Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Papers of the Rutherfoord Family, 1824-1909, Accession #6048-d, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection was donated to the Library by Mrs. Johnson Matthews, 7 Raleigh Court Apartments, 10 University Circle, Charlottesville, 30 March 1976.

Scope and Content Information

The collection consists of ca. 100 items. Approximately one-third of the collection is correspondence (1824-1902) to and from Rutherfoord, Coles, and Johnson family members. The remaining items include a thirty-page manuscript memoir, miscellaneous printed materials, and Christmas cards dating from the late nineteenth century.

The earliest correspondence relates to the Rutherfoords, a prominent Virginia family whose members included John Rutherfoord, governor of Virginia, 1841-1842. Although mentioned in several of the letters, and the author of one, John Rutherfoord is not the major focus of the correspondence. His son, John C. Rutherfoord, is. Letters to John C. Rutherfoord, primarily from his sisters and mother, contain informal family musings, as well as evocations of the social scene in antebellum Charleston and Richmond. In general, family health, courtships, and weddings of friends, and local news are the most common topics of discussion in the Rutherfoord correspondence. Occasionally, political and economic matters receive attention (e.g. Helen C. Rutherfoord to John C. Rutherfoord, 10 March 1845; Emily A. Rutherfoord to John C. Rutherfoord, 13 May 1847.)

The recipient of much of the correspondence, John C. Rutherfoord, was a graduate student at the University of Virginia in the early 1840s. (Like his father, Rutherfoord was a Princeton alumnus). Apparently the younger John Rutherfoord's career ambitions were uncertain during and beyond his days as a graduate student. His mother wrote to his sister Sally Bennett in 1847 that she hoped her son would take up law "or he will have to try the excitement of ploughing." Rutherfoord did take up law, and became a prominent attorney and politician in his native Virginia. He was a representative in the House of Delegates from Goochland County.

Some of Rutherfoord's correspondence--e.g. George F. Harrison to Rutherfoord, 22 January 1861 (misdated 1860)--relates to matters of public import. One of these letters, from G.A. Seddon to Rutherfoord, 9 November 1860, offers a sense of the Southern mind at this time. Viz: "Lincoln is absolutely elected and if we have the lameness to submit we have a Yankee and Abolition master and every probability at no distinct day of feeling the oppresive hand on our property and person....My view of the present is disconsoling and my anticipations of the future even more gloomy...."

Also in the collection is a letter from John Rutherfoord, Sr. to John C. from Charleston, S.C., on the eve of the shelling of Fort Sumter. The letter, dated 1 April 1861, recounts a visit Rutherfoord, Sr. had recently made to the site. "We were," he wrote, "very close to Fort Sumpter [sic]. I could have fired a pistol into it and counted every gun. We sailed nearly around it, and stood still while some of the time viewing it, our Band playing all the while 'Dixie Land'-- I could not help thinking at the time, how completely one well directed cannon from the fort might have spoiled our fun."

Some letter make references to the war: Mary H. Bennett to "My Dear Aunt and Uncle" (Mr. and Mrs. Rutherfoord, Sr.), 27 October 1863; Mary H. Bennett to "My Dear Em" 2 February 1865; and Mrs. Sarah Bruce to Mrs. John C. Rutherfoord, 22 December 1865. Other letters to Mrs. Rutherfoord discuss her husband's health (S. Bruce to Ann Rutherfoord, 17 July 1866) and offer sympathy upon his death (same to same, 6 October 1866).

The collection also contains a scattering of Johnson family correspondence, focused around Bradley T. Johnson and his wife Jane Claudia Saunders Johnson. A native of Frederick, Maryland, Bradley Johnson was active in Democratic politics and the secession movement in Maryland. He served as a Confederate officer (and was made brigadier general in 1864)during the war. His wife, a member of a prominent North Carolina family, was also active on behalf of the Confederate cause, and for her services in securing clothing and munitions for Southern forces was affectionately nicknamed "Mrs. Captain" (later "Mrs. General").

A thirty-three page memoir which Jane Johnson apparently wrote in the 1890s provides background on her family and that of her husband, as well as details on their activities during the war and their participation in the "Association of the Maryland Line," a commemmorative organization, after the war.

In addition to the memoir, the collection contains scattered Johnson correspondence, nine Christmas cards addressed ot the Johnsons in the late nineteenth century, miscellaneous printed materials, newspaper clippings, and a religious oriented commonplace book (ca. 1860-1890).

Arrangement

The correspondence is arranged chronologically wherever possible. Following the correspondence are: a memoir written by Jane Claudia Johnson, Christmas cards, miscellaneous Johnson family papers, and miscellaneous newspaper clippings.