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The South Caroliniana Library Report of Acquisitions

Document Type

Collection Description

Abstract

Correspondence, receipts, legal documents, and labor contracts chiefly documenting the lives of the family of Richard Sadler (1815–1890) and his wife Mary Henrietta Williams (1818–1896) of York County, S.C.

The earliest correspondence in the collection, dated 1846-1846, relates to family affairs and the settlement of the estate of Mary Robertson Sadler (1774–1842) and includes letters written to the Sadlers in York County from relatives in Alabama.

A significant portion of the correspondence are letters to and from Kiah Price Harris Sadler (1842–1864), the oldest son of Richard and Mary Sadler, while he was employed as a clerk in a mercantile firm in Charlotte (1858–1859), while a student at Davidson College (1860–1862), during military service in Virginia with the Sixth Regiment, South Carolina Infantry (1861–1862) during which he was seriously injured in the Battle of Dranesville in December 1861, during military service along the South Carolina coast and in North Carolina and Virginia with the Fifth Regiment, South Carolina Cavalry (1863–1864). Kiah Sadler was killed in the Battle of Trevilian Station in Louisa County, Virginia in June 1864.

Collection also includes correspondence of Oscar William Sadler (1845–1907) during his service in Virginia with the Seventeenth Regiment, South Carolina Infantry (1864–1865).

Reconstruction era documents include labor contracts, December 1865, January 1866, and February 1875, between Richard Sadler and newly emancipated African American men and women, including individuals he had formerly enslaved.

Correspondence in the 1870s is chiefly letters written to Richard and Mary Sadler from relatives that had moved out of South Carolina, including their son John Milton “Mit” Sadler (1848–1908) from Arkansas and Alabama where he worked as a doctor.

Other items of interest include records, 1876–1878, of the “Tilden and Hampton Club” and the “Democratic Club of Pride’s Old Mill,” of which the youngest son of Richard and Mary Sadler, Rufus Earle Sadler (1850–1906) was a member; record of births and deaths of enslaved persons, 1821–1865 owned by the Sadlers listing fourteen births and five deaths and updated with ages at the time of emancipation; farm account book, 1883–1891 detailing expenses and money received for the sale of produce and livestock.

Included in

History Commons

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