GEORGE HAIRSTON PAPERS, #4477, 1778-1919
Chiefly correspondence and business papers of Hairston, tobacco planter of Pittsylvania
County, Virginia. Letters discuss plantation affairs, including conditions among slaves in
North Carolina (1842-1861); antebellum free blacks in Philadelphia (1847); the well-attended execution of a black man in Virginia for murdering another
black man (1844); the enrollment of black soldiers by Yankee forces (1864); a "Negro tournament" in Stokes County, North Carolina (1876); African-American
voting in Virginia (1884); and accounts of crops produced by freedmen in Virginia or North
Carolina (1866-98). Also included are a slave bill of sale and slave lists (1840, 1844-1865) and information concerning the attempt of Hairston's
step-grandfather, Robert Hairston, to will his lands in Lowndes County, Mississippi, to a
slave child he fathered (1844-1865).
