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 Charles Alfred DeSaussure Papers Inventory #5054, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from Lawrence E. Jarrell of High Point, N.C., in June 2001 (Acc. 98986).

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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.

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.

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• Children--South Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
• DeSaussure family.
• DeSaussure, Charles Alfred, b. 1846.
• Education--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Episcopal Church--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Family--South Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
• Plantation life--South Carolina.
• Slavery--South Carolina.
• South Carolina--Social life and customs--19th century.
• Young men--South Carolina--History--19th century.

• Louis M. DeSaussure Plantation Journal (#2251-z), Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Charles Alfred DeSaussure was born on 21 September 1846 into a prominent Huguenot family of South Carolina. His mother was Jane Hay Hutson, the second wife of Louis McPherson DeSaussure. His father owned a 780-acre plantation known as Woodstock in Beaufort County, S.C. Charles lived at Woodstock for part of the year and spent the other part at the family's summer home in the pinelands of McPhersonville, S.C. When Charles was eleven, his father sold the summer home and bought another one in the town of Beaufort, S.C., so that Charles and his brother Tom could receive a better education. Charles and Tom attended the College of Beaufort, which was founded in 1795 as a preparatory school and junior college for local planter families. Charles was raised in the Episcopal Church. In 1863, he joined the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery Corps and stayed with the unit until the end of the Civil War. After the war, he appears to have married and had children.

The collection includes an undated 22-page typed transcription, source unknown, of the memoir that Charles Alfred DeSaussure wrote sometime after the Civil War at the request of his children. The memoir deals primarily with DeSaussure's childhood experiences as a planter's son in antebellum Beaufort County, S.C. He wrote in great detail about the daily plantation life at Woodstock, including crops, how the slaves lived, relationships between slaves and masters, jobs and positions on the plantation, how the southern elite socialized, and what he called "southern hospitality." DeSaussure wrote about the differences between life in Beaufort County and at his summer home in the McPhersonville, S.C., pinelands. He also wrote about the role of Episcopal Church in daily life and about the education and pastimes of young men in South Carolina. As a student at the College of Beaufort, he learned as much out of class as in class, including how to swim and sail. Also included are two photocopied maps showing the locations of many of the places mentioned in the memoir.