List of Sources

I have a long list of sources, linked here and over at the main blog, Your Dear Son. The excerpted list posted below focuses on sources mined for information about Henry Langford Jeffers and Hamburg, SC.

The Boys of Diamond Hill: The Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina, by J. Keith Jones, 2011. The humble Boyd family of Abbeville sent five young men to the war.

A Gentleman and an Officer: A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War, by Judith N. McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton, 1996. Based on eighty letters written by J. B. Griffin to his wife in Edgefield District, SC. For my purposes here, the notes and material written by the authors about the history of Edgefield District is very helpful.

Henry Schultz blog https://henryshultz.wordpress.com/ Henry Schulz and His town of Hamburg, SC: Economic War to the Death in the Antebellum South.

Historic Newspapers: Chronicling America is a website provided by The Library of Congress with search tools for viewing America’s Historic Newspaper pages. This is my favorite source. You have to do a lot of searching - but the articles give the contemporary mindset straight from the horse's mouth. Many horses. I also use Newspapers.com and various state archives.

History of Edgefield County from the Earliest Settlement to 1897, by John Abney Chapman,1897. A resident of Edgefield County, SC, and a contemporary of Henry L. Jeffers, Chapman strings together all the information he can gather about old Edgefield District. Disorganized but picturesque.

The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, by Hinton Rowan Helper of North Carolina, 1858. Remarkable book pointing out exactly why the south would loose a war. Helper was vilified in the southern press, but his book had influence on northern politicians.

In My Father's House are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina, by Orville Vernon Burton, 1985. In-depth dive into the history and statistics of Edgefield County. Has a nice summary of the role of Hamburg.

Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860, by Tom Downey, 2006. An extremely insightful book about the growth of an antebellum mercantile society in upstate South Carolina. Hamburg merchants had to court planters as customers at the same time that they began to push back against the dominant and feudal agricultural system. I learned much about the atmosphere in which Henry Langford Jeffers strived for something new.  

SC Picture Project website: https://www.scpictureproject.org/ A spin-off of SCIWAY that celebrates the beauty of the Palmetto State while preserving its landmarks and landscapes in a permanent historical repository.

SCIWAY website https://www.sciway.net/ The South Carolina Information Highway. A large and comprehensive directory of South Carolina information found on the Internet.

Vital Rails: The Charleston & Savannah Railroad and the Civil War in Coastal South Carolina, by H. David Stone, Jr., 2008. Very helpful resource, putting mercantile, railroad, and military history together in a clearly written style. He explains events that impacted the lives of the Jeffers family in Hamburg, in Charleston, and in the years spent with the Rutledge Mounted Riflemen in the coastal swamps of SC.