Search

Collection includes personal, business, and legal papers (chiefly 1870-1900), relating to retail merchandising, education, religion, politics, Masonry, flour milling, and agriculture in Guilford County, N.C. Includes school registers, students' letters and references to the Battle of Hatcher's Run, Va. (Feb. 5-7, 1865) and to conditions in the Union and Confederate armies at that time.

William Doddridge Smith was a land owner, Justice of the Peace, and attorney in Clarke County, Virginia. The collection is mainly comprised of diaries, account books, ledgers, and an autograph album from several members of his extended family and covers multiple generations who lived at various times in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio. Surnames represented are: Page, Smith, Thompson, and Williams. Three of the diaries are written by H.M. Williams (b.1842), who traveled to Cincinnati as a Christian missionary in 1882. Her diaries record her daily activities such as visiting the sick, attending meetings of various social and religious societies, and teaching Sunday school. One notebook was written by Mary Page Thompson (b. 1869) while she attended State Normal School in Baltimore (Md.) 1889, and includes notes on biology, psychology, and religion, including notes on a discussion of Christian missionary work in China. There are several items relating to Philip Doddridge Thompson (b. 1838), a Christian minister who worked in several states and one ledger that indicates that William Doddridge Smith was a Justice of the Peace in Clarke County, Virginia in 1866. The collection also includes one folder of indentures, deeds, and wills, the bulk of which was created during 1816-1854 and is related to the business and legal dealings of William Doddridge Smith and his father, Edward Jaquelin Smith, who were active in Virginia and West Virginia. There is also one folder of correspondence, photographs, clippings, and ephemera.