[S16]
John Sumner Russwurm Papers, 1786-1914.
John Sumner Russwurm Papers, 1786-1914.
Mf. 1197 -- John Sumner Russwurm Papers, 1786-1914. 900 items. TSLA. 2 reels. 35 mm. Papers of John Sumner Russwurm (1793-1860), Rutherford County planter, merchant, Creek War veteran, and Inspector General during the tenure of Governor William Carroll. Most of the papers are concentrated in the early nineteenth century. They are composed of correspondence; accounts; biographical and genealogical data, legal documents (bills of sale, depositions, promissary notes and powers of attorney), wills, estate papers and land records; medical prescriptions; pension data, clippings and some religious writings. A large part of the collection is Russwurm's incoming correspodence, concerning business matters, land in the frontier regions of Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri and California, and Whig politics. Among the correspondents are John Bell, Newton Cannon, Robert Looney Caruthers, and Ephraim Hubbard Foster. Russwurm was also related to the Blounts of North Carolina and Tennessee, and to Revolutionary War general Jethro Sumner, and many letters detail the concerns of the North Carolina cousins. A particular strength of this collection is the extraordinary attention given to the issues of slave-owning, emancipation, conditions in the freed slave colony of Liberia, and the career of one remarkable mulatto cousin of Russwurm's, John Brown Russwurm. He became one of the first Negro graduates of an American college (Bowdoin College, 1826), and emigrated to Liberia to become that country's first superintendent of public schools and, eventually, its first black governor. The Russwurm papers are rich in source material on the African-American experience. Register available, including a name index to correspondence.