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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 | 2.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1000 items) |
| Abstract | John Francis Speight was a Methodist clergyman, president of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, trustee of Jamestown Female College, and farmer of Edgecombe County, N.C. The collection includes family and professional correspondence, primarily 1822-1894, and bills, receipts, and other financial materials of the Reverend John Francis Speight, his wife Emma Lewis Speight, and their descendants, relatives, and Lewis family connections. Materials prior to 1893 include papers of Emma Lewis Speight's father Exum Lewis II. John Francis Speight travelled extensively in central and eastern North Carolina, and his correspondence, 1832-1860, with his family and with fellow itinerant ministers reflects a variety of church affairs. Emma Lewis Speight's extensive correspondence includes letters exchanged with her numerous relations, particularly her sisters and brothers, in Edgecombe and Halifax counties and other places in North Carolina and in Alabama, Mississippi, and Iowa. This correspondence relates to family events, trips, cotton planting, schooling, and civilian conditions during the Civil War. There are also letters from Confederate soldiers serving in Virginia and eastern North Carolina, 1861-1863. Postwar items include correspondence of students at the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia, and in medical training at the Baltimore Infirmary, 1867-1870. Also included are financial and legal materials, 1827-1906, and other items, among them two ciphering books, clippings, and a copy of a 1970s inventory of the papers that contains genealogical information about some of the correspondents in the papers and item-level description of selected materials. |
| Creator | Speight, John Francis, 1804-1860. |
| 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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Biographical Information
John Francis Speight was a Methodist clergyman, president of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, trustee of Jamestown Female College, and farmer of Edgecombe County, N.C. During the 1830s, Speight was chiefly in Edgecombe, Granville, Guilford, Orange, and Halifax counties. After his marriage in 1840, to Emma Lewis, lived in the Tarboro and Battleboro neighborhood (Mount Prospect) in Edgecombe County when he was not travelling.
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Scope and Content
The collection includes family and professional correspondence, primarily 1822-1894, and bills, receipts, and other financial materials of the Reverend John Francis Speight, his wife Emma Lewis Speight, and their descendants, relatives, and Lewis family connections. Materials prior to 1893 include papers of Emma Lewis Speight's father Exum Lewis II. John Francis Speight travelled extensively in central and eastern North Carolina, and his correspondence, 1832-1860, with his family and with fellow itinerant ministers reflects a variety of church affairs. Emma Lewis Speight's extensive correspondence includes letters exchanged with her numerous relations, particularly her sisters and brothers, in Edgecombe County, N.C., and Halifax County, N.C., and other places in North Carolina, and in Alabama, Mississippi, and Iowa. This correspondence relates to family events, trips, cotton planting, schooling, and civilian conditions during the Civil War. There are also letters from Confederate soldiers serving in Virginia and eastern North Carolina, 1861-1863. Postwar items include the correspondence of students at the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia, and in medical training at the Baltimore Infirmary, 1867-1870. Also included are financial and legal materials, 1827-1906, and other items, among them two ciphering books, clippings, and a copy of a 1970s inventory of the papers that contains genealogical information about some of the correspondents in the papers and item-level description of selected materials.
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. Correspondence, 1795-1906 and undated.
Arrangement: chronological.
Family and professional correspondence of John Francis Speight. Most of the letters are family correspondence, letters addressed mainly to Emma Lewis Speight of Edgecombe County, N.C., daughter of Exum Lewis II and Ann Harrison Lewis. The letters to Emma were written by some of her brothers, sisters, and in-laws, and, in later years, by her three sons, John Francis Speight, Jr., Richard Harrison Speight, and Exum Lewis Seth Speight, and by her nieces and nephews. Later still, they were written by her grandchildren, grandnieces, and grandnephews. There is also correspondence among these relatives with each other, and some letters received by them from friends. Early items are papers of Emma's father, Exum Lewis II, that were interfiled up to about 1839. The correspondence between Emma and her husband is dated mainly 1848-1860.
Also included are the letters and correspondence of John Francis Speight with other itinerant preachers, pastors, and officers of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church. This correspondence, 1832-1860, contains considerable discussion of church affairs and the state of religion in central and eastern North Carolina; issues before the meetings and from the General Conference; personal and family news among the clergymen; and local, social, and personal news from the various communities in which each pastor served. Speight's most frequent correspondents were W. H. Wills and Samuel J. Harris. Among the many other correspondents are W. E. Bellamy, Joshua W. Swift, Alexander Albright, and J. J. Judge.
In addition to the family and professional correspondence, there are some scattered business and other papers of John Francis Speight and Emma Speight, including letters about financial and property matters. There are also some papers of the Powell family, which came to the collection through Margaret Ann Powell Speight, the first wife of Richard Harrison Speight, as well as occasional Foreman family items, which came in through Emma's brother, R. H. Lewis.
Most of the letters were written in eastern and central North Carolina, but there are also letters also from Iowa, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee; from travellers in Baltimore, Md., and New York, N.Y.; from young people at schools and colleges; and from Confederate soldiers in the field in North Carolina and Virginia.
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Series 2. Financial and Legal Papers, 1827-1906 and undated.
Arrangement: chronological.
Bills, receipts, several deeds, and some other business letters of John Francis Speight and Emma Lewis Speight.
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Series 3. Other Papers, 1817-1894 and undated.
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Subseries 3.1. Volumes, 1817, 1837.
Arrangement: chronological.
Slight manuscript volumes including parts of two ciphering books, one apparently of John Wesley Lewis, 1817, and one of Exum Lewis. John Francis Speight's scrapbook, April 1837, contains written sermon texts and ideas.
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Subseries 3.2. Newspapers and Advertisements, 1824, 1870, and undated.
Arrangement: chronological.
Two newspapers: Washington Gazette of Washington D.C., 16 April 1824 and Appleton's Journal of New York, 17 May 1870, and miscellaneous advertisements from North Carolina and other southern states primarily relating to business and medical supplies.
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Subseries 3.3. Miscellaneous Material, 1870s-1890s and undated.
Copy of inventory of the John Francis Speight papers that was produced in the 1970s. This inventory contains genealogical information about some of the correspondents in the papers, including a death notice for Speight from Our Church Record (volume 4, number 45, 29 September 1898); it also contains item-level description of selected materials.
Other items include a poem; a memorial broadside upon the death of Clio Lewis Speight, 16 March 1889; a University of North Carolina commencement invitation, June 1878; newspaper clippings; and the University of North Carolina Executive Committee of the Board's "Statement of Facts About the University" pamphlet, [1894?].
Processed by: Staff, 1991
Encoded by: Peter Hymas, November 2004
Funding from the State Library of North Carolina supported the encoding of this finding aid.
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