies from New York, sales in Alabama and Mississippi, debt collection,
and other business matters. Many of the letters written in the 1850s are from Witherspoon and others who discussed not only
business, but politics, economic conditions, local news and gossip, and the weather.
Family letters received by Reynolds during this period are particularly numerous in 1855 when Reynolds was at Richfield Springs,
New York, and his first wife's relatives were caring for his young son in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1859, there are letters
from Mary Wilson Hill, who Reynolds married that year, and, in 1861, there are letters about Reynolds's arrest and detention
by federal agents, including two documents, 14 September 1861 and 24 March 1862, relating to his parole. There are also items
relating to Mary's father, Baptist minister Stephen Prescott Hill, in 1851 and 1853.
Folder
1
1851-1854
Folder
2
1855 January-July
Folder
3
1855 August-December
Folder
4
1856-1858
Folder
5
1859
Folder
6
1860-1864
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1.2. 1865-1924 and undated
Many 1865 letters to Reynolds in New York from nephew William C. Reynolds and others (and among Reynolds's business associates)
are chiefly concerned with desperate attempts to get bales of cotton from Alabama and Mississippi planters to the speculative
market to sell in payment of the planters' debts. This operation was difficult because federal agents had authorization to
seize these same bales of cotton. Letters discuss the hiding, stealing, insuring, shipping, and marketing of cotton under
these difficult circumstances, as well as debts and collections, suits and settlements, claims and counter-claims all over
Alabama and Mississippi. They also discuss the hardware business in Mobile, general business conditions and credit, and the
outlook for the future in the light of uncertain harvests of crops, government regulations, and court decisions. At the end
of 1866, a small book recording cotton bought and sold by H. L. Reynolds & Co. is filed.
In addition, there are letters relating to rental property Reynolds owned in the Mobile area and other investments he held
in the north, and occasional letters from A. H. Jones, a cotton broker in Augusta, Georgia, telling about his business and
about the general business climate there. In 1869, there are letters from T. A. Hamilton in Mobile that discuss a suit pending
against Reynolds in connection with some cotton shipments.
There are only a few letters after 1866. One is an 1868 letter about Reynolds's election as vestryman at the Church of the
Ascension in Washington, D.C. Items dated 1873-1924 are chiefly personal and family letters about miscellaneous family matters.
Correspondents include Stephen Prescott Hill (1873, 1881); Harry L. Reynolds (1881-1885); Louise Reynolds Greene (1873, 1883,
1911); and Gardiner Greene (1894, 1896, 1922). There are two letters in 1893 and one in 1922 relating to the Adams family.
Five letters, 1923-1924, are from Reginald Reynolds to Gardiner Greene about efforts to publish a translation of German fairy
tales that Greene had produced.
There are a few undated letters and fragments, none of which is very substantial.
Folder
7
1865 January-July
Folder
8
1865 August-November
Folder
9
1865 December
Folder
10
1866
Folder
11
1868-1869
Folder
12
1873-1924
Folder
13
Undated and fragments
Back to Top
4 items.
Diaries written by three or four different members of the Reynolds family at Philadelphia and Norwich, Connecticut. Although
some of the diarists cannot be identified, it appears that they were of same generation; it is possible that they were all
children of Phebe Reynolds, who died in 1818. Information in the volumes reveals that the following person were participants
in the activities described in them: Abby L. Reynolds Hommedieu of Norwich, Connecticut; Enoch and Sara Reynolds of Georgetown
(Washington, D.C.); and Charles and Phebe Reynolds of Norwich. Also mentioned are Joseph, a seagoing man based at Philadelphia;
Eliza; Hannah; and others. The writer of Volume 4 had two nephews, Charles L. and Henry L. Reynolds, who made frequent trips
to Mobile and New Orleans.
Folder
14-15
Volume 1: December 1802 - April 1803, 30 pages; Volume 2: 7 December 1803 - 23 August 1804, 50 pages. These volumes may have
been written by the same person, a woman living in Philadelphia. Topics include the activities of family and friends, social
affairs, and local events. The writer may have been the sister of Abby, Enoch, and Charles.
Folder
16
Volume 3: 1820-1829, 14 pages. Diary with short, infrequent entries, bearing the name Abby L. Hommedieu of Norwich, Connecticut,
on the flyleaf. Topics include local social and church events and the comings and goings of Reynolds family members.
Folder
17
Volume 4: 1811-1840, 30 pages. Diary with short, infrequent entries, of a woman living in Norwich, Connecticut. Topics include
family and church events, religious meditations, sermons heard, missionary activities of the Chelcy Society. The writer mentions
the "death of my mother, Mrs. Phebe Reynolds" in 1818. From 1829 through 1835, there are entries relating to the journeys of nephews Charles L. and Henry L. Reynolds to
Mobile and New Orleans. In 1836, there is mention of sister-in-law Sarah, widow of Enoch Reynolds.
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3. Other Papers, Ca. 1840s-1884 and undated.
About 40 items.
Miscellaneous items, including papers, 1858-1884, relating to land-warrants of the firm of Harding and Redditt that were maintained
as a separate file by Henry Lee Reynolds; papers relating to Greene family history; and two volumes, one an incomplete draft
of a biographical sketch of Hezekiah Smith and the other a sketch book belonging to Harry L. Reynolds.
Folder
18
Harding and Redditt papers, 1858-1884. Papers chiefly relating to land-warrants of the Mobile firm of Harding and Redditt.
Included is correspondence, 1880-1884, of Reynolds, Harry L. Reynolds, and various persons in Alabama about Alabama land-warrants
that turned up in an office occupied by Reynolds and that had been assigned to Reynolds in 1860 in payment of an obligation
by the Harding and Redditt firm. Also included are deeds and other papers, 1858-1859, of Alexander T. Redditt and Jarvis B.
Harding, relating to their land acquisitions and turpentine business in Beaufort County, North Carolina, and Baldwin County,
Alabama.
Folder
19
Greene family history. Items relating to genealogy, including obituaries, clippings, and a typed copy of a memoir written
by Mary Ricketts Adams Greene about her life in New Orleans in the 1840s and 1850s.
Folder
20
Incomplete draft, 32 pages, of biographical sketch of Hezekiah Smith (1737-1805), noted Baptist evangelist of Haverhill, Massachusetts.
The author of the sketch is unidentified, and the draft covers only chapters 5-7. Smith, a traveling preacher and Revolutionary
War army chaplain, is associated with the founding of Brown University and of the Warren Association.
Folder
21
Sketch book, 13 pages, of Harry L. Reynolds. Pencil sketches, with several North Carolina scenes. A tipped-in sketch appears
to have been executed by another artist.
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