Editor’s Note: This blog post originally appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of

Among the vast array of resources available for genealogical research at the Library of Virginia, it may be easy to overlook one potential treasure trove of information – funeral home records.  One such collection, the L. T. Christian Funeral Home Records, 1912-1986 (Acc. 34483) holds a wealth of information on generations of Richmonders, making it potentially useful to genealogists, scholars of local history and Richmond personalities, and perhaps even students of race relations.  

Langdon Taylor Christian (1853–1935) began life as the son of a Charles City County farmer who emphasized field work and not education. Christian had acquired only an elementary education when he decided to leave his family at the age of 18 to seek work in Richmond. After laboring for a time in a tobacco factory, Christian entered employment with John A. Belvin in 1872 in the leading furniture and undertaking establishment in Richmond. Christian applied himself in this endeavor as a fine finisher, varnisher, and cabinet and casket maker. When Belvin died in 1880, Christian succeeded him, reorganizing the business under his own name.

The files kept by the L. T. Christian Funeral Home contain a mass of biographical data relative to nearly every client of the company. As funeral director, Christian and later his son and successor, L. T. Christian, Jr. (1893–1975), were charged with the responsibilities of initiating and filing the required death certificate with state authorities and posting obituaries in newspapers. These tasks required amassing significant genealogical knowledge of each individual including his or her full name, date and place of birth, date and place of death, cause of death, marital status, spouse’s name, parents’ names and places of birth, address, occupation, military service, education, religious affiliation, burial location, and surviving family members. As standard procedure, the funeral home completed a sales agreement for each client that contained this information. Sales agreements are found in each decedent’s file along with copies of every obituary posted and paid for by the funeral home. These documents offer a humanizing exhibit of the family network and personal history of a myriad of Richmond-area citizens.

The files of each decedent also contain correspondence, notes, receipts, and memorabilia that provide deeper insight into the often-difficult logistics involved in this long-lived perpetual care business. Numerous files exist for World War II soldiers, killed and temporarily buried overseas, who were transported and re-interred in Richmond cemeteries after the war with the aid of L. T. Christian’s services. These soldiers’ files contain many of the more interesting pieces of memorabilia in the collection, including what appear to be “dog tags” and “pine box” identification plates. Other memorabilia are found in the file of Hugh C. Tucker, who prior to his 1956 death commissioned a full-scale sketch of his headstone with a local tombstone artist. Correspondence and receipts found in the file of Horace A. Gray, who died along with his wife and three of his four children in a fire at their Windsor Farms home in 1958, detail the intricate role the funeral home played during times of family tragedy.

Processing of the records of this premier Richmond, Virginia, funeral parlor included the creation of an accompanying online database that allows patrons and staff to quickly pinpoint the location of any decedent’s file in the collection.  It is surname searchable and includes the decedent’s death or disinterment date along with the box and folder numbers for the file.

Notable decedents included in the collection are former Virginia governor James Hubert Price, department store founder Webster S. Rhoads, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman, renowned author James Branch Cabell, and pioneer aluminum magnate Richard S. Reynolds. Researchers will also find decedents whose vital statistics may breach the “missing” or “gap” years of 1896–1912 for state-kept vital records, as well as clients who were born prior to 1853. Notably absent through much of the collection are African-American decedents, who were segregated into black-owned funeral parlors and cemeteries until laws and customs separating the races began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. Students of race relations may find this evidence intriguing in the study of segregation in pre-Civil Rights Richmond.

The L. T. Christian Funeral Home has since been absorbed by Bennett Funeral Home, which is still in operation and donated these records to the Library in 1993.  The varied information available, perhaps surprisingly, in a collection of funeral home records provides further proof of the richness and usefulness of archives.

-Alex Lorch, former Personal Papers Archivist.  Lorch is now Program Officer for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

What grabbed my attention was the first line: “My dear and most affectionate lover…”  What a way to start a letter–doesn’t it sound racy? But actually many letters written during the 19th century were as full of love and feelings as modern letters are. The difference is that the 19th-century term “lover” does not necessarily carry the same connotations as it does today. This was a letter written by George Ward (1837-1927) of Tazewell County on 16 July 1861, while serving with 21st Virginia Infantry Regiment, Company H, to his love interest, Mary Jane Ratliff. Ratliff (1842-1905) was the daughter of Abednego and Louisa Vicey Matney Ratliff, also of Tazewell County. George writes of his feelings for [Mary] Jane (“dear Jinnia”), his hopes to marry her, and how he hated parting from her. George mentions the possibility of his death numerous times in the letter, ending it with his hopes that they meet in heaven should he not survive the war.

Transcript of George Ward letter

I have come across many love letters while working on the Legacy Project and always find them so endearing. Often times they end in heartbreak as I find out that the men died in battle or from disease. Luckily George Ward survived the war, married Mary Jane Ratliff, and the two lived out their years in Tazewell County, and later in Iowa.

If you have any letters, diaries, or other manuscript materials to add to the CW150 Legacy Project, we are having a scanning event at the Library of Virginia on 6 April 2013 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Please contact me at renee.savits@lva.virginia.gov or (804) 692-3629 to tell me about your collection and schedule an appointment.

-Renee Savits, CW150 Legacy Project Coordinator

Located in Bermuda’s Warwick Parish, the club boasted 106 acres overlooking Hamilton Harbor, and accommodated 225 guests, who enjoyed the club’s own 18-hole championship golf course, tennis, and heated swimming pool.

The club’s president was Charles Ryland Burnett, Jr. of Richmond, Virginia.  Born on 7 October 1918, he attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, and then graduated from the University of Virginia. Burnett married Toronto native Miriam Louise Weston (1922-2008), in Richmond on 17 April 1954. 

Weston’s father, Willard Garfield Weston (1898-1978), was a Canadian businessman and philanthropist who owned George Weston, Ltd. and its various subsidiaries and associated entities, including Associated British Foods.  He also served in the British House of Commons during World War II.

George Weston, Ltd. purchased the Belmont Manor Golf and Country Club in 1956, and soon Weston’s son-in-law Charles Burnett was on the island and serving as the resort’s president.  “This is a real paradise,” he wrote to his brother Griffin on 16 January 1957, “and I don’t know why they pay me a salary to work here.”

6 February 1957 was “Virginia Day” at the Belmont, commemorating a visit by the 350^th Jamestown Anniversary Commission, including Virginia Lieutenant Governor A.E.S. Stephens.  The club held a luncheon, and prepared a menu with some favorite Virginia foods, including “Virginia Ham, Stephens Sherry Sauce.”  The lieutenant governor later remarked that it was the first time in his 25 years in public life that he had ever “been designated as a sauce.”

One of the big attractions of the Belmont was its pool.  Constructed about a year after the club was acquired by Weston, it featured seven-foot underwater windows separating the pool and a bar.  At certain times, water ballet was performed in the pool, drawing a nice crowd of viewers, and a pianist played nightly, turning the area into a piano bar.

Management also employed the musical services of the Princeton Tigertones, who entertained guests, and later recorded “The Belmont Calypso.” The Tigertones, an all-male a cappella group formed at Princeton University in 1946, are still in existence today.  In the 1950s, they began to tour Bermuda at the end of each summer.  During this time, the group added many calypso tunes to their repertoire.

Listen to The Belmont Calypso by the Princeton Tigertones

Weston sold the Belmont in the early 1960s. Charles and Miriam Burnett and their young son left for London, where Burnett served on the board of directors of Walters Biscuits, another Weston enterprise.  The club’s site is now occupied by the Newstead Belmont Hills Golf Resort and Spa. Charles Ryland Burnett, Jr. died on 27 August 2004 in Toronto. Miriam Louise Weston Burnett died in Richmond on 12 March 2008. They are both buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

During these long March days, take some time to listen to the tropical sounds of the Tigertones, and imagine yourself out on the golf course or viewing the underwater activities in the swimming pool while enjoying a drink at the Belmont Manor Golf and Country Club.  Spring is almost here!

More information on Charles Burnett’s management of the Belmont Hills Golf and Country Club can be found in the Burnett Family Papers, 1881-1998 (Accession 44300), which are open for research at the Library of Virginia.

For information on the Princeton Tigertones, visit their website here.  

-Jim Greve, Sr. Collection Development Archivist

Jan, who is very active in the study and promotion of the history of the Wayland area of Norfolk, England, recently gave a talk to the Wayland Heritage Group.  She shared the story of the original letters, the memories they brought up, and the new trans-Atlantic friendships forged thanks to archives and the Internet.  You can see her talk by clicking the link in this Wayland News article.  

 -Jessica Tyree, Senior Accessioning Archivist

The senior Davis, born 5 February 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, often did odd jobs and ran errands for pilots and airport personnel at the original Providence airport near his uncle’s farm.  Payment or reward for his work would often come in the form of airplane rides, which Davis would turn into lessons.  He soon earned his private pilot’s license, and on a list issued by the Commerce Department in January 1939, Davis was the only African American pilot from Rhode Island.  World War II began in Europe later that year, and in 1940 the United States began preparing for involvement by establishing a draft.  Like many others, Davis did not wait for the draft to find him, but rather enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1941.  He joined a select group of African American men in the 99^th Pursuit Squadron training at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois.  Unfortunately for Davis, he did not qualify as a pilot, most likely because he did not have a college degree.

The unit relocated to Tuskegee, Alabama, where the pilots continued their training.  Davis, along with others, remained at Chanute to train as mechanics until the Tuskegee field could accommodate them.  The Tuskegee Airmen faced a huge obstacle in the racism of the time.  Many believed that African Americans were incapable of serving in the military in almost any capacity beyond basic behind-the-lines support.  The Tuskegee Airmen refuted this notion and served ably when transferred to the European Theater of the war.  The squadrons escorted 200 of 205 bomber missions without a loss, the best record of any bomber escort group during the war.  The unit twice received Presidential Unit Citations.  Equally as impressive as their war record was their maintenance of such a high standard, both in the United States and abroad, in the face of often overt racism.

The yearbook, published in 1943 and titled Tuskegee Army Flying School and AAF 66th FTD, provides an excellent portrait of the Tuskegee Airmen in training.  After supplying a general history of the Army Air Forces, the volume displays images of Tuskegee’s officers, cadets, and training and support personnel, including Ralph Davis as a member of the 889^th Basic Flying Training Squadron.  It not only chronicles the aviators and their support units, but also includes photographs of the field’s medical department, the band, the quartermaster’s units, the signal corps, and the ordinance company.  The yearbook includes photographs of these men at work and training, as well as at rest and leisure, providing valuable documentation of African Americans serving in the military during World War II.

Ralph Davis’s service in the Army Air Forces was only one episode in an active life.  Besides earning his pilot’s license before the war, he also was a star athlete in high school (baseball and basketball) and later a semi-professional baseball player.  In his baseball career, Davis helped integrate two semi-professional leagues in Rhode Island, first the Pawtucket Twilight League as a member of the East Providence Belmonts and then the Pawtucket Inter City League as a member of the East Providence Townies.  He also played on area African American ball clubs and earned a spot on the Boston Chronicle’s all-star team from 1933 to 1935.  In 2012, the Pawtucket Red Sox honored Davis.  Clinton Davis accepted the honor for his father.

During the war, Davis went on leave to Front Royal, Virginia, with a friend who lived there.  While in Front Royal, he met Mary Tate (1920-1983), a teacher from Staunton.  After a quick courtship, the two married and Davis settled down in Staunton.  After World War II, he worked for the Augusta County Board of Supervisors.  In 1968 Davis, along with fellow Staunton residents Larry Williams and Conrad Maxwell, purchased a 1947 Piper Cub airplane.  From 1985 to 1986, Davis and Williams put in 500 man hours to restore the aircraft.  Davis often flew and displayed it at events in the Shenandoah Valley. 

Ralph Davis died 16 November 2002 and was buried in Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton.  The Ralph Hickman Davis Papers (LVA Accession 50284) are open for research at the Library of Virginia.

-Trenton Hizer, Senior Finding Aids Archivist

The guide is organized alphabetically by name of the individual, organization, business, or political entity that created the record and includes a letter index at its top to facilitate searching.  Each entry contains name, title of the collection (whether a private papers collection or a public record), date range and size, accession number, a description of the material, and whether the materials are originals or copies.  Entries link to catalog records and, where applicable, to online finding aids and databases created for the collections.  The Civil War Records in the Archives Guide will be updated on a regular basis as new collections are added to the Library and catalogued.  Jason Roma and Doc Frank of the Library’s IT department provided the necessary technical work to make the guide a valuable online resource.

-Trenton Hizer, Senior Finding Aids Archivist

You have no idea how awfully much I hated to leave you…Even if I can’t hear from you just now I feel sure you are thinking of me a little, aren’t you darling?  Because you must know that you are dearer, and sweeter to me than life itself and I do love you.

So wrote Robert B. Roosevelt, Jr., to his sweetheart, Virginia Lee Minor, on 18 March 1919.  The letter is the first in a collection of correspondence kept by Virginia that now forms the better part of the Virginia Minor Roosevelt Jones Papers (Acc. 45319) at the Library of Virginia.  Almost all of the letters were written by “Bob” to his “Miney,” and reveal a man consumed with love for his eventual wife.  Sadly, they also show him struggling against an addiction that threatened his marriage before it even began, and ultimately contributed to his death.

Roosevelt was the first cousin once removed of President Theodore Roosevelt, the son of Robert B. Roosevelt (1866-1929) and Lilie Hamersley Roosevelt (b. 1882).  It is unclear how he met Virginia, but by the time this correspondence commenced, the two had entered into a seemingly new but already intense long-distance romance (he was living in New York City, she in Washington, D.C.).

The above quote is typical of the frequent declarations of devotion found throughout Bob’s letters.  But another recurring theme first reveals itself in a relatively innocent-sounding statement in his 19 March 1919 letter.  “Virginia the worst thing I have done since I left you was to take a glass of beer, and please forgive me,” he wrote. “I can just hear you saying that now.”  What initially seems like a pre-emptive defense against a girlfriend’s lighthearted correction slowly reveals itself to be more serious, as similar statements begin to pile up in successive letters.

“I am tired, so tired of that life, but we all have to go through that stage,” he writes on 22 March.  On 17 April, he begs–“Miney excuse me for acting like such a perfect child.  I know you tried to make me do what is right, and you always have…I feel so badly about making certain things hard for you and I do hope you will forgive me.”  A few days later (22 April) he professes himself to be “so awfully blue, and so sad, lonely, and depressed and God you don’t know how it hurts me, when I think of my sweet little Miney, saying she wished she were dead, and I thought you felt we both had such a wonderful future to live, just you and I.”

He constantly reassures her that she is the only woman he wants, and worriedly asks about her interactions with other men.  At times when he does not receive a letter from her, he becomes almost despondent: “I hoped you were really sincere in every thing you said dear, but its [sic] awfully hard to believe it now…Its [sic] an awful life dear for me here, and you are the only ray of sun light in my whole life.  Your love means all to me Virginia and I crave for it” (22 March 1919).  In another letter, he notes that she had been engaged in the past, and fears that her love for him would die as it had for the other man.

Roosevelt speaks often of working to make himself worthy of her, and to enable their eventual marriage, as he did on 18 June 1919:

Really dear if I didn’t love you so awfully much, and didn’t think you really cared a lot for me, I would feel life wasn’t worth living.  For I feel I’ve seen and been through too much of it, and I am damn tired of it to be truthful, I mean the so-called social life…I realize dear it is a damn shame that we are so happy together and that we have to be separated, but on the other hand try and look a little into the future, you realized when I was with you that we couldn’t get married under the existing conditions, and I am doing the only right thing by you…I often wondered where I would be now if I gave way to all my feelings as you put it.  I guess more than probably in jail…

He mentions being followed by a doctor, and continually asserts that he will avoid alcohol, even while admitting to a few slips here and there: “I did go on a little party dear, but at no time did I not know everything I was doing…I only wish you could be around me when I didn’t know it and see me and my actions when your [sic] away” (9 July 1919). 

Allusions to his drinking problem are paired with references to money troubles.  He tries his hand at a couple of different jobs and plays the stock market in hopes of making enough money to be able to marry—“It certainly is a wonderful incentive to work like hell” (16 July 1919).  He indicates in his 29 July letter that they will marry in December.  But by early October he is headed down to Eastland, Texas, to try and make his fortune in the oil business.

A 3 October 1919 letter from Roosevelt’s mother encourages him on his way: “Now Bob you have your chance to prove all the good that’s in you, and there is plenty.  My faith in you has never waivered.  I know that you will succeed.  Drink is the big temptation for you to fight, and you have to beat it, so start in and refuse to touch a drop.  It has done you so much harm…I am very proud of you having the courage to go off as you have done and my daily prayer is for you and your success.” 

At this point, there is a gap in the letters from Bob to Virginia, although some postcards sent by him to her from Texas are pasted into a small scrapbook she kept.  The next letter is from a friend, congratulating the couple on their October 1920 marriage, which took place in New York City.  Here again the record goes silent until mid-March 1922, when the letters from Bob to his wife (and new mother of son Robert Jr.), pick up again.

Writing from an address listed in the 1914 Medical Directory of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as the Charles B. Towns Hospital for the Treatment of Drug Addiction, Alcoholism and Nervous Diseases, Roosevelt is making overtures to his now estranged wife: “Now dear be sensible and have a long talk with me when my head is absolutely clear and let us try to come to an agreement of some sort” (17 March 1922).

The next letter, postmarked 20 March 1922, shows Roosevelt angry and hurt, believing that his wife is lying to him about why she has not come to spend more time with him.  “If you would lie to me about little things I have no reason to believe you wouldn’t lie to me about seeing other men or taking lunch and going out with them,” he writes.  “If your thru [sic] with me for God sakes be woman enough to admit it, but we can’t go on this way and you must realize it.”  Another letter, written later that night after again trying to call her and being told she was not in, is similarly reproachful and requests that she show his letter to his mother: “Maybe you can fool her better than your husband with an explanation.”

Things seem to have been smoothed over by the time he composes his 24 March letter.  There is no mention of the recent unpleasantness, only renewed hope for the future: “Honey dear I too want a home somewhere for a wonderful loyal little wife whom I still adore and I want our child to be proud of his Father and I know you do too.  We will both work together Miney and we will gain it back every little bit.”  The next day’s letter assures her that “I really love you in my funny selfish way, but I will try not to be so selfish any more dear.”

The last letter from Bob to Virginia, postmarked 30 March 1922, describes a trip with his mother to Bayshore, New York, to begin cleaning out the home he and Virginia shared before she moved out.  Two days later, he would be dead.  A partial newspaper clipping in the collection notes that Roosevelt had been found on a New York City street late on the rainy evening of 31 March 1922, semiconscious and bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose.  A Dr. Gould (Roosevelt’s personal doctor) is quoted by the newspaper as saying that “he could not add to the police report that Roosevelt received his injuries in an ‘unknown manner while in a partly intoxicated condition.’  He said the injuries were so severe they could not have been inflicted by bandits or in a brawl.  He said he believed Roosevelt had been run over by an automobile which sped away without halting to investigate the extent of his injuries.”

Virginia’s last letter to Bob, the only one found in this collection, is postmarked 31 March 1922.  It is not known whether it reached Bob before he went out that fateful night, but likely echoes other letters he had received from his wife in the days leading up to his death. 

Its [sic] too bad we couldn’t have been happy in the little home it was very sweet and cozy, but now the only thing to do is to try and start all over again and see if you cant [sic] make something of your life and make others happy who love you, that is if you really and truly want to do so.

Write me just what you are doing don’t deceive me any more please dear I would always rather know the truth no matter how hard it is.

Good bye dear.  With lots of love, Miney.

The Virginia Minor Roosevelt Jones Papers (Acc. 45319) are open to researchers at the Library of Virginia.

-Jessica Tyree, Senior Accessioning Archivist

Ever been on vacation and experienced weather so bad that it traps you in your hotel room? Know that feeling of a desperate urge for a change of scenery? If Richmond architect Haigh Jamgochian (1924- ) had had his way, visitors to one proposed hotel in Virginia Beach would have enjoyed a new view every hour. No, he didn’t plan to organize a huge game of “musical rooms” by having guests periodically change their accommodations. Rather, he planned for the hotel buildings to revolve. The rationale was simple even if the engineering was not. The hotels, like the dock of a departing ocean liner, would themselves become a destination. Tourists would visit the area just to see these wonders, thus benefiting the entire local economy rather than just the specific hotel.

The Library of Virginia had the great fortune to receive Mr. Jamgochian’s architectural records in August 2004 (Accession 41492). Included are a number of models designed and built by the architect for various projects in the region. One of the more intriguing is the motorized model for the unbuilt Virginia Beach revolving hotel.

Insanity, you say? Not necessarily. While there was definitely madness to Jamgochian’s method, this project was fully in the realm of the possible. The building’s central core would have housed the mechanical systems and utilized swiveling couplings and flexible connections to maintain service, and parking, shops, and restaurants were located in the buildings’ base. Different from his predecessors, Jamgochian planned to float the building on a thin layer of hydraulic fluid and turn the two 20-story structures via hydraulic pressure.

Still not convinced? Well, what if I told you it’s been done, albeit with different methodology. In 2001, a Brazilian firm completed an apartment building called Suite Vollard in Curitiba, Brazil, that mimics Jamgochian’s idea. The floors all rotate independently giving each resident a 360-degree view of the city several times a day.

Jamgochian’s revolving hotel model was featured in a 2008 work by Chad Randl titled Revolving Architecture: A History of Buildings That Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot. Mr. Randl’s 200-page work proves that rotating structures are not a new or an outdated idea. Happily, one example of that bold endeavor is preserved at the Library of Virginia for future consideration and research.

-Vince Brooks, Senior Local Records Archivist

Another presidential election year is upon us, and we are already bombarded with television ads touting the two candidates and proclaiming their positions on every issue from A to Z.  Will 2012 be an election for the history books or will it be relegated along with other campaigns to the dustbin of history?  You may remember the elections of 1800 (Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800”), 1860 (the election that sparked the Civil War), 1932 (FDR, Hoover, and the Great Depression), and 1984 (Reagan’s “Morning in America”).  But what about others?  Quick, without Googling it—who ran against Teddy Roosevelt in 1904?

The election of 1840 mostly falls into the dustbin file.  It is usually remembered only because of a catchy campaign slogan (“Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”) and the fact that the winner, second-rate military hero William Henry Harrison, served only one month before becoming the first president to die in office.  Yet 1840 was a key election year, and a broadside found in the Library of Virginia’s collection reveals some of the issues at play.  Entitled “This Is The House that Jack Built” (LVA accession 28192), this 1840 political cartoon by John Childs utilizes the nursery rhyme of the same name to illustrate the views of Harrison’s Whig Party. 

Four years earlier, the Whig Party had formed in opposition to President Andrew Jackson, coalescing around Henry Clay’s “American System”—a tariff to encourage domestic manufacturing, federally funded internal improvements, and a national bank to regulate the national economy and finances.  In 1840, the Whigs ridiculed the incumbent Martin Van Buren and the economic policies he inherited from Jackson.  Their “commercials” were often broadsides like this one, which satirized the Jackson and Van Buren administrations’ financial and economic policies that the Whigs believed were responsible for the Depression of 1837 and the sluggish growth of the economy.  While the references found in this cartoon are obscure to most modern readers, they were quite controversial at the time.

This sort of propaganda struck a chord, and the Whigs succeeded in 1840.  With 80% of eligible voters casting ballots, Harrison was elected president and the party gained majorities in both houses of Congress.  The American System seemed poised for passage.  But on 4 March, the 68-year-old Harrison, hatless and with no overcoat, delivered a 105-minute-long inaugural address in the cold rain.  He caught a cold which became pneumonia and died one month later, on 4 April.  Vice President John Tyler, an anti-Jackson states righter, succeeded to the presidency.  More loyal to states rights than to Whig philosophy, Tyler vetoed the Whig-passed national bank bill.  The new president (“His Accidency”) defeated his own party’s goals.

The Whigs elected another military hero president (Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready”) in 1848 and remained competitive in elections until collapsing under the weighty issue of slavery in the 1850s.  But the party never had another chance like 1840 – a chance, had Harrison lived, to alter the course of American history.  Only after the Civil War did a party with a similar agenda to the American System implement it.  Maybe all those uninteresting elections, which only come alive for us now in rare relics like “This Is The House that Jack Built,” had profound consequences after all.

 “This Is The House that Jack Built” (LVA Accession 28192) is available for research at the Library of Virginia.

-Trenton Hizer, Senior Finding Aids Archivist

Today, on the 68^thanniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, one of those voices speaks through the June 1944 diary of Douglas J. Raymond (1921-1994), an acting petty officer in the Royal Canadian Navy.  A native of Rosemont-LaPetite-Patrie, Quebec, Canada, Raymond became a United States citizen and resident of Virginia after the war.  While keeping this diary, he was serving aboard the destroyer HMCS Saskatchewan providing anti-submarine protection for the landing forces.

Raymond’s widow, Mary, donated the diary to the Library of Virginia last July.  In a note she tucked in with the little book, she apologized for her late husband’s spelling, saying that it was more phonetic than technically correct.  No apologies are needed, as the diary is an honest, sensitive, and exciting account of what a 23-year-old man saw, thought, and felt in the midst of intensely stressful circumstances.

Recorded in a thin, pocket-sized notebook, the diary is dated 4-24 June 1944.  Seeking to cover the entire event, including the lead-up to the invasion, Raymond seems to have made the 4 and 5 June entries retrospectively, with the narrative switching to the present tense on 6 June.

The first entry, 4 June 1944, states simply, “In English Channel cleaning out German subs.”  The next day’s entry marks a stop in Plymouth, England, to load up on fuel and “more d/c” [depth charges], before sailing that night “for unknoon destonation for the greatest Invation ever known.  Our nervs were very tense.”

Raymond’s account of D-Day, 6 June, begins with evocative details:

1^st the air force laid smok screens between us and the french coast.  what a sight.  then we blasted the hell out of the German costal guns on the cost of France through the smook screen, shell after shell.  then com the envation barges packed with soldiers.  thousands of barges.  I can’t express our feeling, except we all have tiers in our eyes and our hearts are in the pit of our stomacks.

we are just a stones throw from shore.  shells landing all arround.  blazing planes crashing to the earth and water.  ships dissipearing beneath the surface and they say this is Gods world.  will we ever get to our love ones will we.

The crew gets word that approximately 200 German reinforcement subs are headed north from the Bay of Biscay, and the Saskatchewan (“now leaving the human hell”) sails to meet them.  As they get on their way, Raymond looks toward the shore and sees the invasion troops “are still poaring in,” while out to sea he observes “enmy subs.  so many I cant count them.”

the battling is fearce.  but we cant let them pass us.  part of our guns are facing the sky blasting at all kinds and tips of gerie [German] planes.  the other guns are blasting subs on the surface…d/c are rooling off our decks like pees on subs beneath the surface trying to sneek under us to get at our troops.  Im fighting like mad for a personal reason and I hop one of these subs is the one that Im looking for.

The “personal reason” Raymond alluded to was the loss of his brother Russell, who was killed on 7 May 1944 when his ship, the HMCS Valleyfield, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic.  Just one month later, surrounded by death and with his own life in danger, Doug Raymond had a heavy heart.

I never thought the young men lik us could stand sutch a cean.  and be so hard and heartless.  without sleep.  and just an aud bite.  the water used to be a lovely light green.  at the present its curdled with human blood.  and is a redish color.  bodies and reckage floating all over.  our fotilea of destroyers…sig sag.  to try and avoid gerie bombs.  which explode on all sids of us.  splashing that dirty water.

On the night of 6 June, with word that eight German destroyers (in addition to the aforementioned subs) were sailing in their direction, Raymond and his fellow crew members could still “hear the roar of the army guns ashore in France.”  They got in about an hour and a half of sleep before being summoned to action – two of the German destroyers were in sight, guns blazing.  The Saskatchewan and other ships in the flotilla returned fire and sunk them both.

The next day began off the coast of Brest, France, with orders to stop a group of Nazi destroyers, sweepers, and subs from fleeing the Channel.  That night brought four hours of continuous action (“more torpedoes around than water”), during which two torpedoes exploded in the ship’s “cat geer” [Canadian Anti-Acoustic Torpedo gear].  Further engagement with submarines followed in the early morning hours of 8 June, after which Raymond wearily wrote, “lovely moon light.  but we are sore all over and very tired.”

The evening of 8 June found Raymond “not feeling so hot.”

a gerie bomber attacked us and mad a lucky hit dident do much damage.  but the explosion nocked me up against the torpedo tubs and gave my back an awful wollop.  the musick on the radio is lovely wish I were home.  if I get home it will tak a stick of TNT to meove me.

Two hours later, having been alerted to an imminent engagement with five German destroyers and an untold number of subs, Raymond wrote that, “I cant explane how I feel.  exept at a time like this its our familys we all think of.  were doing it all for them I hope they can see it our way.”  The next day as he recounted the evening’s “exciting…wonderful” events, he recalled watching another of his flotilla’s ships sink a German destroyer.

It was a perfect sight to see thos two destroyers monover in the moonlight trying to get in possession to begin to fire.  then the chance came.  our ship opened a brod side it blue her funnell clear off the oper deck.  then the smoke seemed to blind her crew.  because her shots seemed to be to high or to low brod side after brod side then she settled to one side and sunk.  our sirens all sounded in Victory.  it seems a dam shame but that’s war.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the entries become less detailed.  The Saskatchewan remained in the Channel for the most part, with some time on shore in England to load up on ammunition and fuel, and to repair damage to the vessel.  His 23 June entry records their participation in an attack on German coastal guns some 100 miles south of the invasion site: “what a surprise he [the enemy] got when the fog lifted and 4 distroyers were there looking him in the face.”   The next day, in his last entry, the euphoria has worn off.  He writes only, “June 24/44 still battling subs. (Im fed up.).”

After the war, Raymond returned to Canada, where he spent a year in a remote cabin in Arundel, Quebec, needing solitude to process his war experiences and the loss of his brother.  In the late 1950’s, he moved to Staunton, Virginia, for a job, and there decided to become an American citizen.  He later moved to Chester, Virginia, where he met Mary Keifer in 1969.  The two fell in love, marrying in 1974.  It was the second marriage for both, and a happy one.  Raymond helped raise Mary’s son, Chris, as if he were his own.  They built a quiet life far from the horrors of war.  He occasionally shared humorous stories from his time in the service, keeping the difficult memories locked inside.

Doug Raymond passed away on 4 June 1994, fifty years to the date of his first entry in the diary.  His memory as a kind husband and father is still deeply cherished by his wife and stepson.  His wartime service and vivid account of three historic weeks can be appreciated by us all.

The Douglas J. Raymond Diary (LVA Accession 50043) is available for research at the Library of Virginia.

-Jessica Tyree, Senior Accessioning Archivist