Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Richard Morris Fontaine Account Book, Accession #7244-m , Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This book was donated to the Library on June 12, 1985, by Charles E. Moran of Free Union, Virginia.

Scope and Content Information

Richard Morris Fontaine of "Beaver Dam," Hanover County, included in this account book, which he kept between 1867 and 1875, general accounts; records of horses, cattle, wheat, tobacco, lumber for a house, equipment, etc.; expenses and sales of his farms, "Beaver Dam," "Riverside," and "Collyswamp," during 1868-1871; a record of the sale of his estate of E[dmund] Fontaine, ca. 1870; and records of time worked and lost for black hands on the farm. The ledger as a whole is an excellent example of readjustments in farming after the Civil War, the exploitation of freedmen, and the development of sharecropping.

Richard Morris Fontaine was born on August 8, 1842, at "Beaver Dam," the sone of Colonel Edmund and Maria Louisa (Shackelford) Fontaine. He served in the Confederate Army, and later became a clerk in the Virginia Legislature. He married the former Thomasia "Kate" Meade Minor [1849-1890], and they had six children: Edmund, Richard Morris, Katharine Minor, Berkeley Minor, Charles Landon Carter, and Maria Louisa Shackelford. Fontaine died October 15, 1914.