This collection (2781 items; dated 1751-1929) comprises family and business correspondence, account books, memoranda books, daybooks, time books, court records, and other papers of Jeremiah Slade, Thomas Slade, William Slade, and of several generations of the Slade family. The papers reflect the financial and the family affairs of a plantation-owning family of the antebellum South, and include student letters from the University of North Carolina, Trinity College, and the North Carolina State and Normal College (Greensboro); Mexican War and Civil War letters; legal papers and land deeds, including correspondence and receipts with other N.C. politicians, judges, and officials such as Asa Biggs; plantation records, including lists of enslaved persons; and materials related to slavery and post-Civil War agricultural advances.
There is extensive correspondence between the women of the Slade family, reporting on local and family news as well as offering opinions and accounts of their various studies and activities. There is also a fair amount of business correspondence and account logs from the various Slade ventures, including fisheries, logging, hog farming, tobacco crops, cotton, and horse breeding.
Of note are the materials relating to the forced removal of the Tuscarora Nation in the early 1800s and the leasing of their land through Jeremiah Slade. There are also assorted accounts and receipts documenting guardianship, personal expenses, invoices, and other financial papers relating to the operation of plantations and large farms in North Carolina both before and after the Civil War.
Jeremiah Slade was born in 1775 in Martin County, N.C. He served as a legislator in the N.C. House of Commons from 1797-1800 and as state senator from 1809-1815. He was appointed as a Commissioner to the Affairs of the Tuscarora Indians in 1803. He was also a Brigadier General in the War of 1812.
Jeremiah Slade and his wife Janet Bog Slade had 9 children: Afred, Thomas Bog, Mary Ann, James Bog (M.D.), Elizabeth, Jeremiah, William, Hannah, and Henry. Some of these children died before adulthood. Those represented in the Slade Family Papers include Alfred, Thomas Bog, Mary Ann, James Bog, Elizabeth, and William. The bulk of the papers from this generation appear to come from Thomas and William.
Thomas Bog Slade was born in 1800 in Martin County, N.C. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a law degree in 1823. He then moved to Georgia, where he practiced law and founded the Clinton Female Academy. He married Anne Jacqueline Blount in 1824. The couple had 12 children, several of whom are represented in the collection: they include Janet, James Jeremiah, Mary Livinia, Emma Jacqueline, Thomas Bog Jr., Martha Bog, Sella, Helen, and John Henry. Thomas Bog Slade died in 1882 in Columbus, Georgia.
Another son of Jeremiah and Janet, William Slade, is the other prominently featured Slade present in the family's papers held at Duke. William Slade was born in 1807 in Martin County, Georgia. He also attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and appears to have graduated in 1824. He married Penelope Williams in 1829, and the couple appears to have lived in Martin County for the rest of their lives. They had 11 children, most of whom are well represented in the family papers: James Bog, Jeremiah, Annie Janet, Mary, Elizabeth (Lizzy), William, Henry, Thomas Bog, Helen, Frances, and Richard Williams.
