Stephen Duncan

Stephen Duncan (March 4, 1787 – January 29, 1867) was an American planter and banker in Mississippi. He was born and studied medicine in Pennsylvania, but moved to Natchez District, Mississippi Territory in 1808 and became the wealthiest cotton planter and the second-largest slave owner in the United States with over 2,200 slaves. He owned 15 cotton and sugar plantations, served as President of the Bank of Mississippi, and held major investments in railroads and lumber. 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.

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.

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

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

In 1808, shortly before the War of 1812, Duncan moved as a young man to Natchez District, Mississippi Territory, a developing river town that was important for trade along the Mississippi River. "Saragossa" was located just a few miles south of Natchez and was one of the early plantations he developed. Between 1820 and 1825 he acquired several Natchez-area properties from the widow of territorial governor Winthrop Sargent. In the late 1820s he began developing plantations in the Louisiana sugar parishes, having purchased land that abutted the estate of Alexander Porter. He served as the president of the Bank of Mississippi.

Duncan owned 15 cotton and sugar plantations including L'Argent, Camperdown, Carlisle, Duncan, Duncannon, Duncansby, Ellisle, Homochitto, Middlesex, Oakley, Rescue, Reserve, Attakapas, and Saragossa. He also owned shipping, railroad and lumber businesses in Mississippi and New England.

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. 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.

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. 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." 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. 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. He declined to offer any assistance to the Confederate cause and was ostracized by other Southerners. With investments worth $1,060,000 unrelated to his plantations, he was able to live comfortably regardless of the outcome of the war. The wedding ceremony was performed by Edward Turner.