Library Guides: SCL HIST 111: American History to 1865 Primary Source Research Assignment: Digital Collections

Digital Collection Overview

The curated list of collections presented on this page is not comprehensive. Additional materials are available on the Digital Collections website. The selections below highlight collections that align with key themes relevant to your course timeline. If you wish to explore and incorporate collections outside the specified period, you are encouraged to consult with your professor.

Black History

Abby D. Munro Papers
This collection includes letters from Munro’s purchase of a house which served as the Mt. Pleasant Home for Destitute Children, as well as legal documents from parents and guardians who signed care of impoverished African American children over to the home, financial documents, photographs, and an extensive run of the Laing School Visitor newsletter.
Bonds Conway Papers, 1763-1907
Papers of Bonds Conway (1763-1843), a free African-American resident of Camden (Kershaw County, S.C.). This collection of family letters, land papers, and other items documents several generations of a free family of color from the 18th through the 20th centuries in South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, east Texas, and elsewhere. Topics discussed include social relations during antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras through the early 20th century.

Plantation Life

Keziah Brevard Journal, 1860-1861
Records daily activities, 22 July 1860 – 13 Apr. 1861, of a widowed plantation mistress, including the management of slaves; preparation and preservation of food; menus offered to guests; winery procedures; and the distribution of supplies to the slaves at her Sand Hills and Cabin Branch plantations. Volume also contains Brevard’s personal reflections on slavery and secession; will and appraisal of her estate; notes on the summer resort of Adams Hill; and genealogical information on the Adams, Goodwyn, Boykin, Hopkins and related families.
Bratton Family Papers, 1764-1983
This collection of correspondence, financial records, and land records, spanning from the late Colonial Era through the twentieth century documents the lives of members of the Bratton Family from York County, South Carolina and the enslaved persons that labored on their estate. The collection centers on the family of John Simpson Bratton and his wife Harriet Rainey and their children. Though John S. Bratton was trained as a physician, the bulk of the papers center on the Brattons’ considerable planting and mercantile interests, extensive land holdings, individuals that they enslaved, and participation in the religious and educational affairs of the community.

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Digitization of these papers was made possible by a grant from the Culture and Heritage Commission of York County.
Cox and Chesnut Family Papers, 1792-1858
This collection of papers of the Cox and Chesnut families discusses political, economic, and social aspects of life in the United States during the Early National and antebellum periods. Many of the letters were written between 1792 and 1815 to Mary Cox Chesnut (1775-1864) of Camden, South Carolina, by her mother, Esther Bowes Cox (1740-1814) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This Mary Chesnut was the wife of James Chesnut (1773-1866), owner of Mulberry Plantation, near Camden, in present-day Kershaw County, South Carolina, and the mother-in-law of famed Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823-1886).

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The letters shed light upon life in Camden and contain descriptions of medical and healthcare practices as well as child rearing and courtship mores of the times.
Marx E. Cohen Plantation Records, 1840-1868
Owner of Clear Springs Plantation, or Tipse Boo in St. Andrew’s Parish, Charleston, SC.

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Plantation journal, 1840-1861, contains entries recording details of various forms of plantation labor in addition to the production of bricks, planting and harvesting of such crops as corn, potatoes, and peas, and felling of timber. Narrative entries also record weather observations, distribution of food to plantation slaves, and the occurrence of an earthquake, 19 Jan. 1860. It also includes inventories for tools and household articles, list of plantation livestock (cattle, sheep, poultry, and hogs) which Cohen also marketed, and three-page list of birth and death dates for plantation slaves.

Daybook, 1840-1864, includes account entries for goods sold and outstanding debts plus list of stocks and bonds owned by Cohen, 1853-1858. Cash crops included flint corn and peas, but records indicate that much of Cohen’s income was derived from the sale of plantation-made bricks and cords of wood, the most common varieties of which were oak and pine.

Plantation journal, 1861-1868, contains records of plantation slaves, and narrative entries regarding the daily activities of plantation life, including planting and harvesting of crops, timber cutting, and sale of goods. Also included are sporadic, but general, references to the Civil War.

War & Conflict

South Carolina and the Civil War
Poised for the sesquicentennial remembrance of the Civil War, South Carolina and the Civil War brings together eyewitness views and accounts of this period of American history, selected from the rich holdings of University of South Carolina Libraries. Books, diaries, sheet music, maps, letters, photographs and illustrations all provide glimpses of everyday life during exceptional times. This collection provides students and other researchers with primary sources on the Confederate and Union soldiers, women, African Americans, and others who lived in camps and on battlefields, in urban and rural areas, at the home front and on both sides of the blockade during our bloodiest conflict.

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As we continue to add to this collection, we will include additional items documenting antebellum sectional tensions, the coming of secession, the progress of the Civil War, and the impact of Reconstruction in South Carolina and the United States. Materials in this collection appear courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library and the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Glenn Drayton Journal, 1814-1864
Glenn Drayton’s journal is a bound volume consisting of Drayton’s rules of conduct expected of a U.S. sailor, 1814; and records, 1814-1864, of Rusticello plantation, Pendleton District, S.C., continued after Drayton’s death. Drayton’s entries consist of hand-written guide, 1814, showing the hold stocked with barrels, and dimensions of the ship; and an original water color, presumably executed by Drayton, entitled, “America Must Have a Navy,”. After Drayton’s death, volume served as a plantation account book in upstate, S.C.; entries include medicinal recipes and treatments; list of slave illnesses and vaccinations, 1845-1861; and a record documenting births, baptisms, and deaths, 1814-1864, among the African American slaves of Rusticello plantation in Pendleton District [a region later divided into Pickens County and Oconee County].
Thomas Jones Davies Bible Records,1830-1865
The Bible and its inserts, owned by Thomas Jones Davies, contain vital statistics of enslaved African Americans living on Davies’ plantations located throughout Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The plantations mentioned in the records include: Malvern and Gardner’s Swamp, of Beech Island, SC; Swamp Place, near Hamburg, SC; Cherry Hill and Waldburg of Burke County, GA; and Edgefield and Barnwell of Bolivar County, MS. The vital statistics of the enslaved African Americans span from 1830 to 1865, and consist of 82 births, 36 deaths and 11 marriages.

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According to outside sources, Thomas Jones Davies was born at “Summer Hill,” a property in South Carolina across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. He served as a staff officer in the Confederate States Army and helped develop the kaolin mining industry in Aiken County after the Civil War. Davies was buried in the Hammond family cemetery in Beech Island near his brother-in-law, James Henry Hammond.