Isaac M. Dwight family papers, 1837-1860

Location

South Carolina Historical Society (Charleston, S.C.)

Background

Plantation owner and South Carolina state legislator; lived from 1799 to 1873.

Contents

Correspondence of Isaac M. Dwight consists of three letters to him from Samuel Porcher of Mexico Plantation. The first two (Sept. 1837), concern serious damages to cotton and other crops, bridges, and a canal by heavy rains and a "freshet" in the St. Johns Berkeley Parish area. Porcher also writes of local politics and elections, a minor outbreak of yellow fever, and some deaths among his slaves, mostly children, from disease. ("I have been unfortunate among the little negroes in the country."). Other correspondence consists of three letters (1860) from Henry Ravenel to his children, about his travels to New York City, Saratoga Springs, and Niagara Falls. In New York he writes of attending a "farce" at the Winter Garden Theatre, and seeing Central Park, and mentions his preference for home. "With all this great panorama of human life, & human actions before me I would rather be standing before my corn house door at Pooshee...Strange infatuation it may appear, but nevertheless true." One letter (1845) to Henry Ravenel from D. Bigelow in Columbia, S.C., is written entirely in rhyming verse and concerns Pooshee Plantation and the people there. Miscellaneous items include a typed transcript of "Extracts from the Minutes" (1753-1808) of St. Johns Berkeley Parish concerning glebe lands; and a list (undated) of the "Names of St. John's Negroes," possibly freedmen. Other materials also included.

(See the NUCMC catalog record) (PDF, 13 KB)

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