The Patrick McGill Family Papers are a collection of 435 documents including bills, promissory notes, receipts, court documents and correspondence. The majority are financial transactions related to Patrick McGill, Sr., and Jr. Documents include information about slaves' housing, clothing, medical care, and sale; women's lives and occupations; and the operation of businesses and the legal system in nineteenth-century Maryland.
The majority of documents are pre-Civil War, 1820s-1850s. Locales include Petersville, Point of Rocks, Jefferson, Baltimore, Blue Ridge Furnace, and Frederick City among others.
Folder 5. 1830-1834, contains a letter regarding a "servant" boy, August 12, 1834.
Folder 6. 1840-1844, contains a receipt for hiring out a slave boy named Henry, April 25, 1844.
Folder 7. 1845-1849, contains a blacksmithing bill that includes an item for several slave hands building a fence, June 1848.
Folder 8. 1850-1854, contains a bill for building slave quarters, 1851; and a bill with a note regarding the style of Patrick McGill, Jr.'s sister's bonnet.
Folder 9. 1855-1859, contains a letter regarding hands on the railroad putting out a fire, 1857; a medical bill that includes visits to a slave child, 1858-1860; and a letter regarding selling slaves, 1859
Folder 10. 1860-1869, contains a medical bill for delivering a child for a slave woman named Eliza, as well as providing medicine for a slave child, 1861; a receipt for slaves who were bequeathed in Patrick McGill, Jr.'s will, 1863; 2 receipts for cotton cloth for slaves; and a medical bill for extracting a Black child's tooth, 1867.
Furman University home page