Notes
abbreviations HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania LLMVC, LSU Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Louisiana State University MDAH Mississippi Department of Archives and History NTC, CAH, UT Natchez Trace Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin NYHS New York Historical Society, Manuscript Department prologue 1. Stephen Duncan to Josiah S. Johnston, October 11, 1831, Josiah S. Johnston Collection, HSP. 2. These ideas and concepts, particularly that of Duncan as an “ultramodern master of northern capitalism,” were first explored in Martha Jane Brazy, “The World a Slaveholder Made: Stephen Duncan and Plantation Society” (M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 1987), and Brazy, “An American Planter: Slavery, Entrepreneurship, and Identity in the Life of Stephen Duncan, 1787–1867” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1998). 1. “to seek his fortunes in the distant south” 1. Stephen Duncan’s dates may be found in Certificate of Death, Dr. Stephen Duncan, January 29, 1867, New York City Department of Records, Death Records, New York City Municipal Archives, New York. Duncan family genealogy may be found in Katherine Duncan Smith, The Story of Thomas Duncan and His Six Sons (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1928), esp. 9, 41. For a detailed history of Cumberland County and Carlisle, see History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Warner, Beers, 1886). For information on the Duncan family’s 159 NOTES involvement in Carlisle, see part 2, 27 and 200; for the history of Carlisle specifically, see part 2, 229–40. 2. Smith, Thomas Duncan, 44. A brief Duncan family history may be found in Nicholas Wainwright, The Irvine Story (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Historical Society, 1964), 34–37. For information regarding the Postlethwaites, see History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania , part 2, 135, 200; Morton Rothstein, “‘The Remotest Corner’: Natchez on the American Frontier,” in Natchez before 1830, ed. Noel Polk (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 98. Fairly reliable birth dates for Duncan and Postlethwaite’s children can be found in the Postlethwaite Genealogical Collection, MDAH, and are as follows: Matilda Rose, 1786; Stephen, 1787; Samuel, 1789; Mary Ann, 1792; and Emily, 1793. Much of the Postlethwaite Genealogical Collection was compiled by Mary E. Postlethwaite of Natchez, Mississippi. 3. Smith, Thomas Duncan, 43 (quote)–44; Wainwright, 34–35; Morton Rothstein, “The Natchez Nabobs: Kinship and Friendship in an Economic Elite,” in Essays in Honor of Arthur C. Cole, ed. Hans L. Trefousse (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 108 n. 4. A detailed account of the duel can be found in a communication of Stephen Duncan Jr. to Katherine Duncan Smith, December11 ,1894,andreprintedinSmith,ThomasDuncan,107.Anotherfullaccountof theduel— a typescript of an extract of a letter from Carlisle dated June 22, 1793—can be found in the Postlethwaite Genealogical Collection, MDAH. John Duncan was born on November 15, 1762, and died on June 22, 1793. These dates, as well as other birth and death dates of Carlisle’s citizenry, can be found in Sarah Woods Parkinson, Memories of Carlisle’s Old Graveyard (Carlisle: Mary Kirtley Lamberton, 1930). 4. Coincidentally, Blaine’s son from his first marriage attended the fatal Duncan-Lamberton duel and served as John Duncan’s second. A history of the Blaine family can be found in James Ewing Blaine, The Blaine Family: James Blaine, Emigrant, and His Children (Cincinnati: Ebbert and Richardson, 1920); for Colonel Ephraim Blaine, see esp. 20–42 (quote, 21). For the marriage of Duncan and Blaine, see 51–52. See also Smith, Thomas Duncan, 44; Postlethwaite Genealogical Collection, MDAH; Civic Club of Carlisle, Carlisle Old and New (Harrisburg, Pa.: J. Horace McFarland, 1907), 109–10. 5. For a history of Dickinson College, see Charles C. Sellers, Dickinson College: A History (Middletown,Conn.:WesleyanUniversityPress,1973);fortheDuncans’involvementinthecollege , see, 3–4, 481–84. Also see George L. Reed, ed., Alumni Record, Dickinson College (Carlisle: Dickinson College, 1905), 53. For a discussion of the founding of Dickinson College within the context of Carlisle social history, see Joseph B. Smith, “A Frontier Experiment with Higher Education : Dickinson College, 1783–1800” Pennsylvania History 16 (January 1949): 1–19. Grandfather Stephen Duncan served as a trustee of the Carlisle Grammar School from 1773 to 1788 and as a trustee of Dickinson College from 1783 to 1794. Other family members who served on DickinsonCollege ’sboardof trusteeswereThomasDuncan(1790–1816)andEphraimBlaine(1792– 1804). 6. Wainwright, 34–35; Blaine, 52–53, 66. Ephraim Blaine purchased from Tench Coxe two houses next to each other on Walnut Street for two thousand “Spanish Milled dollars...
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