Dates: 1826; 1852-1885; n.d.

Microfilm copy (MF # 36317) must be used instead of originals in series 1-3. The photograph in series 4 may be used.

 

Biography:

Tryphena Blanche Holder

Tryphena Blanche Holder (1834-1912) was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of George Holder (1810-1849) and Anna Rose Cleveland Holder (1808-1895). Tryphena Holder attended the Maplewood Young Ladies Institute in Pittsfield. The Messenger family of Baconham Plantation, Warren County, Mississippi, later hired her as a governess in 1852. While working for the Messengers, Tryphena Holder met and married Dr. David Raymond Fox (1822-1893), who was formerly of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1856. He had established a medical practice among the sugar planters at Jesuit Bend, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. There the Foxes settled in a small plantation home called Hygiene and began a family, which included ten children born between 1857 and 1878. They were forced to evacuate their home during the Civil War, living in Vicksburg and later in northeast Mississippi. The Foxes returned to Hygiene after the war. In the course of rebuilding her life, Tryphena Holder Fox established schools for the children of planters, creoles, and former slaves.

 

Scope and Content Note:

As a New England native, Tryphena Holder Fox observed many things that would have seemed commonplace in the South to anyone other than an outsider. She frequently corresponded with her mother, Anna Rose Cleveland Holder, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and her letters contain much detail on southern domestic customs and manners. Tryphena Holder Fox was largely to the southern slave owner's viewpoint, and this is reflected in her correspondence. Her letters also provide a great deal of information about her life at Baconham and Hygiene; Dr. David Raymond Fox's medical practice; Mississippi River floods; and trips to New Orleans. On another level, Tryphena Holder Fox wrote as a woman far removed from her family in Massachusetts. In her letters, she poignantly expressed such varying sentiments as the happiness, joy, loneliness, and sadness of a wife and mother living in nineteenth-century Louisiana and Mississippi. In addition to her extensive correspondence, Tryphena Holder Fox also kept a diary between the years 1861 and 1867. In her diary, she wrote primarily of her feelings as a wife and mother. Especially poignant are her impressions of the Civil War and her grief upon the death of her young daughter, Anna Rose.

 

Series Identification:

Series 1: Correspondence. 1826; 1852-1870; 1872-1882; 1885. 1.33 c.f.
Included are letters from Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox to her mother, Anna Rose Cleveland Holder, and occasional letters from various Fox and Holder family members.

Boxes 1-4 (restricted)


Series 2: Correspondence (Typescripts). n.d. 0.33 c.f.
Typescripts of the majority of the original letters in series 1.

Box 5 (restricted)


Series 3: Diary (Typescript). n.d. 0.33 c.f.
Typescript of the original diary that Tryphena Holder Fox kept between 1861 and 1867. The location of her original diary is unknown.

Box 4 (restricted)
 

Series 4: Photograph. n.d. 0.17 c.f.
One black-and-white copy print (8"x10") of the plantation home, Hygiene, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

Box 6