Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Wirt Family Papers, #1704, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Gifts of Mrs. Edward M. L'Engle, Jacksonville, Fla., 1950; Mrs. John Cates, Baltimore, Md., 1950; Mrs. Pauline Coad, Savannah, Ga., and Mrs. Paul Cavanaugh, Staten Island, N.Y., 1962

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Adam Fielding, Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, September 2010

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Autobiographies--Southern States.
• Baker, James McCutcheon, 1837-1900.
• Confederate States of America. Navy--Officers--Correspondence.
• Fathers and sons.
• Goldsborough, Louis Malesherbes, 1805-1877.
• Henry, Patrick, 1736-1799.
• United States. Navy--Officers--Correspondence.
• Wirt family.
• Wirt, William Cabell, 1815-1899.
• Wirt, William, 1772-1834.
• Women teachers--Florida--History--19th century.
• Women--Southern States--Social life and customs.

• Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

Members of the Wirt family of Virginia, Maryland, and Florida include William Wirt (1772-1834); his wife Elizabeth Gamble Wirt and their children; Wirt's son-in-law Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough (1805-1877) of Florida; and James McCutcheon Baker (1837-1900) of Pensacola, Fla., who married Wirt's granddaughter.

The collection contains personal and family correspondence of William Wirt (1772-1834), of Virginia and Maryland, lawyer, author, and United States attorney general, and of his descendants, including letters, 1802-1822, concerning Wirt's biography of Patrick Henry and his other writings and business and financial affairs; family correspondence, 1824-1832, chiefly between Wirt and his son, William Cabbell Wirt, at school in Massachusetts; letters of condolence at Wirt's death; family letters from the Wirt children to their mother and to each other; family and naval correspondence, 1838-1867, of Wirt's son-in-law, Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough (1805-1877), serving with the United States Navy in Brazil, Europe, and Washington, D.C.; and papers, 1861- 1919, of James McCutcheon Baker (1837-1900), of Florida, who married Wirt's granddaughter, concerning his Confederate naval career and postwar sea voyages, chiefly letters to his family in New Orleans. Papers after 1900 are of Baker's wife and children. Volumes include William Wirt's reminiscences of his early years, written in 1825 and 1833; Mrs. Wirt's lettercopy books, 1834-1841; and a lettercopy book, 1848-1849, of a female relative teaching school in Pensacola, Fla. Also included are fragments of William Wirt's manuscript on Patrick Henry.

• Oversized Papers (OPF-1704/1)