Restrictions to Access

This collection contains additional materials that are not processed and are currently not available to researchers. For information about access to these materials, contact Research and Instructional Services staff. Please be advised that preparing unprocessed materials for access can be a lengthy process.

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 David A. Barnes Papers #3484, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Microfilm copy available.

Acquisitions Information

Gift of the Barnes family and David Collin Barnes Jr.

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: Manuscripts Department Staff, October 1975

Encoded by: Mara Dabrishus, October 2004

Updated by: Nancy Kaiser, March 2021

Funding from the State Library of North Carolina supported the encoding of this finding aid.

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.

• Account books.
• Alveston Plantation (Northampton County, N.C.)
• Bagley, William C. (William Chandler), 1874-1946.
• Bankruptcy--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Barnes family.
• Barnes, David A. (David Alexander), 1819-1892.
• Burgwyn family.
• College students--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Estates (Law)--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Families--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Horner Academy (Oxford, N.C.)
• Jackson (Northampton County, N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Lawyers--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Literature--North Carolina--Societies, etc.--History--19th century.
• McRae family.
• North Carolina--Intellectual life--19th century.
• North Carolina--Politics and government.
• Plantations--North Carolina--Northampton County.
• Railroads--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--North Carolina.
• Schools--North Carolina--Oxford--History--19th century.
• Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad Company--History.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Students--History--19th century.
• Vance, Zebulon Baird, 1830-1894.
• Vaughan family.
• Worth, Jonathan, 1802-1869.

David Alexander Barnes was born in 1819 in Northampton County, N.C. He was the son of Collin William Barnes (1783-1855) and his second wife Louisa (1795-1866), daughter of Bailey and Mary Barnes. His father was a planter and mill owner and member of the state Senate, 1829-1830. Collin William Barnes and his first wife Dorcas Stephenso had one son, William Henry, who married Eliza Ann Clifton. Collin William Barnes and Louisa Barnes had David Alexander; George B.; Joseph; Eliza Ann, who married Jesse Moore in 1838; Maria L., who married William H. Faison in 1847; and Caroline (1832-1892) (Carrie), who married William H. Drewry, a merchant of Petersburg, Va.

David A. Barnes graduated from the University of North Carolina with an A.B. in 1840; he later received an A.M. from UNC. He lived at Jackson and later Murfreesboro, N.C., and was a member of the state House of Commons in 1844, 1846, and 1850, and of the Convention of 1861. He was a superior court judge from 1865 to 1868 and a UNC trustee in 1868.

In 1873, he married Bettie Vaughan (1850-1918), daughter of Uriah Vaughan (1813-1890) and Sarah Jenkins Vaughan of Murfreesboro. They had four children: Elizabeth Vaughan (b. 1874), David Collin (b. 1875), Sarah Louisa (b 1878), and Annie Rosa Caroline. Barnes died in 1892.

The collection includes personal and business correspondence, chiefly 1850-1890; bills and receipts; bills of sale; wills; deeds; indentures; and other legal papers of David A. Barnes. The papers concerning legal matters handled by Barnes are largely relate to members of the Burgwyn and McRae families. They include letters concerning Alveston, the Burgwyn plantation in Occoneechie Neck, Northampton County, N.C.; George Pollock Burgwyn's bankruptcy case; and the affairs of T. Pollock Burgwyn and his sister Emily. There are scattered items relating to Barnes's service as aide-de-camp to North Carolina governor Zebulan B. Vance during the Civil War and to his postwar railroad interests as a director and attorney of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. Postwar political correspondence includes letters to and from Jonathan Worth, William C. Bagley, and others. Personal correspondence includes letters between Bettie Vaughan Barnes, the Vaughan family, and her husband and children, especially son David Collin Barnes while he was a student at Horner Academy, Oxford, N.C. Volumes include Collin William Barnes's ledger for provisions, shoe shop, and labor, 1820-1832; an account book and ledger for whiskey and bacon, 1833; Boons Mill day books, 1836-1839; other account books; proceedings of the Jackson Lyceum Society, Jackson, N.C., 1838-1839; and the 1840 diary Barnes kept while he was a student at the University of North Carolina.

Oversize volumes (SV-3484/3,4)

Microfilm (M-3484/1)