Boswell and Stevens Family Papers

Collection

Identifier: MSS-695

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The papers consist primarily of financial documents and correspondence.

Financial documents include land bonds, indenture contracts, tax receipts, account books, and various other business papers, mostly relating to A. J. Boswell’s farming in Shuqualak, Noxubee County, Mississippi.

Correspondence is mostly personal in nature and includes two letters to A. J. Boswell from his mother in Harford, Pennsylvania, in addition to letters to other recipients. There are Civil War letters to Cynthia Jackson Boswell from her husband, A. J. Boswell, as well as her brother, James M. Jackson. There is also a typed transcription of a Civil War letter from Thomas Fletcher Stevens to his future wife, Susan Cynthia Nelson.

Miscellaneous documents include teaching certificates for Mattie Boswell and a book of musical notations inscribed by Samuel D. Jackson, father of Cynthia Jackson Boswell.

A small assortment of artifacts accompany the collection, including a pillbox filled with teeth, two small coin purses, and a metal box.

Dates

1824 - 1964
Majority of material found within 1860 - 1910

Biographical Note

Andrew J. Boswell, known as A. J. or Arthur, was born in New York on December 6, 1827, the son of Rev. Joseph O. Boswell (1804-1886) and Charlotte Lucinda Munn (c. 1811-1893). At some point before 1860, he moved to Noxubee County, Mississippi, where he married Cynthia A. Jackson (1837-1891) on December 19, 1860. Their children were Martha Jane “Mattie” Boswell (1864-1900), a teacher; Charlotte Lucinda “Lou” Boswell (1865-1953), who married William Stuart Tucker; James Arthur Boswell (1867-1952), who married May Augusta Stevens; Mary Antoinette Boswell (b. 1868); and Sallie Boswell (1873-1946), who married Nelson Stevens, son of Thomas Fletcher Stevens (1839-1919) and Susan Cynthia Nelson (1841-1924).

The son of Nelson and Sallie, Arthur Boswell Stevens (1897-1986), was a past president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation. His papers are also available in Special Collections (see the Boswell Stevens papers, MSS.132).