John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961

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Summary

Creator:
Colhoun, John Ewing, 1750-1802.
Abstract:

John Ewing Colhoun was a planter, lawyer, South Carolina legislator, and U.S. Senator.

The collection is mostly papers and correspondence related to Colhoun's law practice and to his plantations, including Santee, Bonneau's Ferry, Pimlico, 12 Mile, Keowee, and Mount Prospect, in the St. Stephen's and St. John's parishes and the Charleston and Pendleton districts, S.C. There are also limited records, 1830s-1850s, for Midway and Millwood plantations in Abbeville District, owned by son James Edward Calhoun (who changed the spelling of his surname), and several letters, 1816-1820, addressed to William Moultrie Reid of Charleston (relation to Colhoun unknown). Financial and legal papers include plantation accounts, slave lists, overseer contracts, warrants, bonds, indentures, affidavits, deeds, estate papers, clippings, and miscellaneous items.

Extent:
265 items (0.5 linear feet)
Language:
Materials in English
Library Catalog Link:
View UNC library catalog record for this item

Background

Biographical / historical:

John Ewing Colhoun (1750-1802) was a planter, lawyer, South Carolina legislator, and United States senator. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he attended Princeton College, and graduated in 1774. After studying law and being admitted to the bar in 1783, he set up practice in Charleston, South Carolina, working mostly in estate settlements and personal injury suits. Colhoun later acquired several plantations across the state, including his Santee Plantation in St. Stephen's Parish, his Keowee and 12 Mile Plantations in the Pendleton District, and his Pimlico and Bonneau's Ferry Plantations in St. John's Parish. Another plantation he owned, the location of which is unclear, was called Mount Prospect. Colhoun grew mostly indigo, rice, oats, and vegetables on his plantations, as well as raising cattle, and breeding horses.

From 1778 to 1800 Colhoun served in the South Carolina House of Representatives; in 1801 he served in the state Senate; and from 4 March 1801 until his death on 26 October 1802, he served as a Democrat in the United States Senate.

Colhoun married Floride Bonneau, a member of a prominent South Carolina Huguenot family, and they had at least three children. John Ewing Colhoun, Jr., was a planter in Pendleton, South Carolina, and another son, James Edward Calhoun (he changed the spelling of the surname), served as an officer in the U.S. Navy in the 1820s, and later became a planter as well. He owned the Midway and Millwood Plantations located in the Abbeville District. Their daughter, Floride, married John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) in 1811. (John C. Calhoun's father, Patrick Calhoun, was a cousin of John Ewing Colhoun.) After John Ewing Colhoun's death, his wife Floride seems to have had little to do with managing his properties. She spent her summers in Newport, Rhode Island, staying in South Carolina only during the winter months.

William Moultrie Reid, for whom several letters appear in the collection, lived in Charleston from 1816 to 1820, and served as a member of the Charleston Riflemen in 1819, but nothing beyond that is known about him. Letters written to him address him as William Moultrie Reid, Esq., so he may have been a lawyer.

(Information for this biographical sketch was taken from the Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929, Volume III, p. 412), the Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. 721), and the papers themselves.)

Scope and content:

The bulk of this collection consists of correspondence and financial and legal papers pertaining to the plantations of John Ewing Colhoun, with scattered papers and correspondence also appearing on Colhoun's law business. The papers do not provide any information on Colhoun's political career. The collection also includes a few papers related to plantations owned by James Edward Calhoun, several letters addressed to William Moultrie Reid, and a few miscellaneous items.

Letters received by John Ewing Colhoun and three he wrote to others are all contained in Subseries 1.1, and comprise the largest part of the correspondence. Most of the letters were written by overseers Colhoun hired to manage his plantations, and concern crops, weather conditions, slaves, livestock, and accounts. The letters are a particularly rich source of information on slave conditions, frequently mentioning runaways, their reasons for leaving, and their punishments, as well as tasks assigned to individual slaves. The financial and legal papers contained in Series 2 also provide significant information on slaves, with several slave lists and work task lists appearing.

The correspondence in Subseries 1.1 and 1.2, and the papers in Series 2, also provide some insight into Colhoun's law business, although information on individual cases is incomplete. Subseries 1.2 consists mostly of the correspondence of Colhoun's executors concerning his estate, but also contains two letters pertaining to an estate case on which Colhoun had been working before his death.

Series 2 contains a few plantation papers for James Edward Calhoun, consisting mostly of a plantation journal kept between 1830 and 1834, discussing his "scientific" approach to farming, and receipts. Other items of note in the collection are ten letters received by William Moultrie Reid of Charleston from friends and family, which comprise most of Subseries 1.3; clippings on various topics, including the burning of Columbia by Sherman and the breeding of silkworms (Subseries 3.1), and a hand-drawn map of two of John Ewing Colhoun's plantations (Subseries 3.2). Also included is a diary, 116 pages, kept by James Edward Calhoun, April 1825-April 1826 (Subseries 3.2.). Series 4 consists of an engraving of Colhoun's Keowee Plantation and several photographs of the site it once occupied.

Acquisition information:

Gift of Mary G. Stevenson of Clemson College, Clemson, S.C., in June 1961. James Edward Calhoun diary purchased from Charles Apfelbaum of Valley Stream, N.Y., in February 1993 (Acc. 93026).

Processing information:

Processed by: Jill Snider, August 1990, Roslyn Holdzkom, March 1993

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, December 2009

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.

Access and use

Restrictions to access:

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to use:

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 John Ewing Colhoun Papers #130, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Location of this collection:
Louis Round Wilson Library
200 South Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Contact:
(919) 962-3765
wilsonlibrary@unc.edu