Administrative Information

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Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Letters to Col. Fletcher Harris Archer, 1868 and 1875, Accession #11139, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

These items were purchased by the University of Virginia Library on March 19, 1994, from Timothy H. Bakken, Halvor Americana, Clarendon Hills, Illinois.

Biographical/Historical Information

Col. Fletcher Harris Archer was a Petersburg, Va. lawyer. Archer was a student at the University of Virginia and served as a captain during the Mexican War and a colonel in the Confederate Army.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of two one page letters to Colonel F.H. Archer of Petersburg, Virginia, from Robert A. Stiles (1836-1905) and John Willcox Brown (b. 1833), both Confederate officers and former University of Virginia students. John Willcox Brown, a Baltimore banker and president of the Maryland Trust Company, writes from Petersburg, July 16, 1868, to Archer, as Chairman of the Executive Committee, that his absence from home for the next two or three months will prevent him from discharging his duties as a member of the Executive Committee of the Conservative Party of Petersburg and that he must resign from the committee. He does promise to be present on the day of voting.

The Richmond lawyer, Robert A. Stiles, writes on December 22, 1875, to Archer at Petersburg, expressing regret that Archer had not received his previous letter or postal which said that he had examined the legal case against the railroad company with all the witnesses that could be secured and thought favorably of it. He promises to interview the officers of the railroad company and to try to get an advantageous settlement without a suit as there is a difference of opinion among the witnesses as to the speed of the train at the time of the accident.