Correspondence

The Correspondence series contains business and personal letters between the founders of Dickinson & Shrewsbury, William Dickinson and Joel Shrewsbury as well as other businessmen and women in the West Virginia area from 1799 to 1880. Most of the correspondence is about the business dealings of the Kanawha salt mines, and in the later years, the lawsuits surrounding the dissolution of the company. The enslaved people who worked at the mines are often subjects in the letters. Some of the letters are accompanied by legal documents or other documents (those are noted in the contents list). Other prominent correspondents include Pleasant Dickinson, William Dickinson Jr., Henry French Smith, and Richard Olive.