Stephen Duncan

Stephen Duncan

Stephen Duncan
Born March 4, 1787
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Died January 29, 1867 (aged 79)
New York City
Resting place
 Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia
Education Dickinson College
Occupation Plantation owner, banker
Known for Wealthiest cotton planter in the South prior to the American Civil War; second largest slave owner in the country
Spouse(s) Margaret Ellis
Catherine Bingaman (m. 1819)
Children (with Margaret): John Ellis Duncan, Sarah Jane Duncan
(with Catherine): Stephen Duncan, Jr., Charlotte N. Duncan, M. L. Duncan, Henry P. Duncan

Stephen Duncan (1787-1867) was an American plantation owner and banker in the antebellum South. He became the wealthiest cotton planter in the South prior to the American Civil War, and the second largest slave owner in the country.

Auburn in Natchez, Mississippi.

Early life

Stephen Duncan was born on March 4, 1787 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.[1][2][3][4] He received a medical degree from Dickinson College.[2][5]

Antebellum career

In 1808, shortly before the War of 1812, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi.[2][3][5] In the antebellum era South, Natchez was a thriving city thanks to the cotton industry. He purchased Auburn from Lyman Harding in 1827.[2][4][6]

In Natchez, he worked as a banker and a plantation owner.[7][8][9] He served as the President of the Bank of Mississippi.[4]

He owned the following cotton and sugar plantations: L'Argent, Camperdown, Carlisle, Duncan, Duncannon, Duncansby, Ellisle, Homochitto, Middlesex, Oakley, Rescue, Reserve, Attakapas, and Saragossa.[8][3]

Duncan sold his crops through the merchant firm Washington, Jackson & Co. in New Orleans, Louisiana, instructing them to sell it through their subsidiary Todd, Jackson & Co. in Liverpool, England.[9] The revenue derived from the cotton and sugar sale would then go to Charles P. Leverich & Co., a bank headquartered in New York.[9] His plantations yielded returns of US$150,000 every year.[9] As a result of these financial transactions, Duncan became the richest cotton planter in the South before the war.[8] He re-invested his money in Northern railroad securities and in Midwestern public lands.[3]

In the 1850s, he owned over 1,000 slaves, making him the largest resident slaveowner in Mississippi.[3][10] By 1860, Duncan's slave ownership was second only to Joshua John Ward (1800-1853) of South Carolina.[11]

Mississippi Colonization Society

In 1830, Duncan, along with James Brown, purchased 400 acres (1.6 km2) of land in the Huron Tract in Ontario, Canada, for the establishment of the Wilberforce Colony of free American blacks, most of whom came from Cincinnati, Ohio.

In the 1830s, prior to the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and together with other slave owners Isaac Ross (1760-1838), Edward McGehee (1786-1880), John Ker (1789-1850), and educator Jemeriah Chamberlain (1794-1851), Duncan co-founded the Mississippi Colonization Society, whose aim was to send freedmen to Liberia on the African continent.[12] The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society, but it focused on freedmen in Mississippi, a large slave state.[12]

American Civil War and postbellum career

During the Civil War, Duncan stood firm against secession and the Confederate States Army.[2][3] As a result, he became ostracized by other Southerners.[4] He sat on $1,060,000 in investments unrelated to his plantations, thus enabling him to live comfortably regardless of the outcome of the war.[3]

In 1863, he left Natchez for New York City.[2][3]

Personal life

Duncan married Margaret (Ellis) Duncan, and they had two children, John Ellis Duncan and Sarah Jane Duncan. Duncan married a second time, in 1819, to Catherine (Bingaman) A. Duncan, and they had four children: Stephen Duncan, Jr., Charlotte N. Duncan, M. L. Duncan, and Henry P. Duncan.[8]

Death

Duncan died on January 29, 1867, in New York City. He was buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1]

In 1911, his heirs donated the Auburn mansion and its gardens to the city of Natchez.[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 FindAGrave
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Natchez Guesthouse
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Engerman, Stanley L. (1976). Owens, Harry P., ed. The Southern Slave Economy. Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery (University Press of Mississippi). p. 107.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Alan Huffman, Mississippi in Africa: [the Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2010, pp. 91-92
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 David G. Sansing, Sim C. Callon, Carolyn Vance Smith, Natchez: An Illustrated History, Plantation Pub. Co., 1992, p. 88
  6. ↑ William P. Baldwin, Elizabeth Turk, Mantelpieces of the Old South: Lost Architecture in Southern Culture, The History Press, 2005, p. 192
  7. ↑ Ann Patton Malone, Sweet chariot: slave family and household structure in nineteenth-century Louisiana, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, p. 287
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Louisiana State University Library: Stephen Duncan Correspondence
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Harold D. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, 1800-1925, Beard Books, 199, p. 160
  10. ↑ 'Plantation Economy', American Cotton Planter, N. B. Cloud, 1854, Volume 2, p. 118
  11. ↑ Blake, Tom (2004). "The Sixteen Largest American Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules". Ancestry.com.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Mary Carol Miller, Lost Mansions of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2010, Volume II, pp. 53-54

Further reading