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 Joseph Sams Papers, #4374, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Gift 1983

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: Jodi Berkowitz, January 2022

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.

• Confederate States of America. Army--Military life.
• Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 29th.
• Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 64th.
• Crawford, H. T.
• Crawford, Robert Benson.
• Georgia--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Mathematics--Problems, exercises, etc.
• Mississippi--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• North Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Sams, Joseph, d. 1865.
• Sams, Polly Ann Crawford.
• Soldiers--Confederate States of America--Correspondence.
• Tennessee--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.

Correspondence and other papers of Joseph Sams and members of his family, consisting mostly of letters from Joseph Sams to his wife, Polly Ann Crawford Sams, during the Civil War years. A native of Madison County, N.C., Sams was in the minority of Confederate sympathizers from that part of the state. Sams's letters to his wife Polly chronicle his hopes and fears for the the Southern cause from his arrival in Raleigh in 1861 to his capture at Yazoo City, Miss., in 1863; they include references to Confederate activities at Camp Haynesville, Elizabethton, Jackson, Charleston, Morristown, and Shelbyville, Tenn., and at Yazoo City, Miss. Sams fought with the 64th and 29th North Carolina regiments. Also included are a ciphering book, dated 19 June 1820, of Robert Benson Crawford, Joseph Sams's father-in-law, and a few letters of other members of the Sams and Crawford families, including letters from H. T. (Henry?) Crawford, R. B. Crawford's son, a Confederate soldier at Dalton, Ga., and Greeneville, Tenn., in 1864 and 1865.