Benjamin Franklin Watson

This collection consists of typescript copies of legal and financial documents filed in Arkansas between 1848 and 1873, as well as typescript copies of letters, diaries, and military service accounts written primarily by Confederate soldiers. The legal documents are mainly deeds of conveyance, tax records, and deeds for swampland.

The majority of the legal documents are related to David F. Shall and W. W. Adams. Notable records include an 1866 employment agreement between Shall and Silas Barbee, a freedman, and a notice about employment requirements written by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. A typed affidavit suggests that these records were typed copies of legal records in the possession of Mrs. D. F. S. Galloway. Further notes suggest that this collection was compiled in 1948 by the Little Rock Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Arkansas Division.

The memoirs included are copies of letters, diaries, and military service accounts written primarily by Confederate veterans. Affidavits attached to many of the typescripts note that the documents were transcribed by the Little Rock Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Arkansas Division, between 1934 and 1941.

Group I contains the memoirs of eleven Confederate soldiers, one written by a woman, and an account of the Red River Riot, a race riot that occurred in Coushatta, Louisiana in 1874. The memoirs are by: David Thomas Brunson; Giles Buckner Cooke; John Glover; A. l. Harper; Samuel GIdeon Marsh; Daniel McLeod; A. F. Morgan; Benjamin Franklin Red; Adolphus Robert Tomlinson; Ida Loving Turner; Benjamin Franklin Watson; and James H. Williams.

Group II contains the memoirs of eleven more soldiers, four more written by women, and one about the Arkansas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The memoirs are by: Edward B. Blanks; Mary Catherine Case; James Combs; David Burton Coulter; John Foster; Felix M. Hanley; Stan C. Harley; J. M. Jackson; William Henry Jarrett; Lucy Johnson; John N. Johnston; Henry O'Bar and Rebecca Jane Anderson O'Bar; Anna Rivers Talbott; F. T. Vaughn; and Mary Adams Yarbrough.