Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Part 3
This module represents the third installment of ProQuest’s digitization of its important collection of Records of Southern Plantations. Part 3 consists of collections selected from the holdings of the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These collections represent rice, cotton, and sugar plantations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. Major collections include Cameron Family Papers, and Pettigrew Family Papers. The Cameron Family Papers chart the rise of a plantation family beginning in 1770, when the family ran a country store along an Indian trail in central North Carolina. The Cameron Family Papers document plantation management by women during the men's absences. The Pettigrew Family Papers recount the history of an influential coastal North Carolina family of planters, ministers, intellectuals, military officers, and politicians. The candor of the Pettigrew letters on slavery has been of value to historians for many years. Part 3 also includes several collections of cotton factors' records, notably the records of Maunsell White from Louisiana, and the Gordon family from Savannah, Georgia. As the financial fulcrum of the cotton trade, the factor served as the planters' banker, supplier and sales agent. Records from Mississippi plantations include a number of diaries documenting daily life. Other topics covered in Part 3 are the lives of the enslaved people, Southern politics, and the settlement of the Southern frontier in Arkansas and Mississippi.