Dates: 1854-1855; 1857-1859.

History:

Courtland Plantation was located in Adams County, Mississippi, on Sandy Creek, about fifteen miles from Second Creek. According to family lore, the plantation was named for Courtland Smith, who built the first house on what would become Courtland plantation and was killed there by Native Americans in 1817. However, land records show that W. O. Evans entered the property into the land records in 1815 and sold it to Reed Carr in 1822. Carr transferred the land to Rev. John H. Van Court, a Presbyterian minister and teacher, in 1828. In 1834, Van Court and his wife, Catherine Smith Swayze Van Court, older sister of Courtland Smith, sold the property, by then identified as “Courtland” in land records, to Daniel Farrar. The purchase price of $48,000 also included all the plantation’s farm equipment and thirty-two slaves. Catherine Van Court was the oldest daughter of Philander Smith, a prominent merchant and public official of Natchez, Adams County, and a Federalist member of the Mississippi Territory Legislature. His father, Rev. Jedediah Smith, was one of the first Protestant ministers in the Mississippi Valley when he migrated there from Massachusetts in 1776.

In 1836, Daniel Farrar sold Courtland to David B. Swayze, son of Catherine Van Court by her first husband, Nathan Swayze, who had left her widowed in 1821. In 1840, Swayze sold the plantation to his widowed and childless sister, Adeline H. Swayze Baker, for $20,000. Baker owned the plantation until her death on June 25, 1882. In 1860, her overseer was Benjamin T. Turberille. In 1861, she owned 2,500 acres in Adams County, and in 1859 owned 100 enslaved persons.

At Baker’s death, Courtland was inherited by her half-brother, Dr. Elias John Van Court of Natchez, who had helped her manage it in her later years. Dr. Van Court died June 4, 1904, and his family began to lease out the plantation until it was sold several decades later. The plantation house subsequently burned down, probably in the 1940s, after the land was sold.

 

Scope and Content Note:

This collection consists of two journals from Courtland plantation that primarily document daily activities of enslaved persons on the plantation. They also contain reports of daily weather and counts of animals. The two journals are identical in content and format. The first journal begins January 9, 1854, and ends July 15, 1855. The second journal begins February 23, 1857, and ends June 5, 1859.

The journals consist of tables for each week, with rows and columns noting names of enslaved persons and dates; the tables document each slave’s specific activities by day. Though the exact numbers vary somewhat over time, the first journal generally documents thirty-three to thirty-five male and thirty-eight to forty-one female enslaved persons. The second journal documents thirty-six to thirty-eight male and forty to forty-three female enslaved persons.

Planting, picking, thrashing, and spinning cotton, as well as plowing and working cotton fields, are among the most common tasks noted in slaves’ work. The journals contain a daily record of how much cotton each enslaved person picked and the amounts are tallied to derive a cumulative total for the entire year. Activities related to production of other crops, especially corn and potatoes, are also noted. Other slave activities recorded include construction work, especially work on fences, bridges, ditches, and hedges; cleaning out fields; cutting wood; and for women, working as cooks or nurses. The journals also note when enslaved persons were sick, injured, or had recently given birth. For some weeks, the ledgers contain longer descriptions of tasks, describing the date and sometimes even the time of day when work was begun or finished on planting or harvest, or noting the location at which work was being done. A brief one-to-three-word summary of the weather is given for each day. Each week’s record also contains a count of animals, including oxen, cattle, calves, mules, horses, hogs, pigs, and sheep.

 
Box List:

Box 1

Folder 1: Journal 1, 1854-1855.
Folder 2: Loose document from Journal 1, week of January 8-14, 1855.

Box 2

Folder 1: Journal 2, 1857-1859.