{"id":3792,"date":"2014-04-29T13:04:14","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T19:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/digitalservices\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2014-04-29T13:04:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T19:04:14","slug":"wynne-family-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/2014\/04\/29\/wynne-family-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a collection as\u00a0regional as the one at the\u00a0W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library<\/a>, it’s not surprising to find some occasional overlap.<\/p>\n

The Wynne Family Papers<\/a> and the Meriwether Family Papers<\/a>\u00a0come together with the Coleman family, as you can see in this family tree (click to view\u00a0a larger version):<\/p>\n

\"WynneColemanMeriwether\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Alice Coleman Meriwether’s brother Bestor <\/a>married a Wynne girl (Laura),\u00a0it meant their families — and family papers — were inextricably entangled, for better or worse.<\/p>\n

What’s in a Name<\/h2>\n

While having more information about each family makes relationships\u00a0easier to figure out, it sometimes also adds to the confusion. Compounding this problems is the tendency of women\u00a0in the 19th century south to give\u00a0their maiden names to their children, usually as first names. For example,\u00a0Bestor Wynne Coleman carries three family names, including one that goes back to his paternal grandmother’s family in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Some women apparently also named their daughters after themselves, much like men might name their sons. When Alice Coleman married John Meriwether, she became Alice Coleman Meriwether, the same name her daughter carried until her own marriage.<\/p>\n

Frances Laura Anderson Wynne<\/a> gave her name to her daughter, although, luckily for us, she called herself simply Laura. (She became Laura Wynne Coleman.) There’s a good bet her daughter, Fannie Coleman, was also a Frances herself. To add to the confusion, there’s also a picture of an infant labeled Fannie Julia Scott<\/a> — which means Julia Wynne Scott must have named her daughter after her mother (and herself!), too.<\/p>\n

Of course, the really interesting thing about the extended\u00a0Wynne-Coleman-Meriwether family is the breadth of their combined collections. These two sets of papers include letters and other documents that span most of the 19th century, an important period of growth and change in America.<\/p>\n

From the Meriwether Collection<\/h2>\n

From the Meriwether collection, we’ve already highlighted yankee\u00a0Juliet Bestor’s long journey to Alabama<\/a> to get married in the 1830s. As Coleman family matriarch, she was deeply mourned at her passing:<\/p>\n

\"eulogy<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition to Juliet’s papers,\u00a0the Meriwether collection mainly consists of letters between Alice Coleman Meriwether and her husband, John<\/a>, as he served in the Alabama Infantry during the Civil War. Included in the collection is a map of the Battle of Vicksburg which John drew by hand:<\/p>\n

\"hand<\/a><\/p>\n

The rest of Alice’s correspondence pops up in the Wynne collection, as letters to and from Laura Coleman. Use this link<\/a> to see those items.<\/p>\n

From the Wynne Collection<\/h2>\n

On the Wynne side, we have pictures of all the siblings:<\/p>\n\n

William was a lawyer. Among several legal documents in the collection (see Wynne\/Miscellaneous Documents) is this contract:<\/p>\n

\"marriage<\/a><\/p>\n

Apparently, William\u00a0approached everything, even a good-natured personal bet, with a legal eye. Did he end up having to pay up? Unless the other two remained bachelors, he would’ve been one of the losers of the bet, as he never married.<\/p>\n

Neither did his brother Thomas. Thomas is rarely in family correspondence, but he seems to have had a close relationship with Julia. Read this\u00a0letter from Julia to Thomas<\/a>\u00a0(1867) and this from\u00a0Thomas to Julia<\/a> (1869) to get a sense of the relationship between these youngest Wynne siblings. The two oldest Wynne siblings were apparently also close, given the number of letters between them, like these examples from 1852: Martha to William<\/a> (April) and William to Martha<\/a> (August).<\/p>\n

Like Thomas, William was not a big letter writer, judging from the evidence we have. However, the\u00a0rest of the Wynne siblings were apparently frequent correspondents, as this assortment shows:<\/p>\n