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 the housing, clothing, medical care, and sale of enslaved persons; 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 an enslaved boy named Henry, April 25, 1844.
Folder 7. 1845-1849, contains a blacksmithing bill that includes an item for several enslaved hands building a fence, June 1848.
Folder 8. 1850-1854, contains a bill for building quarters for enslaved persons, 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 an enslaved child, 1858-1860; and a letter regarding selling enslaved persons, 1859
Folder 10. 1860-1869, contains a medical bill for delivering a child for an enslaved woman named Eliza, as well as providing medicine for an enslaved child, 1861; a receipt for enslaved persons who were bequeathed in Patrick McGill, Jr.'s will, 1863; 2 receipts for cotton cloth for enslaved persons; and a medical bill for extracting a Black child's tooth, 1867.
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