Beschreibung:

The papers are housed in plastic sleeve in six binders, arranged chronologically in fourteen different subject categories, or sections. Important archive of papers and other items passed down by the descendants of President John Tyler through his eldest son Robert Tyler who married Priscilla Cooper, and whose daughter Priscilla C. Tyler married Albert T. Goodwyn. The Tylers and the Goodwyns were old Southern families, from South Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama, long involved in the political, economic and social life of the South, and were owners of slaves and plantations. One of the earliest letters is from John Tyler in 1834, to his then 18-year old son Robert, when the elder Tyler was a senator from Virginia, discussing primarily matters of politics and state. The archive includes letters, deeds, wills, bills of sale, and other records detailing numerous transactions in slaves, and in large holdings of land. These latter include the sell-off of land after the Civil War, and re-acquiring assets in the succeeding decades. There are also three letters written by Albert T. Goodwyn while he was a prisoner of the Union forces during the Civil War, held on Johnson’s Island, in Lake Erie off the north shore of Ohio. Following the Civil War, business practices of necessity changed, but large land-owners and slave-holders such as the Goodwyns were able to adapt, and the documents reveal the share-cropping practices that kept the freed slaves in virtual if not actual bondage. There are also a number of papers relating to the curious ownership of a bridge by the Goodwyn family, acquired in the early 20th century. During this period members of the Goodwyn family became more involved in politics, and various papers and speeches reveal the efforts of the Democratic Party in the south to keep power firmly in the hands of white men. Some of the family were of a literary bent, though more whimsical than serious in nature, and there are several stories and essays by Robert Tyler Goodwyn, some treating in “humorous” fashion the relationships between the white patricians of the south and African Americans. There are, finally, artifacts of the family, including a gold pocket watch from the American Waltham Watch Company, with initials and dates of three family members, beginning in 1852. Provenance: Descended in the family. BINDER I Section One - Photographs Twelve photographic images, some from paintings, mostly portraits of family members. Section Two - John Tyler Letter Letter from John Tyler to his son Robert Tyler Regards negotiations with France and their promised payment of $5,000,000 to the U.S. government for violations of trade agreements. Dated Washington, May 13, 1834. 1½ pp on 4-page stampless cover. Silked repairing some tears and fold splits, etc., with some splits not repaired. “…Yesterday the we expected a message from the President as regards our relation with France – by the late treaty, negotiated through Mr. Reins(?), that government stipulated to pay $5000,000 on account of certain violations committed on our commerce during the time of Bonaparte – the king submitted to the chamber of deputies the propriety of making the appropriations and they refused to do so by a vote of 176 to 168… I received a few days ago a letter from a committee of gentlemen in Williamsburg requesting me to deliver an address at James Town… I am relieved also that you resolved to have nothing to do with this part of the ceremony, I prefer that you go on in silence until you graduate…” Signed “Yr. Father, John Tyler.” Section Three - Slavery Twelve manuscript letters, documents, bills of sale, etc., relating to slavery. 1838-c.1850. May 16, 1838. 1½ page agreement of indemnity between Robert H. Goodwyn of South Carolina and A.A. McWhorter for sums totaling $108,000 in the sale of “certain negro slaves, jointly purchased by the said James L. Beck, Albert G. Goodwyn, John A. Elinore and James G. Stewart, who are the princip