Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Berkeley Family Papers, 1653-1930, Accession #38-113, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection was placed on deposit by various members of the Berkeley family between 1933 and 1999. The papers were made a gift to the Library by Edmund Berkeley, Jr. and Edmund Berkeley, III on November 20, 2018.

Scope and Content

This collection primarily includes personal correspondence and legal and business papers of the Berkeley Family . Interfiled with these papers are extensive papers of the closely-related Noland family . The joined collection comprises about 20,000 items (ca. 85 Hollinger documents boxes on about 38 feet of shelving) dating between 1653 and 1930, with the heaviest concentration in the nineteenth century.

The Berkeleys were in Virginia very early, and settled first in Gloucester County. The family was in Middlesex County by the first decade of the eighteenth century where they built " Barn Elms" on the Piankatank River (on the north bank from present Berkeley Island). About 1820 they left Middlesex for " Aldie, " Loudoun County where they remained until 1882 when they moved to Red Hill, Albemarle County. The name "Edmund" appears in every generation.

The bulk of the Berkeley Papers concern business matters, especially farming operations on lands in Gloucester, Middlesex,King William, Prince William, Hanover, Lancaster, Loudoun, Albemarle, Clarke, and other counties.

Because of the close ties between the Berkeley and Noland families there are many common correspondents and much complementary material in the various groups of Noland and Berkeley families papers received by the Library from a number of donors over almost fifty years. Accordingly, the groups of Noland family papers have been interfiled into the Berkeley Papers. Separate folders have been used, and the accession numbers assigned to each group as it was received by the Library appear on the folders.

Much of the Noland material concerns "Airwell," Hanover County, and William Noland, Carter B. Berkeley, and Nelson Berkeley. Other items and topics of interest in the combined collections include: letters from Berkeley family members attending the University of Virginia; letters written by during the Civil War, especially by the Berkeleys serving in the Eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment. Letters written by Edmund Berkeley (1824-1915) relate many anecdotes about prominent persons such as the Marquis de Lafayette, James Monroe, Catesby ap Roger Jones, Andrew Jackson, Abel Parker Upshur, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Charles Dickens, Sam Houston, and Theodore Roosevelt. He also describes events such as the explosion of the cannon named the "Peacemaker" on board the U.S.S. Princeton in 1844. Edmund served as Lieutenant Colonel of the Eighth Virginia, and his letters and those of his brother Norborne Berkeley (1828-), colonel of the Regiment, describe the many actions in which the regiment was involved such as Bull Run, Seven Pines, and Gettyburg, as well as life in Union prison camps, especially Johnson's Island, after their capture at Gettyburg following Pickett's charge.

The portion of the collection accessioned as #8221 includes personal correspondence of Landon C. Berkeley, Anne Poe Harrison (Landon's wife), Cynthia Berkeley, Edmonia Berkeley, and Francis Lewis Berkeley (1859-1942). Topics mentioned in these letters include: the election of 1856; horse racing; speeches by Dwight Lyman Moody ; Wellesley College; the Miller School of Albemarle, Albemarle County, Virginia; Oregon in the 1880's; While Sulphur Springs, Virginia; slave hiring; Mary Custis Lee, [Chiswell Dabney] "Chilly" Langhorne; and William Mahone. Correspondents in this section include John Thompson Brown, John Warwick Daniel, Andrew Jackson Montague, John Barbee Minor, Thomas Nelson Page, Thomas Walter Harrison, and Micajah Woods.

There are bound volumes in #8221 that include class notebooks used by Francis Lewis Berkeley at the University of Virginia, 1896-1899, while taking courses in geology and agricultural chemistry, and his diary for 1906-1910 (Boxes 78-80). Other bound volumes include: a school notebook kept by Cynthia Berkeley in 1887 (Box 78); a mill ledger kept by William Noland at Aldie, Loudoun County; accounts, 1854-1885, kept by William Noland Berkeley ; a common stock register, 1915-1930, of G.E. Smith with E.L. Rothschild Co.; and a trigonometry notebook, 1912.

Financial and legal papers in #8221 consist of deeds, receipts cancelled checks, and similar material. There is a large body of financial and legal papers of John Crissey of New York, an in-law of the Berkeleys.