University of Virginia Library

250,000 Items

Now housed in the University's Alderman
Library, it includes correspondence,
photographs, reports, speeches, business
records, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and
a collection of 575 political cartoons. Some
250,000 items are estimated to be in the
collection which is the University's largest
collection from a political figure.

The collection of the late senator's political
cartoons is believed to be the largest in the
nation. Three hundred of the 575 framed
cartoons, many of which hung in Sen. Byrd's
office, are originals by the late Fred Seibel,
Richmond Times-Dispatch cartoonist of
national fame.

In notifying President Shannon of the
family's decision to present his father's papers
to the University, Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr. said
"We have concluded that it would seem
appropriate that his papers should be housed at
the University of Virginia. Our father was a
Jeffersonian Democrat; he adhered to the
philosophy of Thomas Jefferson.

"Entering into our thinking, too," he
continued, "is that our mother's close kinsman,
the late R. Gray Williams, served from 1931 to
1946 as a member of the Board of Visitors of
the University, and from 1939 until his death in
1946 was Rector of the University"