Searight family papers

Collection – Box: 1

Identifier: MS-0229

Staff Only

Collection Overview

Abstract

The personal correspondence of the Searight family of Fayette County, Pennsylvania; Canton, Ohio; and South Bend, Indiana, dates from 1839 to 1898. The bulk of the collection falls during the Civil War period and provides ample information on daily life of the times. The correspondents comment upon political, social, educational, recreational, economic, and personal concerns.

Dates

Creation: 1839-1898

Extent

0.46 Cubic Feet (1 legal box)

Creator

Searight family (Family)
Stidger, Rachael Brownfield Searight, 1805-1893 (Person)

Scope and Contents

The correspondence of the Thomas B. Searight Collection demands and warrants further research to clarify the relation of family members to each other and the specific position the family held in communities of Stark County, Ohio, and Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Internal evidence identifies them as middle class.

The letters clearly illustrate the social/sexual dichotomy of a society in which men traveled in a public sphere of politics, war, and higher education, and women traveled in a domestic sphere of children, marriage, fashions, and funerals. The strength of this collection is its tone of on-going conversation between intimates. National trends break into the conversation and are acknowledged on a personal level, such as the westward movement and women as domestic workers.

The letters are full of off-hand references to military events and figures of the Civil War and the effects of such events upon home life are keenly felt and recorded. Place names mentioned most often throughout the letters include: Brownsville and Uniontown, Pennsylvania; Canton, Ohio; Searights; South Bend, Indiana; Fayette County, Pennsylvania; Kenyon College; Washington, D.C.; Nebraska City; St. Louis County, Missouri; and New York City.

The handwriting in most of the letters is legible or easy to identify from one writer to the next.

Biographical / Historical

The Searight family papers are comprised of personal correspondence among friends and family members of the Searights, whose family seat was Searights, Menallen Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

Rachel (Brownfield) Searight and William Searight had four children, Thomas B., James Allison (1836-1915), Ewing, and Lizzie. After William's death, Rachel renewed a friendship with Dr. Harman Stidger of Canton, Stark County, Ohio. Their correspondence became a courtship and eventually led to their marriage between 1856 and 1859.

Harman Stidger was a staunch democrat who helped found the Stark County Democratic Party in 1824. He served one term in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1835. When Canton was reincorporated in 1838, he was one of eight trustees. In 1851, he proctored the first annual examination of local scholars and in 1856, he was a presiding officer in the Masonic Lodge.

Upon their marriage, Harman accepted Rachel's children as his own. James A. Searight graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1863. He worked in the general land office of the U. S. Government, Washington, D.C., until 1871, when he established a real estate and insurance agency in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He founded the William and Thomas B. Searight lectureship on local history at Washington and Jefferson College in memory of his father and brother, Thomas. Col. Thomas B. Searight was nominated and served as a U.S. Surveyor General in Colorado in 1874. Information about female family members is not readily available.

Histories of Stark County and the National Cyclopedia of American Biography were used to clarify information gleaned from the correspondence. James A. Searight authored a history of the "Searight Family in America" (1893). Reference to The Old Pike by the Hon. Thomas B. Searight is made in a collection letter dated 1897.

Conditions Governing Access

No known access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Additional Description

Immediate Source of Acquisition

These records are part of a collection which was brought into the Bowling Green State University Library by Bill Shurk, then of the Popular Culture Library, and was transferred to the Center for Archival Collections in July 1976.

Processing Information

This colleciton was processed and the finding aid was prepared by Jill Gates Smith, field specialist for the Women's Studies Archives Project, in March 1982.