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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the FAQ section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 2.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1,300 items) |
| Abstract | Speculation Land Company was a New York company which owned thousands of acres in Buncombe County, Rutherford County, and Mecklenburg County, N.C. The lands were acquired by Tenche Coxe (1755-1824) in 1797, but soon were turned over to Pierre Etienne DuPonceau (1760-1844) and Abraham Kintzig of Philadelphia, Pa. About 1825 the properties came into possession of a group of New York owners and their agents in North Carolina. The collection includes legal papers, surveying records, agents' account books of sales, and other items, including scattered personal papers of some of the agents. Some correspondence and accounts of the 1850s relate to gold and other mining on the Mecklenburg County lands, and post-Civil War papers relate to the recovery of the properties which had been taken over by Confederate sequestration agents. |
| Creator | Speculation Land Company. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Subject Headings
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.
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Related Collections
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Historical Information
Speculation Land Company was a New York company which owned thousands of acres in Buncombe, Rutherford, and Mecklenburg counties, N.C. The lands were acquired by Tenche Coxe (1755-1824) of Philadelphia, Pa., in 1797. Soon afterward, Coxe assigned some of the lands to Peter Stephen (Pierre Etienne) DuPonceau (1760-1844) and Abraham Kintzig, also of Philadelphia. In 1809 the lands were sold to Augustus Sacket who later defaulted on his mortgage and the lands were returned to the ownership of DuPonceau and Kintzig around 1825. The lands were subsequently sold to a group of New York owners by the name of Thomson, Hoyt, Murray, and Bronson. The New York owners employed agents in North Carolina to manage the lands including James Stevens, Joshua Forman, Matthew W. Davis, Thomas B. Justice, and C. B. Justice. Spokesmen for the landowner group in New York were successively Arthur Bronson, Frederick Bronson, and Willett Bronson. The numerous heirs and assignees of this original group sold out, 1920, to Fred McBrayer of Rutherfordton, N.C., and George W. Justice of Hendersonville, N.C.
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Scope and Content
The collection includes the records of the Speculation Land Company regarding lands owned in Buncombe, Rutherford, and Mecklenburg counties, N.C. There are legal papers, surveying records, agents account books of sales, and other items, including scattered personal papers of some of the agents. Some correspondence and accounts of the 1850s relate to gold and other mining on the Mecklenburg County lands, and post-Civil War papers relate to the recovery of the properties which had been taken over by Confederate sequestration agents.
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Speculation Land Company Records, 1796-1909 and undated.
Processed by: SHC Staff
Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007
Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2009
This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.
Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.
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