Martha Virginia McNair Evans Patterson papers, 1858-1992 (bulk 1870-1900).

ArchivalResource

Patterson, Martha Virginia McNair Evans, 1870-1912. Martha Virginia McNair Evans Patterson papers, 1858-1992 (bulk 1870-1900).

Martha Virginia McNair Evans Patterson papers, 1858-1992 (bulk 1870-1900).

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28048820

Letters and other items, including family photographs, of members of the McNair, Evans, and related families. Letters, 1870-1886, chiefly relate to the Evans family, including some in 1877 to and from Hervey Evans at the Union School, Carthage, N.C. The focus shifts to Mattie around 1888 when, after completing her education at Peace Institute in Raleigh, N.C., she returned to Laurel Hill and became the object of several suitors' attentions, among them Laurinburg physician Daniel Malloy Prince (1848-1919). He and school friends wrote to Mattie chiefly about social events, although there is one letter from Prince about a lynching in Laurinburg. Letters, 1894-1895, are chiefly to Mattie from women friends, some of whom supported themselves in offices and schools, but most of whom discussed their beaus, marriages, and wardrobes. Some, however, shared Mattie's interest in Presbyterian missionary societies. Love letters from Hervey begin in August 1897 and continue until their marriage in June 1899. Other letters document the 1898 suicide of Mattie's brother, John William McNair, a Laurinburg merchant. There are also letters, 1898-1899, from missionaries in China, the Congo, and Japan. In 1899, there are letters relating to the creation of Scotland County from Richmond County. In July 1899, Hervey and Mattie were involved in turpentine manufacture in Fairfield, Fla. By March, Hervey's ill health forced the couple back to Sherwood. By May, Hervey was in the State Hospital in Morganton, N.C., where he died of stomach cancer in June. After Hervey's death, letters show that Mattie moved to Laurinburg where Erasmus Hervey Evans was born in August 1900. There are few letters documenting her marriage to Gilbert Brown Patterson in 1907. Mattie died in childbirth on 3 July 1912.

1000 items (3.0 linear ft.).

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill