NEAL FAMILY PAPERS, #4370, 1816-1916
Correspondence, legal and financial materials, and miscellaneous papers documenting the
lives of members of the Neal family, planters, businessmen, and farmers in Franklin County,
North Carolina; Fayette and Henderson Counties, Tennessee; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Hines County,
Mississippi; Waxahachie, Texas; and other areas. The majority of the antebellum materials are
letters describing life in the "West"--Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Topics covered
include the treatment of slaves; slave courtship, marriage, and divorce; and a slave uprising
in Mississippi (1835). The collection also contains messages sent
home to North Carolina from slaves gone West with their masters (1834). Postbellum materials
from Texas mention an African- American religious revival, African-American sharecroppers, an
African-American pyromaniac, and the existence of racial antipathy of Native Americans for
African Americans (1889).