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Size | 1.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 100 items) |
Abstract | James Clarence Harper was born in Pennsylvania and moved with his family to Patterson, Caldwell County, N.C., in 1840, where he engaged in farming, merchandising, the manufacture of cotton and woolen goods, stock raising, and teaching. He served as civil engineer, surveyor, and justice of the peace. He was a colonel in the state militia; member of the North Carolina legislature, 1865-1866; and U.S. representative, 1871-1873; and sat on the North Carolina Commission of Claims. He was active in road building projects and the Methodist Church and served on the building committee of Davenport Female College, Lenoir, N.C., and as president and building commission member for the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum in Morganton. Harper married Louisa C. McDowell in 1843; the couple had two children: John W. (1847-1865), a Confederate officer who was killed at Kinston, and Emma Sophia (1844-1922), who married Clinton A. Cilley, lawyer and judge of Lenoir and Hickory, N.C. Correspondence and related items, 1857-1886, chiefly document business matters. Beginning in the late 1870s, most items relate to the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum. Harper's multi-volume diary, 1840- 1889, contains almost daily entries, most of which are very short. Entries usually begin with a weather report and go on to document family; community; and business activities, such as buying and selling land, surveying, farming, and teaching. He often gave brief reports of political campaigns and election results; his agricultural activities (little or no mention of slave laborers); names of Methodist sermons; activities in the state legislature (1865-1866) and Congress (1871-1873); and homefront activities during the Civil War. Diary entries in the early 1870s mention painter and preacher Johannes Oertel of Lenoir. There is also periodic mention of Harper's activities on behalf of the Davenport Female College and, after 1876, the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum. Also included are a few clippings and a printed copy of a speech Harper made in Congress against school integration. |
Creator | Harper, James Clarence, 1819-1890. |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom, November 1995
Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008
Revised by: Dawne Howard Lucas, July 2021
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Correspondence and related items, 1857-1886, chiefly document business matters. Beginning in the late 1870s, most items relate to the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum. Harper's multi-volume diary, 1840- 1889, contains almost daily entries, most of which are very short. Entries usually begin with a weather report and go on to document family; community; and business activities, such as buying and selling land, surveying, farming, and teaching. He often gave brief reports of political campaigns and election results; his agricultural activities (little or no mention of slave laborers); names of Methodist sermons; activities in the state legislature (1865-1866) and Congress (1871-1873); and homefront activities during the Civil War. Diary entries in the early 1870s mention painter and preacher Johannes Oertel of Lenoir. There is also periodic mention of Harper's activities on behalf of the Davenport Female College and, after 1876, the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum. Also included are a few clippings and a printed copy of a speech Harper made in Congress against school integration.
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