James McDowell Papers, 1728-1896

Summary

Creator:
McDowell, James, 1795-1851.
Abstract:

Papers of James McDowell (1795-1851) document the white politician from Virginia who held state and national offices, various white McDowell, Preston, and Venable family members, and people enslaved at Col Alto, McDowell's plantation near Lexington, Va. The collection includes a list of people enslaved by McDowell at Col Alto; an emancipation contract with Lewis James, a person enslaved by McDowell; personal and family correspondence; financial and legal materials; writings; printed material; and genealogical papers. Topics include slavery in the territories; colonization societies; economic conditions and policies; internal improvements and public works, such as the James River and Kanawha Canal project; temperance; nullification; Democratic party politics and campaigns; public education; collegiate and literary societies; colleges in Virginia, especially Washington College (later Washington and Lee University); agriculture and plantation management; McDowell family history; and land transactions in Fayette County, Ky. Also included is the will of Colonel James McDowell (1770-1835).

Extent:
1900 items (4.5 linear feet)
Language:
Materials in English
Library Catalog Link:
View UNC library catalog record for this item

Background

Biographical / historical:

1795: Born, 13 October, Cherry Grove Plantation, Rockbridge County, Va., son of Colonel James McDowell and Sarah McDowell.

1805-1812: Attended William McPheeters's classical school in Greenville, Va., and a boarding school in Brownsburg, Va.

1812: Attended Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Va.

1813: Attended Yale College, New Haven, Conn.

1814: Transferred to the College of New Jersey (Princeton University); graduated salutatorian, circa 1818.

1818: Married cousin, Susanna Smith Preston, 7 September; moved to an estate called "The Military," near Lexington, Ky.

1823: Returned to Virginia; began construction on Col Alto Plantation, near Lexington, Va.

1827: Served as justice of the peace for Rockbridge County, Va.

1831: Joined the Presbyterian Church; elected to Virginia House of Delegates, where he served until 1835.

1833: Defeated by John Tyler in U.S. senatorial election.

1837: Re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served until 1838.

1838: Delivered "West Augusta Speech" at Princeton, calling for reconciliation between the abolitionists and the proponents of slavery.

1842: Elected governor of Virginia; served until 1846.

1846: Seated as member of U.S. House of Representatives, 6 March, replacing William Taylor.

1847: Elected to U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1851; death of wife in October.

1848: Partially paralyzed as result of heart attack.

1850: Enslaver of 17 people, according to the 1850 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule (Virginia: Rockbridge: North East District).

1851: Died, 24 August, at Col Alto.

Additional biographical information can be found in James Glen Collier, "The Political Career of James McDowell, 1830 1851" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1963).

Scope and content:

Papers of James McDowell (1795-1851) document the white politician from Virginia who held state and national offices, various McDowell family members, and people enslaved at Col Alto, McDowell's plantation near Lexington, Va. Included are personal and family correspondence, financial and legal materials, writings, printed material, and genealogical papers.

McDowell's personal correspondence, his addresses and essays, and printed materials reflect his interests in the public affairs and intellectual life of Virginia and the nation, especially in the 1830s and 1840s. Topics include slavery in the territories; colonization societies; economic conditions and policies; internal improvements and public works, such as roads, railroads, and the James River and Kanawha Canal project; temperance; nullification; Democratic party politics and campaigns; public education; collegiate and literary societies; and colleges in Virginia.

Financial and legal materials chiefly concern white McDowell family members, but of note are a list of the people enslaved by James McDowell, and an emancipation contract, circa 1831, between McDowell and Lewis James, an enslaved person, that required that he both purchase his freedom and apply for emigration to Liberia. Other materials include sales receipts, statements of accounts, lists of expenditures, indentures, notes and briefs for legal cases, vote tallies, and court dockets. Also included are a fragment of a deed, 1728, involving Alexander McDowell, an ancestor of James McDowell; the will of Colonel James McDowell (1770-1835); and records of land transactions in Fayette County, Ky. There are only a few items after James McDowell's death in 1851. The 1864 item is a series of Confederate bonds. (For other papers relating to colonization and emancipation, see Series 3.)

Family correspondence and other items relate to James McDowell's father and mother, Colonel James McDowell and Sarah McDowell; his wife Susanna Preston McDowell; son-in-law Charles Scott Venable; and brother-in-law Virginia statesman Thomas Hart Benton. Many family letters, especially those from James McDowell to his wife, discuss agriculture and plantation management. Other materials include records pertaining to Washington College (later Washington and Lee University), McDowell family genealogical research, and the childhood reminiscences of Francis Preston Venable, James McDowell's grandson and professor of chemistry and president of the University of North Carolina.

Acquisition information:

Received from Mrs. Francis P. Venable of Chapel Hill, N.C., and her daughters, Mrs. Leo Gardiner and Mrs. W. C. Coker, also of Chapel Hill, in 1938, with additions in 1956, 1960, 1980, and 1983.

Processing information:

Processed by: Lynn Roundtree, 1983; Pamela Dean and Tim West, 1986; Roslyn Holdzkom, 1991

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Remediation by: Nancy Kaiser, October 2020. Updated abstract, biographical note, subject headings, scope and content note, and container list.

In 2017, we began using "white" as an ethnic and racial identity for individual and families, in addition to "Black," "African American," "Jewish," and other familiar identity terms that we have used for decades in collection descriptions. We use this identity term so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default of the people represented in our collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

This collection was rehoused under the sponsorship of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1992.

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.

Access and use

Restrictions to access:

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to use:

Retained by the descendants of writers of items in these papers, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

No usage restrictions.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], in the James McDowell Papers #459, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Location of this collection:
Louis Round Wilson Library
200 South Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Contact:
(919) 962-3765
wilsonlibrary@unc.edu