Post # 1 ~ Welcome to the Side Show

Spin-Offs from the Big Show

While researching a collection of Civil War letters written by the Jeffers brothers of Greenwood, SC, I often find topics that are fascinating companions to the main story, but so complex that they grow out-of-bounds. I decided to put the antebellum thread in its own separate place, here, and build on the subject as I find more to add. There is no perfect way to do this - but for now this will give me room to build related stories, without inserting lengthy diversions into the main story developing over in Your Dear Son ~ Letters from the Civil War.

This blog, A Merchant of Hamburg, will be about their father, Henry Langford Jeffers, 1809-1890, and about Hamburg, SC, the town in which the Jeffers family lived during the brothers' childhood years (1835 -1855). Hamburg was not a typical rural antebellum village, and the father of the family left an unusual footprint there.

Concrete pilings from the old railroad bridge between Hamburg and Augusta, GA. Photo by Larry Gleason, Flickr.

Here I am using an inverted post-time display, to make the thread unroll in (roughly) chronological order. New posts will show up at the end. Since the amount of new material is limited, and I don't expect the total to be more than about 25 posts, this will work out conveniently to present the background story of the Jeffers family. I always welcome messages and new information.

Post # 2 ~ Who Were These People?

Suddenly Want to Know

The Jeffers letters, like most original Civil War documents, shed light on a fascinating time in our national history. The intense patriotism, violence, misery, and hard-won victory by the Union - all these and many more reasons compel people to study the Civil War exhaustively. There are still so many things to understand.

Integral to my project is an understanding of the family life of the three letter-writing brothers. When it comes to the Jeffers family, that is harder to research than I expected. Most southern families kept genealogical records, and were proud of their "blood." Detailed records were kept and passed on, even after Sherman's court-house rampages. In 1861, the families of my all my great-great grandparents lived in South Carolina, owned slaves, attended church, and were loyal to the Confederacy. Almost all of my great-great-grandparents can be researched in old records. That one great-great that left no genealogical trail? Mr. Henry Langford Jeffers, 1809-1890, father of the family of letter-writers.

I understand that often, especially when you have their own hand-written papers, the act of writing about long-ago people makes you feel as if you know them personally. You become invested emotionally; you care about what happened to them. 

Spann's letter from Deep Bottom, VA, September 22, 1864.

Of course, that happened to me!

Post # 23 ~ The Monster Horned Elephant in the Lower Regions

Henry L. Jeffers Pondered His Troubles

~ From His Lonely Couch ~

Somehow, I think Henry bowled right through that attack on his reputation by designing persons. But there was another enemy not so easily dealt with. Debt became a creeping foe to H. L. Jeffers. The causes for  his growing trouble with debts were complicated; then, as now, debt was a familiar risk for entrepreneurs. Suffice it to say, starting with his large losses after the Great Freshet of 1840, and pushed forward by his enthusiasm for newer and bigger enterprises, he went into debt, and then struggled to get out. A serious situation occurred in 1854, which I don't really understand yet, but seems to have resulted when someone working for him in a new corporate alliance (Chambers, Jeffers & Co.) drew an enormous bank note and signed it in the name of the company; and then the responsibility fell on the senior partner in charge.

All Henry Jeffers’ communications that I have seen kept up a strong and self-confident face to the world. All the reactions toward him from other people - family, friends, and business colleagues - tell me he was trusted. But I can get a closer glimpse of how he felt inwardly. 

Henry's fears.

In the collection of letters that I have, there is one written by Henry L. Jeffers to his wife Eliza in 1863.