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).

“War of 1861 John Boyer Company B 10 Virginia

Was Born in the State of New York and inlisted in the State of Virginia in the County of Stafford the town of Brensville to sirve for the term of three years & is here by discharged from the sirves of the Confederates this 4^th day of April one thousand eight hundred and sixty three on account of wounds reseved in battle. Said John Boyer has Read eyes white hair is nine feet 11 inches hie and by confetion when enroled a dog rober. He is never to enter the Military Sirves again under eney consideration and eney Mustering or recruting oficer that is knowen to inlist said John Boyer will sufer death or such punishment as ma be disided on by a General Coart Martial By order of Major General Robert E. Lee.

Signed Jefferson Davis President of the Confederate States of America

Given at Richmond Virginia this first day of April one thousand eight hundred and sixty three.

Thats a fact. So it is if you dont believe it you ma find out beter.”

(Editor’s Note: This April Fools’ prank is part of the Caroline County Military and Pension Records, 1864. This document has been transcribed as it was originally written. For a more legible transcript with edited spelling, click here  April Fool 1863 edited transcript.)

-Bari, Jessica and Roger

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

October brings back falling leaves, cooler weather, football, and most importantly Archives Month! Governor Bob McDonnell has officially proclaimed October as Virginia Archives Month. And the theme of this year’s celebration in the commonwealth is “Boxes to Bandwidth: Reconstructing the Past for the Future.” Archives Month celebrates the institutions and people responsible for preserving and making accessible records that play a critical role in preserving our documentary heritage. The work of archivists gives us a sense of being part of a larger picture and helps us begin to see ourselves connected to others – family, community, nation, or a group defined by ethnicity, religion, work, or play. For more information and to view images submitted by participating Virginia institutions, check out the Virginia Archives Month 2012 website. This year’s theme “Boxes to Bandwidth” is reflected in the 2012 Virginia Archives Month poster with images chosen to highlight Virginia’s rich history of service, innovation, creativity, and artistry.

Archives Month is a great time to attend a book talk, program, or workshop and to explore your local archives repository. The Library of Virginia is celebrating Archives Month with behind-the-scenes tours at 10:00 A.M. on October 10^th and 24^th. David Howard will present a talk on his work Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Lost American Relic on Wednesday, October 10^th, at 12:00. For other events happening throughout Virginia see the Archives Month 2012 website.

Archives Month is a time to celebrate not only the value of Virginia’s historical records but also to recognize those who maintain those valuable documents. Join us in celebrating archives and archivists this October, and please take time to learn more about your local archival institutions and encourage others to recognize their contribution to the quality of life in our communities.

Archives Month is a collaborative project of the Library of Virginia, in conjunction with the Virginia State Historical Records Advisory Board, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.

A small slip of paper on display in the Library of Virginia’s latest exhibition You Have No Right: Law and Justice in Virginia, running 24 September 2012-18 May 2013, was of immense importance to twelve people. It discloses, even though it does not state the fact in so many words, that on 2 May 1772 they gained their freedom after being held in slavery since each of them was born. The piece of paper and the fates of those Virginians illuminates a disturbing and little-known part of Virginia’s history, the enslavement of American Indians.

The paper came into the possession of the Library of Virginia in 1988 when it acquired a copy of volume two of John Tracy Atkyns, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery in the Time of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke . . . (London, 1765–1768) that had once been in the library of the colonial government in Williamsburg. One of the librarians in the cataloguing section showed it to me, knowing of my interest in that library. When she lifted it from her desk to hand it to me, a piece of paper that had been slipped between leaves in the middle of the volume fell out and fluttered to the floor. We were surprised, and I was even more surprised when I saw what it was. It was a 1780s or 1790s copy of the judgment in Robyn v. Hardiway (or Robin, or Hardaway), an unusually important case decided in the General Court of Virginia. The librarian and I presented the judgment to the archivists who added it to the meager surviving records of the colonial General Court.

The court case had two parts. First, attorneys argued about whether a 1682 law that allowed for the lifetime enslavement of Indians imported from other colonies had been repealed in 1684, 1691, or 1705. For decades Virginia’s courts had assumed that the 1684 invalidated the 1682 law, and “under that persuasion,” one of the attorneys informed the court, “hundreds of the descendants of Indians have obtained their freedom, on actions brought in this court.” The court concluded the first part of the case by deciding that the 1682 law had remained in effect until 1705.  This decision enlarged the number of residents of Virginia who could not hope to gain their freedom by claiming to be descendants of Indian women illegally enslaved between 1684 and 1705.

A jury trial then established that the twelve people were descendants of an Indian woman who had been illegally enslaved. The jury awarded Robin, Hannah, Daniel, Cuffie, Isham, Moses, Peter, Judy, Autry, Silvia, Davy, and Ned, all of unstated age, one shilling in damages. Each received one penny, but each also received freedom.

Some excellent 21^st-century scholarship demonstrates that English-speaking Virginians enslaved many more Indian residents of Virginia in the 17^th century than earlier historians believed and that the enslavement may very well have taken place in spite of the laws or in the absence of laws governing the enslavement of Indians. Because almost all of the records of the colonial General Court burned in the fire that destroyed the state court house and much of the business district of Richmond in April 1865, the specific record of the outcome of the important 1772 freedom suit naming the persons freed is especially rare and valuable.

It was critically important that the twelve plaintiffs were descendants of “Indian women,” not of Indian men. In 1662 the Virginia General Assembly had passed a law that arose from a case that Elizabeth Key filed in the Northumberland County Court. She was the daughter of Thomas Key, a white man who had been a burgess in the 1630s, and one of his enslaved female laborers of African origin or descent. Elizabeth Key claimed her freedom as the daughter of a free man and won her case, but the assembly then changed the law. The act of 1662 explained that because “some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or ffree” it declared “that all children borne in this country shalbe held bound or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

Two other pieces of paper on exhibition in You Have No Right demonstrate that descendants of enslaved Indian women continued to file freedom suits in Virginia courts well into the 19^th century. In May 1820, after seven years of tedious and delayed proceedings in the courts of Wythe and Powhatan Counties, Rachel Findlay won her freedom for the second time. When she was a girl in 1773, one year after the General Court issued its judgment in Robyn v. Hardiway, the court ruled that she and her family, too, were entitled to their freedom as descendants of an illegally enslaved Indian woman. But her owner, who lived in the part of Cumberland County that in 1777 became Powhatan County, sold rather than freed her. She lived in slavery in far-away Wythe County for forty years until learning in 1813 that she should have been freed in 1773.

When the Powhatan County Court finally issued its ruling in the May 1820 judgment Rachel vs. John Draper, Sr. that Rachel Findlay was a free person, she was an old woman with thirty or forty descendants, all of whom had lived all of their lives in slavery and should have always lived free. It is not known whether any or all of her children and grandchildren and perhaps great grandchildren ever learned that they, too, should have been living in freedom and not in slavery since their births or whether any of them actually became free as a result of her persistent pursuit of her law suit. A court judgment was not self-enforcing, especially for a group of people like Rachel Findlay’s descendants who probably lived in wide dispersion, perhaps some of them outside of Virginia. Some of them may have lived the remainder of their lives in slavery, too, as she did for forty-seven years.

About the time that Rachel Findlay won her freedom for the second time, members of the Evans family lost a freedom suit in Lynchburg in Charles Evans, etc. vs. Lewis B. Allen, 1821-033. Their story is truly tragic. In preparation for their case, members of the family or perhaps their court-appointed attorney compiled and submitted to the court a genealogical chart that demonstrated how the family members were related to one another. That sheet of paper is also on display in the Library of Virginia’s exhibition and together with other evidence might have persuaded a court that they were entitled to their freedom. However, their attorney, former Congressman Christopher Henderson Clark, had a stroke sometime in 1820 and failed to appear in court on behalf of his clients. As a consequence of the case not being presented when scheduled, the court dismissed it in 1821, leaving all of the people and the descendants of the females stuck in slavery for the remainder of their lives.

Slavery and the laws that created and protected it were cruel and unjust. Adding to the cruelty and injustice were the many unpredictable factors, like the illness of an attorney, that could prevent people from presenting their cases in court, or like the sale of Rachel before she could become free. It is now clear that colonial Virginians enslaved more Indians than historians once knew about, and it is evident that many more people had been illegally enslaved than historians once believed. Men, women, and children of African, American Indian, and also of European and mixed ancestry like Elizabeth Key fell victim to the system of slavery that sustained Virginia’s economy and society from the early years of the colonial period to the end of the American Civil War.

It is also now convenient for the first time to do thorough research on some of the freedom suits that people filed after the American Revolution. People who filed suits seeking freedom and alleging illegal enslavement often sought justice through local courts of chancery. The record of each surviving court case contains unique personal stories about the enslavement of one or more Virginians and the conditions under which they lived and how they attempted to gain their freedom. As part of the Library of Virginia’s project to preserve and make available to researchers the records of the commonwealth’s local chancery courts, archivists at the library have to date digitized thousands of case files containing several million pages of documents, including more than one hundred freedom suits. They are processing and digitizing more every day. The records of the cases that have been digitized can be viewed online in the Chancery Records Index.

Clerks of court did not know or use the surnames of the people who filed freedom suits, so to identify freedom suits it is necessary to search for chancery causes in which the style, or title, of the case does not include a surname. In the search field for the surname for the plaintiff(s), simply enter a tilde ~ which will return a list of cases in which the surname of the plaintiff is not part of the official name of the case.

-Brent Tarter, Founding Editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography

Often in high-profile criminal cases, the victim and victim’s family are an afterthought.  To mark this infamous anniversary, I decided to write a post on Ida V. Belote.  Who was she?  What happened to her eight children?  Two of her young daughters discovered their mother’s body and testified at the coroner’s inquisition.  What became of them?  My search for answers led me to the Belote coroner’s inquisition, newspaper articles, and Ancestry.com.  What follows is a fragmentary picture of Ida Belote and her family.

Ida Virginia Hobbs, the daughter of James and Harriette Hobbs, was born in March 1861 in North Carolina.  Hobbs married James Edward Wadsworth Belote (17 February 1846-6 June 1911) on 5 November 1879 in Northampton County, North Carolina.  By 1880 the Belotes moved to Virginia and started a family.  Ida and James had eight children:  Luther N. Belote (born 25 September 1880), William James Belote (born 24 February 1884), Bernard B. Belote (born 13 February 1886), Edward Linwood Belote (born 22 September 1887), Paul W. Belote (born 10 July 1889), Pauline A. Belote (born September 1891), Harriet Belote (born August 1898), and Sarah Elizabeth (Sadie) Belote (born 1904).  James E.W. Belote worked as a bookkeeper.  He died at home on 6 June 1911 from throat cancer and was buried in St. John’s Episcopal Church cemetery in Hampton.  Ida was buried next to him on 21 March 1912.

Luther N. Belote was married to a woman named Sadie and in 1900 lived in Newport News, where he resided until at least 1942.  He had at least three children:  Luther W. Belote (born ca. 1900), Bernice Belote (born ca. 1904), and Arthur F. Belote (born ca. 1924).

William J. Belote moved to Hartford, Connecticut, by 1917 where he worked as a conductor for the Connecticut Company.  He was married to Marie V. Ouellette.  William died on 30 August 1964 in New London, Connecticut.  Marie died on 9 January 1979 in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Bernard B. Belote lived in 1900 with his grandparents, James and Harriet Hobbs.  He married Helen H. Reed on 25 June 1910 at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Camden, New Jersey.  By World War I, Bernard lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and worked as a machinist.  In 1930 he was an inmate of the Philadelphia County Prison Convict Department.  At the outbreak of World War II, Bernard worked at General Cable and lived in Jersey City, New Jersey.  He died in November 1958.

I did not learn much about Edward L. Belote.  From what I did discover, he led an interesting life.  The Newport News Daily Press reported on 4 August 1906 that Linwood (as he is referred to in the article) was stabbed just under the shoulder by an unidentified African American.  No arrest was made.  In June 1907, Edward ran away from home with his brother Paul and two other friends and found work in Columbus, Ohio.  He was an inmate at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia when he registered for the draft during World War I.  In 1930 he lived in a rooming house in Manhattan, New York.

Paul W. Belote ran away from home in June 1907 with his brother Edward and two other friends.  Paul joined the Navy and served for 2 ½ years.  After his discharge from the Navy, Paul moved to the Alaska Territory in 1910 and was residing in San Francisco at the time of his mother’s murder.  He moved to Pennsylvania and was an inmate in Eastern State Penitentiary in 1920.  By 1942 Paul was still living in Philadelphia with his wife, Bella.

Much to my disappointment, I found very little on Ida’s three daughters who testified at the coroner’s inquisition.  I wanted to learn what happend to the two little girls who not only were orphaned at such a young age but also discovered their mother’s murdered body.  Pauline A. Belote married George W. Wright on 20 September 1909 in Newport News.  In 1920 the Wrights resided in Portsmouth.  Lewter F. Hobbs, Ida’s brother, was named guardian for Harriet and Sadie Belote on 3 April 1912 in the Circuit Court of Elizabeth City County.  Harriet completely disappears from the public record.  I searched the census, marriage, and death records but found no trace of her.  I located one possible record about Sadie.  In the 1920 Federal Census, there is a Sarah E. Belote, age 16, residing in what appears to be an orphanage in Norfolk.  One hundred years after Ida’s death, the story of her and her family remains incomplete.

Roger Christman, Senior State Records Archivist

Mr. A.  Kullin, musician, wrote on 5 May 1790 from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Mr. John Capus, a French dancing master in Richmond, Virginia, asking that he join him in a concert to take place in Fredericksburg a few days later.  “The people here seem very fond of musick,” Kullin noted, also stating that “here is an excellent violoncello in Town, but no player.”  This statement may indicate that Capus was a string player. In preparation for the concert, Kullin had Andrew McKim, a Richmond-based Windsor chair maker, make “2 musick Stands and 1 rail.”  A receipt in the judgment papers indicates that Kullin paid McKim for his services.  Capus was not so fortunate, in spite of Kullin’s promise in the letter that “your expenses here as well as travelling shall be paid you immediately on your arrival, and whatever gratification you think proper to demand you shall have.”

What was promised and what occurred were two different matters. In his bill of expenses Capus wrote to Kullin, “The need for money obliges me to act toward you a little harshly, you know I am owed [an itemized list of expenses follows]…If you send me the money, our account will be resolved, and then I will return to you your book that I have and in case of default you will allow me to keep the book I have of you.”  The court ordered Kullin to pay Capus.

The often-heard quote “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” seems to have had little effect, as Kullin took out a subpoena against Capus for assault in the July 1790 Richmond (City) Hustings Court.  An amicable settlement did not appear to be forthcoming.  However, the case subsequently was dismissed, “for want of pros[ecution].”  Perhaps Euterpe, the Greek muse of music, intervened between the two.    

-Chris Kolbe, Archives Reference Coordinator

Note:  The author is indebted to Ms. Ute Schecter for translating the bill of expenses from French into English.

As promised in a previous post, here’s another look at the plethora of letterheads and stationery found in our archives.  The original text by Vince Brooks is included here for context.

Commercial stationery can offer a fascinating snapshot of a place or time. Scholars of this subject point out that the rich illustrations and elaborate printing of commercial letterheads, billheads, and envelopes correspond with the dramatic rise in industrialization in America. According to one expert, the period 1860 to 1920 represents the heyday of commercial stationery, when Americans could see their growing nation reflected in the artwork on their bills and correspondence. As commercial artists influenced the job printing profession, the illustrations became more detailed and creative.

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Robert Biggert, an authority on commercial stationery, wrote an extensive study of letterhead design for the Ephemera Society of America entitled “Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery” and donated his personal collection of stationery, now known as the Biggert Collection, to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

The primary role of these illustrations at the time of their use was publicity. The images showed bustling factories, busy street corners, and sturdy bank buildings–all portraying ideas of solidity, activity, and progress. Other types of symbolism can be found in commercial stationery, the most ubiquitous being “man’s best friend.” Dogs show up on all sorts of stationery, especially that of banks or other financial companies. Often seen is the illustration of the dog lying in front of a vault or safe, the “watch dog” meant to convey the idea of security. This becomes such a well-known image, that eventually only a dog’s head is needed on checks or envelopes to communicate this meaning.

Letterheads found in the various collections at the Library of Virginia, in addition to sometimes being entertaining, offer an excellent example of secondary research value, especially the stationery depicting buildings. These illustrations can often be the only visual representation of a structure now demolished and can be a great aid to architectural historians. Additionally, business historians and students of graphic design can find letterhead useful in their studies.

-Vincent Brooks, Senior Local Records Archivist

(Editor’s note:  Additional posts featuring letterhead in the collection will go up at some point in the future. Thanks to Vincent Brooks, Sarah Nerney, Bari Helms, Louise Jones, and Ed Jordan for contributing letterhead they found while processing.)

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