Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Alexander Elliot Papers #4596, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Purchased from Doug Mattox in December 1991, June 1993 (Acc. 93085), November 1997 (Acc. 97156), and February 2000 (Acc. 98587). Received as gift from Doug Mattox in February 2001 (Acc. 99146).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom, 1991 with subsequent additions

Encoded by: Roslyn Holdzkom, August 2004

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, November 2009

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Agriculture--Mississippi--History--19th century.
• Boylan, Jane, fl. 1840.
• Children--Education--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Columbus (Miss.)--History.
• Commission merchants--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Cumberland County (N.C.)--Commerce--History--19th century.
• Education--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Elliot, Alexander, 1797-1870.
• Families--Mississippi--Social life and customs.
• Families--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Fayetteville (N.C.)--Commerce--History--19th century.
• Fayetteville (N.C.)--History.
• Fayetteville (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Lowndes County (Miss.)--History.
• Lumber trade--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Lumber--Transportation--History--19th century.
• Migration, Internal--Southern States--History--19th century.
• Slave bills of sale--North Carolina.
• Slave insurrections--Southern States.
• Slavery--North Carolina.
• Teachers--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Students--History.
• Whitfield, William Wilkshire, fl. 1840.
• Wilmington (N.C.)--Commerce--History--19th century.

Alexander Elliot, lumberman of Fayetteville, Cumberland County, N.C., who also served as a colonel in the militia, was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons, 1824-1825, and the North Carolina Senate, 1826.

The collection is chiefly letters documenting lumberman and North Carolina legislator Alexander Elliot's lumbering business. Many items are from agents in Wilmington, N.C., who handled the timber that Elliot rafted to them via the Cape Fear River. These letters typically include financial statements relating to the shipment and sale of Elliot's lumber. There are also many bills and receipts, some relating to buying and selling slaves. Also included are family letters. Some of these letters are from Elliot's sister, Jane Boylan, who lived in Raleigh, N.C., and wrote in the early 1840s chiefly about family matters. Others are from William Wilkshire Whitfield, Elliot's nephew, who, in the mid-1840s, wrote to his uncle from Chapel Hill, N.C., where he was a student at the University of North Carolina. Other family letters, written in the mid- to late-1840s, are from family members who had moved to Columbus, Lowndes County, Miss., to farm. These letters mostly discuss family and agricultural matters, but also include mention of other topics, such as the possibility of slave insurrections in Mississippi and North Carolina. In 1864 and 1865, there are letters to Elliot from a teacher he had hired to provide an education for his children at home during the Civil War. The volume of materials drops off after the 1860s.