Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

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 Shotwell Family Papers, #663, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Mrs. F. A. Shotwell of Rogersville, Tenn., prior to 1940 and November 1943.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1aa.

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: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2009

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

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.

• Clergy--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Ku Klux Klan (19th cent.)
• North Carolina--History--1865-
• Presbyterian Church--Clergy--Southern States--19th century.
• Presbyterian Church--Southern States--Sermons--History--19th century.
• Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--North Carolina.
• Sermons--History--19th century.
• Shotwell, Nathan, 1806-1890.
• Shotwell, Randolph Abbott, 1844-1885.
• Vance, Zebulon Baird, 1830-1894.
• Worth, Jonathan, 1802-1869.

Nathan Shotwell was a Presbyterian minister who held pulpits in antebellum Virginia and North Carolina and in Tennessee after the Civil War. His son was Randolph Abbott Shotwell.

Randolph Abbott Shotwell (1844-1885) was a Confederate officer, North Carolina editor, and politician prominent on the conservative side of Reconstruction. After the Civil War he became a member of the Ku Klux Klan and in 1871 was imprisoned in connection with Klan activities. He was subsequently pardoned by Ulysses S. Grant and returned to politics.

The collection includes personal correspondence, sermons, and notes of the Reverend Nathan Shotwell and correspondence and scrapbooks of his son, Randolph Abbott Shotwell. More than half the collection comprises manuscript sermons and sermon notes by Nathan Shotwell. Other papers include Nathan Shotwell's correspondence about church matters and with his relatives in Washington County, Pa., and in New Jersey. Randolph Abbott Shotwell's correspondence includes letters from Jonathan Worth, Zebulon Baird Vance, and others discussing Reconstruction politics in North Carolina and Shotwell's arrest in 1871 for Ku Klux Klan activities. An undated letter to Shotwell from an unidentified correspondent details Ku Klux Klan activity in Gaston County, N.C.