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No restrictions. Open for research.

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 William Robert Inge Dalton papers #4148-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Louise A. Weynant of Seattle, Wash., in January 1977.

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Processed by: Suzanne Ruffing, August 1996

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

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.

• Confederate States of America. Navy--Biography.
• Dalton, Hamilton H.
• Dalton, William Robert Inge, 1841-1931.
• Henderson family--Genealogy.
• Trafficking in enslaved persons.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Personal narratives.
• United States. Navy--Biography.

William Robert Inge Dalton, the son of Robert Hunter and Jane Martin Henderson Dalton, was born 6 December 1841 in Livingston, Ala. He entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1859, but resigned in 1861 to join the Confederate Navy. His service was chiefly in bearing dispatches to the Confederate ministers in London and Paris.

After the war, he studied medicine and, in 1884, received a medical degree from St. Louis College. From 1884 to 1903, Dalton practiced in New York City, where he became an expert in dermatology. He moved to Seattle, Wash., in 1903 and continued his medical practice until 1918. He died in Seattle on 25 May 1931.

These papers include a biographical sketch of Dalton, taken from Volume LI of the Encyclopedia of American Biography and sketches by Dalton of his Confederate naval service, including his meeting with Napoleon III; running the blockade at Charleston, S.C.; the sinking of the Margaret and Jessie by the Rhode Island off the Bahamas; his voyage to England after the shipwreck and his work there and in France; his continuing friendship with naval colleagues in the federal forces; and friends with whom he served in the Confederate Navy.

There is also a letter, 5 March 1894, from Dalton to Charles R. Flint and Company, reporting on the cruise of the America to Brazil and evaluating her officers; an account by Hamilton H. Dalton of his service with the U.S. Navy off the African coast and the capture of a slave ship; and a genealogy of the Henderson family written by Thomas Henderson Pritchard in 1894.