This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_911167919_boundary Content-ID: <0_911167919@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Here is the file in text format that I sent earlier. Could Burwell Spence possibly be an ancestor of the Burwell family? Maybe maternal? Looking for a Burwell that married a Spence in the 1700's in Va may be a possible link. --part0_911167919_boundary Content-ID: <0_911167919@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: text/plain; name="BURWELL.TXT" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Content-disposition: inline <Picture>William L. Clements Library The University of Michigan Burwell-Guy Family Papers ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Burwell-Guy Family Papers, 1820-1873 (bulk: 1840-1859) 0.25 lin. feet ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Background note: 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 un= cles, 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 -- Luc= y, 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 Carol= ina-Virginia border (Burwell's farmland was actually in Virginia), and tw= o other branches of Mrs. Burwell's family lived close by. Her aunt and un= cle E.T. and Edward Townes and their children lived in the same general a= rea, 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, Elizabe= th T. Guy and Anna Guy, had evidently migrated to Alabama around 1820. So= metime 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 h= er there. John A. Burwell was a prosperous tobacco planter who also produced corn a= nd wheat for market. He did well enough to enjoy moderate luxuries -- a c= arriage and team of horses, fashionable dresses for wife and daughter, oy= sters 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 me= rchants 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 o= f his daughter, the reputation and success of his sons. The work of his p= lantation, hunting, fishing, and dining seem to have been the preoccupati= ons of his life. Around 1856 the Burwells may have relocated to new lands= near their old ones, for their address changes from Lynesville to Townes= ville and some letters comment on clearing land and constructing a barn. 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 hir= ed by Burwell. Lizzie Anna Burwell attended an "institute," in nearby War= renton, N.C. for some part of her elementary education. After school Thom= as Burwell went to work for a commission merchant in Norfolk, Virginia, w= hile the other children remained at home. Details on Lucy Burwell's life are not abundant. She managed a complicate= d household; bearing and caring for children, directing the work of domes= tic slaves, gardening, nursing the sick, entertaining company. She appear= s to have suffered ill health frequently. To her fell the tasks of mainta= ining the social facade required by a prideful husband -- a husband who w= as 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 abo= ut the family after this. There is virtually no biographical information on the slaves -- called "s= ervants" 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 sp= lit 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 d= aughters. 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 t= heir own lives. Scope and contents: About one third of the 114 letters in the Burwell-Guy collection are busi= ness 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 Ri= chmond, Va. company and the Petersburg, Va.-based firm of Martin and Dorm= ans 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 commenta= ry 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 war= ns the young man at length about fashionable women with "paint on their c= heeks, 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 o= f nature..." His fatherly advice is to "[l]ook aloof, & let alone the wom= en, & 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, "y= ou 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." Bu= rwell's comments reflect his rather casual attitude toward religion -- th= at it was good for a person, but not in excess, and that it need not occu= py a central role in life. Women seemed to place a greater emphasis on at= tending church, but their letters have little to say about religion. Chur= ch-going obviously fulfilled a social function as well as a spiritual one= . Plantation children's education was frequent commented upon in correspond= ence. Some teachers ran their own small schools, while others were hired = to instruct the children of an individual family or related families. Chi= ldren occasionally went away to nearby boarding schools. Boys appear to h= ave attended school more consistently than girls, although both were inst= ructed in a range of academic subjects. John Burwell went through a succe= ssion of teachers; one was dismissed for being too "mean," another for be= ing "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 w= ay. 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 w= rites at length on the life of the plantation, as viewed through his prop= rietary eyes. He describe illnesses, births and deaths, his sons' intelli= gence 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 prod= uce sales, has brought in $2,224.00. A letter of April 30, 1847 offers ch= illing commentary on attitudes toward slaves. Burwell writes with amuseme= nt 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 fathe= r 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 brot= her, Thomas, between 1854 and 1857. These comment largely on hunting, whi= ch seems to have been a favorite male pastime. He also notes attending a = wedding and enjoying "waiting on" two young ladies. When the railroad wen= t 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 w= ork expected of him; or perhaps he did not consider chores worthy of comm= ent. The remainder of the Burwell-Guy letters consists of social correspondenc= e, largely between women members of the families. Aunts, nieces, sisters,= and cousins write typically of domestic life, visiting, social events, f= ashion, gardening, and illnesses. The women's correspondence is much more= fragmented than the men's, in which letters to or from John Burwell pred= ominate. There are nine letters from Elizabeth Guy to sister Lucy Burwell= , several to Elizabeth from the women of the Townes and Rawlins families,= respectively, and several to Elizabeth or Lucy from Aunt Mary Williamson= in Kentucky. The women's letters almost always include some news of the = slaves, whom they clearly regarded with affection as members of their hou= seholds. It is always, however, the affection of a superior for a subordi= nate, and if these women treated their slaves well and cared about them, = they also removed them from families at their convenience and hired them = out or assigned them work as they saw fit. After Anna Guy's marriage to Edward Rawlins she and sister Elizabeth had = their slaves insured and sent down to them in New Orleans. Elizabeth writ= es in December, 1846 "They will no doubt dislike to leave very much but t= ell them to dispose of their plunder to the best advantage, behave well, = & they shall be always well treated ..." Once there, Miss Guy hired some = of her slaves out to bring in income: "My three men are hired at sixty do= llars a month to a gentleman who is very kind to them; but a deduction is= made for all the time they are sick of course. The two Jim's are draymen= and Coy attends to the stables. Lucretia has grown & fattened very much = since she had scarlet fever. I made her some new blue dresses & long slee= ve white aprons & she is one of the nicest little maids that I know. The = lady who has her is very particularly [sic] with her, & is teaching her t= o sew." In the same letter Elizabeth consoles her sister Lucy at the loss= of her slave Indy. "I feel truly sorry to hear that she is no more. We t= hought a great deal of her, she always felt so much for you in your sickn= ess. I deeply sympathize with you in the loss you have sustained for I kn= ow you will miss her a great deal." Courtship is a recurrent theme in the Burwell-Guy papers, and both men an= d women seem to have been fond of flirting and appreciative of physical c= harm. It was evidently not necessary to be coy about expressing ones opin= ions and preferences, and a lively social life was much desired. After he= r sister's hasty marriage to Cousin Edward during their visit to Aunt Mar= y in Kentucky, Elizabeth Guy developed a passion for Cousin Perry DuPuy a= nd sought permission to marry him. When sister Lucy in North Carolina dis= approved, her ardor cooled -- much to brother-in-law John Burwell's amuse= ment. William Rawlins writes to his cousin Elizabeth Guy, addressed as "S= weet Sister Lizzy," on June 12, 1844, describing the social season last w= inter in Norfolk and his current adventures: "there are some beautiful sc= hool girls here and I have been flying around some of them." He wants to = see her soon so that he may tell her of "courting scrapes and engagements= and discards..." In September, 1855 Mary L. Burwell asks cousin Thomas B= urwell about her chances with an acquaintance of his, Dr. Robert, who los= t his wife recently. She wishes to know if he has "thrown aside the weeds= of mourning yet," for she still has "a fondness for young widowers." The collection winds up with the intriguing story of John and Lucy Burwel= l's divorce, an ugly tale which depicts the underside of their seemingly = stable, convivial plantation life. Letters from John Burwell to son Thoma= s 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 t= he family" in court, after saying previously that they would have no part= in their parents' quarrels. Unhappy domestic relations had evidently com= e to a head when Burwell became violent toward his slaves; he was accused= of "runing the negroes about with guns & sticks." Burwell asserts that h= e was doing it "out of fun," that no one was shot or struck, and that a g= ood marksman like himself "knows too well which way his guns were pointed= to have done mischief." The court decided otherwise, and granted Mrs. Bu= rwell, who had just given birth to a new son, a divorce. Her husband entr= eated her to return, vowing never to give "another cross word," and decla= ring that the decree was "a pack of foolishness." She evidently did not r= eturn. The few later letters in the collection do not touch upon the matt= er. When all of its bits and pieces are put together, the Burwell-Guy collect= ion 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 th= at enabled it to function. M-2832.3 cat. 11/95 sms ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ <Picture>Subject index to the Burwell-Guy Family Papers<Picture>Back to b= rief guide ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return to: <Picture> Homepage<Picture> Manuscripts<Picture> Collections<Picture> Staff<Picture> Hours and policies --part0_911167919_boundary--