| Scope and content |
Collection contains the published memoir of Stephen F. Miller about life in New Bern, N.C., from 1822 to 1872. He mentions over three hundred names of residents of New Bern from the early to mid-19th century. The memoir contains brief biographies of New Bern's merchants, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals of the period. Also discussed are such topics as schools and teachers, churches and ministers, shipping, town officers, banks, markets, boarding houses, fruit shops, steam mills, dueling traditions, Swiss nobility, free African Americans, the "Yankee Influence," and a host of other professions and places. The volume also includes discussions concerning various elections and duels involving politicians, performances at a New Bern theater, the dog tax, fine arts, newspapers, wealthy plantation owners, first steam mill, Hardy Bryan Croom shipwreck inheritance suit, the Swiss Ipock family, a seaman's capture and imprisonment by the British during the War of 1812, and the various religious groups of New Bern. An appendix is comprised of transcripts of letters Miller received from William Gaston, David Lowry Swain, John R. Donnell, and M. E. Manly. |
| Biographical note | Stephen Franks Miller (b. 1805), native of Trenton, Jones County, N.C., moved to New Bern in 1822, where he worked as a clerk. Miller moved to Georgia in 1824 and was admitted to the bar in 1827. Subsequently, he edited the Monitor (Tuscaloosa, Ala.) in 1848, and in 1849, he was associated with DeBow's Review and the Daily Commercial Times of New Orleans. He penned this memoir about 1872. |
