University of Virginia Library

Ninth Annual Report of the Archivist, University of
Virginia Library, for the Year 1938-39

THE NINTH year since the establishment of the Archivist's
office has been distinctive in two respects. The Archivist,
Dr. Lester J. Cappon, has been on leave of absence by virtue
of a grant from the University's Institute for Research in
the Social Sciences; and it coincides with the first twelvemonth
of occupation by the University Library of ample quarters in
the new Alderman Memorial Library building. The former of
these two facts has conditioned, and the latter has in very large
measure enhanced, the progress of the University's archives during
the past year under the guidance of an Acting Archivist.

It has been customary in these reports to discuss some of the
developments within the increasingly vigorous and self-conscious
archival profession as a whole, but spacial limitations preclude
the possibility of extensive remarks upon forward steps elsewhere
in the state and nation. Yet one cannot forbear comment on the
prophetic nature of the Archivist's review a year ago of the problem
of archival training, in which emphasis was placed upon
the need for broad and sound scholarship rather than upon the
mechanics of technique.[1] Soon thereafter a report coinciding
with that viewpoint in all essentials and in many details was
presented to a round table meeting, October 24, 1938, of the Society
of American Archivists by its Committee on Archival Training.
Both the Archivist and Acting Archivist were in active
attendance upon that occasion and welcomed the later publication
of the report[2] as an official influence in the proper direction. In
similar vein the Library Committee of the University has considered
the possibility of introducing here for future archivists a
program of curricular studies and of practical training in library
craftsmanship.

The remarkable but not wholly unexpected multiplication of
archival materials in the University Library within the nine years
of its formal archival program can be indicated by contrasting

the exact count of 2,177 manuscripts and photostats in December,
1929, with the conservatively estimated total of 1,155,000 manuscripts
(exclusive of microfilms, photoprints, broadsides, and
other printed items) in June, 1939. The pace of acquisition has
been so vastly accelerated recently that the already substantial
holdings were approximately doubled within the last twelve
months. This fact is a pointedly indicative meter of the degree
of magnetism possessed by the lodestone of a new building and
an increased staff affording more ample quarters, greater protection,
and better care. It is also a significant commentary on
the rapidly increasing, though relatively newborn, public realization
of the desirability of preserving under proper conditions in
a public institution personal and official records illuminating
phases of the past and present which are worth remembrance.

There lies cause for rejoicing in this notable expansion in terms
of sheer bulk. Yet it should not be overlooked that in final
analysis there is only a limited satisfaction in the mere accumulation
and hoarding of historical materials. Physical growth should
not be permitted to obscure the research ideal which constitutes
the raison d'être of archives. Neither statistics of accessions nor
cubic feet of occupied space can be an accurate index to archival
progress. Acquisition and preservation become archival virtues
in the truest sense only when they assure significant historical
content accessible to scholars. A succeeding portion of this report
will attempt to appraise the value of recent additions to the University's
archives. But, since stress has been laid upon accessibility
as well as upon acquisition, it would seem appropriate first
in general terms to inform serious readers of these pages how
readily they might mine the wealth they seek.

To those familiar with the herculean task of providing a key to
the information buried in an average manuscript collection it
will not be astonishing to learn that few accessions of the past
year and of previous years are covered by complete guides. But
ease of access has improved recently in even greater proportion
than physical growth. Thus, though manuscripts are received
here faster than they can be supplied with checklists and calendars,
it is satisfying that the accumulation of unexamined collections
has not increased quite so fast as the number of accessions.
It seems likely that two valuable calendars, providing guides to
eighteenth century and Civil War manuscripts in the University's

collections, will be published within the next twelve months.
Calendars of two other collections, the Jefferson and the Berkeley,
have been begun in accordance with an organized program designed
to extend eventually much further, and a handbook of all
manuscript collections is contemplated for issuance in 1945. Improved
methods of recording and arrangements for filing acquisitions
have been adopted by the Rare Books and Manuscripts
Division. These have been rendered possible by the new building
and supply a basic contribution to accessibility. In this creditable
program of preparing calendars, checklists, card indexes, and
other guides, the microfilm collection, representing the newest
phase of the library's archival activities, has fallen farthest in
arrears and has been designated first order of business for the
coming year.

Acquisitions have been received by the Library during the past
year, as formerly, by outright gift or purchase, by deposit for safekeeping
during an indefinite period, and by temporary loan to
permit photographic reproduction as microfilm or photoprints.
These three methods will be considered in that order in the following
enumeration and evaluation of major accessions.

Among outright accessions to the University's manuscript collections
during the past year the bulkiest group is the Miles
Poindexter (b. 1868) Papers. A descendant of a family prominent
in Virginia since the earlier half of the seventeenth century,
Miles Poindexter was graduated in law at Washington and Lee
University and removed in 1891 to the state of Washington. As
a Republican delegate from that state he served in the House
of Representatives during 1909-1911 and in the Senate during 19111923.
Thereafter he was ambassador to Peru until his resignation
in 1928. It is estimated that his papers exceed half a million
manuscript and printed items, covering principally the two
decades of his participation in national affairs and almost rivalling
in size and scope the voluminous Taft and Roosevelt collections
in the Library of Congress. They will be of particular interest
to students of the Congressional "insurgent revolt" of 1909-1912,
for Poindexter was a leading Insurgent; of the three-cornered
presidential campaign of 1912, in which he was a prominent Progressive;
of the bloc against entry by the United States into the
League of Nations, which was opposed on the floor of the Senate
first by Poindexter in November, 1918; and of Latin-American
relations in general and of Peruvian culture in particular, concerning

the latter of which he has published two studies.[3] Comparably
large, but of more economic than political importance, is
the Edward L. Stone (1864-1938) Collection, which includes a
notable library of 4500 volumes (among them a few bound
mediaeval manuscripts) illustrative of the history of printing and
of the book-making crafts; a few autographs of such persons as
Washington, Monroe, Beverley Randolph, and Henry Lee; and his
own personal business and official papers, ca. 1890-1938, estimated
to number somewhat less than a quarter million manuscript items.
The late Edward L. Stone was an outstanding Roanoke citizen,
printer, and businessman; his papers contain, for example, his
records as president of the Borderland (W. Va.) Coal Corporation.

Several other figures prominent in national or local affairs
during the past half-century are also represented among recent
acquisitions. Professor Emeritus Richard Heath Dabney of the
University has presented about 100 letters written to him by
Woodrow Wilson during the years 1881-1924. To the collection of
Senator John W. Daniel's papers[4] have been added about 1,000
items concerning especially his interest in Confederate military
history, his father and other relatives, and his congressional
career. One of Daniel's nephews was the late Don P. Halsey,
Jr. (1870-1938), of Lynchburg, whose career as a lawyer, state senator
during 1901-1912, commissioner to present a copy of the
Houdon statue of Washington as a gift from Virginia to France
in 1910,[5] orator, author,[6] and judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit,

1925-1938, is revealed in a collection of almost 20,000 letters, legal
and financial papers, speeches, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks.
The Harry Wooding (1844-1938) Papers are composed of
roughly 2,000 letters, speeches, and newspaper clippings portraying
the long life of a man who served as a captain in the Confederate
Army and as Mayor of Danville for forty-six years beginning
in 1892. Wooding earned clear title to the distinction of
longest consecutive mayoralty service in United States history,
and his papers will supply personal data to students of municipal
government as well as to the military historian. The original
manuscripts in this collection are augmented by a microfilm comprised
in part of three rough autobiographical sketches and of a
twelve-page autograph letter dated August 1, 1861, describing
Confederate victories near Centreville.

Notable as an almost complete record of a prominent family's
history through four generations of lawyers and planters are the
Watson Papers from Louisa County, which cover the century and
a half beginning with the Revolution.[7] The 5,000 or more letters
and financial papers in this collection deal successively with
Major James Watson (1742-1828) of "Ionia", Major David Watson
(1773-1830) of "Bracketts", Thomas S. Watson (1819-1895) of
"Bracketts", and Thomas S. Watson, Jr. (1856-1927), of "Burnley".
In lesser degree they concern also such relatives as Colonel Garrett
Minor (d. 1799), J. H. Minor, Peter Minor, and Joseph W.
Morris, and such friends as Francis W., Peachy R., and Thomas
W. Gilmer[8] and Dabney, Peter, and Samuel Carr. Seventy-three
volumes of manuscript account books reveal the nineteenth century
plantation economy of the Watsons, Morrises, and Minors.
Major David Watson, a graduate of William and Mary College in
1797, was a state legislator and a member of the first Board of
Visitors of Central College, 1816, and of this University, 1819,[9]
but he resigned from the latter body, perhaps because as a stalwart
conservative he distrusted Jefferson's liberalism or because
the new institution threatened his alma mater's long leadership.

Some letters to him have already been published.[10]

The G. R. B. Horner (1804-1892) Papers are noteworthy as a
record centering chiefly in a single individual's career and as a
source for research students in several distinct fields of knowledge.
Gustavus Richard Brown Horner graduated in medicine
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1826[11] and was commissioned
immediately a Surgeon's Mate in the U. S. Navy. In this
service he advanced to the position of Medical Director on the
Retired List in 1871, whereupon he returned to his native Warrenton.
Some 5,000 letters and official documents covering the years
1820-1892 reflect much of his and his family's life. Even more significant
are the hundred-odd manuscript volumes among his
papers. These begin in 1817 with approximately fifty student
notebooks stretching from his preparatory schools in Fauquier
County to post-graduate classes as late as 1835. Eight volumes
record notes concerning his official and private patients (18261863,
with some gaps); and thirty-five volumes of ledgers, day
books, and other accounts cover the years 1831-1891. Thirty-eight
volumes of diaries and journals, extending from his graduation to
his death, are of value to medical, naval, topographical, meteorological,
and archaeological students, for they narrate minutely
and with a fine avocational curiosity the details of dozens of distant
voyages on naval vessels. Portions of these journals provided
the basis, in much revised form, for his published books.[12] Investigation
of both diaries and loose manuscripts will prove particularly
fruitful to naval historians of the Civil War, during
which Dr. Horner remained in the Federal service and was
stationed with the Gulf Blockading Squadron and at hospitals in
Pensacola, Florida, and the Brooklyn, New York, Navy Yard.
Together with his papers were acquired fourteen volumes of

account books of his relatives, chiefly of Benjamin F. Horner of
Warrenton, for the years 1810-1885.

Two manuscript accessions are of consequence because they
illustrate the story of inland water transportation. Each of these
also contributes directly to the military history of the Civil War.
The James Peter Williams (1844-1893) Papers include 100 or
more of his personal letters, 1854-1889, among them a significant
group during the Civil War,[13] together with ten letter-press and
account books and about 500 loose letters and documents portraying
his work as freight agent and last superintendent of the
Lynchburg division of the James River and Kanawha Canal, 18671881.[14]
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Papers consist of about
300 letters, legal documents, newspaper clippings, and broadsides,
cover four decades beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and
center principally in the figure of Colonel Alfred Spates, president
of the company during the sixties, and in the direct control
exercised upon its management during 1861-1865 by various Federal
military authorities. They also throw light upon its successive,
antagonistic administrations, its desperate financial manipulations,
and its rôle as a disturbing factor in Maryland politics.

To a number of collections previously preserved in the University's
archives substantial additions have been made during
the past year. The Jefferson Papers have been notably enriched
by roughly 1,000 manuscript and photostated items dealing with
virtually every phase of Thomas Jefferson's life. Among these,
specific comment is warranted by some seventy-odd letters written
by him to Joseph C. Cabell; by photoprints from the Library
of Congress of his three memorandum and account books, 17671782;
by somewhat less than 200 photostats from the Franklin
Collection in the Yale University Library; and by a group of over
400 miscellaneous items including papers concerning Jefferson's
lands, his grocer's accounts during his first presidential term,

and documents of the Williamsburg law firm of George Wythe and
Robert Carter Nicholas concerning their business for prominent
Virginia and Maryland clients, 1747-1757. Also added to the Jefferson
Papers are photoprints from the Henry E. Huntington
Library and Art Gallery of Peter Jefferson's account book, 17281755,
and of the account book for 1757-1765 of John Harvie,
executor of Peter Jefferson. The Lee Papers have been
augmented by numerous manuscripts of the eighteenth century,
among them a group of fourteen letters written in French to
Arthur Lee, 1777-1780, while he was commissioner to France.[15]
The Minor Papers[16] have been enriched by eleven personal letters
from John B. Minor to Lucian Minor during 1831-1845, most of
them being written prior to the former's election to a chair of law
in this University. Of similar interest in connection with the
University are ten additional letters, 1830-1875, of Professor
Henry Tutwiler of the University of Alabama.[17] The General
John D. Imboden Papers[18] have been enlarged by photostats of
three significant military items regarding the Civil War and by
approximately 75 manuscripts reflecting his personal and business
affairs before and after the war.

Approximately 1,500 letters, invoices, and legal documents
dating ca. 1775 to ca. 1850 concern Capt. Isaac Davis, Sr., Isaac
Davis, Jr., and state legislator Thomas Davis, all of Orange
County, and include autographs of Patrick Henry, John C. Calhoun,
James Barbour, and Philip Pendleton Barbour;[19] these
papers also relate in part to Kentucky. The Reid Miscellaneous
Collection of an estimated 2,500 items ranging in date from ca.
1790 to ca. 1910 (a majority being ante bellum) is varied in respect
both to the sources from which it was assembled and to the
subjects and personalities it involves; however, a thread of unity
may be discerned in that nearly all of its materials are related to
Pittsylvania and neighboring Southside Virginia counties. It is
composed of letters, militia returns, postmasters' receipts and
accounts, some papers of the state auditor's office, many business

memoranda concerning slaves, tobacco, railroads, schools, and
hotels, and a number of letters illuminating the course of post
bellum state politics. Many items pertain to Peter D. Holland,
businessman of Halesford in Franklin County; there are a few
letters of John Hook,[20] of Colonel Henry Eaton Coleman, C. S. A.,
of Richard Randolph, and of John W. Daniel[21] in regard to one of
his early and local political campaigns; and a casual inspection
discloses also a few letters of, or items pertaining to, Professor
George Tucker of this University, Dr. John Peter Mettauer, Benjamin
Harrison, Fitzhugh Lee, Governor F. W. M. Holliday, and
Beverley B. Munford the author.[22]

A few of the small acquisitions by gift or purchase fall within
the eighteenth century, but the large majority are of the succeeding
hundred years. Earliest of all are photoprints from the
Draper Collection in the University of Wisconsin Library of manuscripts
relating to James Patton of Augusta County, ca. 1700-ca.
1750. Another group includes an account book for 1790-1795 and
more than a score of loose manuscripts, ca. 1780-1808, of John
Hook (d. 1808), a Scotch merchant at New London in Bedford
County, best known as the Loyalist who was prosecuted by
Patrick Henry during the Revolution for his refusal to sell beef
to the Continental Army. In connection with these original
papers a microfilm copy has been made of his two letterbooks of
mercantile correspondence for 1758-1784 and of another score of
loose manuscripts, half of which are documents illustrative of his
Toryism. The same group is also composed of about a dozen
journals and day books and nearly 100 individual manuscripts,
ca. 1800-ca. 1850, of Bowker Preston, Hook's son-in-law, and of
Peter D. Holland, both of whom were dealers in general merchandise.[23]
The so-called "Carrington Letters, 1796[1780]-1823"
—preserved only by virtue of the fact that they were copied into
a bound volume, and even then mysteriously "borrowed (or
rather stolen)" long enough to permit of partial publication[24] —

constitute a notable correspondence from Mrs. Edward Carrington
(and others) to Mrs. Ann Fisher (and others), revealing
many engrossing details about the private life and character of
their brother-in-law, Chief Justice John Marshall. Of both
maritime and economic significance are 27 letters of a Yankee
shipmaster, Captain Enoch Greenleaf Parrott, written from Norfolk
and Alexandria to his wife in New Hampshire and brother
in Massachusetts during the autumn of 1809 and the fall and
winter of 1810-1811. Though primarily of personal interest, these
reflect some noteworthy sidelights on Virginia's ports in Hampton
Roads and on the Potomac. Slightly larger in both number and
appeal are 33 letters of James Monroe, 1811-1831, written chiefly
to Stephen Pleasonton, and other manuscripts of the Pleasonton
family during the Civil War period. The ante bellum era is represented
by thirty-odd letters, 1813-1858, written largely to William
McCutchan of Middlebrook, Augusta County, by relatives
who had become farmers in Indiana, and by twenty-odd letters,
ca. 1840-1855, addressed largely to William R. Stuart at Lewisburg,
Greenbrier County (now in West Virginia), by correspondents
from Orange, Madison, and Greene counties. Fifteen manuscript
items, 1861-1868, relate to claims of C. B. Ackiss, Sheriff of Princess
Anne County, against the state auditor arising from the conquest
of the Norfolk area by the Federals and from complications
of the rival Richmond and Alexandria governments. From Staunton
come a few hundred items of correspondence and legal papers,
ca. 1850-1915, of George M. and John B. Cochran, attorneys, of
George M. Cochran, Jr., and of his law partner, Colonel John
Briscoe Baldwin (1820-1873).[25] Approximately 175 manuscript and
printed items, 1897-1938, concern the authenticity of William E.
West's portrait of the poet Shelley, which was presented to the
Alderman Library several months ago.

One of the many interesting single items is a document signed
in 1739, shortly before his death, by ex-governor Alexander Spotswood
and titled "Proposals for Leasing my Iron works at Tuball
. . . ." Another is a facsimile of the warrant issued in 1648 for
the execution of King Charles the First. An official archive which
has gravitated to the University's collections is "An Entry Book
for Lands Entered and Located with the principal Surveyor

[Jacob Rinker] of the County of Shenandoah . . . Virginia. No.
1", 1783-1794. To the collection of student notebooks under University
professors has been added that of John Herbert Claiborne,
Sr. (1828-1905), later an eminent physician in Petersburg, state
legislator, and author,[26]
on the physiology lectures of Dr. J. L.
Cabell, 1849. The plantation diary of John W. Jarvis of "Torreyville",
Mathews County, covering some thirteen months of the
years 1849 and 1850, is of peculiar significance because of his
narrative of a ten-day trip to the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs
(Warrenton Springs), his manuscript drawings of the hotel and
grounds, and his description of the state legislature in convention
there during the summer of 1849 by adjournment from a cholera
epidemic in Richmond.[27] Historians of the Civil War may have
occasion to refer with profit to a manuscript volume containing
contemporary copies of telegraphic dispatches from New York
City, Boston, Philadelphia, various military headquarters, etc.,
to the Bath, Maine, Merchants' Exchange during some seventeen
months of the years 1863 and 1864; these concern such subjects as
military, naval, and political war news, the arrivals and departures
of ships in northern and southern ports, and the fluctuating
quotations on gold and commodities. Other individual acquisitions
include letters to or from Caleb Wallace, Charles Pinckney,
Bushrod Washington, Governor J. M. McDowell of Virginia,
James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, John Randolph Tucker, William
H. Cabell, John Letcher, William Cabell Rives,[28] John T. Mason,
Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, P. G. T. Beauregard,
Fitzhugh Lee, and Abel P. Upshur.

As in preceding years, a portion of the new materials acquired
by gift or purchase will probably be of reference value almost
exclusively to economic historians. Such, for example, are some
275 bound volumes and 1,000 or more loose manuscripts and
printed office forms constituting a comprehensive and detailed
record of the workings and business of the LaGrange Furnace
Company and Southern Iron Company of Stribling and McKinnon

in Stewart County, Tennessee, 1886-1893. Much less complete and
more varied is a group of approximately 1,000 William W. Davis
Papers. Like William Weaver, whose records have previously
gravitated to the University's collections,[29] Davis was a prominent
figure of the mid-nineteenth century iron industry in Rockbridge
County. His manuscripts, consisting chiefly of financial memoranda
and letters to him during the forties and fifties, are a significant
record of the California and Buena Vista furnaces and
Lebanon, Gibraltar, and Globe forges and of such iron manufacturing
firms as Jordan & Davis, W. W. & J. C. Davis, and Isaac
& William M. Bryan. John W., S. F., and W. H. Jordan were
three notable ironmasters among his correspondents. Other materials
in the Davis Papers include about 30 militia returns, ca.
1845-1865, of the Fairfield Rifle Company, Brownsburg Invincibles
(volunteer cavalry), Brownsburg Volunteer Artillery, and 144th
Regiment of Virginia Militia; about 20 items pertaining to the
Bethesda (Presbyterian) Church, ca. 1850; and a much larger
number of letters and financial papers, 1840-1907, of Jacob and
John Horn, Robert B. Anderson, Benjamin F. Firebaugh, and
other members of these related families. Also miscellaneous in
content are the business records, 1833-1915, of Thomas Baxter and
of his son, William H. Baxter, of Petersburg, which include about
70 volumes of bound account books, bank books, and check stub
books and approximately 1,500 less valuable loose manuscripts,
chiefly financial in nature. These papers deal principally with the
Blandford (lumber) Mill Company, organized in 1833, and to a
lesser extent with two public utilities of later date, the Petersburg
Gas Light Company and the Petersburg Car Company. Five
volumes in this collection are unique: accounts of the Petersburg
Benevolent Mechanics Association, 1849-1866;[30] a letterbook for
1836-1838 of the Mill Company containing a sporadic diary of
Thomas Baxter, 1851-1852; accounts of William H. Baxter as
treasurer of the Old Street (Presbyterian) Sabbath School, 18691871;
a commissary record evidently kept by Captain John P.
May, Company A, 12th Regiment, Virginia Volunteers, [186-?];
and a record of requisitions by Petersburg schools for supplies and
textbooks, 1868-1869. The history of a single firm since its establishment
soon after the close of the Civil War is rather fully
available in 83 volumes from Lexington covering the business of
H. H. Myers (d. ca. 1905), H. H. Myers & Sons, and Myers Hardware
Company, 1869-1918; two volumes among these deal with
two 1890 Lexington real estate companies with which Myers was
associated. Typical of grist mill records are 49 account books,
1872-1930, of the Germania Mills, Inc., of Fredericksburg.[31] A
major Virginia industry is represented in eight manuscript volumes
of accounts and records of R. E. Gish (d. 1920) & Company,
Lynchburg tobacconists, 1871-1892, and in the accompanying 75 or
more individual loose letters and statements of British importers
to this firm, 1887-1892.[32]

Among the deposits of manuscripts and other historical materials
loaned to the Alderman Library for safekeeping the Stuart-Baldwin
Papers are preeminent. These consist of almost 4,500
items ranging from ca. 1760 to ca. 1865, a large majority of which
fall within the half century beginning about 1785. They constitute
essentially the legal and financial papers of two outstanding
lawyers of Staunton, Judge Archibald Stuart (1757-1832) and
General Briscoe G. Baldwin, Judge of the Supreme Court of
Appeals. Judge Stuart, a well-known Jeffersonian who influenced
the history of Virginia in many respects from the outbreak of the
Revolution until his death,[33] was a son of Alexander Stuart, a
Revolutionary officer and a founder of Liberty Hall Academy
(parent institution of Washington and Lee University),[34] and the
father of the noted Alexander H. H. Stuart. About 100 of Archibald
Stuart's papers directly concern his father and about half
as many his son, while well over 1,500 relate to himself and
his wife. Judge Baldwin, father of Colonel John B. Baldwin[35] and
father-in-law of Alexander H. H. Stuart, was for a time law partner
of Judge Stuart, whose wife was Judge Baldwin's aunt. About

100 of his papers directly concern his father-in-law, Judge John
Brown (d. 1826), Chancellor of the Staunton District, the remainder
being very largely his own. It may be regretted that
only about a score of the hundreds of letters in this collection were
written by Judge Stuart and Judge Baldwin, but some significance
lies in the fact that an overwhelming majority were written to
them by hundreds of legal clients and friends in Augusta, Rockbridge,
and other counties. Among these letters are several from
John Coalter and a few from William Waller Hening, John Taylor
of Caroline, the Richmond merchant A. W. Dunscomb, and Philip
Norborne Nicholas; also of interest are Baldwin's few extant
lectures and other papers concerning his private law school held
at "Spring Farm," his Staunton home. Of interest in the same
connection is a much smaller deposit of Alexander H. H. Stuart
(1807-1891) Papers, ca. 1810-1891, which were partially used by
his son-in-law and biographer.[36] These materials comprise family
letters of Archibald Stuart and other relatives; school-boy letters
of A. H. H. Stuart from the University of Virginia and William
and Mary College to his parents; letters, newspaper clippings, and
both manuscript and printed speeches illustrative of his affiliation
with the Whig and American parties, his particularly able administration
as Secretary of the Interior, and his significant influence
during the Reconstruction decade; letters to or from Henry Clay,
Millard Fillmore, his cousin J. E. B. Stuart, U. S. Grant, and
Robert C. Winthrop of Boston; and letters to him as a member of
the Board of Visitors from several professors of the University of
Virginia and from its benefactor, W. W. Corcoran.

The Richard Eppes IV (1824-1896) Papers, 1795-1896, are also
outstanding among recent deposits. Eppes was a college graduate
of this University and a medical graduate of the University
of Pennsylvania;[37] his student career is partially revealed by five
notebooks, 1838-1845. In or before 1851 he settled as a gentleman
farmer in his ancestral home in City Point, "Appomattox Manor",
at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers, an estate

which is notable because it was patented to the Eppeses about
1640 and, longer than any other tract in the United States, has
remained in the ownership of the same family. During the Civil
War he returned to direct medical practice as a surgeon in the
Confederate forces. His diary covers in nineteen volumes the
years 1851-1854, 1858-1861, and 1865-1896, while three of his account
books reflect the business for 1851-1890 of his four farms. A dozen
volumes and sundry letters and passports are records reaching back
as far as 1795 of his relatives, Archibald Eppes, Benjamin Cocke,
and others. The Berkeley Family Papers, previously deposited,[38]
have been augmented by a final installment consisting of about
a score of agricultural ledgers and notebooks, of political papers
of state legislator William Noland, and of other miscellaneous
manuscripts ranging in date from the Revolution to the present
century. About half a hundred deposited letters of Peachy
R. and Francis W. Gilmer, 1809-1838, have considerable literary
and political interest..[39] Three journals of Sterling Claiborne
of "Bellevette" in Nelson County, 1819-1832, 1836-1845, and
a journal of the general merchandise partnership of David Hume
& Thomas R. Towles at Orange, 1858-1861, are typical examples
of deposited business records available to researchers in economics.
Not so representative but worthwhile also as social
documents are a ledger for 1855-1856 and two registers for 18701872
of the once-proud Sweet Springs, West Virginia, Hotel.[40]
A volume containing records of the Albemarle Confederate
Memorial Association for 1884-1939 is not merely local in appeal,
for it involves founders of the first United Daughters of the Confederacy
organization. The correspondence, invoices, and similar
records, 1925-1936, of the late Tracy W. McGregor concerning the
assembling of his valuable library of rare books and pamphlets[41]
have been entrusted to the University's care by the trustees of the
McGregor Fund.

Among the several individuals whose extant manuscripts have
been photographically copied on microfilm during the past year

the John Wickham (1763-1839) Papers, 1766-1880, will be of
greatest service to future biographers of prominent public figures.
Two volumes of diaries contain complementary accounts of his
European travels and impressions during 1784, while a portion of
the second diary and six other volumes reflect some of the legal,
intellectual, and personal interests of this immigrant into Virginia
who became a leader of the Williamsburg and Richmond bars.
Approximately 275 letters and miscellaneous documents further
illuminate his career, though only a score were written in his
hand. An equal number of the total deal directly with his rôle
as chief counsel for the defense in the trial of Aaron Burr, and
the political historian will be particularly concerned with these
fresh footnotes to the episode for which he is best known. Several
scores of the many letters to him are from members of his family
and from other relatives—a few from his noted father-in-law,
Dr. James McClurg (1746-1823) of Williamsburg and Richmond.[42]
His devoted friend since schoolboy days at William and Mary
College, Littleton Waller Tazewell, the Norfolk lawyer, is also one
of his chief correspondents,[43] and other names of note involved
in his manuscripts are those of Joseph C. Cabell, Isaac A. Coles,
and Benjamin Watkins Leigh.

The Francis McFarland (1788-1871) Papers, 1815-1871, are those
of an exceptional Presbyterian clergyman. Born in Ireland of
Scotch-Irish stock, McFarland was brought in early youth by his
immigrant family to Pennsylvania, was educated in Ohio, at two
Pennsylvanian colleges, and under the famed theologians of
Princeton Theological Seminary, by whom he was graduated in
1820. Following missionary labors in New Jersey, Indiana, Missouri,
and Georgia, he became pastor in 1823 of the Bethel Church
in Augusta County, and with this community he was identified
throughout the remainder of his long life, except for the five years
of 1836-1841 when he served as corresponding secretary of the

church's Board of Education at Philadelphia. Though plagued
relentlessly by ill-health from his college days onward, he managed
nevertheless to exert a forceful influence in religious and
educational councils: he was for years stated clerk of the Synod
of Virginia and a trustee of Washington College (now Washington
and Lee University), moderator of the Presbyterian General
Assembly in 1856, and moderator pro tempore of the separatist
Assembly in 1861 at Augusta, Georgia, which divided his denomination
into "southern" and "northern" churches. His microfilmed
papers are of special value to local and religious historians, but
students of political and military developments, of economics and
genealogy, and even of Augusta County meteorology during 18531870,
will not find the McFarland cupboard bare. Two volumes of
his student writings, 1815-1820, throw light upon his training; two
volumes of missionary journals, 1819-1821, are excellent travelogues
which illuminate religious and social conditions in as
many as ten states; and five volumes of financial notations, 18231836
and 1839-1869, include a record of his salary payments and
marriage fees during all but the last two years of his two Bethel
pastorates. Of primary consequence are the fourteen volumes of
his diaries commenting on personal, local, and national affairs
for portions of the years 1832, 1834-1836, 1839, 1841, 1852, and
1871, and for every day of the years 1853-1870. Twenty-five
manuscript letters and documents to McFarland from as many
different correspondents, covering brokenly the years 1821-1848
and 1861-1864, and two typescript biographical sketches of him
complete this collection.[44]

In connection with the papers of this eminent minister it may
be reported that a separate microfilm copy has been made of the
extant early official records of three Augusta County Presbyterian
churches. These include two session books, 1817-1869, of the
Bethel Church, first built of logs in 1779,[45] which are of special
value as supplements to the personal papers of the Reverend

Francis McFarland, D. D.; a typescript copy of the earliest known
records of the Tinkling Spring Church, 1741-1793, with notes on
its history prepared by the county historian, Joseph A. Waddell,[46]
and others; a register for 1850-1908 of the same congregation; and
a session book, 1840-1892, and a register and minute book, 18401882,
of the Tinkling Spring and Waynesboro churches.

Still another group of important manuscripts photographically
reproduced comes from the same immediate locality. These are
the Bumgardner Papers, 1770-1930, numbering three scrapbooks,
two other volumes, and about 150 unbound letters and financial
papers concerned primarily with the "Bethel Green" estate,
located across the old Howardsville Turnpike from the Bethel
Church. The papers of this large, widespread, and stable family
of merchants and farmers provide much unpublished genealogical
data about Jacob Bumgardner, Sr. (1767-1857), of "Bethel Green"
and his descendants,[47] but they are also quite pertinent to students
in other fields on both the local and the national scale.
They reveal that Jacob Bumgardner, Sr., established in 1820 the
long-lived J. Bumgardner Distillery Company, that his son James
Bumgardner, Sr. (1801-1890), continued to maintain with success
the varied business pursuits which had become traditional at
"Bethel Green", and that five of his other sons settled in Hart
County, Kentucky, and Fayette County, Missouri.[48] Aside from
their local and economic information, these papers will prove
fruitful to Civil War historians. It may be mentioned incidentally
that among them are an autograph letter of Francis McFarland,[49]
and one of the late President Edwin Anderson Alderman of this
University.

Apropos of sundry research interests of scholars who have use
for original plantation records, this type of material in the University
Library has been enriched by two notable microfilms. The
Lightfoot Account Books from Caroline County, 1781-1793, 18051872,
are composed of three ledgers, two day books, and a slave

book recorded almost entirely by Philip Lightfoot (1784-1865)
of Port Royal but also in small measure by his father, son, and
others.[50] From the Valley come the Henry B. Jones (1797-1882)
Papers, 1821-1894, portraying life and business at the "White Hall"
estate in northern Rockbridge County. These comprise four diaries
covering the years 1842-1882 (except 1853-1857), eight volumes
of financial, court, and church records, and about 500 individual
manuscripts of diverse content concerning Jones and his son.
Also worthy of comment are some corporate stock records for
1835 and 1857-1858 of the Middlebrook and Brownsburg Turnpike
Company, quite a number of items pertaining to Brownsburg
schools, 1822-1894, an account of the "Liberty Hall Volunteers at
First Manassas" and other Civil War materials, and a collection
of extracts from The Union, predecessor of the present-day Lexington
Gazette, during 1832-1834, the first years of its publication
and a period for which none of its copies are extant.[51]

Among other microfilmed manuscripts are six groups of items
bearing upon the military history of the Revolution and the Civil
War: almost a score of muster rolls and other documents of Captain
Custis Kendall's Company, 1st Virginia Regiment, 1777-1779;
a diary by Captain G. B. Strickler of operations in March, 1862,
and in the same volume sundry other records through 1864 of
Company I, Fourth Virginia Infantry, Stonewall Brigade (the
"Liberty Hall Volunteers" unit); a diary of Solomon Augustus
Lenfest of the Nansemond Union Guards, Company G, 6th Regiment
of Massachusetts Volunteers, for nine months beginning
August 29, 1862, depicting the siege of Suffolk; a book of soldiers'
autographs collected by Lieutenant Andrew Wallace Varner,
Company H, 27th Regiment of Virginia Infantry, Stonewall Brigade,
while he was a recuperating prisoner in 1864 at Johnson's
Island near Sandusky, Ohio; 21 items related to the Reverend
Walter Q. Hullihen (1841-1923), long an Episcopal rector in Staunton,
chiefly illustrative of his war career as aide or courier of J.
E. B. Stuart; and one volume containing the complete minutes,

1883-1931, of the Jackson Memorial Association, an organization of
his veterans which erected and cared for the well-known statue
of General T. J. ("Stonewall") Jackson in Lexington. Through a
vagary of archival preservation and by channels too devious for
tracing, an official Lynchburg tax book, 1813-1816, became private
property loaned for photographing; the Town Council's official
minutes of Louisa from the incorporation of the municipality in
1873 through 1905 also were made available for microfilming. Business
records similarly reproduced include John D. Murrell's
records, 1819-1830, of the Ferry Bank at Lynch Dock on the James
River, reputed to be the first banking institution at the site of
Lynchburg; a volume in which Edward Bland (1767-1831), grandson
of Richard Bland "the Antiquary", recorded his legal fees for
the years 1806-1827; and three account books for the summer
seasons of 1816-1817, 1827-1828, and 1830-1831 and two registers
for the seasons of 1896 and 1898-1899 of the distinguished Greenbrier
Hotel at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.[52] To this
resort these volumes indicate that Henry Clay, John Tyler, John
Wickham,[53] and many other prominent and fashionable Virginians
repaired. A unique genealogical item from the pen of a celebrated
divine is the 78-page manuscript "Biography of the McPheeters
and Moore Families" compiled by the Reverend William
McPheeters, D. D. (1788-1842). Finally another group of
manuscripts pertains directly to the University of Virginia, among
them being a brief biographical sketch of Professor Henry Howard,
M. D., by his daughter, Miss Anna Elgar Howard (1838-1927);
a sporadic diary of her sister, Miss Eliza Elgar Howard (18361894),
chronicling "doings" of such University families as those of
professors Howard, McGuffey, Cabell, Maupin, Gildersleeve, and
Minor[54] during portions of 1858, 1860, and 1868, notably at Virginia's
mineral springs resorts during summer vacations;[55] a letter
dated March 8, 1865, from William Dinwiddie of Greenwood to the
Misses Howard describing the survival of the University and
nearby damages inflicted by raiding Federal troops; and a group
of letters from Dr. Henry Howard to his son-in-law, the renowned
Dr. William H. McGuffey.

A small number of broadsides have been separately added to the
treasures of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division. These
include a circular letter of April 29, 1845, from the faculty of the
University to parents and guardians of its students concerning
recent student riots; a circular constituting letters of Charles L.
Cocke to the students and "patrons" of the Female Seminary at
Botetourt Springs (now Hollins College) in explanation of the
belated opening of the 1853-1854 session because of a dysentery
epidemic; a contract of the Culpeper Medical Society in 1852 listing
the minimum "Rates of Medical Charges" which they agreed
to require for specified services and prohibiting "engagements to
practice in families by the year"; a curt broadside dated May 15,
1861, and alleged to have been printed in Romney, now West
Virginia, defining "Treason in Virginia"; and an impassioned
appeal by P. G. T. Beauregard, dated shortly before the First Battle
of Manassas, to the people of Prince William and neighboring
counties to arise in defense of their homes against invading
Federals.[56]

An extensive enlargement of the newspaper collection, which
has been expanded within the past year by issues estimated to
total several tens of thousands, has paralleled the unprecedented
growth of the manuscript collections. The card index, which was
reported a year ago to be in progress as a key or checklist for
local holdings,[57] has been completed, has virtually maintained in
its elastic expansion the exceptional pace of new accessions, and
has won the plaudits of critical visiting librarians. From the viewpoint
of the bibliographer the prize acquisition of all in this category
is the February 5, 1790, issue (slightly mutilated) of The
Staunton Gazette, or, the weekly Western Star (volume I, number
indeterminable) —a paper which is significant because it
moves back three years the known date of Staunton's first newspaper.[58]
From Warrenton come three additional weekly newspapers
of which no other copies are known to be extant:
Venus, January 5, 1839, Minerva, January 26, 1839, and The

File-leader, August 1, 1882;[59] and the same degree of scarcity
seems to hold true also in the cases of the Franklin Times-Democrat
of Rocky Mount, June 1, 1910, and of The Trumpeter, September
10, 1914 (volume I, number 4; "last issue"), published in
Richmond as an organ against statewide prohibition by the Virginia
Association for Local Self-Government. Scarcely less rare
are The Hartford Connecticut Courant, October 29, 1764, "Number
00 [prospectus]" (facsimile); the first issues of two very shortlived
weeklies published in Virginia by Federal soldiers during
the Civil War, The Pennsylvania Fifth, June 10, 1861, issued from
Camp McDowell at Alexandria, and The New York Ninth, July
31, 1862, printed in Warrenton;[60] and the first issue, June 1, 1895, of
a "free silver" daily, the Chicago Daily Coin, published by W. H.
("Coin") Harvey, author of the well-known volume of Populist
campaign literature titled Coin's Financial School.[61] Notable as
the largest and earliest file of a comparatively rare newspaper is
a bound volume containing half of the first seven years' issues
of the prominent Leesburg Genius of Liberty, 1817-1823.[62] About
200 scattered copies for 1883-1897 form a broken file of an interesting
school publication which may not be elsewhere available,
The Goodson Gazette, published weekly in Staunton by the Virginia
Institution for the Education of the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind.
While a number of other recent newspaper accessions are quite
rare,[63] greater reference value attaches to sundry incomplete
files or additional issues of such papers as the Danville Register,
1898-1938, and Bee, 1915-1938; Harrisonburg Rockingham Register,
1822-1865; The Norfolk Landmark, 1877-1900; Petersburg Express,
1858, 1861, and Index-Appeal, 1873-1913; Richmond Enquirer,
1835-1870, State Journal, 1869-1871, Daily Dispatch, 1870-1872,
Whig, 1875-1877, and Virginia Patron, 1876, 1878; Staunton Virginia
Messenger, 1849-1852; Tappahannock Tidewater Index, 18731886;
The Alderson (West Virginia) Advertiser, 1911-1938; and the
New York City Herald, 1898. The Library has subscribed to the
project for microphotographic reproduction by the Harvard University
Library of three outstanding foreign dailies and is currently
receiving microfilms of the English Manchester Guardian,
Le Temps of Paris, and Il Giornale d'Italia of Rome, each beginning
with the issues of July 1, 1938.

Like the Library's resources of other types of historical materials,
the music collection, begun only two years ago and designed
to be primarily representative of southern musical imprints and
of scores played and sung during the nineteenth century in the
polite parlors of Virginia homes,[64] has shown notable growth.
Thousands of ante bellum songs, including some additional Stephen
Foster numbers, have been acquired, but only a small minority
were published south of the Mason and Dixon line. A relatively
few unusual Civil War, Populist, and World War items deserve
mention in passing. Comment should also be made to the effect
that some scores of sheet music are Virginia music imprints.[65]
This historical collection has been distinct from the Music Library
of the University's School of Fine Arts. The removal of the
latter to the Alderman Library at the end of the 1938-39 session
has brought under one roof two collections in which the emphasis
is very different. Though questions as to the final method of
cataloguing and arranging the music have not been decided, the
contents of the collection are much better known now than previously,
for workers of the American Imprints Inventory, a Work
Projects Administration project, have to date listed a majority
of the compositions. A separate checklist has been prepared by
the library staff of the fifty-odd imprints of William Blackmar,

an outstanding southern music publisher at Augusta, Georgia,
and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Thousands of volumes have entered the periodical, rare book,
and general book collections through the archival office during
the past year. Among these are partial files of three unique
magazines so rare as not to be found in the Union List of Serials:
The Baltimore Olio, and American Musical Gazette, A Monthly
Parlor Companion for the Ladies, Devoted Chiefly to Music, the
Arts, and Musical Intelligence Generally . . . (published by W. C.
Peters, Baltimore), volume I (1850); The Game Fowl Monthly,
Devoted to the Fancier, Cocker and Breeder (published by C. L.
Francisco, Sayre, Pennsylvania), volume IV, number 4 (April,
1888)—volume VII, number 3 (March, 1891), with exceptions of
two issues;[66]
and about three-quarters of the issues for 1890-1930
of The Sectarian: a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Cause of
the Anti-Means, Old School, Predestinarian, or Bible Baptist
(Occoquan, Prince William County, Virginia).

It was announced in the preceding issue of this Report that
appropriate quarters would be provided in the Rare Books and
Manuscripts Division for the valuable library of the late Tracy W.
McGregor of Detroit.[67] The completion of necessary alterations
was fittingly signalized on April 14, 1939, by ceremonies dedicating
the luxuriously appointed room and by the unveiling of a
portrait of Mr. McGregor.[68]

The library has benefitted by the labors throughout the past
year of two workers of the American Imprints Inventory, a subsidiary
program of the Historical Records Survey of the Work
Projects Administration.[69] Reference has been made in another
connection to their examination of the music collection. They
have also brought and maintained up to date a card record of all
United States imprints through 1876 (or 1890 for eight Rocky

Mountain states) in the general and rare book and pamphlet collections.
The bibliographical fruits of this project bid fair to
be of enormous importance to the scholarly world as a whole.
Announcement was made last year[70] of the publication of the first
volume in the Inventory of the County Archives of Virginia
series, issued by the Historical Records Survey, with which this
office had formerly a direct rather than an advisory connection.[71]
This series has now been creditably enlarged by the appearance
in mimeographed form of three additional volumes: No. 27, Dinwiddie
County; No. 60, Middlesex County; and No. 73, Powhatan
County. It is hoped that similar publications for other counties
can be steadily produced.

In conclusion, it can not be too strongly emphasized that the
progress of the University's archives during the past year has resulted
from the coöperation of many persons. More than three
hundred individuals have been directly concerned with the
sources of accessions, while still more have assisted indirectly in
the work. To many members of the library staff in particular a
grateful word of acknowledgement is due for services rendered.
The frequent counsel of Mr. Harry Clemons, Librarian, and of
Dr. Lester J. Cappon, Archivist, has been especially helpful.