Lenoir Plantation records

The Lenoir Plantation records contain the personal and business records of the extended Lenoir family in Mississippi and Texas. There is a small amount of correspondence with family and friends, including some Civil War letters, along with other personal material. The largest proportion of the collection materials is concerned with the family’s business activities including financial correspondence, accounts and invoices, deeds, legal materials, and other documents pertaining to the land holdings and cotton plantation operations of the Lenoir and Blanchard families in Monroe, Clay and Marion Counties in Mississippi, and Falls County, Texas. These materials document extensively plantation cotton growing in Mississippi and Texas and the Mobile, Alabama, cotton trade from the 1840s into the 1920s. Other materials in this category include land and oil plats and maps, and plans for a gin and cotton house. The collection also contains 19th and 20th century family photographs.

The papers are divided into eight series. The first, Personal, includes letters from Mary Lenoir, James Lenoir and others written during the Civil War; letters to William S. Lenoir, Sr. at Greene Springs School for Boys in Alabama, and; two letters from Methodist Bishop Robert Paine, Superintendent of LaGrange College, Alabama, in support of the graduation and qualifications of William A. Blanchard and William T. Lenoir. There are also genealogical materials, postcards, clippings, items related to Whitman H. Lenoir’s service as a pilot during World War I, school notes from 1833 and a speech honoring the Confederacy, as well as yearbooks from Whitman H. Lenoir’s school in Tennessee and copies of Sterling P. Lenoir’s college yearbook entries. The miscellaneous items include a 1943 ration book for Ruth P. Lenoir.

The second series, Business records, is the largest, comprising the financial correspondence and receipts and invoices documenting the business activities of Absalom Blanchard and his son William A. Blanchard, William T. Lenoir and his wife Mary, and their children. The family being cotton planters, there is extensive documentation on the cotton trade in their correspondence. Folder 68, however, deals with a legal suit in Texas. Folders 23, 24 and 35 contain receipts and invoices related to the Blanchard and Lenoir cotton business. There are also some documents on the enslaved persons owned by the family. Folder 18 contains a receipt for $900 paid to Hope H. Lenoir by Absalom Blanchard for enslaved persons Kizzy (30), Jordan (4) and Dorcas (6 weeks) in 1848. Folder 25 includes receipts for enslaved individuals named Samuel and Philip bought by William A. Blanchard in 1845 and 1847 for $575 and $600 respectively, as well as property tax receipts and a property list which include enslaved persons. Folder 27 contains a bill of sale for an enslaved person named Jordan. Folder 29 contains a fair handbill which has a penciled enslaved persons list on the reverse while Folder 44 also contains a property list featuring enslaved individuals Ned and Peter. Along with receipts and invoices for other goods and services provided to the family, there are also tax receipts, including some from the Civil War period, the bulk of which relate to Monroe County property but also to other counties in Mississippi and Texas. In addition, the series contains some bank books, soil conservation documents from 1936, and miscellany including William S. Lenoir, Sr.’s 1886 visitor’s ticket for the Mobile Cotton Exchange.

Series three, Legal documents, is primarily related to land. These documents include deeds to property in Mississippi and Texas from the 1840s to the 1940s, and they show how the family acquired their plantations and how these were later divided with the passing of the generations. Of particular interest are the land grant to a member of the Chickasaw tribe, Ki-am-ma, in 1840 by President Martin Van Buren and two centesimal or hundredth deeds in the names of William A. Blanchard and William T. Lenoir from 1848 relating to 27 acres of the land sold by Richard W. Anderson in Monroe County which were set aside for public buildings such as churches and schools to be used by the settlers. Folder 79 comprises an abstract of the land inherited by Whitman H. Lenoir drawn up in 1924 which gives a detailed history of the ownership of the properties. The series has a number of plats, one of which shows the purchasers of Richard Anderson’s land including the Blanchard and Lenoir families. In addition there are documents related to two law suits, a holograph copy of the 1773 will of Absalom Blanchard’s father Josiah, in which he bequeaths two enslaved persons, Nancy and Jack, and other property to his wife and son, and correspondence and documents concerning the family’s investments in railroad and mining stocks, and a Confederate States of America bond for $500.

Three documents comprise the fourth series, blueprints, showing plans for cotton gins and a cotton house from around 1900.

Series five is a transcript of the Lenoir Plantation Journal, found in a copy of C. V. Lavoisne et al. A Complete Genealogical, Historical, Chronological and Geographical Atlas (1821). The original volume was returned to the Lenoir family after transcription. It comprises genealogical information, recipes and other notes recorded by family members in the book, including Blanchard enslaved persons lists.

The sixth series, Publications, encompasses a variety of publications and pamphlets. Among them is a broadsheet titled “The Strange Luck of Israel Speed” purporting to be a warning against the activities of an African-American confidence man in Monroe County. It was written by the president of the First National Bank in Aberdeen, Eugene L. Sykes and was published in the Aberdeen Examiner on November 10, 1938. Folder 93 includes religious booklets and a 1918 report on German war practices, while Folder 94 holds a Rand-McNally Indexed Pocket Map and Shippers’ Guide of Mississippi from 1915 and Goodrich Route Book: Ohio and Indiana from 1914. Additionally there are a number of maps, showing the railroads of Louisiana, the railroads of Mexico and mines in Sonora, and a soil survey of Monroe County, all from the early years of the twentieth century. There are oil maps of the southern United States, many being supplements from Oil Weekly magazine.

The seventh series, Photographs, is a collection of photographs and negatives of the extended Lenoir family, their friends and acquaintances, featuring particularly the family of William S. Lenoir, Sr. There are photographs from Ruth Lenoir’s travels, and a group portrait taken at Club de la Union, Santiago, Chile, on August 18, 1937 which includes Joaquín Yrarrázaval Larraín and Harold Biggs. The contents of a cartes de visite album contains images of some extended family members but features mostly unidentified people photographed in Salem, N.C., Columbia, S.C., Waco and Galveston, Tex., and New Orleans, La..

The last series, Artifacts, includes a wooden box which was used to hold documents and an iron bullet mold.