Archibald Davis Alston Papers - 1804-1893
Archibald Davis Alston (b. 1817, son of Thomas Nicholas Faulcon Alston and Elizabeth Crawford Davis Alston), lawyer and planter of Halifax County, N.C. Deeds, wills, gold mining accounts, tobacco sales records, notes, bills, receipts, and family correspondence of Sarah M. Alston (fl. 1840s) of Halifax County, N.C.; her son, A. D. Alston and his wife; their son, A. D. Alston, Jr. (fl. 1870s), of Warrenton and Louisburg, N.C.; and of Elizabeth Crawford Davis Alston (fl. 1834-1846). Family letters, 1843-1859, are from Ariella Alston Hawkins (fl. 1843-1859) and her family in Matagorda County, Tex., and from Edgar M. Alston (d. 1848) in Galveston, Tex. There are no Civil War letters. Business correspondence, 1874-1882, of A. D. Alston, Jr., concerns mining properties. Includes materials for Joseph John Alston and Willis Alston.

Robert Ruffin Barrow Papers: 1811-1858
Robert Ruffin Barrow (1798-1875) was a sugar planter and canal operator in Terrebonne Parish, La. Barrow was the son of Bartholomew Barrow (d. 1852), a merchant of Fishing Creek, Halifax County, N.C., and later a planter in West Feliciana Parish, La., where he settled on his estate, Afton Villa, in 1820. Robert Ruffin Barrow's mother was Ascension Slatter Barrow. The younger Barrow owned six Terrebonne Parish plantations, including Residence, Myrtle Grove, and Caillou Grove, as well as plantations in Lafourche, Assumption, and Ascension parishes and in Texas. Daybook (microfilm), 1811-1914, of Bartholomew Barrow in Fishing Creek, N.C., and journal, 1857-1858, for Robert Ruffin Barrow's Residence Plantation in Terrebonne Parish, La. The daybook includes accounts with Fishing Creek residents, including several blacks. The plantation journal, kept by Residence manager Ephraim A. Knowlton and several overseers, including Robert P. Ford, George Bucknall, N.B. Holland, and Charles Lull, contains slave Records, details of sugar production, records of daily operations, and reports of conflicts between slaves and overseers and between Barrow and his overseers, including reports of fugitive slaves. Slave records include slave lists, birth and death Records, and notes on illnesses, tasks assigned, and supplies distributed.

 

Branch Family Papers: 1788-1919
Prominent members of the Branch family included John Branch (1782-1863), governor of North Carolina, U.S. representative and senator, secretary of the Navy, governor of the Florida Territory, and a planter in North Carolina and Florida; his son, William Henry Branch (1823-1910), cotton planter in Florida and merchant and farmer in Georgia; and his grandson, William Horton Branch (1852-1920), also a merchant and farmer in Georgia. The collection includes scattered political papers of John Branch, including some relating to his resignation from Andrew Jackson's cabinet as a result of the Peggy Eaton affair; journals and other documentation of Wood Lawn and Live Oak, John Branch's plantations, presumabley in Leon County, Fla.; and personal and business papers of William Henry Branch, William Horton Branch, and members of their families (especially the women), relating chiefly to life in Baker, Colquitt, and Mitchell counties, Ga., including social activities, small mercantile businesses, education, farming, and local politics.

Edward Conigland Papers: 1838-1921
Edward Conigland (1819-1877) was an Irish immigrant, lawyer, member of the North Carolina constitutional convention of 1865, and counsel for Governor William W. Holden at his impeachment, 1871. The collection contains, in part, microfilm versions and photocopies of primarily letters concerning politics, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and domestic life. They are from other lawyers, Roman Catholic churchman, and editors, but are mainly Conigland and Ezell family letters from Halifax county and Northampton county and Raleigh, N.C. Also included is the diary, 1861-1862, of Conigland's second wife, Mary Wyatt (Ezell) Conigland; speeches; clippings; and a biography of Conigland, literary writings, and reminiscences, 1899, by his daughter, Frances (Conigland) Farinholt.

William Richardson Davie Papers: 1758-1819
Davie (1756-1820) was a lawyer, state legislator, Revolutionary officer, member of the United States Constitutional Convention, Federalist governor of North Carolina, and peace commissioner to France, and was influential in the founding of the University of North Carolina. He moved from Halifax County, N.C., to Lancaster District, S.C., in 1805. These papers include letters to, from, and about Davie and his family. Two long narratives pertain to Davie's Revolutionary War experiences as a cavalry officer in North and South Carolina and as commissary general to Nathanael Greene. Other papers, of scattered dates, relate to Davie's varied activities and to his family and the related Crockett family, with only a few items later than 1805. Also present is a copy of a report of William Richardson, Presbyterian minister, on his mission to the Cherokee Indians, 1758. Collection is, in part, photostatic and typed transcript copies.

See Also:

Biography and portrait of Davie

William Eaton Papers: 1725-1893
William Eaton (1785-1862) was a planter of Halifax and Warren counties, N.C. The collection includes deeds, bill, receipts, letters, and other papers pertaining to the Eaton and Bell families of Warren County, N.C. Included are colonial land grants, deeds, indentures, and receipts; accounts, 1850-1857, of William Eaton; letters, 1853, to William Eaton's daughter, Ella Rives Eaton Bell, from John McGill, Roman Catholic Bishop of Richmond, Va., written while he was in Paris, France, describing the wedding of Napoleon III and referring to Levi Silliman Ives (1797-1867); letters, 1853-1856, to Ella Rives Eaton Bell from Teresa and Beatrice Orsini of Rome, Italy; legal papers, 1870-1876, of the Eaton and Bell families, including the wills of William Eaton and his wife, Martha P. Eaton; and business papers, 1880-1893, of Peter Hansborough Bell (1812-1898) and Ella Rives Eaton Bell, living in Littleton, N.C. Peter Hansborough Bell, a native Virginian, had been in Texas during its war for independence and the Mexican War. He was governor of Texas from 1849 to 1853 and served in Congress from 1853 to 1857.

Halifax County (N.C.) Miscellaneous Account Books: 1845-1865.
The collection includes ledgers of merchants in Enfield, N.C.: a ledger (136 pages), 1845-1861, of Thomas C. Hunter and William Hunter, for provisions sold, cotton received and sold, and dry goods bought wholesale and sold; a ledger (259 pages), 1859-1865, of Beavans, Vick, and Co., containing accounts for merchandise sold and an index of purchasers; and a daybook (590 pages), also of Beavans, Vick, and Co., 1860-1862.

Charles Wilson Harris Papers: 1765-1924
Charles Wilson Harris (1771-1804), originally from Concord, N.C., was a lawyer and educator of Halifax and Warren counties, N.C., and one of the first professors at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C. Papers include letters from Charles Wilson Harris to his uncle, Charles Harris, a physician, and to his brother, Robert Harris, a student at the University of North Carolina and later a merchant in Salisbury, N.C. Topics include business, foreign affairs, state politics, the University of North Carolina, and the legal and medical professions, and advising his brother on choosing a career. Additions include a 1916 publication reproducing some of Harris's letters; a history of the Poplar Tent Church, a Presbyterian church in Cabarrus County, N.C., in which the Harris family was active; and deeds, correspondence, genealogical information, and other items relating to Charles Wilson Harris and the Harris and related families.

Herring Family Papers: 1882-1900
The Herring family of Scotland Neck, Halifax County, N.C., included John Robert Herring, his wife, and their children. The collection includes correspondence of John Herring and his family, especially his daughter Mattie Herring Josey; family financial and legal papers; school reports; and obituaries. The correspondence deals largely with routine family matters, but includes letters from a student at Wake Forest College in the 1890s and letters, 1889, reflecting on life in the North Carolina Insane Asylum in Raleigh, N.C., from a patient there.

Stuart Hall Hill Papers:1726-1936
Genealogical correspondence, 1921-1936, of Stuart Hall Hill (1876-1948), University of North Carolina alumnus, of Halifax County, N.C., and Brooklyn, N.Y., and his collection of original papers, 1726-1916, relating to members of the Gooch, Hall, Hill, Long, Williams, and related families of Bertie, Martin, and Halifax counties, N.C. Included are deeds, wills, contracts, letters, and miscellaneous other papers. In the early period there are colonial deeds and the will (manuscript copy, 1820) of Thomas Pollock (1654-1722), early leader of the Albemarle Colony; and a few property papers of Whitmel Hill (1743-1797), member of the Continental Congress. Also included is the political and legal correspondence of Judge Thomas Norfleet Hill (1838-1904) of Halifax County.

(collected by Richard James Hooker, b. 1912)

Sally Long Jarman Papers: 1826-1945
Sally Long Jarman (b. 1887) was a genealogist of Halifax County, N.C. The collection includes genealogical data and ancestral papers gathered by Sally Long Jarman, the bulk of which are typed transcriptions of legal and Episcopal church records pertaining to the Mason, Gray, Long, Amis, and related North Carolina families. Papers of Nathaniel Mason of Summit, N.C., include an order to assemble his militia company to suppress a rumored slave insurrection, 1831. Materials related to Mason's son, Thomas Williams Mason (1839-1921), include his writings while a student at the University of North Carolina in the 1850s, including an essay about his life as a student; four letters he wrote as a Confederate cavalryman on the staff of General Robert Ransom in North Carolina and Virginia,about his military experiences from S. W. Arrington, a soldier in the A.E.F. in England and France, 1918-1919. Among other family papers are a notebook, ca. 1814-1815, kept by Richard A. Jones at Princeton College, and love letters, 1839-1841 and 1859, from Andrew Joyner to his wife, Sarah Jones Burton Joyner, in Weldon, Halifax County, N.C.

 

Robert A. Jones Account Book: 1817-1828
Robert A. Jones was a resident of Halifax County, N.C. The collection includes personal accounts of Jones of Halifax County, N.C.; accounts for his ward, Jones served as guardian for Willie W. Jones, who was possibly his nephew. Willie was the son of Mrs. Mary Montfort Jones, for whom Robert Jones acted as estate administrator after her death in 1825.; and accounts he kept as treasurer for the county poor wardens, 1820-1822.

William W. Kitchin Papers: 1880-1968
William Walton Kitchin (1866-1924) was a landowner, lawyer, United States representative, 1897-1909, and governor of North Carolina, 1909-1913. Personal, political, and professional correspondence concerning Kitchin's legal and political careers and his interests in the Kitchin family farms and property in Halifax County, N.C. Correspondence includes letters from Kitchin's father, William Hodge Buck Kitchin, and his brothers, Sam, Claude, Arrington, and Paul, that provide detailed accounts of the Kitchin family farming enterprises and the financial arrangements among the brothers. There is correspondence between Kitchin and Musette Satterfield at Greensboro Female College, 1890- 1891. Material concerning Kitchin's law practice includes an account book, 1889-1901, and four lettercopy books, 1893-1900. Also included are speeches, miscellaneous genealogical and biographical materials, and photographs. Volumes include account books and lettercopy books, three small diaries containing brief daily entries, February-November 1886, while Kitchin was in Chatfield, Tex.; notebooks containing clippings and notes for speeches; and an indexed volume of excerpts from the Congressional Record.

 

Willie Jones Long Family Papers: 1828-1915
MICROFILM ONLY. Papers of ancestors of Willie Jones Long (b.1892), including letters and papers of various members of the Burton, Joyner, Mason, and Gray families and their connections. The largest part of the collection is the correspondence, 1828-1870, of Sarah Jones Burton Joyner, who married Andrew Joyner of Halifax County, N.C., in 1839. There is little material pertaining to Mrs. Joyner's first husband, North Carolina governor Hutchins Gordon Burton (1774-1836), although letters of Burton's children are intermingled. Notable among these are business papers and letters, 1850s, of Thomas Burke Burton, farming in Halifax County, N.C., and elsewhere, and letters, 1860s, to and from Mary Burke Alston. Also included is correspondence of Mrs. Joyner's sister, Martha Jones Eppes, with her relations, among them members of the Hubard family on their plantation in Buckingham County, Va., 1860-1870. These family lettters concern deaths of friends and relations, crops, labor, post-Civil War poverty, and property matters. Later items are chiefly scattered letters and other personal, legal, and business papers of William Henry Gray and of Thomas Williams Mason (1839-1921), both of Northampton County, N.C.

Moore, Blount, and Cowper Family Papers: 1789-1990
The Moore, Blount, and Cowper families of North Carolina were active chiefly in Wake, Franklin, and Halifax counties. Moore family members included B.F. Moore, an anti-secessionist lawyer and North Carolina attorney general, 1848-1851; his daughter Lucy Catherine Moore Henry Capehart and sons Bartholomew Figures Moore, Van Boddie Moore, and James Moore; and his grandson Bartholomew Figures Moore, who was married to Olivia Blount Cowper Moore. Other Cowper family members included Olivia's paternal grandparents, Pulaski Cowper and Mary Blount Grimes, and maternal great grandparents, Bryan Grimes and Lucy Olivia Blount. The collection consists of correspondence, legal papers, volumes, pictures, family history, family bibles, slavery records and other materials documenting the Moore, Blount, and Cowper families, as well as the Boddie, Coapman, Gatling, Grimes, Keeble, Ruffin, and Williams families of North Carolina.

See Also:
Slavery and the Making of the University - Includes archived copies of letters from B. F. Moore regarding slavery transactions.

North Carolina Land Grants and Deeds:  1711-1861; 1901
The collection includes miscellaneous land grants from the Carolina Proprietors and royal and state governors, legal certificates of alterations in land grants, and deeds from individuals, chiefly in the colonial period and for lands in eastern North Carolina. Counties represented include Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Caswell, Chowan, Craven, Cumberland, Davie, Dobbs (1758-1791), Edgecombe, Greene, Halifax, Johnston, Lincoln, Martin, Mecklenburg, Orange, Perquimans, Rowan, Tyrrell, and Wilkes.

A NURSERY OF PATRIOTISM: THE UNIVERSITY AT WAR, 1861-1945
A Collection of various Students from the University of North Carolina who served in the Civil War including Ruffin Thomson, Wesley Lewis Battle, Junius Cullen Battle, Thomas Whitted, J. T. Morehead, Isaac Erwin Avery, Richard Henry Smith, and Iowa M. Royster.

Person Family Papers: 1728-1907
Person family members included Thomas Person (1733-1800), North Carolina Revolutionary leader, born in Brunswick County, Va., but resident from infancy in Granville County, N.C. He became a surveyor for Lord Granville, and, over the years, he acquired a large estate in North Carolina and Tennessee. He became a justice of the peace in 1756, sheriff in 1762, and was representative in the Assembly in 1764 and frequently thereafter. Thomas Person married Johanna Thomas of Granville County; they had no children. Thomas Person became a surveyor for Lord Granville, and, over the years, he acquired an estate of more than 82,000 acres lying in Granville, Halifax, Warren, Franklin, Orange, Caswell, Guilford, Rockingham, Anson, and Wake counties in North Carolina and in Davidson, Sumner, and Green counties in Tennessee. Thomas Person's brother was William Person Jr. Eliza Person Mitchell, wife of Warrenton, N.C., merchant Peter Mitchell, was probably his granddaughter. The collection includes letters, bills, receipts, deeds, land grants, slave birth records, as well as papers concerning Thomas Person's estate, and many other papers. 

John Raymond Shute Papers: 1765-1951
John Raymond Shute (born 1904) was a Monroe, N.C., businessman, state legislator, and active member of many masonic orders. The collection includes correspondence, 1930-1939, clippings, articles, and other papers of Shute relating to his interest in the history and lore of masonry. The papers include copies of minutes, constitutions, letters, and other papers, 1765-1927, relating to masons in North Carolina; and Shute's correspondence concerning the American edition of Gould's History of Freemasonry, and his own membership in various masonic groups. Masonic organizations represented in the collection include, among others, the Grand Lodge of North Carolina; Royal Arch Grand Chapter; Unanimity Lodge, Edenton, N.C.; Royal White Hart Lodge, Halifax, N.C.; Roanoke Royal Arch Lodge 4; Eagle Lodge, Hillsboro, N.C.; St. John's Lodge, New Bern, N.C.; Concord Lodge 5, Tarboro, N.C.; Kilwinning Lodge, Wadesboro, N.C.; and Warren County Lodge.

Solomon Slatter Papers: 1798-1852
The collection includes scattered bills, receipts, and accounts for purchases, schooling, blacksmith work, and other business of Solomon Slatter (1798-1852) Scotland Neck, Halifax County, N.C.; and one family letter from Slatter, 1848.

Peter Evans Smith Papers: 1738-1944
Peter Evans Smith (1829-1905) of Halifax County, N.C., civil and mechanical engineer, inventor, surveyor, cotton planter, and railroad employee. The collection includes personal and business correspondence, business Papers, and various other records of Smith and his relatives. Some items concern Smith's work on the Confederate ironclad Albemarle; navigation on the Roanoke River; planting and lumbering before, during, and after the Civil
War; relations with African Americans as slaves, tenant farmers, and laborers; his work with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad; his interests in Vine Hill Academy and the Episcopal Church in Scotland Neck, N.C.; and many other matters. There is also material relating to Smith's daughter Lena, a schoolteacher who established the Cottage Home School in Scotland Neck after her deafness caused her to lose her teaching job. The collection also includes scrapbooks and commonplace books, photographs, clippings, bills, receipts, genealogical notes, and historical sketches, mostly of Civil War incidents and including regimental histories of the 1st and 3rd North Carolina Cavalry, by Smith and others. Also of note is a series of letters written during World War II from a woman missionary in China.

 

Stuart Hall Smith Collection: 1862-1976
Correspondence, notes, writings, clipppings, charts, and other items collected by Archibald Stuart Hall Smith (b. 1876), relating to genealogical studies and to historic sites in and around Halifax County, N.C. The genealogical material centers on the Smith family of North Carolina and other closely allied families and is chiefly the work of Claiborne Smith, Jr. The historical material includes files on Old Trinity Church (Episcopal) in Scotland Neck, Halifax County, and other sites in Scotland Neck. Also included is an autograph album signed by students and professors at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the 1860s.

William Ruffin Smith Papers: 1770- 1959
William Ruffin Smith (1803-1872) lived in Halifax County, N.C. His father was William Ruffin Smith (1779-1846); his father-in-law, Peter Evans (1781-1852); and his granddaughter, Lena Smith. The collection is chiefly business papers pertaining to debts and estates, especially the estate of Charles Shields, which included a plantation in Lowndes County, Miss., that was managed by William Ruffin Smith through an overseer. Account books and Estate materials deal with miscellaneous accounts of members of the Smith, Spruill and other families with which the Ruffins were connected. There are also materials relating to William Ruffin Smith's business affairs, including a list of birthdates of his slaves from 1775 to 1849, and the accounts of Vine Hill Academy, for which Smith served as treasurer; also included are newspaper articles written by Lena Smith about Halifax County and family history; items about the construction and destruction of the Confederate ironclad ship Albemarle; an 1868 marriage certificate for two freedmen; and two brief essays by Claiborne Smith (1893- ), one about freedmen and the other about his grandmother, Adelaide Maria Evans Smith (1819-1909), who lived in Halifax County.

John Francis Speight Papers: 1795-1906
John Francis Speight (1804-1860) 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 correspondence, 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. 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.

Annie Blackwell Thorne Papers: 1769-1965
Papers collected or created by Annie Blackwell Thorne (born 1878) include correspondence, legal and financial materials, genealogical papers, and other items of the Alston, Harriss, Kearny, Thorne, Williams and related families, chiefly of Warren and Halifax counties, N.C; multi-generational collection includes documentation of the buying and selling of slaves, slave books detailing slave births and marriages of the slaves of William K. Kearney. Also included is Thorne family material largely from Saint Martin Parish, La. Correspondence pertains chiefly to personal matters, but also deals with business affairs. Included are two letters, 1831, from Thomas Whitmell Harriss (1810-1890) ; a few letters relating to the Civil War in Virginia and Louisiana; and letters, 1890s, to Annie's sister, Tempe Williams Thorne (born 1874), from family members and friends. Financial items include slave bills of sale and materials concerning tobacco sales in the 1850s. Legal materials include items, 1866-1869, relating to cases handled by John Davis Thorne (1834-1900), justice of the peace in St. Martin Parish, La.

Absalom Benton Whitaker Papers: 1814-1845
Absalom Benton Whitaker (1787-1845) was a cotton planter with plantations in Halifax County, N.C., and Leon County, Fla. The collection includescattered letters, receipts, and accounts relating to Whitaker's cotton plantations near Enfield, Halifax County, N.C., and Miccosukee, Leon County, Fla. Also included are items relating to the estate of John Whitaker (fl. 1800), of which Absalom Benton Whitaker was co-executor with James Whitaker (d. 1829).

Lucy Tunstall Alston Williams Papers:  1827-1979
Lucy Tunstall Alston Williams was the daughter of Jane Elizabeth Crichton (1840-1891) and Philip Guston Alston (1839-1924), a farmer and Confederate Army captain, of Warren County, N.C. She married Archibald Davis Williams, a planter in Franklin County, N.C. The collection includes personal and business correspondence of the Alston, Williams, Crichton, and Tunstall families of Warren, Halifax and Franklin counties, N.C. The bulk of the collection consists of personal correspondence, including Civil War letters. Miscellaneous items include leaflets, church bulletins, concert programs, poetry, cards, and invitations, school records, genealogical records, wills, pamphlets, and autograph albums.