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 Susan Petteford Certificates #70067-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [Note: Previously was unit 3 within the North Carolina Miscellaneous Papers #1135-z.]

Acquisitions Information

Gift of the Special Collections Librarian, Karl B. Johnson, of Arizona State University Library, Tempe, Ariz., in November 1971 (Acc. 20200407.3).

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: Suzanne Ruffing, September 1996

Encoded by: Byte Managers, Inc., 2008

Revision by: Nancy Kaiser, April 2020, October 2022

This collection previously was unit 3 within the North Carolina Miscellaneous Papers (#1135-z). In April 2020, all nine units of North Carolina Miscellaneous Papers were separated into individual collections with revised description. North Carolina Miscellaneous Papers (#1135-z) originally was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

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.

• African American women--Legal status, laws, etc.
• African American women--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• African Americans--History--To 1863.
• Free African Americans--North Carolina.
• Free Black people--North Carolina.
• Freed persons--North Carolina.
• Petteford, Susan, active 1861.

Susan Petteford was a free woman of color residing in Granville County, N.C., in 1861 and she was the daughter of Alse Petteford, a free man of color.* She was born in North Carolina in 1837 or 1838. She married Lindsey Pulley in February 1861. By the time of the 1880 census, Susan C. Pulley was "keeping house" in Wakeman, Huron County, Ohio, with Pulley and their children: Polly R., Robert W., Norman F., John H., Sarah H., Harvey, and Charles S. She died in 1909.

*Any further biographical information about Susan Petteford rests on the archivist's finding that Petteford secured both a certificate of character and a marriage license in February 1861 from the Granville County, N.C. courts. Marriage and census records were accessed via Ancestry.com on 20 April 2020. The original source material can be found in 1) North Carolina County Registers of Deeds, Record Group 048 (microfilm), North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.; and 2) Tenth Census of the United States, 1880 (microfilm), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Certificate of character for Susan Petteford, a free woman of color about 23 years old, 26 February 1861, by the acting justice of the peace of Granville County, N.C., W. R. White. Attached is an official printed state form, 5 April 1861, signed by the Granville County Clerk of Court Augustus Landis, the Governor's Secretary Graham Daves, and Governor John W. Ellis. Susan Petteford was the daughter of Alse Petteford, a free man of color.