2008 Woodie Awards
Plantation attic holds 400 years of documents
Kristen Wyatt - The Associated Press
Issue date: 6/24/08 Section: Over the Wire
They aren't in any particular order, and some are mouse-eaten tatters that look like something out of "The Da Vinci Code."
"You really get a sense of the range of America through these papers," said Edward Papenfuse, director of the Maryland State Archives, which will eventually house them.
Perhaps most strikingly, letters tell of a family's torn allegiances during the Civil War. The Emorys lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore, across Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore, where the plantation economy of the South ended and the abolitionist industrial North began.
It was a conflict the Emorys catalogued, anti-slavery petitions stacked alongside records of slaves sent to Natchez, Miss., and a packet of letters, still tied in silk ribbon, titled, "Correspondence with W.H. Emory and wife in regard to his resignation from U.S. Army, 1861."
The Emorys owned slaves, but some signed an 1832 petition to the Maryland legislature calling for the gradual eradication of slavery.
One family member, William H. Emory, was a colonel in the U.S. Army when the Civil War began. He wrote out a resignation of his post, then changed his mind and fought for the Union.
Two sons also fought in the Civil War - one for the Union, one for the Confederacy. Bundles of letters from all family members detail their divided feelings. The family kept not just personal letters, but political posters about the conflict.
"These are things that usually do not survive," Papenfuse said, pointing to a broadside blasting then-President Martin Van Buren for favoring voting rights for "every free negro." "After the heat of a campaign, this printed matter was thrown out or put to other uses, including the outhouse."
Not so at the Emory house, where even small scraps of paper were kept alongside military uniforms and other family heirlooms.
The collection also includes notes on an aspect of slavery historians know little about: the practice of renting slave labor to neighbors and plantations farther south.
"Scholars have not paid a great deal of attention to it, but this is something that helps recreate and draw back together the lives of these people who were considered chattel," Papenfuse said.
Relatives are also curious to know what historians find.
"I can't believe they didn't throw this stuff out," Wood said with a chuckle. "I mean, it's kind of weird. It's fascinating, though. I can't believe that something might come out of it."
"You really get a sense of the range of America through these papers," said Edward Papenfuse, director of the Maryland State Archives, which will eventually house them.
Perhaps most strikingly, letters tell of a family's torn allegiances during the Civil War. The Emorys lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore, across Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore, where the plantation economy of the South ended and the abolitionist industrial North began.
It was a conflict the Emorys catalogued, anti-slavery petitions stacked alongside records of slaves sent to Natchez, Miss., and a packet of letters, still tied in silk ribbon, titled, "Correspondence with W.H. Emory and wife in regard to his resignation from U.S. Army, 1861."
The Emorys owned slaves, but some signed an 1832 petition to the Maryland legislature calling for the gradual eradication of slavery.
One family member, William H. Emory, was a colonel in the U.S. Army when the Civil War began. He wrote out a resignation of his post, then changed his mind and fought for the Union.
Two sons also fought in the Civil War - one for the Union, one for the Confederacy. Bundles of letters from all family members detail their divided feelings. The family kept not just personal letters, but political posters about the conflict.
"These are things that usually do not survive," Papenfuse said, pointing to a broadside blasting then-President Martin Van Buren for favoring voting rights for "every free negro." "After the heat of a campaign, this printed matter was thrown out or put to other uses, including the outhouse."
Not so at the Emory house, where even small scraps of paper were kept alongside military uniforms and other family heirlooms.
The collection also includes notes on an aspect of slavery historians know little about: the practice of renting slave labor to neighbors and plantations farther south.
"Scholars have not paid a great deal of attention to it, but this is something that helps recreate and draw back together the lives of these people who were considered chattel," Papenfuse said.
Relatives are also curious to know what historians find.
"I can't believe they didn't throw this stuff out," Wood said with a chuckle. "I mean, it's kind of weird. It's fascinating, though. I can't believe that something might come out of it."
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