Manuscript Location

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ North Carolina

Date of Composition

1830s-1880s

Description

The American Person family was established by Thomas Person (1733-1800), a North Carolina Revolutionary War leader and post-Revolution state office holder, who acquired a vast estate reaching from western North Carolina into eastern Tennessee. The descendants of Thomas Person's brother, William Person, included a number of nineteenth century North Carolina planters and prominent political figures.

The library's collection of the Person Family papers contains two housekeeping books compiled in the nineteenth century by members of the Person family. One book, written between 1833 and 1857, is primarily the work of Eliza A. Person Mitchell, although at least one other individual wrote in it. This book includes many culinary recipes, mostly for sweets, and some household recipes, particularly for dyeing wool; it also contains records of soap making, vegetable gardening, slave births, and blankets and clothing given to slaves. The other book, which was mostly written in the 1840s, may have been principally authored by Madelle E. Mitchell. This book opens with a record of foodstuffs and other articles bought in Petersburg, North Carolina, in 1847 to 1849. In addition, it contains many culinary recipes, particularly for sweets, a few household formulas, a vegetable gardening record, and records of two unusual snowstorms, in 1857 and 1885.