Latta Family Papers, 1818-1956

NotUh Ccvwtina Stxvtz кпоКЬоол Rdtexgh, UonXh CoJiotLna CoUection: LATTA FAMILY PAPERS P.cJ^lIl5 • 1818-1956 Granville Co. (N.C.) Durham Co. (N.C.) Physical Description: 342 items including manuscript and printed agricultural papers, memorandum books, tradesmen's circulars, blueprints of plats of survey, and miscellaneous printed material. Acquisition: Gift, Mrs. Kathryn Latta, Durham, N.C., 2006 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 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 Fbotsteps of' the Flock, printed at Wilson, N.C., in 1877 by Zion' s Landmark Printing Company.