Bailey Family Papers

The collection includes Civil War correspondence by Casermo Bailey pertaining to the Battle of Chickamauga and Siege of Chattanooga (autumn, 1863) among others. The papers in the collection span the years 1841-1870 with a particular concentration in 1863. In addition to correspondence, the collection also includes invoices belonging to the different members of the Bailey family.

Casermo Bailey's letters to his mother and father, provide the researcher with a first-hand account of life in the Confederate Army at the Western Front. The Southern population's scorn for the "Yanks" comes out through Casermo's description of the Union fighters as "cowards." Casermo makes mention of the pervasiveness of price-gouging and war-profiteering which grew to colossal proportions during the Civil War. Most of the letters originate from a camp near Petersburg, Virginia. Other locations are Camp Beauregard, Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, Charleston, South Carolina, and Folley Island. They recount the lack of provisions and the cost of a loaf of bread, the promotion and activities of officers including Major Ingram, Colonel Bullock, General Davis Stark, and troop movements. It should be noted that one letter, dated Sept. 21, 1863, is signed by one C.F. Bailey, instead of C.O. Bailey. This may be Charles F. Bailey, also in the Seventh Regiment.

The collection also includes business ledgers detailing the various transactions and purchases necessary to manage the Bailey plantation enterprise. Being a wealthy man and a shrewd entrepreneur, James Bailey kept a precise record of his tobacco, cotton, rice, and sugar cane holdings down to the bushel (Wayne 1981, 28). These ledgers, from 1858-1877, collectively form a sort of microcosm through which the researcher can see the infrastructure of the South operating on the small-scale.

A glass lantern slide of the Bailey House in Gainesville, Florida (1923) is also included.