Dates: 1811; 1830 - 1897.
MDAH only has microfilm.

Biography:

Thomas Alexander Watkins

Thomas Alexander Watkins was born in Augusta, Georgia, on October 30, 1802. He was the son of George and Mary Early Watkins of Georgia. Watkins had four sisters, Emily, Elizabeth, Jane, and Umbra, and one brother, Robert Watkins. Thomas A. Watkins attended schools at Mt. Zion and the University of Georgia. He received his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1825, he moved to north Alabama, settling in Courtland. There he owned a drugstore, and from 1832, practiced medicine in partnership with Dr. Jack Shackleford. 

Watkins married Sarah Epes Fitzgerald, the twenty-year-old daughter of Thomas Fitzgerald and Ann Roper Williams, on April 29, 1834. Their first daughter, Letitia Ann Watkins, was born on March 21, 1835. After a brief venture to Columbus, Mississippi, where he entered into the cotton-gin business with David Hubbard of Aberdeen in 1841, Watkins moved from Alabama to Carroll County, Mississippi, in 1843. There he acquired a plantation of some 1,500 acres, Forest Place, and apparently gave up his medical practice for the life of a cotton planter. 

Thomas and Sarah Watkins' second daughter, Mary Early Watkins, sometimes referred to as Mollie or Baby, was born in Mississippi on February 23, 1844. Thomas Watkins remained in Mississippi through the Civil War, joining the Home Guards of Middleton, Mississippi, hiring out enslaved persons to the Confederate Army and the South and North Alabama Railroad, and acting as a local Confederate agent for slave-impressment claims in 1864. After the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1865, Thomas Watkins sold his property in late 1866 and removed to Austin, Texas, near the family of his eldest daughter, Letitia. The year 1875 found Watkins serving as an agent for the La Grange Land Company of Austin, Texas, working with Georgians who had assisted Texas financially during the Mexican War. Watkins remained in Texas until his death in Austin on November 25, 1884.

Letitia Ann Watkins and William Walton

Letitia Ann Watkins, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Sarah Watkins, attended a seminary for girls in Columbia, Tennessee, and schools at Middleton and an academy in Holly Springs, Mississippi. On February 9, 1854, she married William Martin Walton. Born in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1832, William Walton divided his time between Mississippi, where his father owned land and slaves in Carroll County, and Texas where his mother had moved in 1844 after the death of his father two years earlier. After attending the University of Virginia, Walton studied law in the Carrollton, Mississippi, firm run by William Cothran and James Z. George. In 1853, Walton moved permanently to Austin, Texas, where he practiced law and to which he brought his wife, Letitia, in 1854. She returned to Mississippi for visits in 1856 and 1858; her son, Early, was born in Mississippi in 1856. William Martin Walton volunteered in 1862 and served in the Confederate Army in the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry, rising from private to the rank of major. In October of 1865, Letitia Watkins Walton moved back to her father's home, Forest Place, with her four children, Early, Newton, George Longstreet, and Sarah, and resided there for a year. In 1866, William Walton was elected attorney general of Texas but was removed from office and disenfranchised by the Reconstruction government. Practicing law under the name of a colleague, Walton succeeded in appealing his disenfranchisement and formed the firm of Walton, Green, and Hill. He served as a delegate to the Texas Democratic Convention in 1876 and continued practicing law until his retirement in 1907. Letitia Ann Walton died in Austin on June 23, 1914, and William Walton on July 1, 1915. Of their children, Early Walton became a physician, and George Longstreet Walton managed a sheep ranch owned by the Walton family near Granger, Texas. Both died unmarried: George Walton was accidentally shot when he was twenty-five. Newton Walton, who lived until 1894, joined his father's law firm as partner, while Sarah Walton married James Jefferson Parmele, a grandson of Martha Phillips, whose family had been close friends of Thomas Watkins in Alabama and Mississippi.

Mary Early Watkins and Jefferson "Jeff" H. McLemore

The second daughter of Thomas Watkins, Mary Early Watkins, attended the Holly Springs Female Institute and the Patapsco Female Institute at Ellicott's Mill, near Baltimore, Maryland. On December 23, 1863, she married Jefferson H. McLemore (known as Jeff), the son of wealthy Leflore County, Mississippi, planter Colonel John D. McLemore. At the time of his marriage, McLemore was twenty-three years old and serving in the Confederate Army. He saw action at the first Battle of Manassas, spied behind Union lines, fought in G. C. Wood's Company, Twenty-eighth Regiment, Mississippi Cavalry, and was wounded at the Battle of Ezra Church near Atlanta on July 28, 1864. On his return from the war, Jefferson McLemore first managed Forest Place for his wife's father, and then took charge of one of his father's plantations near Greenwood, residing eventually at Lone Star Bend on the Tallahatchie River. Jefferson McLemore died in a traffic accident in Chicago at the age of forty-five. Mary McLemore survived him, and moved to Austin, Texas, where she died in 1935 at the age of ninety-one.

 
Scope and Content Note:

The strength of this collection of papers lies in its documentation of the migration of settlers across the southeastern United States, from North Carolina and Georgia to Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, within the context of one family, that of Thomas A. Watkins. The collection of personal and social papers, legal and business records, printed material, and newsclippings is arranged chronologically. It is principally composed of the papers of Thomas A. Watkins and those of the families of his sons-in-law, William M. Walton and Jefferson A. McLemore. Members of allied families are also well represented in both the correspondence and legal records in the collection. There is the guardianship correspondence of Robert Watkins, the brother of Thomas A. Watkins, and correspondence from the families of Emily Watkins Todd and Jane Watkins Hillyer, the sisters of Thomas A. Watkins. Other family correspondents include Richard Jones, who was married to Thomas A. Watkins's first cousin, Lucy Early, and William Fitzgerald, who was married to Sarah Fitzgerald Watkins's aunt. There is estate correspondence of the Fitzgerald family as well.

The family of Martha A. Phillips is the source or subject of numerous letters and legal papers in the collection. These include the correspondence and will of her father, Thomas Cobbs, letters of her husband, William Phillips, and correspondence of families allied to her through the marriage of her daughters, Elizabeth, Julia, and Mariah Louise. The marriage of Martha Phillips's grandson, James Jefferson Parmele, to the granddaughter of Thomas A. Watkins, Sarah Walton, united their families, both of which had followed a similar path of migration from Alabama to Mississippi and been in close contact during the Mississippi residence of the Watkins family.

Such records permit one to trace the westward movement of these families; early correspondence of both Thomas A. Watkins and Martha A. Phillips mentions plans to move west and acquire land. Other records document efforts to settle in each state once the move was completed. The social correspondence of the Watkins family in Mississippi, and their daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and William M. Walton in Texas, gives insight into their attempts to create new ties in these areas. This picture is reinforced by that provided by the business records of Thomas Watkins which form the bulk of the papers from 1830 to about 1870. His early papers reflect his concern with the settlement of business affairs left behind in Georgia and his establishment of new ties in Alabama. From 1841, when Watkins engaged in a cotton-gin business, until about 1870, his business papers focus on agriculture and cotton planting, the expansion of his land holdings in Mississippi, and his efforts to obtain investment properties in other states. Watkins's business papers consist primarily of records with cotton factors regarding the crop sales and the purchase of staples and other goods. Included are several notices of dissolution of various cotton factors and several pages of the New Orleans Price-Current, Commercial Intelligencer and Merchants' Transcript, which were sent to Watkins by various New Orleans cotton factors with whom he traded. Throughout this period, Watkins dealt with factors in New Orleans, as well as with merchants and factors in Carrollton, Greenwood, Middleton, and Winona, Mississippi. His papers, therefore, serve to document trading practices between rural and sometimes isolated communities such as Carrollton and metropolitan areas such as New Orleans and New York.

Thomas A. Watkins's papers thus provide considerable information on small planter society, the problems of plantation management, and slavery before and during the Civil War. Among the business correspondence are letters such as those involving the solicitations for an overseer by Watkins and the refusal of one. In the business deals involving land and estate settlements, the purchase, sale, and use of slaves was an important issue. There are letters concerning the selling of slaves, the rental of a servant for a year, and an order for Watkins to relinquish his slaves for Confederate Army work projects. Since Watkins served as an agent for the Slave Claim Board of Richmond, Virginia, there are a number of letters to him from slave owners explaining their cases for compensation for slave impressment.

The papers of the Watkins and Walton families provide information concerning other professions and academic activities of the nineteenth century as well. The early correspondence of Thomas Watkins, particularly that written during his residence in Courtland, Alabama, documents the practices and concerns of the medical profession of the 1830s through the correspondence Watkins maintained with other physicians and the orders he placed for medical books with his partner, Jack Shackleford. While Watkins's interest in medicine appears to have declined after his move to Mississippi, occasional later correspondence concerning the purchase and sale of books may provide further information on the development of the medical profession.

The papers also include information on education in the nineteenth century. There is a body of letters concerning the education of the Watkins daughters in schools in Tennessee, Holly Springs, and Maryland and receipts from the Middleton Female Academy of Middleton, Mississippi. Numerous letters of Thomas A. Watkins's grandsons, Early and Newton Walton, document their academic and social life at the University of Virginia during the 1870s. Their correspondence provides a detailed description of their campus and social life which is supplemented by the inclusion of end of semester evaluation and attendance reports and social papers such as invitations to balls, club activities, and commencement exercises, and the celebration announcements of academic societies.

Other than the material concerning the use of slaves and slave-impressment claims, the collection provides very little documentation of the Civil War period or of war activity in the area of Carrollton, Mississippi. From 1867, and the departure of Dr. Thomas Watkins from Carroll County, Mississippi, the focus of the collection shifts to the Walton family in Texas. However, the collection remains a useful source for Mississippi history during this period, as there are letters exchanged between the members of the family living in Texas, and those remaining in Mississippi, such as the McLemores. These provide information on problems affecting both states, such as the challenges of Reconstruction. Of particular interest are the letters written by former slaves in the Carroll County area of Mississippi to members of the Watkins family in Texas. While this section of the collection includes material concerning the genealogical interests of Dr. Watkins and his preparation of a book on his family, it also provides a valuable record of frontier and late nineteenth-century Texas life through the social correspondence of the Watkins and Walton families. This portion of the collection, then, completes the documentation of the migratory pattern of the family, as it traces the establishment of its members in Texas.

Related Watkins and Walton family papers have been edited and published by E. Grey Dimond and Herman Hattaway in Letters from Forest Place: A Plantation Family's Correspondence, 1846–1881 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), 1993.

 
Series Identification:

Series 1: Papers. 1811; 1830–1834; 1836–1884; 1891; 1893; 1896–1897; n.d. 8 35 mm, positive microfilm rolls.

The papers of the Thomas A. Watkins, William M. Walton, and Jefferson H. McLemore families are arranged chronologically in one series. The papers are distributed by date as follows:

1811 (1); 1830 (3); 1831 (5); 1832 (4); 1833 (1); 1834 (2); 1836 (7); 1837 (11); 1838 (1); 1839 (2); 1840 (17); 1841 (7); 1842 (2); 1843 (23); 1844 (21); 1845 (37); 1846 (98); 1847 (45); 1848 (34); 1849 (60); 1850 (34); 1851 (22); 1852 (54); 1853 (38); 1854 (27); 1855 (31); 1856 (9); 1857 (18); 1858 (17); 1859 (68); 1860 (47); 1861 (4); 1862 (8); 1863 (1); 1864 (17); 1865 (8); 1866 (15); 1867 (1); 1868 (13); 1869 (20); 1870 (54); 1871 (100); 1872 (113); 1873 (108); 1874 (154); 1875 (175); 1876 (132); 1877 (154); 1878 (133); 1879 (95); 1880 (149); 1881 (28); 1882 (50); 1883 (40); 1884 (11); 1891 (1); 1893 (1); 1896 (1); 1897 (2); n.d. (146).

Microfilm edition contents:

  • Roll 1 (MF Roll # 36341): papers, 1812–December 25, 1848
  • Roll 2 (MF Roll # 36342): papers, 1849–1859
  • Roll 3 (MF Roll # 36343): papers, 1860–1872
  • Roll 4 (MF Roll # 36344): papers, 1873–1874
  • Roll 5 (MF Roll # 36345): papers, 1875
  • Roll 6 (MF Roll # 36346): papers, 1876–September 27, 1877
  • Roll 7 (MF Roll # 36347): papers, October 8, 1877–December 25, 1880
  • Roll 8 (MF Roll # 36348): papers, 1881–1897; n.d.