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 Jacob Doll Diaries #5335, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from the Presbyterian Historical Society of Montreat, N.C., in 2007 (Acc. 100695).

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: Joyce Chapman, October 2007

Encoded by: Joyce Chapman, October 2007

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.

• Caswell County (N.C.)--History.
• Caswell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Clergy--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Confederate States of America--Social conditions.
• Diaries.
• Doll, Jacob, 1812-1878.
• Ku Klux Klan (19th cent.)
• Murder--North Carolina--Caswell County.
• North Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Presbyterians--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--North Carolina.
• Stephens, John Walter, 1834-1870.

Jacob Doll was born in Martinsville, Va. (now W.Va.), in 1812 and died 27 April 1878. According to the Caswell County Historical Association, Doll was installed at Bethesda Church in Caswell County, N.C., on 1 November 1866 and organized the First Presbyterian Church in Reidsville in 1875.

(Information from the Caswell County Historical Association website: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncccha/memoranda/churches/bethesdachurch.html, accessed October 2007.)

The collection consists of eight diaries, with entries 1848-1876, belonging to Presbyterian minister Jacob Doll of Caswell County, N.C., and several enclosures. The diaries date from 1848 to 1876 and document daily events in 19th-century Caswell County, including marriages, deaths, sermons preached, social events and holidays, weather, church events, and anniversaries. They also include lists of letters written and visits made on church business. National events are occasionally noted, most prominent among them the Civil War. Doll recorded the dates of major battles and the wounding or deaths of soldiers from the community. One diary entry discusses the murder of Republican North Carolina state senator John Walter Stephens by the Ku Klux Klan in the Caswell County courthouse on 21 May 1870. The enclosures consist of several undated notes written by Doll's granddaughter, Mrs. J. M. McCord. The notes point out events in the diaries that McCord found of particular interest.