In addition to parts 1 and 2, Northwestern University Libraries now have access to parts 3 and 4 of Southern Life and African American History, 1775–1915, Plantation Records.
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. – Publisher
Part 4 focuses on plantations in North Carolina and Virginia while also covering Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. Major series of records in this module document tobacco and cotton plantations in the Tidewater, Coastal Plains, and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. Throughout these collections, the lives of enslaved people and the work performed by them is documented in extensive lists of enslaved people, purchase of and sale agreements for enslaved people, plantation diaries, account books, correspondence, and financial and legal papers. Many of the collections also include records of plantation overseers. One of the major collections in this module is the Papers of the Hairston and Wilson families, related families of tobacco planters and merchants from Southside Virginia and Piedmont North Carolina. The records in this module on Tennessee and Kentucky focus on cotton, tobacco, and mixed farming enterprises, while Alabama records focus on the Mobile area and include records of plantations as well as commission merchants. – Publisher
