|
Description |
This small collection is made up of papers that appear to be random survivors representative of the lives of three generations of a Latta family residing in Granville and Durham counties, N.C.: (1) Thomas Latta (1800-1885); (2) George Simpson Latta (1856-1927); and 3) Jackson Thomas Latta (1891-1961). The family collection includes manuscript and printed agricultural papers, memorandum books, tradesmen's circulars, blueprints of plats of survey, and miscellaneous printed material. The papers of Thomas Latta of Granville County range in date from 1818 to 1885 and include not only materials relating to his farming operations, but include 1848-1849 accounts of his blacksmith shop as well. Only a few of the papers relate to the education of his children, and these are limited to bills for sending them to a subscription school in his neighbor�hood during the Civil War years. A substantial number of the papers concern aspects of his spiritual and intellectual life. Among the latter are secular songs and poems composed by him before he fell under a religious conviction of his fallen spiritual state in the summer of 1833, and other poems and songs composed after he had "an experience of Divine Grace" on August 28 of that year. Admitted to membership in the Primitive Baptist Church meeting at Mount Lebanon in Granville County, Latta was briefly licensed to preach by the congregation (but was never regularly ordained), and was sent by the church as their delegate to annual meetings of the Country Line [Primitive] Baptist Association several times in the 1840s. The collection includes a manuscript copy of the rules of church government adopted by New Bethel Primitive Baptist Church in 1823, Latta's spiritual diary for the years 1833 and 1834, notes of permission from two slaveowners allowing a slave to join the churches at Coggins Meeting House (1839) and at Mount Lebanon (1845), printed minutes of the Country Line [Primitive] Baptist Association for the five years from 1841 to 1845; sixty-seven issues of the fortnightly periodical, The Primitive Baptist, published at Tarboro, N.C., between 1838 and 1844, and a 43-page pamphlet by Thomas J. Bazemore of Cornucopia, Georgia, entitled The Footsteps of the Flock, printed at Wilson, N.C., in 1877 by Zion's Landmark Printing Company. The papers of his son, George Simpson Latta, range in date from 1880 to 1929, and relate almost altogether to his farming operations in the vicinity of Berea, Granville County. In addition to some tenants' accounts from the 1890s and sporadic records of various crops and products of Latta's farm, the collection includes Latta's farm diary for the year 1880 in which he made. almost daily entries of farming activities. The diary includes a few veterinary recipes. The bulk of the papers relating to fertilizers in Latta's papers date from the years 1901 to 1903, during which he was agent for the Petersburg, Va., chemical fertilizer firm of William H. Camp. Some circulars and advertizing brochures are included among the fertilizer papers. In addition to an 1881 patent for a combined agricultural fork and rake invented by Latta, and a 1903 patent for improvements in farm plows, the patent papers include a 1903 listing by the Washington, D.C., firm of patent lawyers, C. A. Snow & Co., of approximately 300 North Carolinians on whose behalf the firm acted. There is but a smattering of papers from the life of Jackson Thomas Latta, long time superintendent of the Durham, N.C., city garage. Most of them are plats of survey of land belonging to him and his wife, Annie Pickett Latta, though there area few materials relating to the organization in 1926 of the Durham Citizens Hotel Corporation, and the reorganization of the National Bank of Durham during the height of the depression in 1935. Four newspapers belonging to this group of papers have been transferred to the Newspaper Collection: (1) Zion's Landmark (Wilson, N.C.), Nov. 1, 1885; (2) Zion's Landmark (Wilson, N.C.), Oct. 15, 1886; (3) undated Supple�ment (issued at the end of June 1903) to The Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.); and (4) Atkinson's Saturday Evening Post Philadelphia), Dec. 20, 1834. INVENTORY: PC.1954.1. Thomas Latta Papers, 1818-1885: Bills and Receipts, 1833-1883 Blacksmith Accounts, 1848-1849 Blalock Family Vital Records, 1741-1895 Estate--Blalock, Rebecca, 1853 Estate--Latta, Thomas, 1885 Farm Accounts [1846-1864], 1865-1874 Freedmen's Marriage License Fee, 1866 Land Lease, 1847 Miscellaneous Money Paid and Received, 1835-1844 Primitive Baptist Church, 1818-1877 Promissory Notes, 1831-1867 School (Subscription), 1861-1866 Slave Hire, 1850-1866 Songs and Poems, 1829-1833, n.d. Tax Receipts, 1839-1884 Tobacco Sales, 1855; 1878 Wheat Sales, 1860 PC1954.2. George Simpson Latta Papers, 1880-1929: Agriculture--Statistical Methods, 1895 Bills and Receipts, 1886-1902 Estate--Latta, George Simpson, 1929 Farm Diary, 1880 Farm Petty Accounts, 1889-1899 Fertilizer, 1895; 1901-1903 Ginseng, 1900 Granvestone, 1896 Patents, 1881-1903 Miscellaneous Poems, 1890, n.d. Poultry and Eggs Sold, 1895-1898 Primitive Baptist Church, 1892, 1899 School Fund, 1892 Swine Pedigrees, 1918 Tax Receipts, 1893-1896 Tenant Farmers [1889-1899] Tobacco Sales, 1883-1896 Wool Prices Current, 1884 Wheat and Corn Ground, 1901 PC.1954.3. Jackson Thomas Latta Papers, 1923-1956: Durham Citizens Hotel Corporation, 1926 Meadows Family Vital Records, 1819-1962 Miscellaneous, 1926-1956 Mortgate Deeds, 1938-1939 National Bank of Durham--Reorganization, 1935 Newspaper Clippings, n.d. Plats of Survey (Chapel Hill Road Property), 1943 Plats of Survey (Lakewood Park Property), 1923, 1939 Plats of Survey (Pickett Property), 1935-1936 PC.1954.4. The Primitive Baptist Vol. 3-71, 1838-1842 PC.1954.5. The Primitive Baptist [Vol. ], 1843-1844 |
