Dates: 1849; 1855 - 1862; 1869 - 1870; 1873 - 1883; 1885; n.d.
Microfilm copy must be used.

Biography:

Frederick Augustus Metcalfe

Frederick Augustus Metcalfe was born at Cold Springs Plantation, Claiborne County, Mississippi, on July 5, 1830. He was the only child of Albert Gallatin Metcalfe, formerly of Kentucky, and Evelina Matilda McCaleb, formerly of South Carolina. Albert Gallatin Metcalfe died on January 28, 1833, and his widow later married William H. Hammett who served as a member of Congress from Mississippi from 1843 to 1845. Frederick Augustus Metcalfe was a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and he also received a law degree from Tulane University. He married Martha Priscilla Miller of Jefferson County, Mississippi, on June 6, 1854, at Berkley Plantation on Lake Washington. The couple lived at Lammermoor Plantation on Lake Washington until they acquired Newstead, a 1,460-acre plantation in Washington County, in 1855. The Metcalfes had eight children: Albert, Priscilla, Sally, Frederick, John, Clive, Harley, and George Metcalfe.

Metcalfe did not serve as a field officer in the Confederate Army, but he did serve as a captain in the Washington County home guard. After the Civil War the first regular term of the probate court of Washington County was held at Metcalfe's plantation. Metcalfe was appointed a grand juror of the circuit court of Washington County in November 1865. He also served as chaplain of the Mississippi legislature for one term. Metcalfe died at Newstead Plantation on January 15, 1883.

Scope and Content Note:

Included in this collection are five diaries kept by Frederick Augustus Metcalfe from 1873 to 1883. The diaries document plantation management, family matters, and local weather data. They also document the utilization of an integrated labor force composed of negro and Chinese laborers in the Mississippi Delta during the post-Reconstruction period. In his diaries Metcalfe recorded the frequent flooding of nearby plantation lands. He also recorded the activities of several important men including Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay; black Republican legislator John R. Lynch; and former Mississippi Governor Charles Clark. The diaries further document such local social activities as baseball games, circuses, concerts, and dances.

The collection also contains four plantation journals, one of which is in fragmentary form. The journals enabled Metcalfe and his overseer to manage various plantation operations from 1857 to 1862. The journals contain planting, harvesting, and marketing data. They also contain extensive information regarding slave management.

A limited amount of correspondence is present in the collection, and it relates to Metcalfe's plantation operations from 1860 to 1862 and during 1870.

Included are three lecture notebooks. Two of the notebooks were kept while Metcalfe was a student in New York City and afterward at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and they contain notes on human anatomy and the belles-lettres. The third notebook contains Harley Metcalfe's lecture notes on political science, history, law, and rhetoric. There is also an account book which records the cotton crops produced by various Washington County planters from 1880 to 1883.

 
Series Identification:

Roll 1 (MF Roll # 36369):

Series 1: Correspondence. 1860–1862; 1870. 1 folder. 
This series contains the correspondence of Frederick Augustus Metcalfe, and it primarily concerns the management of Newstead Plantation. There is also a letter addressed to Metcalfe regarding a land survey dated 1861. Arranged chronologically.

Series 2: Diaries. 1873–1883. 5 volumes.
This series contains five diaries kept by Frederick Augustus Metcalfe from 1873 to 1883. The diaries provide detailed notes on plantation management, and they are an excellent source of information on nineteenth-century methods of cotton and corn planting and harvesting. The diaries further document the utilization of negro and Chinese laborers in the post-Reconstruction Mississippi Delta. Metcalfe noted in his diary that the Chinese were not only hired as laborers, but also for their culinary skills. He also described the spread of yellow fever from New Orleans, Louisiana, through Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, during 1878 and 1879. In addition, Metcalfe recorded events such as bank failures in New York City and other major cities and the lynching of two negroes in Greenville, in 1875. He also referred to the speaking engagements of Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1875 and John R. Lynch in 1876; his acquaintance in 1875 with a man formerly involved in the African slave trade; the overnight stay of former Governor Charles Clark with the Metcalfes in 1876; and attending a meeting of the Yazoo Delta Immigration Society in 1881. One diary also contains accounting data recorded by M. P. Metcalfe who operated a grocery outlet for several Washington County farms and plantations from 1875 to 1876. Arranged chronologically.

Series 3: Plantation Journals. 1857–1862. 4 volumes. 
This series contains four cotton plantation journals used by Frederick Augustus Metcalfe from 1857 to 1862. The journals, entitled The Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book, No. 3, Suitable for a Force of 120 Hands, or Under, eighth edition, 1859, were designed by Thomas Affleck and published by J. P. Lippincott and Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The journals afforded a planter or overseer a means of recording daily events; the names of slaves; the amount of cotton harvested daily by each slave; weather patterns; and inventories of stock and implements used on a plantation. There are also sections devoted to the management of slaves, (i.e., clothing, farming implements, medical needs, births and deaths, and estimated fair market value at year's end). The journals also recorded several instances of levees breaking and the resulting inundation of the surrounding land. Also recorded are descriptions of the illnesses, medical treatments (sometimes experimental), celebrations and entertainments, religious exercises, living quarters, escape and subsequent capture, and punishments and executions of slaves. Metcalfe also stated that the plantation's livestock was frequently ravaged by bears, wolves, and foxes. His journals also document the first arrival of ice on the plantation in 1859. Metcalfe even mentioned observing Donati's Comet on October 3, 1858. He also mentioned sending negro men to work at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on December 1, 1861. Arranged chronologically.

Roll 2 (MF Roll # 36370):

Series 4: Account Book. 1880–1883; 1885. 1 volume. 
This series contains an account book of Frederick Augustus Metcalfe that recorded the amount of cotton harvested and ginned for the plantations Brighton, Courtland, Cold Springs, Glenbar, and Newstead, and the amount of cotton other planters harvested. It contains the weights, sales, and expenses of various planters. The account book also lists the amount of Newstead Plantation land rented and the amount of fodder harvested and or purchased for livestock.

Series 5: Lecture Notebooks. 1849; 1855–1856; 1882–1883; 1885; n.d. 3 volumes.
This series contains Frederick Augustus Metcalfe's undated lecture notebook for a course on human anatomy kept while attending school in New York City and his lecture notebook on the belles-lettres kept while attending the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) during 1849. Also included is Harley Metcalfe's lecture notebook on political science, history, law, and rhetoric for the year 1885. Arranged chronologically.

Series 6: Miscellany. 1858–1861; 1869–1870; 1875; 1880; n.d. 1 folder.
This series includes an agreement between Frederick Augustus Metcalfe and William Golding, a freedman, regarding Golding's rental of a portion of acreage on the Newstead Plantation in 1870. It also includes an undated petition signed by Metcalfe and his wife and several other Washington County citizens requesting that the Board of Supervisors authorize the construction of a public road in their area of the county. Arranged chronologically.