Stephen Duncan

Stephen Duncan was born on March 4, 1787, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania^[2] to John Duncan and Sarah Postlethwaite. His family were early settlers to the Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania and his grandfather received a land grant from King George III of Great Britain.^[3]

In 1793, Duncan's father was killed in a duel when Stephen was only six years old. His mother remarried Ephraim Blaine, ancestor of James G. Blaine, in 1797.^[4]

Duncan was related to the Fighting Butlers and Samuel Postlethwaite (his uncle), early and influential Natchez nabobs.^[5]

He received a medical degree from Dickinson College in 1805.^[6] After graduation, he moved to Philadelphia and lived with his mother and sisters while apprenticing as a physician under Benjamin Rush.^[4] Duncan's stepfather Blaine died in 1804; Sarah Postlethwaite Duncan Blaine lived out her days in Philadelphia (surviving until 1850).^[5]

In 1808, shortly before the War of 1812, Duncan moved as a young man to Natchez District, Mississippi Territory,^[7] a developing river town that was important for trade along the Mississippi River.^[2][6] In the pre-Civil War South, Natchez became a thriving city due to the booming cotton industry. In Natchez, he became a banker and planter.^[8][9] "Saragossa" was located just a few miles south of Natchez and was one of the early plantations he developed.^[10] Between 1820 and 1825 he acquired several Natchez-area properties from the widow of territorial governor Winthrop Sargent.^[11] In the late 1820s he began developing plantations in the Louisiana sugar parishes, having purchased land that abutted the estate of Alexander Porter.^[12] He served as the president of the Bank of Mississippi.^[13] The Bank of Mississippi charter was revoked in 1831 and Duncan became one of the founders of the Agricultural Bank of Natchez in 1833.^[14]

Duncan purchased Auburn plantation from Lyman Harding in 1827.^[15]

Duncan owned 15 cotton and sugar plantations^[1] including L'Argent, Camperdown, Carlisle, Duncan, Duncannon, Duncansby, Ellisle, Homochitto, Middlesex, Oakley, Rescue, Reserve, Attakapas, and Saragossa.^[2][16] He also owned shipping, railroad and lumber businesses in Mississippi and New England.^[1] He was a partial owner of the Erie & Kalamazoo, Columbus, Pequa & Indiana, Terre Haute & Richmond and Panama railroads.^[17] Historian Dunbar Rowland reported that in 1848 there was epidemic cholera in the lower Mississippi and in "'Stack Island' reach, one of the largest planters, Dr. Duncan, of Natchez, lost over 133 hands and the entire crop on his place, where he usually made 3,000 or 4,000 bales of cotton."^[18]

Duncan sold his crops through the merchant firm Washington Jackson & Co. in New Orleans, instructing them to sell it through their subsidiary Todd, Jackson & Co. in Liverpool, England.^[9] The revenue derived from the cotton and sugar sales was sent to Charles P. Leverich & Co., his bank headquartered in New York.^[9] His plantations yielded returns of US$150,000 annually.^[9] As a result of these financial transactions, Duncan became the richest cotton planter. In the 1850s, Duncan owned more than 1,000 slaves, making him the largest resident slave holder in Mississippi.^[2][19] By 1860, Duncan's ownership of 858 slaves in Issaquena County made him second nationally to the estate of Joshua John Ward of South Carolina, which enslaved 1,130.^[20]

While Duncan enjoyed the Mississippi weather during the winter months, he spent most summers away from Natchez and escaped the heat with his family to Philadelphia, Saratoga Springs, New York or Newport, Rhode Island.^[21] He loaned money to Henry Clay "during periods of personal embarrassment and [Clay] discovered in his late years that both interest and principal were canceled."^[22]

Duncan became a backer of the American Colonization Society.^[23] In the 1830s, he co-founded the Mississippi Colonization Society along with major slave owners Isaac Ross, Edward McGehee, John Ker, and educator Jeremiah Chamberlain, president of Oakland College. Their goal was to relocate free blacks and newly freed slaves to the developing colony of Mississippi-in-Africa in West Africa.^[24] The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society, but it focused on freedmen from Mississippi. They bought a portion of land for the colony. Free blacks were thought to threaten the stability of slave societies, and Mississippi's population had a majority of slaves, outnumbering whites by a three-to-one ratio.^[24] The Mississippi colony eventually became part of Liberia.^[13]

During the Civil War, Duncan remained a steadfast Unionist. Along with his in-laws and close allies William Newton Mercer, William J. Minor, and Levin R. Marshall, he had been a Conservative Whig and was "bitterly opposed to secession."^[22] He declined to offer any assistance to the Confederate cause^[17] and was ostracized by other Southerners.^[13] With investments worth $1,060,000 unrelated to his plantations, he was able to live comfortably regardless of the outcome of the war.^[2] In 1863, Duncan left Natchez and moved to New York City.^[2] He unsuccessfully attempted to lobby the Lincoln administration to protect his slaveholdings in Union occupied Mississippi.^[23]

Duncan died on January 29, 1867, in New York City, and was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[1]

Duncan married Margaret Ellis, and they had two children together, John Ellis Duncan and Sarah Jane Duncan. Ellis was a granddaughter of Richard Ellis, for whom the Ellis Cliffs near Natchez were named.^[25] Their daughter Sarah Jane Duncan married Dr. William Irvine.^[25] The Irvines died by the mid-1840s, leaving had two daughters Irvine.^[26]

After his first wife died, Duncan married again in 1819, to Catherine A. Bingaman, a daughter of Adam Bingaman.^[27][25][28] The wedding ceremony was performed by Edward Turner.^[28] They had five children:^[25]

• Henry P. Duncan (1824–) m. Mary Sargent (1829–)^[25]
• Samuel P. Duncan m. Martha Parker^[25]
• Charlot N. Duncan m. Samuel Davis^[25]
• Maria L. Duncan m. J. J. Pringle^[16]
• Stephen Duncan Jr. (1835–1910)^[25]

In 1910, his heirs donated the Auburn mansion and its gardens to the city of Natchez. The mansion and grounds were designated as Duncan Memorial Park by the city of Natchez.^[29]

• List of slave owners
• Arthur P. Hayne, cousin