http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/y/Yancey,Benjamin_C.html
Manuscripts Department
Library of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION
#2594
BENJAMIN CUDWORTH YANCEY PAPERS
Inventory
Abstract: Planter, lawyer, antebellum Alabama newspaper
editor, Democratic state legislator in South Carolina,
Alabama, and Georgia; U.S. minister to Argentina;
Confederate officer in Virginia, 1861, and Georgia
militia officer in the Atlanta Campaign, 1864;
publisher of postwar agricultural journals and
promoter of agricultural societies, business, and
industry in Georgia; and brother of William Lowndes
Yancey.
Yancey's papers, primarily 1835-1891, include
extensive correspondence with public figures and with
a large and widespread family connection, which
included the Yancey, Bird, Cunningham, Hamilton,
Phinizy, and Patterson families; papers relating to
plantations in Cherokee County, Ala., and Floyd
County, Ga., including correspondence with overseers;
papers relating to law practice and politics,
especially in the 1840s and 1850s in Alabama, Georgia,
and South Carolina; correspondence and letterpress
copy book in Argentina, 1858-1859, including letters
to Secretary of State Lewis Cass; and papers relating
to military service and varied business, industrial,
and agricultural pursuits after the war. Also
included are volumes of miscellaneous accounts, 1847-
1885, and a woman's diary, 1850, of a seven-week trip
from Georgia to New York and New England.
Online Catalog Terms:
Alabama--Politics and government--To 1865.
Argentina--Description and travel--19th century.
Cass, Lewis, 1782-1866.
Cherokee County (Ala.)--History.
Floyd County (Ga.)--History.
Georgia--Politics and government--1775-1865.
Lawyers--Alabama--History--19th century.
Lawyers--Georgia--History--19th century.
Lawyers--South Carolina--History--19th century.
Marengo County (Ala.)--History.
Plantations--Alabama--Cherokee County.
Plantations--Georgia--Floyd County.
South Carolina--Politics and government--1775-1865.
Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century.
Travellers--Diaries--United States--History.
United States--Description and travel--1848-1865.
United States--Diplomatic and consular corps--Argentina.
Yancey, Benjamin Cudworth, 1817-1891.
Yancey, William Lowndes, 1814-1863.
Size: About 4,800 items (7.0 linear feet).
Provenance: Received from Hamilton Yancey and Claire Yancey
Clark of Rome, Ga., in April 1943 and October
1946.
Access: No restrictions.
Related Collections: Benjamin Cudworth Yancey Papers, Special
Collections, Duke University.
Processing Note: This collection was processed with support, in
part, from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.
Copyright: Retained by the authors of items in these papers,
or their descendants, as stipulated by United
States copyright law.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Biographical Note
Collection Overview
Series Descriptions
Series 1. Yancey Papers
Series 2. Volumes
Series 3. Pictures
Shelf List
INTRODUCTION
Biographical Note
Benjamin Cudworth Yancey was born in Charleston, S.C., on 27
April 1817, the younger of two sons of Caroline Bird and Benjamin
Cudworth Yancey. His father was a prominent South Carolina
lawyer and political figure while his mother was the daughter of
William Bird of Warren County, Ga. When his father died in 1817,
his mother moved to Georgia where Yancey received his education
at the Mount Zion Academy in Hancock County, under the tutelage
of Reverend Nathan Sidney Smith Beman, later the leader of the
New School Presbyterians and an ardent abolitionist. Caroline
Bird Yancey married Beman in 1821 and the family moved to Troy,
N.Y., where Yancey attended the Academy School. He graduated
from the University of Georgia in 1836 and from Yale Law School
in the winter of 1838.
Yancey began his practice in Cahaba, Ala., edited the local
Democrat paper, and, in 1840, joined his brother, William L.
Yancey, as co-owner and co-editor of the Wetumpka Argus. In
1841, he moved to Hamburg, S.C., across the Savannah River from
Augusta, Ga. He married Laura Hines of Hancock County, Ga., in
1842, and they had one daughter, Caroline. Three years after
Laura died in 1844, he married Sarah Hamilton, daughter of Thomas
N. Hamilton of Athens, Ga., with whom he had Hamilton and Mary
Louisa. Yancey practiced law in Hamburg until 1850, serving
several times in the South Carolina legislature. In 1850, he
left South Carolina for a plantation home in the Coosa River in
Cherokee County, Ala.
Yancey was elected to the Alabama legislature and served as
presiding officer of that body. In 1858, he accepted an
appointment to the post of Minister Resident of the United States
to the Argentine Confederation, serving there until the winter of
1859 when he returned to the United States to look after his
private affairs following the death of his father-in-law. While
serving as United States minister to the Argentine Confederation,
he attempted to mediate a dispute between the Confederation and
the then independent state of Buenos Aires, but was unable to
avert war. Upon his return to the United States, he was offered
other diplomatic positions by President Buchanan, but declined
them.
During the American Civil War, Yancey served in Virginia as an
officer in the Fulton Dragoons of Cobb's Georgia Legion, and also
participated actively in the defense of Atlanta in 1864 as a
colonel in the Georgia militia. After the war, Yancey resided in
Georgia where he practiced law in Athens and undertook various
other business interests and planting ventures in several
localities. He served in the Georgia legislature, was a trustee
of the University of Georgia, edited an agricultural journal, and
was president of the Georgia State Agricultural Society. He
remained actively interested in business and agricultural affairs
until shortly before his death in 1891.
Collection Overview
Personal, business, professional, and official papers of
Benjamin C. Yancey in Series 1 are divided into dated and undated
material.
The collection is arranged as follows:
Series 1. Yancey Papers
Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers
Subseries 1.2. Undated Papers
Series 2. Volumes
Series 3. Pictures
SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
Series 1. Yancey Papers
1800-1931 and undated. About 4,775 items.
Personal, business, professional, and official papers of
Benjamin C. Yancey together with the correspondence of his wife's
Georgia relatives, the Hamiltons, as well as his own more widely
scattered relatives.
Personal papers include letters from the Cunningham family in
Laurens County, S.C., and picture daily life in South Carolina;
the Hamilton family, beginning in 1837, and covering details of
business and daily personal life of a Georgia planting family;
disputes and the separation of Yancey's mother, Caroline Beman,
and her second husband, Reverend Nathan S. S. Beman, 1834-1838;
the career and migration to the west of Samuel S. Beman, Yancey's
step-brother; and Yancey's education at the University of Georgia
and Yale, 1837-1838, with letters from classmates and other
friends. There are also letters from his son, Hamilton Yancey,
while at University of Georgia and the University of Virginia,
1868-1869, and his daughters, Mary Lou Yancey, at the Virginia
Female Institute at Staunton, 1868-1869, and Caro, at the
Tuskegee Female College, 1856-1858. After the Civil War, there
are letters among Yancey's relatives about Reconstruction and the
situation of the South. Other correspondence deals with Mary
Lou's marriages to Phinizys and other personal letters of Sarah
Hamilton Yancey. Letters, 1916-1931, deal chiefly with family
history and genealogy.
Business materials, 1800-1855, include letters discussing
management of Yancey's Cherokee County, Ala., plantation;
management of Thomas N. Hamilton's Woodville, Ga., plantation
(beginning in 1837); correspondence with overseers, relatives,
and brokers, chiefly in Augusta, Rome, and Charleston, pertaining
to the ordering and delivery of supplies and debt collection; and
the river transportation of cotton in Alabama and Georgia. In
1858, Yancey settled the Woodville estate belonging to his
father-in-law, Thomas N. Hamilton, from South America.
Yancey's papers as president of the State Agricultural Society
in Georgia begin in 1869 and continue through 1878. During this
time, he was president of the Plantation Publishing Company,
Atlanta, 1870-1873, and editor of The Plantation, an agricultural
journal. Much of the correspondence of this period deals with
subscriptions, advertisements, binding and printing work,
agricultural articles, applications for positions, and news about
seeds, fertilizers, and machinery. Yancey maintained both his
cotton plantations in Floyd County, Ga., and Cherokee County,
Ala., and was interested in experimental farming, insurance
matters, and horses.
Political papers relating to local politics in Edgefield
County, S.C., and Cherokee County, Ala., are dated, 1840-1851.
State legislature papers discuss the struggle for states' rights,
1851-1852, and national issues in the South. Yancey served one
legislative term in Alabama in 1856 and served as Minister
Resident of the United States to the Argentine Confederation,
1858-1859. Material from this period includes Yancey's official
papers and reports in connection with peace negotiations between
the Confederation and the state of Buenos Aires; items relating
to political and military activities in that connection;
correspondence relating to the interests of American merchants,
navigation rights, and diplomatic and social matters, especially
to Secretary of State Lewis Cass; and Yancey's own business and
personal affairs.
Also included is material relating to Yancey's service as
captain, later major, in the Fulton Dragoons of Cobb's Georgia
Legion stationed near Yorktown, Va., in 1861 and as colonel in
the Georgia militia around Atlanta in 1864. There is also
materials relating to Yancey's candidacy as judge of the western
circuit, 1872-1873; president of the Georgia Chemical Works,
Augusta, beginning in 1878; trustee of the University of Georgia;
and candidate for legislature in 1878.
Material in connection with his law practice begins in 1838
and includes documentation of cases handled by Yancey; documents
pertaining to property involved in the cases; and miscellaneous
wills and deeds. There are also materials relating to Yancey's
editorship of the Cahaba Democrat in 1838 and law practice in
both Cahaba and Wetumpka in 1839, his 1840-1856 law practice in
Hamburg, S.C., and editorship of The Crisis, and his Atlanta law
practice, beginning in 1856 and continuing until his move to
Athens after the war.
Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers
1800-1931. About 4,000 items.
Arrangement: chronological.
Folder 1a Biographical Data
1b 1800-1835
2 1836
3 1837
4 1838
1839
5 January-June
6 July-December
7 1840
8 1841-1842
9 1843-1844
10 1845
11 1846
12 1847-1848
1849
13a January-March
13b April-December
1850
14 January-March
15 April-July
16 August-December
1851
17 January-March
18 April-July
19 August-December
1852
20 January-May
21 June-December
1853
22 January-May
23 June-December
24 1854
1855
25 January-September
26 October-December
1856
27 January-June
28 July-December
1857
29 January-May
30 June-December
1858
31 January-April
32 May-June
33 July-August
34 September-December
1859
35 January-March
36 April-June
37 July-August 21
38 August 30
39 September-December
40 Undated
41 1860-1861
42 1862-1865
43 1866
1867
44 January-April
45 May-December
1868
46 January-October
47 November-December
1869
48 January-February
49 March-June
50 July-December
1870
51 January-March
52 April
53 May
54 June-December
1871
55a January-June
55b July-October
56 November-December
1872
57 January-March
58a April-May
58b June
59 July-September
60 October-November
61 December
1873
62a January
62b February
63 March
64a April-May 14
64b May 15-June
65 July
66 August-October
67 November-December
1874
68 January
69 February
70 March-April
71 May-June
72 July-September
73 October-December
74 1875
75 1876
1877
76 January-February
77 March-May
78 June-August
79 September-December
80 1878
1879
81 January-August
82 September-December
83 1880
84 1881
1882
85 January-July
86 August-December
1883
87 January-April
88 May-September
89 October-December
1884
90 January-March
91 April-June
92 July-September
93 October-December
94 1885
1886
95 January-July
96 August-December
97 1887
98 1888-1889
1890
99 January-July
100 August-December
101 1891
102 1892-1896
103 1897-1931
Subseries 1.2. Undated Papers
Undated. About 775 items.
Includes undated material arranged by sender, addressee, or
type of material.
Folder 104-105 Letters to Ben C. Yancey
106-107 Letters to Florence Patterson Yancey
108 Letters to and from Hamilton Yancey
109-110 Letters to and from Mary Lou Yancey Phinizy
111-112 Letters to and from Sarah P. Hamilton Yancey
113 Letters from William L. Yancey
114 Letters from Lucy Alexander, Saida B. Byrd,
and S. E. Byrd
115 Letters from Caro Yancey Williams and Family
116 Patterson and Phinizy Family Correspondence
117 Letters to and from Mamie Lou Phinizy
118-120 Miscellaneous Personal Letters
121-124 Business Papers and Miscellaneous Papers
125-126 Speeches, essays, poems, recipes, cures, notes
127 Fragments ad short notes
128 Circulars and broadsides
129 Clippings
130 Invitations, replies and visiting cards
Series 2. Volumes
1847-1885 and undated. 13 items.
Primarily account books and one letterpress book, one diary,
and two memorandum books.
Folder 131 Volume 1: Undated, 16 pp. Lady's fortune-telling
game book.
Folder 132 Volume 2: 1853, 17 pp. Memorandum of curiosities
to be seen at the Crystal Palace in 1853.
Folder 133 Volume 3: 1850, 200 pp. Diary of Julia Marsh
Patterson describing a trip to the North with her
husband, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, and typescript
copy.
Folder 134 Volume 4: 1858-1859, 500 pp. Letterpress
copybook of Benjamin C. Yancey while Minister
Resident to the Argentine Confederation.
Folder 135 Volume 5: 1872, 24 pp. Accounts relating to
William Garrett's Reminiscences of Public Men in
Alabama for Thirty Years.
Folder 136 Volume 6: 1847-1850, 18 pp. Small account book
which contains receipts and various accounts of
Benjamin C. Yancey.
Folder 137 Volume 7: 1856-1857, 75 pp. Receipt book of
Benjamin C. Yancey.
Folder 138 Volume 8: 1860, 75 pp. Receipt book of Benjamin
C. Yancey.
Folder 139 Volume 9: 1860, 75 pp. Account book of Benjamin
C. Yancey with John Ryan.
Folder 140 Volume 10: 1860-1864, 44 pp. Memorandum of Bonds
and other bank transactions.
Folder 141 Volume 11: 1879-1885, 34 pp. Benjamin C.
Yancey's account book with Gate City National
Bank.
Folder 142 Volume 12: 1877-1883, 100 pp. Planation journal
of Benjamin C. Yancey.
Folder 143 Volume 13: 1868, 20 pp. Account book with
mathematical calculations of Benjamin C. Yancey.
Series 3. Pictures
Undated. 4 items.
P-2594/1-2 Photograph and pencil sketch by Horace Bradley of
Benjamin C. Yancey, undated.
P-2594/3 Photograph of William L. Yancey, undated.
P-2594/4 Photograph of the clover seed gatherer, a farm
machine, undated.
SHELF LIST
Series 1. Yancey Papers
Box 1 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 1-12)
Box 2 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 13-26)
Box 3 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 27-40)
Box 4 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 41-48)
Box 5 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 49-56)
Box 6 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 57-64a)
Box 7 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 64b-74)
Box 8 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 75-84)
Box 9 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 85-93)
Box 10 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 94-101)
Box 11 Subseries 1.1. Dated Papers (folders 102-103)
Subseries 1.2. Undated Papers (folders 104-112)
Box 12 Subseries 1.2. Undated Papers (folders 113-125)
Box 13 Subseries 1.2. Undated Papers (folders 126-130)
Series 2. Volumes (folders 131-134)
Box 14 Series 2. Volumes (folders 135-143)
Items separated:
OP-2594/1-15
P-2594/1-4 (
geocities.com/heartland/acres) (
geocities.com/heartland)