Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

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 William Worrell Vass Papers #739, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Eleanor Vass, Raleigh, N.C., before 1940 and from J. Douglas Mattox in December 2000 (Accession # 98808). Purchased from J. Douglas Mattox, October 1999 (Accession # 98481).

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.

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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.

• Baptist State Convention of North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Baptist Sunday School Society.
• Baptists--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• CSX Corporation--History.
• Carolina Paper Company.
• Chatham Railroad Company (N.C.).
• Granville County (N.C.)--History.
• North Carolina--Economic conditions.
• Paper industry--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Railroads--Management--History--19th century.
• Railroads--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Raleigh & Augusta Air Line Railroad Company.
• Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company.
• Seaboard Airline Railroad Company.
• Typhoid fever--North Carolina--History.
• Vass, William Worrell, 1821-1896.
• Wake County (N.C.)--History.

William Worrell Vass was born on 19 February 1829 near Oxford in Granville County, N.C., to Thomas Vass Junior (1777-1857), a farmer, and Lucy Hester. The family of Thomas Vass Senior (1738-1818), a Baptist minister and descendent of French Huguenots, had moved to North Carolina from Virginia in 1790.

Vass was educated in common schools. In his early adolescence, he clerked in the mercantile store of Major John S. Eaton at Henderson, and became a full partner in 1843. Eaton retired from his mercantile business in 1845. As the director of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company, chartered in 1835, Eaton secured Vass an appointment as treasurer of the railroad on 1 January 1845.

The state bought the bankrupt Raleigh and Gaston Railroad in 1848 and Vass secured the position of president. Vass's administration proved a success and in 1851, as the line was again profitable, Vass returned to his duties as treasurer.

Vass was elected to serve as treasurer of the Chatham Railroad Company, later the Raleigh & Augusta Airline Railway Company, in 1862. He remained as treasurer of the Raleigh and Gaston, which consolidated with Seaboard Airline in 1893. Owing to his advanced age and health, Vass resigned as treasurer and was appointed honorary secretary of the new consolidated railroad. By 1896, Vass had achieved the distinction of being perhaps the longest continuously serving railroad official in the United States.

In addition to his career in the railroad industry, Vass also served as a Confederate major, a director of the Raleigh Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, and as a trustee of Wake Forest College. He was an active member of the First Baptist Church of Raleigh for 49 years.

Vass's first wife, Amanda Freeman of Granville County, died without children. Vass married Lillias (Lillie) Margaret McDaniel, daughter of Reverend James McDaniel of Fayetteville, on 11 October 1866. This marriage resulted in three children; Eleanor, Lilla May, and William W. Junior, who became a prominent banker.

Vass died in Raleigh in 1896 and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

[From a draft of the sketch by Ronnie W. Faulkner for the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.]

Railroad business records, family and personal business correspondence, and other materials of W. W. Vass. Railroad materials are most plentiful for the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, but are present for the numerous roads with which Vass was in some way associated over his long career. These materials include extensive incoming and copies of outgoing correspondence as well as financial records of many kinds, reports, minutes of stockholders meetings, and other items. The bulk of the railroad records date from the 1870s to the 1890s, with some earlier material included. Also included are letterpress copy and sales invoice books of the Carolina Paper Company, 1895-1896. Family and personal business correspondence of Vass consists mainly of correspondence and other items concerning the numerous loans Vass made to individuals in Granville and Wake counties and other areas and to the properties he rented, particularly in Granville County. There are also letters from relatives and friends, papers relating to Vass's activities as a Baptist layman, especially material relating to the North Carolina Baptist Publications and Sunday School Society in the 1840s, and detailed records of the course and treatment of the typhoid fever suffered by Vass's son Will in 1898.

• Volumes SV-739/19B, SV-739/24