Archibald Debow Murphey (1777-1832) Papers, PC.12
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- Archibald Debow Murphey (1777-1832) Papers
- Call Number
- PC.12
- Creator
- Murphey, Archibald D. (Archibald De Bow), 1777-1832
- Date
- 1797-1852
- Extent
- 0.2 cubic feet
- Repository
- State Archives of North Carolina
Collection Overview
Papers of Murphey, Orange Co. lawyer, state senator, superior court judge, and historian, including letters collected and published by William Henry Hoyt, editor of The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, 2 volumes (Raleigh, 1914). Subjects include court cases; friends in Louisiana and Mississippi Territory (1811-1812); investments in lands, new towns, and internal improvements, and his subsequent financial difficulties; his proposed history of North Carolina, with notes and narratives on Indian Wars (1755-1776) and the Revolution in western North Carolina; his service to UNC as agent in dispute with Tennessee over western lands (1824-1826); national politics before and during the War of 1812 and in the 1820s; gold mining (1827); and the Mecklenburg Declaration (1827). Correspondents include Benjamin H. Latrobe, discussing proposed Yadkin-Cape Fear River Canal, and Herndon Haralson, John Haywood, Archibald McBryde, V. M. Murphey, Colonel Thomas Polk, Thomas Ruffin, and Montfort Stokes. Miscellaneous items include a speech on volcanoes (1799), an 1815 army discharge, Murphey's 1824 will and an affidavit of Murphey's father's service in the Revolution. Hoyt's transcriptions of papers include legislative bills and committee reports (1812-1818); Murphey's "Report on the Western Lands" to the UNC Board of Trustees (Nov., 1824); Gen. Joseph Graham's Revolutionary reminiscences and William Lenoir's account of the Battle of Kings Mountain; a biography of Prof. William Augustus Richards; and letters relating to Tennessee (1825-1833), Mississippi (1839), petitions for criminal pardons, and the identity of Peter Stewart Ney.