The Miller Family Collection

The Miller family collection is most significantly a study of pre-Civil War and Civil War life and occurrences. Plantation life is outlined: its hospitality and courtly manners, farming concerns, management of slaves, and during the war, fear of retaliation by enemy troops and of commandeering of property by Confederate troops. During the war, there is mention of the interruption of railroad and other conveyances, the movement of troops, guerrilla warfare, and sickness. Political and business interests of family members are indicated both before and after the war. The collection then follows the family’s migration to various Southern states.

Unusual tales appear alongside the accounts of war and family life:

Tom Jamison went to California after gold in 1850.

A Paine cousin writes from medical school in New York, telling of girls dressed in bloomers, of annoying abolitionist and freesoilers, and of women’s right advocates. He expresses doubt about the issue of women becoming physicians, and hints at uneasiness in a school at which only a few students are Southerners like himself.

Jesse G. Frazer fled the South during the Civil War due to his Northern sympathies. Parts of his letters are written in code to avoid being traced to him; his wife, the former Lizzie Jamison, died before they could be reunited.

The donor of this collection, Dr. C Keith Barnes, was connected to Miss Elizabeth Miller in that his wife was a beneficiary in Miss Miller’s will.