Papers (1897-1901) consisting of correspondence of routine personal matters and family matters, clippings, schedule of recitation and recipes relating to Dr. and Mrs. Richard H. Speight of Edgecombe County, N.C. and their relatives.
Dr. Richard Harrison Speight (1847-1920) was the son of Methodist minister John Francis Speight and his wife Emma Lewis Speight. John Speight died soon after his house The Cedars was completed at Wrendale in Edgecombe County, N.C., in 1859 or 1860. His son Richard lived at The Cedars until 1919 and had his medical office there. Dr. R. H. Speight was a prominent physician, planter and a member of the Senate in the N.C. General Assembly. He was married twice and fathered twelve children. His second wife Margaret Whitefield was the daughter of George W. Whitefield, a prominent lawyer of Edgecombe and Wilson Counties, N.C. For more information on Dr. Speight's life, refer to Samuel Ashe's Biographical History of North Carolina and William S. Powell's Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.
Items (1897-1901) in the collection are primarily concerned with routine personal matters; however, there is a letter (15 October 1899) written by author Louise Manly in Alabama where she discusses generally her progress on two of her publications. Two letters are from a New York merchant and pertain to proposed purchases of clothing. The remaining correspondence is written by relatives in Reidsville and Wilson, N.C., and in Mississippi, to Mrs. Richard H. Speight at Wrendale and is concerned with family matters. Topics discussed are life in the Delta region of Mississippi (specifically Stovall), the poor health of family members, the possibilities for funding the education (parochial) of a relative's child if its mother should die, a widow coping with the death of her husband and trying to find work, and the depth of Roman Catholic religious convictions. Also included are clippings, a schedule (no date) of recitation for State Normal and Industrial College, an obituary (1900) for Robert Powell Speight (son of Dr. Speight) who died at the age of thirty, recipes, receipts, poems and other miscellaneous items. One oversize item contains pages one and two of the morning edition of the The New York Herald for Saturday, 16 May 1857.
Gift of Mrs. James A. Doggett and Mrs. J. L. Johnson
Processed by D. Lennon; M. Elmore
Encoded by Apex Data Services
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.