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My late mother had a copy of Mary Chestnut's Diary. I believe it was a more complete version. I will look in it. I remember it mentions a small child in her family who became the first African American cadet at West Point.
I found McIntosh's WPA interview on ancestry.com under slave narratives. Some of the slave narratives are also found at NARA
(the national archives) Nara has photos of the people interviewed.
McIntosh said after his father (J Sumpter Durant) was killed in Virginia his mother and he were sold by Bartlett Sanders to William Carter for $1,500 and $500 in gold because Sanders thought they would be freed anyway. When news came that the war was over. His mother dropped her hoe, got a gunny sack and punched holes for his head and arms. stuck it on him and walked back home. Kids in those days ran around in what would look like granny gowns before they were old enough for pants.
I find the slave narratives great sources of information although names and places are often misspelled. Partly because the ex-slaves were old, spoke with a rural accent and the WPA typing was not the best.
There has also been reprints of a book by Frederick Law Olmstead of his trips through the South from Virginia to Texas before the Civil War. Olmstead was one of the best land scape artists and agriculturists in America.
He designed Central Park in New York and many other cities. He made three trips through the South sending back newspaper articles which were collected into books. These are out of print but just before the war they published a condensed version of all three books (with one third of the original material). This book had been reprinted several times. You could probably get it through interlibrary loan through your local library although its online free.
Its at ine of the MOA sites (Making of America). MOA is awkward You see the original pages which were scanned one at a time although they are now making it possible to download the whole book or article. But it is machine read and if there are illustrations it causes problems.
There are two MOA sites. One at the University of Michigan and one at Cornell. They add to the collections all the time.
One of them has the records of borth armies and navies from the Cil War. They are way over 100 volumes of battle reports, casualty lists, etc. Many are written from the battle fields themselves.
Anyway, Olmstead traveled by horseback staying with anyone who would have him asking about
everything from prices, to food, to farming methods. If anyine wants to know the South in those days they should read his books.
There are sevral places on the net with thousands of free books. Some have search engines that go through these books and magazines from the 1800's. I find all kinds of things that way.
Sometimes I download these books, hole punch them. put them into a binder, and even index them for names. Otherwise I would have to pay a lot for an out of print rare book.
One source of rare book is the site I named before called "Documenting the American South" at the University of North Carolina. They ask that people recommedn books they can add to this online source. Some are novels and others are non-fiction. You never know what you will find.
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