Collection contains chiefly correspondence relating to the Clingman, Jarratt, Poindexter, and Puryear families, early settlers of Surry County, N.C., together with a genealogical table. Subjects include the slave trade between North Carolina and Alabama, 1830-1835; North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction, conditions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prior to the war, plantation accounts, the distillation and sale of whiskey, and business affairs. Correspondents include William James Bingham, John Adams Gilmer, and Zebulon Vance.

This collection contains papers of the related Jarratt, Puryear, Clingman, Poindexter and Cash families, and especially of Isaac A. Jarratt, soldier in the War of 1812, landholder, merchant, and distiller.

The collection concerns family matters and local affairs; the education of Mary Jarratt at St. Mary's College, Raleigh, North Carolina; the education of Augustus Jarratt at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and conditions at the university preceding the Civil War; Isaac Jarratt's partnership with Tyre Glen in the slave trade between Alabama and North Carolina, 1830-1835; the Creek War of 1836; United States relations with Mexico, 1842; a survey of Wilson, North Carolina, 1851; frontier conditions in Texas; the Civil War, including troop movements in North Carolina and Virginia, conditions in the Confederate Army, conscription, lists of absentees, official orders for enrolling new age groups, conscription lists, casualty lists, payments to widows, and home conditions; freedmen, including letters from former enslaved persons inquiring about relatives; Jarratt's efforts to get whiskey during the war; North Carolina politics after the war; whiskey taxes; conditions in California; a Texas counterfeit affair in which A. B. Clingman was unjustly suspected; the business affairs of the Jarratt family; the administration of the estates of Samuel L. Davis, William Doss, Sally Doss, and Polly Sapp by Isaac Jarratt and of the estate of Richard Clauselle Puryear (d. 1867) by Jarratt and by his son, Richard Clingman Puryear (b. 1848); and the law practice of Richard Clingman Puryear, including the collection of many claims, 1870-1900.

Volumes include a plantation account book, 1834-1881, containing lists and prices of enslaved persons bought and sold in 1834 and 1835; a plantation account book, 1866-1871, recording supplies and cash advanced to tenants; an administration book, 1845-1848, concerning the estate of Matthew A. Doss; and a ledger, 1869-1870, of Isaac A. Jarratt & Sanderford, a general mercantile firm, containing the records of the sale of whiskey.