Manuscript Resources on Plantation Society and Economy
This guide describes manuscript collections documenting plantation society and economy in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections (LLMVC) at LSU. The plantation records and personal papers of planters, factors, merchants, and others whose livelihood came from plantations provide a wealth of documentation supporting research in plantation economy, slavery, and the social history of Southern landholding elites.
The collections described below touch upon all facets of plantation life. They include the papers of tutors, preachers, lawyers, and doctors who provided services to planters. They include the letters of Northerners who visited plantations in the antebellum period and wrote home about them, and those of Union soldiers who marched past plantations and sometimes plundered them. While the majority of collections are from the prewar years, there are substantial holdings on postbellum plantations as well. The sugar and cotton plantation records in LLMVC are among its most noteworthy and famed collections, and among the earliest collections that LSU acquired.
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Jones, George Noble. Bill in Equity, circa 1840-1876. 1 item. Location: MISC: J. George Noble Jones was born in 1811 to Noble Wimberly Jones and Sarah Fenwick Jones, and was the grandson of Noble Jones, founder of Wormsloe Plantation near Savannah, Georgia, and was himself the owner of several plantations. This is a copy of a bill in equity, undated, for George Noble Jones and Mary N. Jones vs. Mary Nuttall and Hector W. Braden. The bill concerns stocks, slaves, and land from a Florida plantation owned by Mary Nuttall Jones, widow of William B. Nuttall, who remarried to George Noble Jones on May 18, 1840. Mss. 822. Referenced in Guides: Plantations
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Jones, James M. Plantation journals, 1854-1888 (bulk: 1855-1880). 6 items, 2 manuscript volumes, 1 microfilm reel. Location: VAULT:11, MSS.MF:J. James M. Jones was a cotton planter of Poplar Ridge Plantation, Rodney, Jefferson County Miss. Plantation journals (volume 1: 1854-1861, 1876-1880) and (volume 2: 1861-1866) record the weather, work done by his hands on the cotton, corn, pea, and fruit crops, the dates of the first cotton bloom for the year, and the amount of cotton picked. Farmers almanacs for 1876-1878 and 1880, as well as accounts with merchants, have been sewn into volume one. In addition to plantation work, volume two contains a few notations of Union soldiers in the area and the activities of freedmen (1864), as well as mentions of Jones's furloughs from the 4th Mississippi Cavalry. For further information, see online catalog. Mss. 4824. |
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Jones, John P. Papers, 1851-1859. 3 items. Location: MISC:J, OS:J. Papers contain a land lease agreement between the school commission of Franklin County, Mississippi and John P. Jones and a land grant certificate issued to Jones for purchasing land in Washington, Mississippi. Certificate is signed by President James Buchanan. There is also an estate conveyance document pertaining to Adaline Dillon and her father Clarkson Dillon. Document transfers two slaves, Angeline and Isaah [sic], to Adaline and is signed by other Dillon family members. Mss. 5353. |
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Jules A. Dornier and Family Papers, 1917-1965. 0.3 linear ft. Location: 50:15, OS:D. Farm and sugar planting family near Convent, Saint James Parish, Louisiana. Correspondence and ephemeral related to the family's farm business including World War II prisoner of war labor contracts. The collection also contains letters from former POW laborers and records showing Lillian Dornier's involvement in the Cooperative for American Remittance to Europe (CARE, Inc.) program.. Mss. 3468. |
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Keary, Patrick F. Letters, 1848-1855. 19 items. Location: Misc. Planter of Ben Lomand Plantation, Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Letters to Wylie and Egana and Juan Y. de Egana, brokers in New Orleans, concerning business and plantation matters on Keary's cotton plantation, Ben Lomand, and his sugar plantation Catalpa Grove, on Bayou Boeuf, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. For further information, see online catalog. Mss. 1053. |