Scope and Contents: This collection contains the papers of the Thomas H. Walker family of Brownsburgh, Rockbridge County, Va., including correspondence, commercial papers, and a petition to release one of Walker's sons, James, from service in the army due to bad health. The correspondence is mostly personal, written largely among relatives within the Walker family. The letters contain personal news and information about regional conditions, farm and manufacture prices, marketing and transportation methods, life at college and seminary, and life in the newly settled areas of Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky. In addition, family letters also discuss the whiskey trade, religion, the temperance movement, and political news, including some local election results. The business letters concern the distillation of liquor and the purchase and sale of land, while the commercial papers are bills of sale and agreements for sharecroppers and laborers.
Avery O. Craven made the selection of these materials, which were chosen from a considerable body of material collected in Virginia.
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