James Campbell Wilkins papers, 1801-1852, Natchez, Mississippi, also Louisiana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania
James Campbell Wilkins (ca. 1789-1849) was a Natchez, Mississippi, cotton planter, merchant, cotton factor, financier, and banker. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before 1790, he came to Adams County around 1805. He participated in the Battle of New Orleans, the last general assembly of the Mississippi Territory, and the constitutional convention for the new state. Between 1828 and 1835 he attempted an unsuccessful political career. He was associated prominently with four banks at Natchez (1824-1840), but he lost most of his fortune in 1841 and died at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849. This collection consists of correspondence, financial records, and legal documents organized into ten series and arranged chronologically under name or subject. Papers relate to the lives and careers of Wilkins, his family, and business associates and concern the cotton trade; business of commission merchants in Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana; plantation life and economy; African American slaves and slavery; and the planter elite of the Natchez and Adams County area. Included is material concerning James Campbell Wilkins's uncle, Charles Wilkins, Lexington, Kentucky, merchant and provisioner of the U.S. Army's work on the Natchez Trace road (1801-1807); his partnership (1816-1834) with John Linton in New Orleans; activities of individuals and families, including Stephen Duncan, Levin R. Marshall, and the Minor family; and the 1836 sale and transportation to the South of a group of fifty slaves from Baltimore, Maryland, by J.S. Skinner. Subjects documented in this collection include U.S. Army supplies and stores; banks and banking; merchant and commission merchant activities; cotton; and Coles Creek Plantation
Microform, English, ©2001
University Publications of America, Bethesda, MD, ©2001