Manuscripts

Mary Randolph Custis Lee letter to Mary W. Rhodes, Lexington, Va

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Description: Mrs. Less thanks her correspondent for the support of "our poor suffering people;" discusses the fate of Jefferson Davis and the book by John J. Craven Prison life of Jefferson Davis (New York, Carleton, 1866), and inveighs against the "malignity" that "has desecrated my own beautiful & cherished home with the avowed intention of preventing our ever living there" by turning into the cemetery for the Union soldiers.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1866, June 25.
Call number: mssHM 75885
Creator: Lee, Mary Randolph Custis (1807-1873)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: Gift of Susan E. Williams, February 7, 2014. The letter was purchased from William Reese Company in February 2013; William Reese had acquired as part of the James S. Copley's library sale on October 15, 2010 (Session One, Lot 697).

Robert E. Lee letters to Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee

Manuscripts

Five letters that Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife during his service in Virginia and the Midwest (the summer of 1835): 1832, April 17, Old Point Comfort, Va. (HM 20560); 1832, July 6, Old Point Comfort, Va. (HM 23236); 1833, November 27, Fort Monroe, Va. (HM 23096); 1835, August 21, Detroit, Mich. (HM 20561), and 1835, September 2, South Bend, Ill. (HM 20562).

mssHM 20560-20562, HM 23096, HM 23236

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Rhodes, W.A.E. Letter to Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee

Manuscripts

The collection primarily consists of incoming correspondence to the Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee law firm from their various clients and legal colleagues. The content of the cases represented is mainly civil, most heavily focused on divorces, estate settlements, and patents, as well as some correspondence on Mission Indian land cases, suits against railroads, water rights, and mining disputes. There are also a variety of advertisements from publishers, typewriter merchants, and other business connections, as well as a very few outgoing letters from Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee and limited personal correspondence. In addition to facts regarding specific cases, the letters provide an overview of general social issues, law fees and practices, property laws, patent laws, the status of women, child custody laws, divorce laws, and prevailing views of divorce in 1880s California. Some notable correspondents include Lucky Baldwin, theologian John Alonzo Fisher, American Bar Association co-founder Henry Hitchcock, California governor Henry Harrison Markham, US Secretary of State James Davis Porter, Coca-Cola Bottling Company founder B.F. Thomas, and Lucky Baldwin's ranch manager Hiram Unruh. The collection also includes the Superior Court Registry of Actions, Vol. 3 (1886-1888).

WVL 1000.

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Rhodes, W.A.E. Letter to Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee. Newhall, Calif

Manuscripts

WVL 997.

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Braxton, A.C. Letter to Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee. Staunton, Va

Manuscripts

WVL 168.

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Mary Jane Brooks letter to Fanny Davis

Manuscripts

In this letter to her sister Fanny Davis, Mary Jane Brooks writes that as she is now sixty years of age, she is unable to work as in her youth. She asks for back payment on rent for Fanny's house, where she lived for twenty-five years without payment, or suggests Fanny buy the property outright. She also writes of details of mutual friends in San Francisco.

mssHM 19795

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Rhodes, W.A.E. Letter to Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee. Santa Barbara, Calif

Manuscripts

WVL 999.

Mary Randolph Custis Lee letter to Mary W. Rhodes, Lexington, Va

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