Rufus Ward Collection

Personal and business correspondence, accounts, receipts, deeds, slave records, tax receipts, military orders, genealogical material and other papers of the James Sykes family of Columbus, Mississippi. Includes letters from cotton brokers in West Point, Mississippi, Mobile, Alabama, St. Louis, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana; letters from Alleghany Springs and Blue Ridge Springs, Virginia, and White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; letters from Wildie and Ida Sykes at Patapsco Female Institute, Ellicott City, Maryland, and from James W. Sykes, Jr. at Belleview High School, Bedford County, Virginia, and Poughkeepsie Business Institute, New York. Other material relates to Columbus, Mississippi, schools and Columbus Methodist Church. Persons represented include James Sykes (1810-1885), his wife Martha Lanier Sykes (1815-1881), her mother Elizabeth Lanier, his brother William Sykes of Winona, Mississippi, and his grandchildren, Ida (Sykes) Billups (1858-1891) and her husband Thomas Carleton Billups (1839-1898), Wildie (Sykes) Billups and her husband Joseph Saunders Billups, and James W. Sykes, Jr. Additions include correspondence, estate records, farm record ledgers, receipts, photographs, newspapers and other materials.