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 Neill McKay and Frances Reid Ross Papers #5388, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Gayle Ross DeGeurin in April 2008 (Acc. 100908) and Victoria Ross Byrd in August 2008 (Acc. 101073).

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.

Encoded by: Laura Smith

Updated by: Jodi Berkowitz

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.

• Cumberland County (N.C.)
• Harnett County (N.C.)
• Lillington (N.C.)
• McKay family.
• McKay, Neill.
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Board of Women's Work.
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S.--Clergy.
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S.--History--19th century.
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S.--History--20th century.
• Ross family.
• Ross, Frances Reid, 1880-1977.
• Women teachers.
• Women--Societies and clubs.

Neill McKay (1816-1893) was a white Presbyterian minister of Harnett County, N.C. He owned land in Cumberland and Harnett Counties, N.C., and also owned African American slaves.

Frances Reid Ross (1880-1977) was a daughter of Neill McKay and his third wife, Maggie Murchison McKay. She taught parliamentary law and procedure and received requests from many women's clubs and church organizations.

The collection contains the nineteenth-century papers of white Presbyterian minister Neill McKay (1816-1893) of Harnett County, N.C., and the mid-twentieth-century papers of his daughter Frances Reid Ross (1880-1977) of Lillington, N.C. Financial and legal documents comprise the majority of Neill McKay's papers, and many items pertain to land sales in Cumberland and Harnett Counties, N.C. Documents include bills payable, receipts, accounts, land surveys, indentures, deeds, and estate papers, and some items predate McKay's life years, dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. Scattered correspondence pertains chiefly to financial matters. Materials related to his ministerial responsibilities and the Presbyterian Church are slight. Although he had extensive landholdings and owned African American slaves, McKay's papers include little documentation of enslaved people. Correspondence, printed items, and notes particularly on the history of the Presbyterian Church comprise the majority of Frances Ross's papers. Ross taught parliamentary law and procedure, and much of her correspondence pertains to requests from women's clubs, church organizations, training schools and colleges, and the Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics through State College of North Carolina (now North Carolina State University) for her to teach. Organizations represented in Ross's correspondence and other papers include the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, the Garden Club of North Carolina, Inc., the Committee on Woman's Work and later the Board of Women's Work for The Presbyterian Church in the United States, the North Carolina chapter of American War Mothers, Kings Mountain Junior Woman's Club, Flora MacDonald College in Red Springs, N.C., and Peace College in Raleigh, N.C.

The Addition of August 2008 contains combined papers of Rev. Neill McKay and his daughter, Frances Reid Ross, consisting primarily of financial material and smaller amounts of correspondence and papers relating to the church.

• Photograph (PF-05388/1)
• Oversize papers (OPF-05388/1-2)