Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

Retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the John Walker Papers #2300, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

All or part of this collection available on microfilm.

Additional microfilm: All or part of this collection is also 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 J. Henley Walker in 1940. Originals of volumes 3-7 returned to donor in 1943. Family chart received from Mr. and Mrs. J. Henley Walker in 1975.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Jill D. Snider, August 1991

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Conscious Editing Work by: Nancy Kaiser, July 2020. Updated abstract, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content note, and container list.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Includes originals of the first two volumes of the journal, typed transcriptions of the first two and one-half volumes, and microfilm of all seven volumes.

This collection was rehoused under the sponsorship of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1992.

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.

• Camp meetings--Virginia--History--19th century.
• Chatham Hill Plantation (King and Queen County, Va.)
• Cotton growing--Virginia--History--19th century.
• Diaries (Blank-books)
• Enslaved persons insurrections.
• Enslaved persons--Employment--Virginia.
• Estates (Law)--Virginia--History--19th century.
• King and Queen County (Va.)--History--19th century.
• Medicine, Botanic--History--19th century.
• Methodist Church--Virginia--History--19th century.
• Plantation owners--Religious life--Virginia.
• Plantations--Virginia--King and Queen County.
• Silkworms--Virginia--History--19th century.
• Slave records--Virginia--King and Queen County.
• Slavery--United States--History--19th century--Sources.
• Slavery--Virginia.
• Slaves--Virginia--Social conditions.
• Thomson, Samuel, 1769-1843.
• Walker family.
• Walker, John, 1785-1867.
• Wheat--Virginia--History--19th century.

John Walker (1785-1867), cotton and wheat farmer of King and Queen County, Virginia, was born at Locust Grove, the home of his parents, Humphry (1762-1820) and Frances Temple Walker (1760-1824). As a young man, he lived in Nashville, Tennessee, but returned in 1819 to King and Queen County where he went into trade with Baylor Temple at Walkerton Mills. He took up farming in 1824 at his plantation, Chatham Hill, near Clarkston on the Mattaponi River. Walker grew mostly cotton, wheat, oats, and corn, and raised livestock at Chatham Hill, but supplemented these with a variety of vegetables and peach and apple orchards. In 1840, he also began experimenting with growing silkworms.

In 1829, Walker married Margaret Watkins Shepherd, and together they had seven children, five of whom died in early or late childhood. Two, Watson (1834-1900) and Melville (1846-1904), survived.

Walker was a devout Methodist. He first joined the Church in 1818 in Nashville, and joined Shepherd's Chapel upon his return to King and Queen County in 1819. He served for many years as a steward for the Gloucester and Essex circuits and the Richmond District of the Methodist Church.

In addition to his church activities, Walker held several public positions, including overseer of the poor in 1828 and surveyor of the road in 1831 for King and Queen County. Walker also served as executor for the estates of his father and of Joseph Temple. He died in 1867 at Chatham Hill.

The journal of John Walker, a white farmer, is most useful for the study of the enslaved community, plantation finances, and religious life, at Chatham Hill and in and around King and Queen County, Va.

The journal is a particularly rich source for biographical information about the enslaved community, including vital statistics, family relationships, skilled positions held outside the household or fields, and the buying and selling of enslaved people. The range of employments include field workers; house servants; a cooper, Daniel, whom Walker hired out to shops in Richmond; and a doctor, Lewis, of King William City and enslaved by John Steverson, whom Walker hired to treat the people he enslaved in 1833 and 1834. The journal also provides insight, from the enslaver's perspective, into the lived experience of the enslaved through description of activities, relations between enslaved and enslaver, and examples of resistance, including frequent attempts at self-emancipation and stealing of food. Of note are entries for 21 March 1826, reporting that a local doctor's enslaved people had burned down his house; 13 November 1832, noting that one of Reverend Hezekiah McLelland's enslaved people had poisoned the minister to death; and 30 April 1836, claiming that a an enslaved woman, Sillar, had poisoned Walker's son, as well as an enslaved girl. In retaliation for their resistance, Walker often had his enslaved people whipped or sold. Walker also administered punishment to enslaved people for other transgressions. On 2 July 1834, angry at the death of one of his enslaved people from venereal disease, he had several enslaved people whipped on the charge that they had acted as procurers of enslaved women for a local brothel catering to white men. There are also several entries between 1837 and 1839 concerning the treatment of an enslaved boy, William, for scufola, first in the Thomsonian Infirmary in Richmond, later by a Thomsonian doctor, Dr. George K. Hooper of Richmond, and finally by an Elliott Chiles of Chesterfield County.

The journal documents Walker's finances thoroughly, including his income and expenditures for cotton, wheat, and silkworm businesses. Some information, principally notes on suits filed and fees paid, appears on Walker's legal actions as executor of his father's and Joseph Temple's estates.

Religious life is documented in descriptions of camp meetings, church business, and Methodist preachers. Often the movements of preachers on their circuits can be traced from the entries. Walker also provided some insight into the race and gender of converts at camp meetings.

Another topic receiving considerable attention is Samuel Thomson's method of Botanic Family Medicine, which Walker adopted in the 1830s.

Only a few entries appear on the public offices Walker held in King and Queen County or on his family life. Family information is limited to some discussion of disputes between relatives and occasional mentions of his attendance at camp meetings with his wife and children and of household tasks his wife completed.

Originals appear for the first two volumes only. Typed transcriptions appear for the first two and one half volumes. All seven volumes appear on microfilm.

Also included is a family tree that documents the white Walker family of King and Queen County from the mid 1660s through the 1950s.

• M-2300/1-4