EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 Inventory Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library Louisiana State University Libraries Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Reformatted 2007-2008 By John Hansen and Caroline Richard Updated 2013 By Jennifer Mitchell Updated 2020 EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 1797-1938 LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS CONTENTS OF INVENTORY SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................... 3 BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE ...................................................................................... 4 SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE ................................................................................................... 6 LIST OF SERIES ............................................................................................................................ 7 SERIES DESCRIPTIONS………………………………………………………………………...8 CONTAINER LIST ...................................................................................................................... 70 Use of manuscript materials. If you wish to examine items in the manuscript group, please place a request via the Special Collections Request System. Consult the Container List for location information. Photocopying. Should you wish to request photocopies, please consult a staff member. Do not remove items to be photocopied. The existing order and arrangement of unbound materials must be maintained. Reproductions must be made from surrogates (microfilm, digital scan, photocopy of original held by LSU Libraries), when available. Publication. Readers assume full responsibility for compliance with laws regarding copyright, literary property rights, and libel. Proper acknowledgement of LLMVC materials must be made in any resulting writing or publications. The correct form of citation for this manuscript group is given on the summary page. Copies of scholarly publications based on research in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections are welcomed. Page 2 of 81 EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 1797-1938 LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS SUMMARY Size. 62 linear feet (186 document cases); 165 manuscript volumes. Geographic St. Louis, Missouri; Iberville Parish, Louisiana; Washington, D.C. locations. Inclusive dates. 1797-1938 Bulk dates. 1838-1910 Language. English Summary. Personal, business, and plantation papers of Edward J. Gay (1816-1889), merchant, planter, and United States Congressman, St. Louis, Missouri and Iberville Parish, and his wife, Lavinia Hynes Gay, consisting principally of letters, land records, maps, photographs, plats, bills, receipts, drafts, invoices, contracts, agreements, pay rolls, and time sheets pertaining to family matters, business and plantation operations, and the settlement of their successions. Organization. Organized chronologically within broad series. Restrictions on William T. Sherman letters (February 4, 1860 and June 17, 1860) are restricted. access. Use photocopies. Glass negatives are not to be accessed without the permission of a curator. Use copy prints. Related collections. Andrew Hynes Gay and Family Papers, Mss. 2542 Edward J. Gay III Congressional File, Mss. 1295 Gay-Butler-Plater Family Papers, Mss. 4872 Acadia Plantation Records, Mss. 4906 Lemuel Parker Conner Family Papers, Mss. 81, 1403, 1431, etc. Copyright. Copyright of the original materials is retained by descendants of the creators in accordance with U.S. copyright law. Unpublished items whose creators have been deceased seventy or more years are in the public domain. Citation. Edward J. Gay and Family Papers, Mss. 1295, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, La. Stack location(s). Y:1-62, Y:81, H:25-27, OS:G, Vault:1, 33, 40 Page 3 of 81 EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 1797-1938 LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE Edward J. Gay was born to Sophia Mitchell Gay (1793-1869) and John Henderson Gay (1787-1878) in Liberty, Bedford County, Virginia. The family moved west to Illinois then settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where they resided on Union Avenue. In 1834, Edward J. Gay graduated from Augusta College in Kentucky and entered the family mercantile business in St. Louis. He then joined the St. Louis factor firm Glasgow and Gay, which he later left to form his own wholesale grocery business, Edward J. Gay and Company. He operated that business until the outbreak of the Civil War. Gay married Lavinia Hynes of Nashville in that city in 1840. The couple had six children: Andrew Hynes Gay (1841- 1914), Edward J. Gay, Jr. (1850-1878), John H. Gay (1853-1915), Sophia M. Gay [Crow] (1843-1929), Mary Susan Gay [Butler] (1846-1882), and Anna Margaret Gay [Price] (1855- 1939). It was his marriage to Lavinia Hynes that brought Gay to Louisiana, for she was the daughter of Anne Erwin Hynes and Andrew Hynes, a Nashville merchant who acquired an interest in his father-in-law’s plantation, Home, located in Iberville Parish near Plaquemine, in 1836. When Andrew Hynes died in 1849, he owned one of the largest sugar plantations in Iberville Parish and 223 slaves valued at $86,000. Gay, acting as administrator of the Hynes estate, took over the management of Home Plantation. About 1856, after having purchased the interests of the other, Gay built a new residence at Home and changed the name of the plantation to St. Louis. Around 1869, he also built Gay Villa on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri. During the Civil War, Edward J. Gay and family remained for the most part at their Louisiana plantation, and he continued to engage in the purchase and sale of sugar and cotton. After the war, Gay expanded his financial interests through the purchase of a partnership in the William Edwards and Company, a New Orleans factor house, and the acquisition of additional plantations by sales and foreclosures of mortgages. By 1868, Edward J. Gay either owned or was financially interested in St. Louis, Olivia, Keep, Mount Magnolia, Greenfield, Kleinpeter, and Oaks plantations located in Iberville Parish and West Baton Rouge Parish. He continued to acquire holdings and interests until about 1880, and those plantations included Woodland, Landry-Toffier, Ridgefield, Theresa, Larimore, Greenwood, Pecan, Shady Grove, Acadia, Coulon, Mulberry Grove, Elvinia, Edgefield, Normandy, Dunboyne, and Kuneman plantations located in Iberville Parish, Pointe Coupee Parish, and Lafourche Parish. Gay’s sons and sons-in-law assisted him in the management of his properties and businesses. With the dissolution in 1868 of the firm William Edwards and Company, Edward J. Gay opened up a New Orleans commission firm, Edward J. Gay and Company, placing his son, Edward in business there with Samuel Cranwill as manager. Young Edward was affiliated with this firm until his death in 1878, from yellow fever. Between 1870 and 1872, Major Lawrence L. Butler, husband of Mary Sue Gay, apparently assisted his father-in-law in managing St. Louis Plantation. When Gay opened the commission firm of Edward J. Gay and Company in St. Louis, Butler became manager. In the early 1880s, Andrew Price, husband of Anna “Nannie” Margaret Gay, took over the management of Acadia Plantation near Thibodaux in Lafourche Parish, and moved there from New Orleans in 1882. Gay also had several raw sugar mills on his various plantations. He established a sugar refinery in New Orleans in 1883 and maintained residences and offices there, in Plaquemine, and in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1884, Edward J. Gay received the nomination of the Democratic Party of the Third District of Louisiana for Congress and defeated William Pitt Kellogg. He served as United States Representative until his death in 1889. After the Civil War, Andrew H. Gay married his wartime sweetheart, Mary Dickinson (1845-1872) of Bayou Grosse Tete not far from Plaquemine. In 1876, he married Lodoiska Clement (1843-1933). The children of the first marriage were Anna Maria Gay, later married to Charles McClung of Knoxville; Page 4 of 81 EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 1797-1938 LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS Lavinia Gay, married to Allen Weaver of St. Louis; Mary Sue Gay, married to Albert Doolittle of Kansas City, and Andrew Gay, Jr., married to Irene Cannon. The sole child of the second marriage was Edward J. Gay, III (1878-1952), who married Gladys Fenner (1883-1970) of New Orleans. Edward J. Gay III served as Louisiana’s United States Senator from 1917 to 1920, and fathered the generations of the Gays who now control St. Louis Plantation. Page 5 of 81 EDWARD J. GAY AND FAMILY PAPERS Mss. 1295 1797-1938 LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE Personal and business papers of the Gay and related families consist of correspondence, land records, maps, photographs, land plats, bills, receipts, drafts, invoices, contracts and agreements, time sheets and pay rolls. These papers pertain to plantation economy, commerce, the sugar cane industry, slavery, St. Louis Plantation and its operation, Iberville Parish, the Civil War and Reconstruction in Louisiana, social activities and family matters. Manuscript volumes 1-31 reflect the business affairs of Joseph Erwin and include estate record books (1825-1848), cashbooks (1834-1852), expense account book (1836-1849), memoranda books (1812, 1829-1852, bank books (1812, 1837-1846), daybook (1843-1847), and a diary (1827-1838). Volumes 32-36 contain daybooks (1826-1848,