Hollyday family papers

This extensive collection documents the correspondence, agricultural, and business dealings of the Hollyday family of Ratcliffe Manor in Talbot County and Readbourne in Queen Annes County. One volume contains tabulations of land duties levied on the Eastern Shore, 1727-1745, for the importation of Negroes, Irish servants, and liquor, and for the exportation of tobacco, tar, and pork. Correspondence includes that of William Anderson and James Anderson, merchants of London and relatives of the Hollydays, on matters ranging from social affairs to the tobacco trade and nonimportation, 1748-1774. Letters of Henry Hollyday(1) (1725-1789) to his brother, James Hollyday(2) (d. 1786), document smallpox innoculation (1777), salt making (1779), Continental currency (1780), the British in the Chesapeake (1780-1781), law, politics, and innumerable plantation and social occurrences in their lives, including many references to slave labor. Correspondence of James Hollyday (4) relates to cotton planting in Adams County, Mississippi, and the prospects of farmers there versus those in Maryland from 1814 to 1829, with some letters dwelling on the attitude of Maryland slaves toward migration. The movement for improvements in agriculture in Maryland appears in letters, including some to John S. Skinner, 1823-29.