Scope and Content Note
The papers of James O. Harrison (1804-1888) span the years 1803-1913, with the bulk of material dating from 1836 to 1888. The collection documents many aspects of Harrison’s personal and professional life, including his law practice and work with Lexington, Kentucky, public schools. Although much of his legal and professional career was centered in Lexington, Harrison established law practices at different times in Vicksburg, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Eatonton, Georgia; and Richmond, Virginia. The papers are in English and comprise correspondence, legal and financial records, biographical material, photographs, writings, notes, notebooks, scrapbooks, and printed matter. The collection is arranged in seven series: Family Correspondence, General Correspondence, Special Correspondence, Biographical File, Financial Records, Legal Records, and Miscellany.
The Family Correspondence series documents Harrison’s private life and provides glimpses into the intimate world of an upper middle-class Southern family during the nineteenth century. Family correspondents, in addition to James O. Harrison, include his father, Micajah Harrison (1776-1842); his mother, Polly Harrison (died 1851); his wife, Margaretta P. Ross Harrison (1810-1883); a son Richard Pindell Harrison (1832-1858) who was a New Orleans attorney; a son George Ross Harrison (circa 1834-1860) who attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1850-1851 and became a Texas cattleman for a brief period; a daughter Mary Eliza Harrison; a son James O. Harrison (1839-1867) who served in the Confederate army; a daughter Margaretta (“Dettie”) H. Martin (circa 1837-1867), the wife of a Mississippi planter; a daughter Ellen Simrall Harrison; a son Albert (“Allie”) M. Harrison (born 1848) who was a Confederate naval cadet and later became a planter and trader in Honduras and a public official in Lexington, Kentucky; and a daughter Susan Lucretia Harrison (1850-1883). Other letters in the series were written by James O. Harrison’s brother Jilson Harrison; his sister-in-law Ellen Reily Harrison; a sister Mary P. Hannah and her husband Dr. J. A. Hannah; a son-in-law Colonel William H. Martin; a granddaughter Margaretta (“Maggie”) H. Martin; and a daughter-in-law Mary H. Harrison.
In addition to domestic affairs, family letters discuss pioneer life in Texas, Honduras, and Brazil; hardships experienced by the residents of New Orleans during the Union army occupation of the city; activities of Union troops in Kentucky during the Civil War; a yellow fever epidemic following the war; and popular political reaction in New York to the presidential election of 1876. Other family material can be found in the Financial Records and Legal Records series.
The professional and business life of James O. Harrison is told in his autobiography which is located in the Biographical File. Additional material filed in the General Correspondence series and in the professional parts of the Financial Records and Legal Records series augments this narrative account. Almost all of this material pertains to Harrison’s legal practice and his work with the Lexington public schools. There is very little material on his activities connected with the Lexington and Frankfort Railroad Company or with the Law Department of Kentucky University.
The Special Correspondence series contains letters from William T. Barry, Henry Clay, John J. Crittenden, Joseph Holt, and William Henry Miller, a former slave of the Harrison family. A scrapbook in the Biographical File contains additional letters from Barry, Clay, Crittenden, and Holt, as well as from other historically important figures, acquaintances, and friends of Harrison made during the course of both his professional and private life. Included are letters from Montgomery Blair, John C. Breckinridge, Orville Hickman Browning, Benjamin F. Butler, Lewis Cass, Caleb Cushing, Thomas Ewing, Henry S. Foote, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, S. S. Prentiss, Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, and Daniel Webster. Photographs, explanatory notes, and other material accompany the correspondence in the scrapbook. Biographical sketches of Breckinridge, Clay, and Holt are among the unbound papers in the Biographical File. Additional documentation on Harrison's role as executor of Henry Clay's estate is filed in the General Correspondence, Financial Records, Legal Records, and Miscellany series.