Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Letters to William Mewburn, Accession #4761, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection was placed on loan in the library by Mrs. Dwight Ashton File of "Bolling Hall," Irwin, Virginia, on May 10, 1954, and bears no restrictions.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists chiefly of letters to William Mewburn, a Richmond, Virginia merchant, from customers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Identified places include Norfolk, City Point, Bowling Green, Petersburg, and Buckingham; Philadelphia and Columbia County (?); Charleston, South Carolina and Liverpool, England. The letters are badly damaged and most have sizeable portions missing.

Topics discussed pertain primarily to business matters: shipping and receiving of goods, complaints, orders, and miscellaneous legal matters. Types of goods ordered include: calico, shoes, nails, cotton, playing cards, corn, looking glasses, thread, gloves, gunpowder, flints, and castor oil.

Prominent correspondents in the collection include John Parker, a Continental Congressman from Maryland. There is a brief letter from Benjamin H. Latrobe, a noted engineer and architect, discussing his account with Mewburn. Other identified correspondents are John Duffield, E.H. Dunbar, James Kenon, Richard Maupin, Bernard Moore, Sarah Randolph, W.J. Stone, Betty Tayloe, William Vaughan, and R. Watkins. Of special interest are two June letters, one of which was apparantly hand delivered by a slave named Ralph; the other places an order for shoes with the size required drawn on the letter itself.