About the Collection
The Weehaw Plantation Journal, 1855-1861, is a journal kept by Henry A. Middleton, Jr. (1829-1861). The son of Henry Augustus Middleton (1793-1887) and Harriot Kinloch (1801-1878), South Carolina planter Henry Middleton, Jr. joined Wade Hampton’s South Carolina Legion and was fatally wounded at the Battle of First Manassas in July of 1861. Numerous pages in the Weehaw Plantation journal document Henry Middleton Jr’s experiences during the onset of the Civil War ending in May 1861.
The Weehaw Plantation journal records births, deaths, duties, vaccinations, tasks and allowances of enslaved people, plantation expenses, names of overseers, listings of rice crops, clothing for enslaved people, cattle, yearly accounts, tools, usage of fields, vegetable garden production, medicines, house groceries and contracts. The journal is also used as a partial diary regarding the plantation with comments on Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address, secession of South Carolina, the days leading up to the attack on Fort Sumpter, the day of the attack on Fort Sumpter, lists of enslaved persons given winter and summer clothes and mentions of recruiting for Hampton’s Legion for the Confederate States of America. Loose papers found within the journal contain names of enslaved persons and notes on the plantation.
