Needler R. Jennings papers (M097)

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Needler R. Jennings lived most of his life in New Orleans. He practiced law until 1841, when he was appointed Clerk of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He remained in office after secession, serving until the Union army occupied the city in 1862. Despite the fact that one obituary mentioned "his well known Union sympathies" (The Daily True Delta, Dec. 29, 1863, p.1), Jennings served to Major in the Confederate army.

Jennings was a member of the board of school directors of the Second Municipality of New Orleans, chairman of the Committee on Lyceum Lectures of the New Orleans Public School Lyceum and Library Society, and a member of the convention to amend the Louisiana state constitution. He was also joint editor of the Civil Code of the State of Louisiana (1838).

Jennings married Anna Maria Hennen, daughter of Alfred Hennen, in 1843. He died November 20, 1863, in Osyka, Mississippi.

The collection contains letters (1805-63 and undated), a certificate (1855), and bills and receipts (1854). Most pre-Civil War material was either personal or involved recruiting speakers for the Lyceum lectures; the Civil War letters, three of them letters of introduction from Pierre Soulé, relate to Jenning's service in the Confederate army.

Prominent correspondents include James Madison, Louis Agassiz, Elizabeth Agassiz, Edward Everett, P.G.T. Beauregard, and Jefferson Davis. Major correspondents include Agassiz, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Soulé, and Anne Jennings.