Three of a prominent family from Wilkes County, N.C., and Maury County, Tenn. Persons represented include John Brown (1738-1812), immigrant from Ulster, early landowner in western North Carolina and in Tennessee; his son, Hamilton (1786-1870), planter, businessman, sheriff, and militia officer of Wilkes County; Hamilton's sons Hugh Thomas Brown (1835-1861) and Hamilton Allen Brown (1837-1917); and Gordon, Gwyn, Finley, Lenoir, and McDowell relatives, including James Byron Gordon (1822-1864), Confederate general. generations The collection includes extensive and varied business and personal papers, including correspondence, accounts, legal papers, and other items pertaining to land acquisitions, planting, slaves, livestock, lumbering, merchandising, estates, and politics in Wilkes County, N.C., and elsewhere; military service in the War of 1812 and the Civil War; gold mining in Lumpkin County, Ga.; travels and settlement in Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana in the early 19th century; business in Virginia, Georgia, and many places in western North Carolina; and local government of Wilkes County in the early 19th century. Other papers include letters and diaries, 1850s, of Hamilton Brown's sons at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; several letters from slaves, 1830s-1840s, and about runaway slaves; letters from students at other colleges; and a play and poems by a woman of the family.
