Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

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 Robert Walker Withers Papers, #3235, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Series 2 consists of microfilm of original materials privately owned as of 1958.

Acquisitions Information

Acquired 1856, 1957; 1958

Additional Descriptive Resources

Original finding aid is filed in folder 1a.

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: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, March 2010

Conscious Editing Work by: Nancy Kaiser, July 2020. Updated abstract, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content note, and container list.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

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--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Alabama--Climate--History--19th century.
• Artesian wells--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Families--Alabama--Social life and customs.
• Flour mills--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Greene County (Ala.)--History.
• Hale County (Ala.)--History.
• Horse breeders--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Inland water transportation--Southern States--History--19th century.
• Lumbering--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Medicine--Practice--Alabama--Accounting--History--19th century.
• Physicians--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Plantation owners--Alabama.
• Plantations--Alabama.
• Scrapbooks--Alabama--History--19th century.
• Slave records--Alabama.
• Slavery--United States--History--19th century--Sources.
• Steam power plants--Alabama--Design and construction--History--19th century.
• University of Virginia--Curricula--History--19th century.
• University of Virginia--Students--History--19th century.
• Withers Family Plantation (Ala.)
• Withers family.
• Withers, Robert Walker, 1798-1854.
• Withers, Robert Walker, b. 1834.

Robert Walker Withers was a white physician, farmer, businessman, and enslaver of Greene and Hale counties, Ala.

Robert Walker Withers Papers document members of the Withers family and the people they enslaved in Greene and Hale Counties, Ala. There are two volumes of Robert Walker Withers, a white physician, farmer, and businessman, that contain birth information about the white family and the enslaved people, including name, birth year, and the mother's name. There are also varied accounts and memoranda pertaining to his medical practice and sale of drugs; his lumber and flour mills; agricultural methods; plantation and household expenditures; costs of river transportation; weather; and records of race horses. The other volumes include an album, 1837-1839, of Maria Withers, and five notebooks of Robert Walker Withers Jr. (b. 1834), containing his class notes while a student at the University of Virginia, 1852-1853. Two of the latter volumes have been used as scrapbooks. Also available, on microfilm, are scattered business letters, 1820-1890, pertaining to Robert Walker Withers's various business enterprises and to his research in an effort to construct a steam engine fed by artesian wells to power a cotton factory.

• Microfilm reel (M-3235/1)