Historical Family Collections and Bible Collections

A listing of Historical Family Collections found in local libraries

Family documents contributed to various institutions, libraries, and universities can be a valuable asset in researching one's ancestors. They can contain many things, including family histories, bibles, plantation records, deeds,  slave records of all kinds, personal letters and other correspondence. North Carolina is fortunate to have many such collections, some of which I am listing below along with the time period covered  and linked to the institution where it is housed with a more complete description by clicking onto the name. As I locate other collections with genealogical material, it will be added to this page.

Robert Burton (1747-1825), Revolutionary War officer, delegate to the Continental Congress, lawyer, and politician, owned a large plantation near Williamsboro in Granville County (now Vance County), N.C., as well as much land in what eventually became Tennessee. The collection includes correspondence; deeds, receipts, ledgers, and other financial and legal materials; and miscellaneous items of Robert Burton and his son, Horace A. Burton. Letters to Robert Burton include a letter, 1775, from Benjamin Hawkins (1754-1816), letters from his father-in-law, John Williams (1731-1799), from Richard Henderson (1735-1785) in Holston, Tenn., and Boonesborough, Ky., about the Transylvania Colony and other matters. Letters to Horace A. Burton include one from Elisha Mitchell (1793-1857) concerning Mitchell's testing of mineral water that Burton had sent him. Many of the legal papers are late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century items relating to land in Kentucky and the Powell River valley in Tennessee. Two ledgers of Robert Burton consist of general accounts, 1777-1785, including a record, 1780, of a sale of a horse to Daniel Boone and tables of depreciation and coinage for North Carolina and Virginia; and accounts of whiskey distilled, 1784-1789.

Burwell family of Warren, Vance, and Granville counties, N.C.,and Mecklenburg County, Va., and the Williams family of Warren County, N.C. Family members included Armistead, Lewis, and Spotswood of Mecklenburg Co.,VA.; personal & business records, slave purchases, runaway slaves, tax records, household & farm records.

Benjamin Mosely Collins was born 18 August 1840, to Mary Ann Cottrell and Michael Collins, at Pleasant Hill, the family's home plantation near Ridgeway, Warren County, N.C. A planter, slave owner & mill owner, the family had interests in Rockingham, Warren & Vance Counties. The collection includes inventories documenting the sale of slaves, real estate, and perishable property from the estate of Michael Collins and some genealogical material relating to the Collins and Arrington families.

Elizabeth Henderson Cotten (1875-1975) worked in the Southern Historical Collection and was secretary of the Friends of the Library of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Papers include correspondence, reports, and clippings concerning restoration or historical projects in North Carolina.  The collection is divided into six series, including: Old North Carolina houses; Tryon Palace (New Bern, N.C.); Nash-Kollock School (Hillsborough, N.C.); St. John's Episcopal Church (Williamsboro, N.C.); Virginia Dare; and the John Paul Jones-Willie Jones tradition.

Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill;covers Hargrove's plantation records including family & slaves in Townsville & Williamsboro, Granville Co., now Vance Co.

Business account books and other records of several persons in Granville and Vance counties, N.C., and the surrounding area, consisting of a ciphering book, 1818; ten volumes of general merchandise accounts, 1829-1835, carpenter's accounts, 1803-1810, and blacksmith and miscellaneous accounts, 1848-1865, of Samuel Duty of Vance County; six volumes, 1887-1900, of scrapbooks on famous men and law notes of John W. Hays, lawyer of Oxford, N.C.; ten volumes, 1887-1918, of school notebooks and essays on health and on social questions of Benjamin K. Hays, Oxford physician and public health officer; and eight volumes, scattered 1835-1874, of miscellaneous accounts for general merchandise, a shoe shop, tobacco sales, estate settlements, blacksmith work, an academy, and other business, all of Oxford or Henderson, N.C.

Letters to William F. Henderson, physician of Williamsboro, N.C., from friends, a patient, and business associates. Two letters are from physicians asking that Henderson practice medicine with them; two others concern leasing slaves from Henderson.

Goodrich Wilson Marrow was a farmer and businessman of Townsville, Vance County, N.C. The collection includes business papers, mainly 1904-1919, relating to the building, operation, and dismantling of the Roanoke River Railroad; a lumber business; the Tobacco Warehouse Company; the Northwestern Telephone and Telegraph company at Townsville; and miscellaneous local enterprises. Manuscript volumes are account books, 1884-1917.

The collection is a volume of very brief entries, mainly November 1878-December 1893, made by John Morgan, a Vance County, N.C., farmer, recording weather, dates, amounts of planting and harvesting, and a few family and neighborhood events.

Alexander Steed (d. 1891) & Elizabeth Lundie Phipps (d. 1902)  family collection of Vance, Nash & Warren Counties. The collection includes personal and family correspondence and other papers of the Steed and Phipps families. Early items include papers concerning Bettie's attendance at Opheleton Seminary in Easton, Pa.; letters to Bettie while teaching at Castalia, Nash County, N.C., from her cousins, Alexander Steed, who was farming in Warren County, N.C., and Erastus ("Raz") T. Allen in Tennessee. Civil War items include an 1863 tax evaluation for land and slaves in Warren County, N.C.

William Wallace White was a planter and storekeeper at Holly Hill plantation in Warren (now Vance) County, N.C. His diaries contain a full daily account of his farming activities, which included the cultivation of tobacco, cotton, grain, corn, vegetables, melons, livestock, etc., and of public life in the area. Topics include Methodist church activities, education, local government and politics, and events of significance.

Family Bible Records Online

Images in the State Library collections can be read online

Crawford C. Currin Family Bible

Burris Family Bible

Hall Family Bible

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