About the Collection
The Stoney Family Papers, 1775-1949, collection contains two bound volumes kept by members of the Stoney Family at Medway Plantation in Berkeley County, South Carolina. The Stoney family is comprised of Samuel Gaillard Stoney (1853-1926), a Charleston, S.C. businessman and plantation owner who married Louisa Cheves Smythe (1868-1939), daughter of South Carolina state Senator Augustine Thomas Smythe (1842-1914). Samuel and Louisa Stoney’s children included Samuel Gaillard Stoney (b. 1891) and Augustine Thomas Smythe Stoney (b. 1894)
The Stoney Account Book, 1837-1838, and Plantation Daybook, 1852 is separated into two parts. The first half of the book documents payments for shipping, freights, wharfage and commissions from GM Thompson, Wade Hampton II, William Cunningham, Robert E. Russell, Mary Hampton, Horace Osborne & Co., John Preston, and Nesbit Manufacturing Co. The second half of the book was written by a plantation overseer at Medway Plantation in which he documents the tasks performed by enslaved people and those who missed work due to sickness.
The Stoney Family Plantation Day Book, 1872, records payrolls, cash accounts and general accounts for laborers, formerly slaves and now freed persons, at Medway Plantation. The second half of the book is comprised of journal entries recording weather, work completed by laborers, conditions of the plantation crops, farming rice, visits from family and friends and hunting expeditions.
