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Preferred Citation

Letters of North Carolina families, Accession #1030, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection was purchased by the Library from Paul Ashburn of McKee Pontiac Company, Washington, D. C., on January 8, 1941.

Scope and Content

This collection contains 100 letters, 1813-1896 and 1914, dealing with a wide variety of issues, including family life, agriculture, slavery, finances, religion, education, and politics, especially in North Carolina, but also in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

The three chief areas of North Carolina represented are: Salem, Forsyth County; Germantown, Stokes County; and, Huntsville, Surry County. For more on Stokes and Forsyth counties and their histories and families, please see the two editions of Forsyth, A County on the March (The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill), 1949, by Adelaide Fries, and 1976, by Adelaide Fries, Stuart Thurman Wright, and J. Edwin Hendricks, contributors. The following are excerpts from the 1976 edition's chapter entitled "The Formation of Forsyth County and the Founding of Winston":

The story of Richmond Town was dramatic and short, for the 1789 Surry County was divided by a north-south line, and new courthouse sites were selected--Rockford in Surry County and Germanton in Stokes County. The Surry County courthouse records were removed from old Richmond to Rockford; Stokes County set up new records on her own account. The area now called Forsyth was mostly in the new county of Stokes, but straight lines were still the custom, and the new line crossed and recrossed the Yadkin in an annoying fashion. As a result, Stokes had a long narrow strip west of the river on the Surry side; Surry had a C-shaped tract east of the river in the part of Rowan which became Davie County. In each case these detached pieces could be reached only by boat, for there were no bridges.

In December 1796 the assembly changed the line between Surry and Stokes, giving to Surry the long narrow strip lying on the west side of the Yadkin, the river becoming the boundary there. The Act of Assembly calls in the land "south of the Yadkin," but old deeds show that for many years everything on the righthand bank of the Yadkin River, looking downstream, was called "south" of the Yadkin, regardless of the actual direction.

For fifty years the county of Stokes remained practically unchanged. The War of 1812 and the Mexican War made but slight demand upon the people, though the former called the attention of the nation to Colonel Benjamin Forsyth. The population increased slowly, but it did increase, and finally the General Assembly of 1848-1849 was petitioned to divide it. The act dividing Stokes County bears the ratification date 16 January 1849, and it printed in full in the Laws of the State of North Carolina passed by the General Assembly at the Session of 1848-1849, published at Raleigh in 1849 by Thomas J. Lemay, Printer, Star Office.

The act provided for a line "beginning at the South West corner of Rockingham county, and running thence West to the Surry county line." It was further enacted "that all that part of the said county lying North of said line, shall be erected into a distinct county by the name of Stokes county; and all that part lying South of the said line shall be erected into another distinct county by the name of Forsyth county, in honor of the memory of Northern frontier, in the late war with England." A supplemental act, passed at the same session of the assembly, appointed Caleb Jones, Frederick Meinung, and John Banner to run the dividing line, named county commissioners for each county, and provided the necessary machinery for setting up the two county governments. The commissioners for Forsyth County were Zadock Stafford, John Stafford, Henry A. Lemly, Leonard Conrad, and Francis Fries, who was elected chairman.

After the formation of the new county and the naming of her commissioners, it became necessary to select and purchase a site for the county seat; a courthouse and public building had to be erected as soon as possible. Because Salem was located almost at the center of Forsyth, it seemed apparent to the commissioners that they would have to choose land in that neighborhood.

Papers of Forsyth County are chiefly concerned with the Van Vleck and related Blickensderfer and Fries families, and describe life, religion, and education in Salem, Forsyth County (formerly in Stokes County), North Carolina; Dover, Ohio; and Bethlehem and Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Information on the inhabitants of the county and its history may be found in the multi-volumed Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, particularly Volumes IX (1838-1847) and X (1841-1851). Each volume contains its own index of persons and places. There are numerous mentions of Francis [nee Franz Levin] Fries during the years 1838-1851, with a detailed record, 1848, of his requests to build cotton and woolen mills as well as buildings and additions, and land transactions; and, there are several mentions of Arthur Van Vleck during 1849-1850. Correspondence of the widow of Carl A. Van Vleck, Christina Susanna (Kramsch) Van Vleck, and her children, Amelia Adelaide, Arthur Lawrence, Lisetta Maria, and Louisa Cornelia, discusses family, education, religion, travel, and the mission service during 1849 of Arthur. According to the Moravian Records, in 1846 an appointment was offered to Arthur Van Vleck in Greeneville, Tennessee, to serve as teacher at Nazareth Hall, [Pennsylvania]; the family arrived in Salem on the following fifteenth. Records for 1849 indicate that the Wachovia Provincial Helfer Conferenz in Salem recommended Arthur Lawrence Van Vleck for service in a mission school; and, in April 1849 he was called to serve as assistant missionary and assistant teacher at Saron on Barbadoes. In 1850, the records report:

...that the mission conference in Barbadoes had unanimously expressed this opinion, that the Single Br. Arthur L. Van Vleck was not suited for mission service, for which reason the U. A. C. had advised his return to North America. It further commends him both to the P. H. C. at this place and to the Pennsylvania P. H. C. for employment as a home missionary or in some other way.

The P. H. C. at this place wholeheartedly regrets that the attempt to place Br. Arthur Van Vleck in the West Indies has failed but considers itself unable to use him in the congregations of this district or in our home missionary undertaking.

There are several letters, 1848-1852, from Francis Fries to his wife Lizetta (Vogler) Fries, from areas in South Carolina and North Carolina; these are chiefly personal.

Francis Fries (17 October 1812 - 1 August 1863) was descended from an old German family, which in the eighteenth century turned from war and court life to trade. His grandfather, Peter Konrad Fries, studied theology at Strasbourg and received his Ph.D. in 1741; in 1758 he joined the Unitas Fratrum (Moravian Church), later becoming a member of the Unity's Elders' Conference and holding important posts in this religious fellowship. His paternal grandmother was Christiane Jaschke, the daughter of a Moravian exile. His father, John William Fries, after receiving a Moravian education in Europe, came to the United States and settled in the Moravian colony of Wachovia (later Salem), where he married Elizabeth Nissen. Although his parents wished for Francis to become a minister and sent him to the Moravian seminary, Nazareth Hall, Pennsylvania, he decided against the ministry. After returning home, he taught for a while and then read law with Emanuel Shober and entered practice, soon being appointed clerk of the court and master in equity.

Fries' business career began when as agent of the new Salem [cotton] Manufacturing Company, he visited Paterson, New Jersey, and other northern points to purchase machinery, which in 1836 he installed in a factory building erected after his own plans. In 1838 [May 24] he married Lizetta Vogler, by whom he had seven children [including Caroline Louise, John William, and Mary Elisabeth]. Two years later, with the assistance of his father-in-law, he commenced woolen manufacture; at first he operated only cards for making rolls of the wool brought in by farmers, and set up a little dyeing and fulling mill for finishing cloth woven in the homes of the countryside. Being successful in these enterprises, in 1842 he installed spinning machinery, and then looms. He was encouraged in manufacturing by his friend Edwin M. Holt of Alamance, with whom he made arrangements to make alternate information-gathering trips to the North to study developments in the older textile centers, afterward sharing their information. The South manufactured very little at this time, but the tradition of the Moravians in North Carolina was one of mechanical enterprise, and Fries did more than any one else to foster this spirit. His brother, Henry W. Fries, was taken into partnership in 1846; two years later they built a cotton factory which was conducted until 1880, when it was dismantled and became part of the woolen mill.

Fries was involved in other endeavors. As a member of the legislature in 1857 he gave special attention to revising the state system of taxation. He was an architect, who designed the court-house for the new county of Forsyth and the main building for the Salem Female Academy, of which institution he was a principal supporter. He was also mayor of Salem. He was a promotor of the plank road from Fayetteville to western North Carolina and was associated with Governor John M. Morehead in building the North Carolina Railroad, in which he was a director until his death. Fries built a tannery, conducted a store, and was one in a small but important group which sought vainly to implant industry in the agricultural ante-bellum South. [from the Dictionary of American Biography, Volume VII (Charles Scribner's Sons: New York), 1931]

Papers of Stokes County contain chiefly letters addressed to Hampton Bynum from John H. Farmer in Bowling Green and Russellville, Kentucky, and others. Farmer writes of financial matters and land purchases and settlements in Kentucky. There is also a letter from John Gray Bynum, Columbia, South Carolina, concerning the selling of slaves and personal finance issues of this attorney. There are also two letters from C. M. Pepper to his father, John Pepper, concerning his education in Emory and the literary society (9 April 1851), and his preaching circuit and religion (25 May 1853). Letters, 1843-1849, addressed to John Hill (9 April 1797 - 24 April 1861), Clerk of Stokes County Court, concern financial matters; and, a request, July 2, 1849, from John A[dams] Gilmer (4 November 1805 - 14 May 1868), state senator, for a female prisoner, Jane Hill, to be given the right to take the "insolvent debtor's oath."

The letters of Huntsville, Surry County, North Carolina, are chiefly from Isaac Jarratt in various cities in Alabama, to his wife, Harriet A. Jarratt. These letters contain personal content from a husband to his wife as well as advice and/or news of the family "negroes" and farm, and life in Alabama.

Papers of other counties of North Carolina include a variety of correspondents and topics. An interesting letter of May 30, 1838, was written by George D. Phillips, Clarksville, Georgia, to Maj. Thomas B. Cooper, Jefferson, Cherokee County, Alabama, concerning the escapades of a slave named "George," trouble between Indians and U. S. troops, and frost damage to crops. There is also an interesting letter, November 1, 1841, from Elijah [ ], Yazoo County, to Andrew McCants, Union Post Office, Georgia, describing travels through Mississippi, western Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, with a lively discussion of the city of New Orleans. There is a letter, June 28, 1865, from H[enry] P[arker] Sartwell (18 April 1792 - 15 November 1867), physician and botanist, writing about impending botany publications by prominent botanists.