Personal and family correspondence re social, domestic, educational, and business/professional activities of various family members in Waxhaws area of S.C., particularly the descendants of Peter Wylie (1787-1855), and his wife, Annie Evans Wylie (1792-1859). Papers re education of Gilbert Lafayette Strait (1834-1863) at Arsenal Academy and Citadel Academy; medical training at University of New York; medical practice at Rich Hill; his aborted duel, December 1860, with Major T.J. Dunovant; Confederate military service with Catawba Guards, Company A, 6th Regiment, later with Palmetto Sharpshooters, from which he eventually resigned as an officer in order to serve as a medical officer; and his death, of dysentery, 18 Oct. 1863, at Chester home of his uncle, A.P. Wylie. Antebellum items document strong regional support for secession and division it caused between Richard Evans Wylie (1810-1875), a committed secessionist, and the chiefly Unionist Wylie family; letter 25 Sept. 1850, from W.J. Baskin, re southern reaction to California's admission as a free state and the Compromise of 1850. Undated letter from Susan Ann Wylie (1823-1857) re a frenzied pro-secession rally in Lancaster; land and legal papers; promissory notes; tax receipts, tax-in-kind estimates; bills of sale for African-American slaves; estate and guardianship papers; and miscellaneous papers of Leonard Strait as tax collector of Chester District, and of Peter Wylie as judge of ordinary of Chester District. Anti-nullification political cartoon, "The Nullification Column, with accompanying poem, "Nullification Column, as Planned and Reared to its Present Not Fearful Eminence"; other broadsides include undated election flyer, "To the People of Chester Dist.," [ca. 1832?] signed by Samuel McAliley; letters of Dr. William W. Mobley, who removed to Mississippi after the death of his wife, Marie Wylie Mobley, in 1857, describing conditions in the old Southwest. Postbellum materials including Oath of Allegiance, signed by Jacob Fox Strait, 31 Aug. 1865; notice, Dec. [ca. 1865], "To the Freedmen on the Plantation of J.F. Strait," ordering them to remain on the plantation until further notice; freedmen's labor contracts, 2 March 1866 and 28 Jan. 1868; twentieth century genealogical correspondence addressed to Rosa Baskin Strait Guess; and research files compiled by Mrs. Guess, including genealogical notes, papers re the churches of Chester, Lancaster, and York counties, and biographical notes re Rock Hill area physicians.
