Business and family letters, account books, and papers relating to lands near Combahee River in Colleton County, S.C., and involving the Heyward, Capers, Chiffelle, Coachman, Gibbes, and Palmer families; includes undated map showing boundaries of plantations, towns, streams in Colleton County, and route of Charleston and Savannah Railroad; topics include cultivation of rice and cotton; African American slaves; politics; Charleston, Colleton County, and elsewhere in S.C.; life during Colonial, Early National, Antebellum, Reconstruction, and later eras. Edward "Barney" Barnwell Heyward, born in Beaufort, S.C., on 4 May 1826, was the son of Charles Heyward (1802-1866) and Emma Barnwell Heyward (1806-1835). Heyward spent much of his youth at Rose Hill plantation near Bluffton, S.C., where he was born and in his family's home in Charleston, S.C. His graduation from South Carolina College in 1845 was followed by an extended trip to Europe. In 1850 Heyward married Lucy Green Izard, of Columbia, S.C. Only one of their four children, Walter Izard (b. 1851), survived infancy. Before his wife's death in 1858, Heyward purchased Goodwill plantation on the Wateree River in lower Richland District, S.C. Civil War letters include family letters of Catherine "Tat" Maria Clinch (1828-1870) who became E.B. Heyward's second wife in 1863. Like the Heywards, family issues beset the Clinch family at the outset of the Civil War. Tat's sister Elizabeth was married to Maj. Robert Anderson, who surrendered Ft. Sumter in April 1861. In July 1861 Tat Clinch informed her mother of the death of Edmund Clinch (22 July 1861); other letters of 1863 discuss her impressions of life in lower Richland County, S.C., as well as news of the Vicksburg campaign and in S.C., the situation along the Combahee River where "The Yankees have devastated the plantations, six or seven of them ... carrying off six or seven hundred negroes" (5 June 1863) [a reference to the raid on Combahee River plantations during the night of June 1st and 2nd by Harriet Tubman and ca. 150 black troops led by Col. James Montgomery]; Sherman's arrival in Savannah, evacuation of slaves and supplies; skepticism about military's ability to stop Sherman's advance; and high incidence of runaway slaves while working as diggers; and. Reconstruction-era letters discuss agriculture and adjustment to free labor; speech, 18 Aug. 1892, of Duncan Clinch Heyward, Black Creek, Colleton County, supporting gubernatorial candidacy of John Sheppard. Letter, 5 Jan. 1918, Ducan Clinch Heyward to Mendel L. Smith, re taxation to support American war efforts in Europe; 3 undated essays presented to Kosmos Club by D.C. Heyward: My Campaign for Governor; Gullah Negroes; A Lynching I Once Attended; and address welcoming Confederate veterans; and congratulatory letters, ca. 1937, to Duncan Clinch Heyward upon publication of his book, Seed from Madagascar. Bound volumes include account book, 1819-1820, of Duncan L. Clinch, containing general expenditures, property value estimates, as well as amounts owed him for military services and prize money for captured vessels; 2 volumes, 1835-1855 and 1856-1862, Charles Heyward's journal while in residence at Charleston, noting yellow fever and cholera outbreaks (1836), trips to Montreal (1844) and Europe (1854), Charleston fire of 11 Dec. 1861, and moving to "Wateree," 7 June 1862. Account book, 1847-1861 and 1863, re cloth and blankets issued to slaves at Ashley farm and Marshland plantation and other expenses; volume, 1855-1862, re planting and harvesting at Amsterdam and Lewisburg plantations, with comments on desertion of African-American slaves to Union forces, and making plans to move slaves to Wateree; volume, 1855-1862, re planting, harvesting of rice, and operation of steam rice thrashing mill at Rose Hill plantation; and 2 volumes, 1837-1864, C[harles] H[eyward], account with Margaret Hays, nurse. Other volumes include Clinch Heyward's 1888 time book for farm laborers; and undated unbound volume, "Genealogical Scrap Book of the family of Mary Campbell Heyward Married in 1914 to Irvine Furman Belser," compiled by Katherine Bayard Heyward.
