The Diary of Julius M. Bacot, 1886 contains daily diary entries discussing Julius Bacot's work as a lawyer, the weather, illness, and his social engagements with members of other Charleston families such as the Manigaults, Lowndes, Rhetts and Ravenels. Other entries talk about weddings, deaths, hunting trips, and property claims following the Civil War. The diary includes entries on the Protestant Episcopal Church Convention in which discussion formed around the admittance of African American ministers which was ultimately denied. Finally, Julius Bacot writes about the 1886 Charleston Earthquake in which he records the event as it happens and the damages, anxieties, aftershocks, and relief efforts following it.
1850-1859, 1870-1879, 1860-1869, 1840-1849, 1830-1839, and 1820-1829
Description:
This is the plantation register by Mathurin Guerin Gibbs (1788-1849) for Rice Hope Plantation (January 1, 1824 to December 1844) and Jericho Plantation (December 1844 to 1875). Gibbs, a lawyer before becoming a planter, used the first several pages of the manuscript dating January 1824 to May 1829 for summarizing legal cases. The plantation register primarily documents daily labor activities on the plantation including cultivation and harvesting of staple crops such as corn, cotton (Sea Island Cotton and Santee black seed cotton), rice and potatoes, livestock, and building fences. Gibbes also writes about the use and management of slave labor, the movement of enslaved people between the plantation and Charleston, and selling and purchasing of enslaved people. Slave names are included in portions of the register. Gibbs notes throughout the register the struggles he encounters as a planter including being unable to pay the mortgage of Rice Hope Plantation and the property going into foreclosure. Most of the entries at the end of the register are regarding slave births, slave deaths and distribution of blankets. Gibbs died in 1849 and the management of the plantation was carried out by his son.
The Roslin Plantation journal, kept by Archibald Simpson Johnston, documented enslaved people and slave labor on an antebellum plantation for two years (1813-1815). The journal documents correspondence, equipment, planting and harvesting, livestock, slaves and supplies related to the plantation. There are detailed descriptions of tasks and number of enslaved people working each task, particularly tasks regarding growing cotton and rice and maintainining those fields.
