Chiefly business records documenting transactions, promissory notes, lists of notes held and settlement of debts with firms in the Northeast during years following Civil War. Antebellum papers include contract, 4 Sept. 1829, signed by James [Ames?], who agrees to paint interior and exterior woodwork at the office of Vaughan & Lee, with payment to be made in cash and bricks; account, 1836-1860, estate of Francis S. Lee with Mrs. R[ebecca] A. Bonney; letter, 20 Oct. 1850, to Bonney's aunt, Lucy Carpenter, of Massachusetts, relating personal and local news, including the illness of Mrs. John Chesnut, the formation of Southern Rights Associations opposing the purchase of Northern manufactured goods and promoting a boycott, and the growth of mercantile establishments in Camden; and letter, 4 Jan. [18]61, to Usher [P. Bonney], reporting only about forty infantry volunteers in Camden, doubting that the number of volunteers would grow rapidly, and suggesting that his son volunteer in Charleston if he was insistent upon it, "The news that we get here is very conflicting. We hardly know what to believe." Document, 10 Oct. 1841, listing outstanding notes for collection and land in Kershaw District, S.C., and Illinois; letter, 20 Oct. 1850, Camden, S.C., Eli W. Bonney, to his aunt, Lucy Carpenter, Mass., re personal and local news; and document, c. 1866, Camden, S.C., re debt owed George R. Miller. Papers dating to the Reconstruction era include legal document, ca. 1866, oath swearing that George R. Miller is justly due a note of $92.73, the original having been destroyed during the war; fragmentary letters, 28 Mar. 1865, [ca. 19 July 1865], 11 Aug. 1865, and 13 Sept. 1865 , of J.D.B. DuBose, Winnsboro, S.C., conveying instructions to Bonney re safe storage of his cotton until DuBose was ready to sell; certificate, 21 May 1866, issued by the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana authorizing Usher P. Bonney to practice law in the Superior Courts of South Carolina; agricultural labor agreement, 1868, between Archy Crim and E.W. Bonney; and newspaper clipping, 1922, obituary for Maj. Thomas B. Lee, with manuscript notation "First Cousin of F.P.L. Bonney."
