Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

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 Speculation Land Company Records, #2876, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Loaned by Fred McBrayer of Rutherfordton, N.C., and Mrs. George W. Justice of Hendersonville, N.C., December 1952.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

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: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2009

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

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.

• Buncombe County (N.C.)--History.
• Coxe, Tench, 1755-1824.
• Du Ponceau, Peter Stephen, 1760-1844.
• Gold mines and mining--North Carolina--History.
• Kintzig, Abraham, fl. 1797-1809.
• Land companies--North Carolina--History.
• Mecklenburg County (N.C.)--History.
• Real estate investment--North Carolina--History.
• Real property--North Carolina--History.
• Rutherford County (N.C.)--History.
• Speculation Land Company.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Claims.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Confiscations and contributions.

• Archibald MacIntyre Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

Speculation Land Company was a New York company which owned thousands of acres in Buncombe, Rutherford, and Mecklenburg counties, N.C. The lands were acquired by Tenche Coxe (1755-1824) of Philadelphia, Pa., in 1797. Soon afterward, Coxe assigned some of the lands to Peter Stephen (Pierre Etienne) DuPonceau (1760-1844) and Abraham Kintzig, also of Philadelphia. In 1809 the lands were sold to Augustus Sacket who later defaulted on his mortgage and the lands were returned to the ownership of DuPonceau and Kintzig around 1825. The lands were subsequently sold to a group of New York owners by the name of Thomson, Hoyt, Murray, and Bronson. The New York owners employed agents in North Carolina to manage the lands including James Stevens, Joshua Forman, Matthew W. Davis, Thomas B. Justice, and C. B. Justice. Spokesmen for the landowner group in New York were successively Arthur Bronson, Frederick Bronson, and Willett Bronson. The numerous heirs and assignees of this original group sold out, 1920, to Fred McBrayer of Rutherfordton, N.C., and George W. Justice of Hendersonville, N.C.

The collection includes the records of the Speculation Land Company regarding lands owned in Buncombe, Rutherford, and Mecklenburg counties, N.C. There are legal papers, surveying records, agents account books of sales, and other items, including scattered personal papers of some of the agents. Some correspondence and accounts of the 1850s relate to gold and other mining on the Mecklenburg County lands, and post-Civil War papers relate to the recovery of the properties which had been taken over by Confederate sequestration agents.