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Size | 1.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 62 items) |
Abstract | Robert Walker Withers Papers document members of the Withers family and the people they enslaved in Greene and Hale Counties, Ala. There are two volumes of Robert Walker Withers, a white physician, farmer, and businessman, that contain birth information about the white family and the enslaved people, including name, birth year, and the mother's name. There are also varied accounts and memoranda pertaining to his medical practice and sale of drugs; his lumber and flour mills; agricultural methods; plantation and household expenditures; costs of river transportation; weather; and records of race horses. The other volumes include an album, 1837-1839, of Maria Withers, and five notebooks of Robert Walker Withers Jr. (b. 1834), containing his class notes while a student at the University of Virginia, 1852-1853. Two of the latter volumes have been used as scrapbooks. Also available, on microfilm, are scattered business letters, 1820-1890, pertaining to Robert Walker Withers's various business enterprises and to his research in an effort to construct a steam engine fed by artesian wells to power a cotton factory. |
Creator | Withers, Robert Walker, 1798-1854. |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
Processed by: SHC Staff
Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007
Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, March 2010
Conscious Editing Work by: Nancy Kaiser, July 2020. Updated abstract, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content note, and container list.
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Robert Walker Withers was a white physician, farmer, businessman, and enslaver of Greene and Hale counties, Ala.
Back to TopRobert Walker Withers Papers document members of the Withers family and the people they enslaved in Greene and Hale Counties, Ala. There are two volumes of Robert Walker Withers, a white physician, farmer, and businessman, that contain birth information about the white family and the enslaved people, including name, birth year, and the mother's name. There are also varied accounts and memoranda pertaining to his medical practice and sale of drugs; his lumber and flour mills; agricultural methods; plantation and household expenditures; costs of river transportation; weather; and records of race horses. The other volumes include an album, 1837-1839, of Maria Withers, and five notebooks of Robert Walker Withers Jr. (b. 1834), containing his class notes while a student at the University of Virginia, 1852-1853. Two of the latter volumes have been used as scrapbooks. Also available, on microfilm, are scattered business letters, 1820-1890, pertaining to Robert Walker Withers's various business enterprises and to his research in an effort to construct a steam engine fed by artesian wells to power a cotton factory.
Back to TopFolder 1a |
Original finding aid |
Folder 1 |
1794-1822; 1845-1850Includes information about enslaved people. |
Folder 2 |
Volume 1: Physician's ledger, 1821, and plantation accounts, 1827-1841The physician's ledger shows Withers's charges for visits and medicines. This account runs about halfway through the volume. Plantation accounts consist chiefly of receipts and expenses. Also included in the volume are miscellaneous accounts written into the spaces at the bottoms of pages. |
Folder 3 |
Volume 2: 1823-1953Includes birth information about enslaved people (beginning page 39) and memoranda relating to agricultural methods, horse pedigrees, a list of the children of R. W. and Mary D. Withers, and a running record of the peculiarities of the seasons in Greene County, Ala. |
Folder 4 |
Volume 3: Album of Miss Maria Withers, 1837-1839Poetic tributes from friends in Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, and Edge Hill, written in a book containing printed verses, prayers, and religious and sentimental illustrations. |
Folder 5-9
Folder 5Folder 6Folder 7Folder 8Folder 9 |
Volumes 4-8: Robert W. Withers student notebooks, 1852-1853Five notebooks belonging to Withers while he was a student at the University of Virginia, containing class notes on lectures in Latin, Greek, geometry, and chemistry. Two of the volumes have also been used as scrapbooks and contain recipes, pictures, and miscellaneous clippings. |
Reel M-3235/1 |
Business letters and other papers, 1820-1890 and undated |