Benjamin Franklin Little was a planter of Carlisle plantation, Richmond County, N.C.; Confederate Army officer with the 52nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment; state legislator, 1864-1865; dry goods merchant; and delegate to the 1876 National Democratic Convention in Saint Louis, Mo. In 1856, he married Mary Jane Reid of Iredell County, N.C., daughter of Rufus Reid. The collection includes correspondence, financial and legal materials, writings, volumes, photographs, and other papers. Many letters were written by Benjamin Franklin Little to Mary Jane Reid Little as one or the other traveled on business or family visits, 1857-1860, and after 1865. Civil War letters, 1862-1864, were written by Benjamin Franklin Little from Camp Mangum near Raleigh, N.C., and from the North Carolina and Virginia-Pennsylvania theaters. They include accounts of battles, his feelings about the war, his daily activities, conditions in camp, and other information. Little frequently mentioned Wiley, the slave who accompanied him throughout the war, and sent instructions to Henry, the slave who managed Carlisle in Little's absence. After Gettysburg, there are letters Benjamin Franklin Little's army associates and from L. M. Oakley, Little's Union surgeon who appears to have amputated Little's arm in 1863, as well as from Little himself in hospitals and prisons in Maryland and Pennsylvania. In 1864 and 1865, there are a few letters relating to Little's service in the North Carolina state legislature, and, in 1876, letters from Little serving as a delegate to the Democratic Convention in Saint Louis, Mo. Beginning in 1877, there are a number of letters to Rufus Little, a student at Davidson College, Mecklenburg County, N.C.; most post-1879 letters are to Rufus Little about his horse breeding and racing interests. Financial and legal materials, 1833-1878, chiefly relate to Benjamin Franklin Little and his father, Thomas Little. They include a deed, 1833, conveying slaves; valuation and division of slaves to settle an estate, 1853; agreements, 1871, relating to Little's dry goods business; an undated contract with tenant farmers and set of plantation rules and regulations; and other items. Writings include speeches by Little, chiefly at educational institutions, and notes for poems and other writings. Volumes include a school notebook of Thomas Little with a short journal of his 1806 voyage as an immigrant from England to the United States; account books detailing cotton production with names of pickers and amounts of cotton picked by each slave; account books listing slave birth dates and clothing allotments; a Civil War journal with details of the movements of the 52nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, April 1862 to July 1863, and Benjamin Franklin Little's personal narrative as a Federal prisoner, 1863; a Carlisle plantation weather log, 1867-1879; household inventories; tenant accounts, 1885-1886; an account book for Benjamin Franklin Little's estate; and other volumes. Also included are a few family photographs; a photograph of General James Johnston Pettigrew; Confederate Army muster rolls, 1862, for Company E, 52nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment; clippings; recipes for horse remedies; and other items. freedmen and women
