Correspondence, diary, account books, ledgers, bills, receipts, business records, legal papers, and other material of the MacRae family of North Carolina and Florida. Alexander MacRae's papers concern Florida plantations and their management, the Seminole Indian War (1842), and settlements in southern Florida. Papers of his son, Archibald MacRae, deal with his life aboard ship as a U.S. naval officer, and with his trips to the Azores, Italy, Sicily, Hawaii, South America, and California during the Mexican War. Other papers pertain to railroad construction and management, North Carolina militia (1832, 1839), a general commission business, life in the Confederacy and Confederate Army during the Civil War, postwar business and industrial development in the Wilmington, N.C., area, and a variety of business enterprises with which the MacRae family was connected. Includes writings and papers of Hugh MacRae.

Collection contains primarily correspondence, diary, account books, ledgers, bills, receipts, business records, legal papers, and other material of Hugh MacRae and the MacRae family of North Carolina and Florida.

From the ante-bellum period there are papers of Hugh MacRae's grandfather, Alexander MacRae, concerning the management of plantations in Florida and the second Seminole War; of Archibald MacRae, pertaining to his career in the United States Navy, including a voyage to the Azores and the Mediterranean Sea, 1838, observation of the British attack on Egyptian forces, 1840, participation in the Mexican War in California, voyage to Hawaii, 1847, and descriptions of political and social events in Chile while part of the United States Naval Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, 1849-1852; of John Colin MacRae and Henry MacRae, relating to the construction and management of railroads in North Carolina and general construction and transportation development in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, including correspondence concerning quarrels between the Wilmington and Manchester Rail road, headed by Alexander MacRae, and other North Carolina lines; and of John MacRae and Donald MacRae, concerning their general commission business in Wilmington, North Carolina, founded in 1849, the Endor Iron Works (McIver, North Carolina), begun in 1857, and the political activities of John MacRae in Wilmington.

Civil War papers reflecting army life are those of William MacRae, Robert Bruce MacRae, Henry MacRae, and Walter G. MacRae, all of whom served in the Confederate Army, for the most part in North Carolina and Virginia. Their letters describe numerous battles and skirmishes and depict camp life in the 1st, 5th, and 87th North Carolina Regiments and the 2nd North Carolina Regiment, Cavalry. Letters of Donald MacRae, John Colin MacRae, Roderick MacRae, and Alexander MacRae, Jr., concern conditions at home during the war and family business interests, including the sale of cotton, blockade running, operations of an iron works, manufacture of salt, an epidemic of yellow fever in Wilmington, speculation and economic dislocation at the end of the war, and the occupation of Wilmington by Union troops.

Papers for the years after the Civil War are primarily those of Donald MacRae and his son, Hugh MacRae. Papers of Donald MacRae concern the handling of family real estate; settlement of claims on property in Florida; the guano business, particularly the Navassa Guano Company; general business interests, including the development of Linville, North Carolina, as a resort by the Linville Improvement Company and the Western North Carolina Stage Coach Company; and power development, especially the Great Falls Water Power Mining and Iron Company. The papers after 1890 are increasingly those of Hugh MacRae and concern his business interests, including the Wilmington Street Railroad Company, the Consolidated Railways, Light and Power Company, the Central Carolina Power Company in South Carolina, the Tidewater Power Company, and the Investment Trust Company of Wilmington (North Carolina), and his interest in land development and land reclamation, including the formation of farm communities near Wilmington, the promotion of legislation designed to help tenant farmers acquire their own land and to encourage immigration, the creation of the Carolina Trucking Development Company and the Carolina Real Estate Trust Company, and MacRae's work with the National Economy League and the Southern Economic Council in the 1930s.

The collection contains bills and receipts from many of the businesses in which the MacRae family was interested and a number of volumes dealing with personal and business matters, including works on rural rehabilitation; a diary of Robert Bruce MacRae, 1865-1866; a volume of Hugh MacRae's experiment records, 1909; "Roll of the Wilmington Hibernian Society," 1866-1879; account books of Alexander MacRae; record book of Donald MacRae, Company K, 2nd North Carolina Regiment in the Spanish-American War; letter book of Hugh MacRae, 1899-1900; and mercantile and shipping records for J. & D. MacRae of Wilmington, 1858-1860.

Prominent family of plantation owners, lawyers, politicians, and businessmen from Randolph County, North Carolina, residing in Asheboro and Wilmington. Correspondence, business records, and other papers, pertaining chiefly to family matters, business affairs, opposition to Southern secession, politics in North Carolina, fertilizer manufacturing and marketing, textile industry, Zebulon Baird Vance, and patronage during the early years of Woodrow Wilson's presidency. Includes letters to Jonathan Worth (1802-1869), lawyer and governor of North Carolina, to his son, David Gaston Worth (1831-1897), commission merchant and manufacturer, when he attended the University of North Carolina and when he was superintendent of the salt works at Wilmington, N.C., during the Civil War; correspondence of David with his wife, Julia Anna (Stickney) Worth, and his son, Charles William Worth, when attended Bingham School and the University of North Carolina; and letters of Barzillai Gardner Worth. Other correspondents include Edwin Anderson Alderman, Robert Bingham, Josephus Daniels, Hannibal Lafayette Godwin, John Wilkins Norwood, Lee Slater Overman, James Hinton Pou, Cornelia (Phillips) Spencer, and George Tayloe Winston.

The papers of the Worth family of North Carolina contain correspondence, business records, and other papers, pertaining chiefly to family matters, business affairs, opposition to Southern secession, politics in North Carolina, fertilizer manufacturing and marketing, textile industry, Zebulon Baird Vance, and patronage during the early years of Woodrow Wilson's presidency. Includes the papers of Jonathan Worth (1802-1869), lawyer and governor of North Carolina, including a few of his official papers as governor during Reconstruction, 1865-1868; correspondence relating to his business interests and law practice; and letters of Jonathan Worth and Martitia (Daniel) Worth in the 1850s to a son at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, concerning family matters and the construction of a plank road near Asheboro, North Carolina. Also among the papers identified with him are commissions signed by him as governor and a copy of a newspaper article concerning a speech he delivered at the Negro Educational Convention (October 13, 1866) and a certification of election returns in Beaufort County (October 20, 1866).

Materials relating to David Gaston Worth (1831-1897) contain essays from David Worth's college days; Civil War correspondence concerning financial conditions in the Confederacy and the Confederate salt works at Wilmington, North Carolina; material relating to the Bingham School, Mebane, North Carolina, and the Fifth Street Methodist Church, Wilmington, North Carolina; there are also some business papers.

Later papers consist of business records belonging to William Elliott Worth: a ledger, 1906-1911, for William E. Worth and Company, dealers in ice, coal, wood, and other merchandise; and records of the Universal Oil and Fertilizer Company, including a ledger, 1903-1914, and a letterpress book, 1906-1907, concerning the manufacture and marketing of various fertilizers, cottonseed oil, and related products.

The papers of Charles William Worth contain letters written to and from his parents while he was a student at the Bingham School, Orange County, N.C., and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and letters from many prominent North Carolinians advocating for his appointment as American consul at Shanghai, China, and other political posts, 1912-1913 and later years.

The collection also contains five account books, 1888-1924, of Worth & Worth and its successor, The Worth Co., a large Wilmington firm of grocers and commission merchants which also traded in cotton and naval stores.