Papers of James McDowell 1752-1878.

Personal correspondence, chiefly of members of the McDowell and Preston families (including Thomas Hart Benton), contains family and social news from Rockbridge County, Va., Kentucky, and St. Louis, Mo.; one letter includes a note from young Jessie Benton (Fremont).

Business correspondence pertains to land claims in the Southern states and Ohio, and a fugitive slave; accounts concern slave hiring, school, stud horses, and cattle (including a livestock record); and miscellaneous business papers concern slave appraisals, Revolutionary War claims, and plantation management.

Legal papers concern estate settlements, especially of Preston family members, custody, financial interests of Washington College, and land purchases in Augusta and Rockbridge counties, Va., with pertinent records and documentation.

Military correspondence, 1797-1826, relates to the elder James McDowell's service as colonel of 8th Regt. Va. Militia, and its records for the War of 1812, some relating to courts-martial, and a discharge for John Floyd (1813).

Political correspondence pertains to Virginia and national politics, the Democratic party, the War of 1812, the Staunton Convention of 1816, reasons to locate the University of Virginia at Lexington, the Virginia Constitutional Conventions of 1829-1830 and 1850-1851, military appointments in the Mexican War, temperance, and the tariff.

Correspondents include Allen Trimble, William H. Cabell, John Tyler (Sr.), Robert Bland Lee, James Pleasants, James Barbour, John Floyd, Francis H. Smith, Robert Craig, Alexander H.H. Stuart, William H. Richardson, William P. Anderson, John Letcher, and various local politicians.

Also include letter, 1869, of introduction from W.H. Smith to John Letcher for Gilbert C. Walker; and letter, 1870, of William Mahone to a constituent concerning Virginia railroads and the constitutional convention.

Also include correspondence, 1823-1866, of various Rockbridge County residents re: education, horses, estate settlements, medical practice; letter, 1826, from William Cabell Rives re: medical treatment; and letters, 1859, from a man alleged to be mentally ill applying to John Letcher for legal help.

Also include letters, 1861-1862, from James B. Dorman re: secession, the organization of 3rd Regt. Va. Artillery, and a request for a pistol; and a letter, 1862, from Thomas Martin, Letcher Artillery, requesting a court-martial of his captain, with witness list.

Also include letter, 1864, from Ham Webb, 7th Miss. Regt., concerning wounded friends; letter, 1864, concerning imprisonment of John Humphreys, 52nd Regt. Va., in Fort Delaware; printed broadside, 1864, declaring protection of soldiers' families' supplies; and two love letters, 1865, to a Confederate soldier.

Also include fundraising letters, 1870-1878, for the Lee Memorial Association, including a letter, 1875, from J. William Jones, donating his book profits; and petition, n.d., to raise money to buy Jefferson Davis a cotton plantation.

Also include home remedy, 1816; a subcribers' contract, 1834, to teach a sewing class; Goggin family genealogy, 1854; and notebook, ca. 1855, with notes about the Democratic and Know-Nothing parties and Henry Wise.  再读一些...