Z 1574.000 Jenkins (John Carmichael) and Family Papers

Z 1574.000
JENKINS (JOHN CARMICHAEL) AND FAMILY PAPERS

John Flavel Carmichael, a native of Pennsylvania, was a surgeon during the Revolutionary War and a friend of George Washington. He came to the Mississippi Territory with General James Wilkinson and settled in what is now Wilkinson County. He was appointed the first tax collector of the Natchez District. Carmichael's main occupation was his medical practice, but he also owned two large plantations that later became the property of his nephew, John Carmichael Jenkins. Carmichael died on October 31, 1837.

John Carmichael Jenkins was a physician and planter who practiced experimental agriculture on his plantations in Adams and Wilkinson counties in Mississippi and in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. He was born in Churchtown, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1809. Jenkins was educated at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and he received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He then moved to Wilkinson County to take over the medical practice of his uncle, John Flavel Carmichael, who had lost his eyesight.

In 1839, Jenkins married Annis Field Dunbar, daughter of Dr. William Dunbar and granddaughter of Sir William Dunbar. The Jenkinses established their permanent residence at Elgin Plantation in Adams County. It became the nursery for Jenkins's experiments with many varieties of fruit trees and cotton. Jenkins became a staunch proponent of slavery as both a constitutional right and an economic necessity. The Jenkinses had five children: Annis Dunbar (b./d. 1840), Alice (b. 1841), Mary Dunbar (b. 1843), John Flavel (b. 1846), and William Dunbar (b. 1849). John Carmichael and Annis Dunbar Jenkins died within a few weeks of each other in 1855, both victims of yellow fever. He was forty-six; she was thirty-five.

At the age of sixteen, John Flavel Jenkins fought for the Confederacy, apparently joining the Breckinridge Guards, a cavalry unit attached to the Army of Tennessee. He was discharged in 1863. After the war, he attended Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), graduating in 1868. He took over the management of the family plantations, established two plantation stores, and became one of the first specialty breeders of Guernsey cattle in the state. In 1872, he married Louisa Winchester, daughter of Judge Josiah and Margaret Sprague Winchester of Natchez. Alice Jenkins was educated in New York and New Orleans. She resided in Washington, D.C. Mary Dunbar Jenkins married Lewis M. Johnson of New York. William Dunbar Jenkins finished his studies in Paris, France. He became chief engineer of the New Orleans and Northwestern Railroad. He married Henriette Koontz of Natchez.

While this microfilm edition of the collection is not consistently arranged in chronological order, the papers fall into these broad categories: family and business correspondence, the Carmichael estate (after 1837), the Jenkins estate (after 1855), and maps of some river bottoms in the Natchez District.

The correspondence is written by family, friends, and lawyers, and nearly every item discusses the ownership of land or the dispersal of assets accruing from the land first acquired by John Flavel Carmichael and later owned by John Carmichael Jenkins. Included in some of the early letters are maps and plats of some of the property. The family members were in constant contact with their distant relatives over legal matters, as evidenced by the number of letters written from Natchez, Woodville, and Pinckneyville, Mississippi; New Orleans; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; and Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, among others.

The bulk of the collection concerns the settlement of the Carmichael and Jenkins estates. The executor of the Carmichael estate was John Carmichael Jenkins, and the executor of the Jenkins estate was Judge Josiah Winchester. Papers relating to the Carmichael estate contain copies of his Spanish land grants in Louisiana and Mississippi. Papers relating to the Jenkins estate include the claims filed by the four Jenkins children, Alice, John Flavel, Mary Dunbar, and William Dunbar, against the United States government for the military seizure of cotton from the Tarbert Plantation in Wilkinson County in 1863.

The remainder of the collection is a set of four maps of river-bottom land in the area: the confluence of the Yazoo River and the Mississippi River at Walnut Hills (Vicksburg), Mississippi; the Louisiana tributaries to the mouth of the Red River; the Louisiana tributaries of the Black River; and a branch of Bayou Sara in Wilkinson County showing tracts belonging to William Dunbar, John O'Reily, and Hubert Rowel, among others.

1. Correspondence. 1796-1866.
2. Estate Papers (John Flavel Carmichael). 1792-1909.
3. Estate Papers (John Carmichael Jenkins). 1855-1880.
4. Maps. n.d.