The Direleton Plantation Memorandum Book was kept by James Ritchie Sparkman beginning in the 1850s; changes in handwriting indicate additional authors and additional uses into the 1900s. The book contains slave records. Records includes slave births, slave deaths, purchases of slaves, sales of slaves, family seperation, measurements for clothing, distribution of blankets, and labor tasks. The book also contains lists of first and last names of agricultural workers after the American Civil War and figures, likely wages paid. There are account records kept for purposes of the Internal Revenue Services, Confederate taxes and bonds, personal and agricultural work purchases, and financial transactions with B.M. Grier, Eliza S. Heriot, Dr. R.S. Heriot, A.G. Heriot (with signed receipts), M.E. Heriot (with signed receipts), and G.A. Thorne. There are transactions with other plantations recorded including Cornhill Plantation, Northampton Plantation, and Birdfield Plantation. There is information on livestock, wines removed from the plantation, and rice sales.
The Weehaw Plantation Journal, 1855-1861, is a journal of Weehaw Plantation, near Georgetown regarding birth, death, 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 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.
