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Burwell-Guy family papers, 1820-1873 (majority within 1840-1859)

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Summary

Creator:
Burwell family and Guy family
Abstract:
The Burwell-Guy collection yields a revealing slice of antebellum plantation life on a North Carolina tobacco plantation. It portrays a social and domestic setting which emphasized family and hospitality, the tobacco economy that supported such a lifestyle, and the slave system that enabled it to function.
Extent:
120 items
Language:
English
Authors:
Collection processed and finding aid created by Susan Swasta, November 1995, and Meg Hixon, August 2013

Background

Scope and Content:

About one third of the 120 letters in the Burwell-Guy collection are business correspondence to John A. Burwell from grocers, dry goods merchants, and the commission merchants who handled the sale of his tobacco, corn, and flour. The latter deducted a percentage of sales income and the costs of transport and storage of produce, then paid Burwell his profits both in the form of goods and money. Letters and invoices from John Jones's Richmond, Va. company and the Petersburg, Va.-based firm of Martin and Dormans generally comment on the tobacco market and its prospects, and advise Burwell on how to cure and pack his tobacco in order to obtain the best prices. A letter dated December 9, 1844, from John Eaton, who was also a planter and probably a relation of Burwell's, offers interesting commentary on North Carolina politics and public improvements.

Thirteen letters from Burwell to his son, Thomas, in Norfolk are full of advice on proper moral and business behavior. In December of 1854, he warns the young man at length about fashionable women with "paint on their cheeks, cotton in their Bosoms, & wading on their hips and they pretend to be smart but none hardly have any more sense than to reverse the order of nature..." His fatherly advice is to "[l]ook aloof, & let alone the women, & you will do well." The following month he expresses agreement with Thomas that it is better to "gallant the Young Ladies to Church on Sunday than to 'sit back' in Hotels, & Coffee & Oyster Houses 'puffing segars.'" He adds, however, that while church attendance instills good morals, "you are not obliged to take all you see & hear at a church as right & good . You have sense enough, if you will, to cull the good from the bad." Burwell's comments reflect his rather casual attitude toward religion -- that it was good for a person, but not in excess, and that it need not occupy a central role in life. Women seemed to place a greater emphasis on attending church, but their letters have little to say about religion. Church-going obviously fulfilled a social function as well as a spiritual one.

Plantation children's education was frequent commented upon in correspondence. Some teachers ran their own small schools, while others were hired to instruct the children of an individual family or related families. Children occasionally went away to nearby boarding schools. Boys appear to have attended school more consistently than girls, although both were instructed in a range of academic subjects. John Burwell went through a succession of teachers; one was dismissed for being too "mean," another for being "an abominable fool" who tried to assume an "arbitrary & dictatorial sort of power" over his sons, who would not stand to be treated in this way. Burwell desired his sons to be respectful but not docile: "... never give an insult & never take one. With this motto you avoid difficulty... as well as the finger of scorn & contempt that every gentleman must have for the coward."

In three letters to his sister-in-law Elizabeth T. Guy, John A. Burwell writes at length on the life of the plantation, as viewed through his proprietary eyes. He describe illnesses, births and deaths, his sons' intelligence and his daughter's beauty, the success of his crop and the luxuries bought with its profits, and the superiority of Virginia land. In July, 1846 he brags of having "left my own neighborhood entirely out of sight" in this year's tobacco production, which, with the addition of other produce sales, has brought in $2,224.00. A letter of April 30, 1847 offers chilling commentary on attitudes toward slaves. Burwell writes with amusement that daughter Lizzie Anna has a black maid, Fanny, of whom she is very fond, but that when Fanny made her angry the little girl asked her father to "cut Fanny's ears off & get her a new maid from Clarksville." A more businesslike expression of the status of slaves as profitable chattel is displayed in a June, 1848 letter which details the expenses and profits due Elizabeth from the hiring out of her five slaves.

John E. Burwell, at home on the plantation, wrote six letters to his brother, Thomas, between 1854 and 1857. These comment largely on hunting, which seems to have been a favorite male pastime. He also notes attending a wedding and enjoying "waiting on" two young ladies. When the railroad went through nearby, he amused himself by building a handcar to ride up and down the tracks. The young man appears to have had little in the way of work expected of him; or perhaps he did not consider chores worthy of comment.

The remainder of the Burwell-Guy letters consists of social correspondence, largely between women. Aunts, nieces, sisters, and cousins wrote of domestic life, social events, fashion, gardening, and illnesses. The collection includes 9 letters that Elizabeth Guy wrote to her sister, Lucy Burwell; letters that Elizabeth Guy received from the women of the Townes and Rawlins families; and letters that Elizabeth Guy and Lucy Burwell received from their aunt, Mary Williamson of Kentucky. These letters frequently include news of slaves. Elizabeth Guy also received letters from her brother-in-law, Edward Rawlins, and from his brother William, who discussed their social lives in New Orleans.

After Anna Guy's marriage to Edward Rawlins, she and her sister Elizabeth had their slaves insured and sent to them in New Orleans; in a letter dated December, 1846, Elizabeth Guy claimed, "they shall be always well treated." In order to bring in income, Guy hired some of her slaves out in New Orleans. Anna Guy Rawlins also continued to update her sister on her social life in New Orleans, which included parties and attendance at the opera.

After her sister's hasty marriage to Cousin Edward during their visit to Aunt Mary in Kentucky, Elizabeth Guy developed a passion for Cousin Perry DuPuy and sought permission to marry him. When Lucy disapproved, her ardor cooled. On June 12, 1844, William Rawlins wrote to his cousin, Elizabeth Guy, describing the previous winter social season in Norfolk, with its "courting scrapes and engagements and discards." In September 1855 Mary L. Burwell, who had a "a fondness for young widowers," asked her cousin Thomas Burwell whether Dr. Robert, an acquaintance of his whose wife had recently died, had "thrown aside the weeds of mourning yet."

The collection winds up with the intriguing story of John and Lucy Burwell's divorce, an ugly tale which depicts the underside of their seemingly stable, convivial plantation life. Letters from John Burwell to son Thomas written in March, 1857 lament that his wife has moved out, and that his sons are taking her side, telling things which "should never go out of the family" in court, after saying previously that they would have no part in their parents' quarrels. Unhappy domestic relations had evidently come to a head when Burwell became violent toward his slaves; he was accused of "runing the negroes about with guns & sticks." Burwell asserts that he was doing it "out of fun," that no one was shot or struck, and that a good marksman like himself "knows too well which way his guns were pointed to have done mischief." The court decided otherwise, and granted Mrs. Burwell, who had just given birth to a new son, a divorce. Her husband entreated her to return, vowing never to give "another cross word," and declaring that the decree was "a pack of foolishness." She evidently did not return. The few later letters in the collection do not touch upon the matter.

The Burwell-Guy collection yields a revealing slice of antebellum plantation life. It portrays a social and domestic setting which emphasized family and hospitality, the tobacco economy that supported such a lifestyle, and the slave system that enabled it to function.

Biographical / Historical:

North Carolina tobacco farmer John A. Burwell and his wife Lucy Penn Guy Burwell inhabited a world defined by the southern plantation economy and by the social ties of extended family. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, parents and children, and a large crop of cousins corresponded and visited back and forth. Cousins intermarried, further cementing the ties that made up a close and complex kinship web. Favorite first names -- Lucy, Mary, Sally, Elizabeth, Edward, William, John -- were used in related families and in succeeding generations. In this largely rural antebellum setting it seems that family, rather than church, educational institution, or town, provided ones sense of community and identity.

Genealogical details are sketchy. The Burwells lived near the North Carolina-Virginia border (Burwell's farmland was actually in Virginia), and two other branches of Mrs. Burwell's family lived close by. Her aunt and uncle E.T. and Edward Townes and their children lived in the same general area, while aunt Mary A.E. Rawlins, husband and children were based about 75 miles away in Danville, Virginia. Another aunt, Mary T. Guy Williamson, and her family had settled near Louisville, Ky.

The parents of Lucy Penn Guy Burwell and her two younger sisters, Elizabeth T. Guy and Anna Guy, had evidently migrated to Alabama around 1820. Sometime before 1840 both parents died, and the three girls then made their home with or near their mother's aunts, E.T. and Fanny Townes, in North Carolina. By 1840, Lucy Guy was married to John A. Burwell and settled in Lynesville, N.C. Anna Guy married cousin Edward Rawlins of Danville, Va. in 1846 and they relocated to New Orleans. Her unmarried sister joined her there.

John A. Burwell was a prosperous tobacco planter who also produced corn and wheat for market. He did well enough to enjoy moderate luxuries -- a carriage and team of horses, fashionable dresses for wife and daughter, oysters and brandy -- but was clearly not of the richest class of planters. He and his wife owned 15 slaves to work the fields and several to serve in the house. Burwell took great pride in his tobacco, yearly endeavoring to "beat his neighbors" and win the prize awarded by Virginia tobacco merchants for the highest quality crop. Pride seems to have been a primary feature of Burwell's personality, for he set great store not only on his tobacco, but on the quality of the material goods it bought, the beauty of his daughter, the reputation and success of his sons. The work of his plantation, hunting, fishing, and dining seem to have been the preoccupations of his life.

John and Lucy Burwell had at least 7 children: Thomas, Armistead, John E., Charles, Lizzie Anna, and a girl and boy whose names are not known. The children were for the most part educated by a succession of teachers hired by Burwell. Lizzie Anna Burwell attended an "institute," in nearby Warrenton, N.C. for some part of her elementary education. After school Thomas Burwell went to work for a commission merchant in Norfolk, Virginia, while the other children remained at home.

Details on Lucy Burwell's life are not abundant. She managed a complicated household; bearing and caring for children, directing the work of domestic slaves, gardening, nursing the sick, entertaining company. She appears to have suffered ill health frequently. To her fell the tasks of maintaining the social facade required by a prideful husband -- a husband who was evidently hot-tempered as well as arrogant. In 1857, Lucy Burwell left home, accusing her husband of violent behavior. The marriage ended, Lucy and her daughters went to live with her brother, and little is known about the family after this.

There is virtually no biographical information on the slaves -- called "servants" by their owners -- whose work fueled the plantation economy and its elaborate social life. They are mentioned as individuals at birth or death, when ailing, when hired out, when bought or sold. Families were split up when Anna and Elizabeth moved to New Orleans and had their slaves sent to them. Occasionally the women were permitted to visit mothers or daughters. Various members of the Burwell and Guy families wrote of their affection, respect, even love for certain slaves. But although these men and women may have been recognized as individuals, with distinct talents and personalities, they were also possessions, accorded no control over their own lives.

Acquisition Information:
1991, 1992. M-2654a, M-2832.3 .
Processing information:

Cataloging partially funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). This collection has been processed according to minimal processing procedures and may be revised, expanded, or updated in the future.

Rules or Conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Contents

Using These Materials

Info for Visitors

How to Request

Ordering Reproductions

Download PDF Finding Aid
RESTRICTIONS:

The collection is open for research.

USE & PERMISSIONS:

Copyright status is unknown

PREFERRED CITATION:

Burwell-Guy Family Papers, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan