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The original item in SEP-2718/1 is not available for immediate or same day access. Please contact staff at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu to discuss options.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Branch Family Papers #2718, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

All or part of this collection is available on microfilm from University Publications of America as part of the Records of ante-bellum southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, Series J.

Acquisitions Information

Received from James A. Branch of Atlanta, Georgia, in March 1939 and February 1944. Subsequent additions include 120 items received from Mrs. A. H. Branch of Fayetteville, North Carolina, in January 1975, and acquisitions of individual items in 1964, 1970, and 1971. Addition received from Nancy Bacon in November 2013 (Acc. 101931).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Marla Miller, August 1990

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated: November 2018, December 2018

Updated by: Dawne Howard Lucas, April 2021

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Agriculture--Florida.
• Agriculture--Georgia.
• Baker County (Ga.)--Social life and customs.
• Branch family.
• Branch, John, 1782-1863.
• Branch, William Henry, 1823-1910.
• Branch, William Horton, 1852-1920.
• Colquitt County (Ga.)--Social life and customs.
• Cotton growing--Florida.
• Cotton growing--Georgia.
• Eaton, John Henry, 1790-1856.
• Education, Elementary--Georgia--History--19th century.
• Education, Higher--Georgia--History--19th century.
• Florida--Politics and government.
• Georgia--Politics and government.
• Georgia--Social life and customs.
• Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845.
• Leon County (Fla.)--History--19th century.
• Live Oak Plantation (Leon County, Fla.)
• Merchants--Georgia--History--19th century.
• Mitchell County (Ga.)--Social life and customs.
• North Carolina--Politics and government--1775-1865.
• Plantation life--Florida.
• Plantation life--Georgia.
• Plantations--Florida.
• Women--Education--Georgia.
• Women--Southern States--Social life and customs.
• Wood Lawn Plantation (Leon County, Fla.)

John Branch (1784-1863) was born in Halifax, North Carolina, the third child in the wealthy and prominent family of Colonel John Branch and Mary Bradford Branch. He was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1801. He studied law, but never actively engaged in practice, preferring the life of a wealthy planter and politician. He became a state senator in 1811, and served again in 1813-1817, 1822, and 1834, acting as speaker of the state senate from 1815 to 1817. He served as governor of North Carolina from 1817 to 1820, United States senator from 1823 to 1829, and secretary of the Navy from 1829 to 1831, when his involvement in the complications and embarrassment resulting from the marriage of John Eaton and Peggy O'Neale forced Branch to resign from the cabinet. He declined appointments to foreign missions and to the territorial governorship of Florida and severed relations with Andrew Jackson, becoming a supporter of John C. Calhoun. As a show of confidence, Branch was subsequently elected to the House of Representatives by unanimous vote, and served until 1833.

About 1833, Branch began acquiring property near Tallahassee, Florida, and was appointed governor of the Florida territory from 1843 to 1845, during which time Florida became a state. Plantations operated by Branch included Wood Lawn, Live Oak, and Whitehead Place, near Tallahassee, Florida, presumably in Leon County. (A description of Live Oak can be found in Series 2.2, Folder 107.) Upon the death of his wife, Elizabeth Foort, Branch returned to North Carolina, where he later married Mary Eliza (Jordan) Bond, with whom he had no children. He died in Enfield 4 January 1863.

Branch and Elizabeth Foort Branch raised nine children. One son, John Richard, died before John Branch, leaving children who were named in Branch's will. A daughter, Mary Eliza, first married Leigh Read and later married William Bailey. She was not named in her father's will and probably died before he did, as did two other children, James Branch and Rebecca Bradford Branch (Mrs. Robert White Williams). The surviving children of John Branch included William Henry Branch of Florida and Georgia, who is the central figure through much of the period covered by these papers; Sarah (Sally), who married Dr. James Hunter of Halifax County, North Carolina; Martha (Mrs. Edward Bradford) of Florida; Susan (Mrs. Arvah Hopkins) of Florida; and Margaret (Mrs. Daniel S. Donelson) of Tennessee. All of the daughters had children who wrote at various times, some frequently, to William Henry Branch and his children.

William Henry Branch was born 9 October 1823 and died 20 October 1910. In 1848, he married Mary Eliza Horton, daughter of R. Horton of Huntsville, Alabama. He was a licensed attorney and planter in Florida until 1866, when he moved to Georgia, where he became a small merchant and farmer. In Georgia, the William Henry Branch family lived in Baker County (Newton, Branchville); in Colquitt County (Felix), where Branch served as county commissioner and postmaster and was involved in local politics; and finally in various places in Mitchell County, including Camilla, Magnolia, Pelham, Pebble City, and Sale City, or on farms near these towns.

Branch was called William H. or W.H.; his son, William Horton Branch, called Horton by the family, signed his name W. Horton Branch and was frequently addressed as W.H. In many of the later Papers, it is difficult to determine which Branch was indicated by W.H. Other children of William Henry and Mary Eliza Branch include Lucie (Mrs. Charles Munnerlyn), among whose children were Genie, Josie Elma, Lucius, and others; and Josie (Mrs. Wimberly W. Cullens), whose children were Wimberly, Jr., Willie Frank, Branch, and Plant. Mary Eliza Branch died in 1871.

William Horton Branch (1852-1920), the focus of the papers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born at Live Oak, a Branch plantation in Florida. He moved to a location near Felix, Georgia, and married Sallie Thornton of Georgia in 1876. About 1888 Horton moved to a home near Magnolia (later Pelham), Georgia; he served there as overseer of roads, and became a member of the Democratic Executive Committee of Mitchell County in 1904. Children of William Horton Branch and Sallie Thornton Branch included Will [William Henry]; Edward; Elbert; and James A. James A. Branch was educated at Emory University, taught briefly in Leary, Georgia, became a lawyer in Atlanta, and was the donor of most of these papers.

The collection includes correspondence and legal and financial material of four generations of the Branch family. The earliest papers are deeds and legal documents relating to property in Halifax County, North Carolina. Other financial and legal material relating to John Branch includes deeds, indentures, sales receipts and other material relating to cotton production. After the 1850s, the financial and legal papers are primarily those of William Henry Branch, and document the inventory and operation of Branch's small farming operation and mercantile businesses. Similar papers of William Horton Branch, a small merchant in various southwestern Georgia towns, become a significant part of the collection by the late 1880s and continue until the end. Scattered throughout the papers of both William Henry and William Horton Branch are items relating to small mercantile businesses, the marketing of cotton and other produce, local government and politics, social life in small Georgia towns, and education at all levels.

Correspondence in the Branch family papers of the 1820s and 1830s relates largely to the political activities of John Branch, but are too sporadic to reveal a full picture, with the partial exception of Branch's involvement in the Eaton affair. There is very little information on Florida politics in the period of Branch's governorship.

After the 1840s, the focus of the correspondence shifts to the family of William Henry Branch. Papers document both family and business concerns of William H. Branch and his children and grandchildren. While there is no evidence in the papers of any participation in the Civil War by Branch men, letters contain both John and William's views on secession, as do two undated essays (see Series 3). Several letters reveal the effect of the war on women. Documentation of William Horton Branch is central to the collection after 1870. Documentation of women increases throughout, and is especially strong in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Correspondence (Series 1) and financial and legal papers (Subseries 2.1) have been arranged chronologically with subseries divided by dates of events that to some degree alter the focus of the material.

• Separated Folder SEP-2718/1