When I found a little booklet titled “Presented with the Compliments of B.F. Avery & Sons…” in a box of oversized Smyth County Chancery Court papers, my first thought was how to, if possible, reunite it with the court case of which it was originally part. The booklet was part notebook, calendar, and company catalog, a common advertising tool. When I opened the front cover, I saw on its reverse side a picture of a log building with the caption, “B.F. Avery’s First Plow Factory, at Clarksville, Mecklenburgh (sic) Co., Va.” Then I wondered how I missed the connection between B.F. Avery and Clarksville. Was Clarksville really the starting point for one of America’s most famous farm implement companies? The temptation to chase down stories that may be unrelated to the work at hand, or go down a rabbit trail,  is a great danger in the archivist’s line of work.

After a little digging – on my own time – I found that the answer is yes and no. When Benjamin Franklin Avery (born 1801) set sail from New York City in 1825 on a boat headed for Virginia, he left behind his legal career and prominent family in upstate New York, according to Luther D. Thomas’s 2003 book B.F. Avery and Sons: Pioneer Plow Makers. His plan was to start a manufacturing operation to make plows. He met Caleb H. Richmond on the journey, a man with practical experience working with metal. The two became partners and set up shop on rented land in Clarksville, a town on the Roanoke River (also called the Staunton River) that already boasted a number of manufacturing enterprises and a booming trade in tobacco.

The company soon began to show promise but the landlord took advantage of the fledgling firm’s success by not renewing the lease and setting up his own foundry on the property. Avery and Richmond relocated twice more, the final time to neighboring Halifax County, before dissolving their partnership. When his father died in 1842, B.F. Avery sold his foundry in Virginia to his brother and returned to New York.

In 1847 Avery and a nephew started a new plow-making business in Louisville, Kentucky, which became B.F. Avery & Sons. The company became one of the largest farm equipment makers in the country, first manufacturing horse-drawn farming implements, then motor-powered tractors, and continued in operation until Minneapolis Moline bought the company in 1951.

Today B.F. Avery tractors are a footnote in America’s agricultural history, one of many farm manufacturing companies that did not survive to the present day. Many of the company’s bright-red tractors, a mainstay of many small farmers, are today restored and cared for by enthusiasts and collectors.

Clarksville would be unrecognizable to B.F. Avery today. The town is unique in that it is the only incorporated town in the state that borders a lake. The John H. Kerr Dam, authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944 and completed in 1953, created a 50,000-acre lake that left 15 percent of Mecklenburg County underwater, including low-lying parts of Clarksville. Buggs Island Lake as it is called in Virginia, or, as it is known in North Carolina, Kerr Lake – its official name – makes Clarksville a destination for fishermen, boaters, and retirees.

-Dale Dulaney, Archival Assistant

Editor’s Note: Guest contributor Brent Tarter offers the following post, pointing out some interesting finds made by the creators of the Library of Virginia’s Union or Secession exhibition.

During Virginia’s secession crisis in the winter and spring of 1860-1861, men and women across the state wrote to Governor John Letcher to comment on public affairs. They wrote to tell the governor what to do, to ask for help, to offer advice and assistance, or to get something off their chests. While researching in preparation for the Library of Virginia’s exhibition, Union or Secession: Virginians Decide , we spent time looking through the letters received by Governor Letcher. Like the records of every Virginia governor since 1776, the letters are preserved in Record Group 3 of the state’s archives in the Library of Virginia. The Governor’s Office records are an extremely rich source for the beliefs and words of ordinary Virginians.

During 1860 and 1861 the governor received letters from men and women in every part of the state who expressed every possible opinion and political allegiance. “I would like to Know from you what is to prevent me from Voting for Lincoln,” Giles County resident John M. Smith asked Governor Letcher in September 1860. “As he is the man I prefer. the reason of this letter is that there is a great deal of threatning on the part of Slave holders in regard to poor men excerciseng the elective franchise.” It is unlikely that Smith was able to vote for Abraham Lincoln on election day, 6 November 1860. Although 1,929 Virginia men voted for Lincoln (most of them in the northwestern counties and in the upper Potomac River Valley), there is no record of any of those votes being cast in Giles County.

At the beginning of the crisis, most men and women in Virginia opposed secession, and it was not until April 1861 when the people of the state had to decide whether to fight with or against the United States that a majority favored secession.  In April 1861, Sarah A. Logan, of Goochland County, asked the governor to “Accept my services for my State. I have no son old enough, and my husband is one of the ‘homeguard’ so I wish with the assistance of my daughters to do something—anything. Hearing that red flannel shirts or jackets are needed, I will make as many as you can send me the materials for,— say five hundred or a thousand.” Probably referring to the more than fifty enslaved laborers on her family’s plantation, she assured the governor that “I can do it, as I have a large force at my command.”

The words of enslaved Virginians appear in court records that are preserved in the governor’s papers, too. Many enslaved people correctly foresaw that war would offer them new opportunities for freedom. According to testimony in a Mecklenburg County case, a slave named Sam made statements around his neighborhood that “from what I can find out, Old Lincoln is coming down the Mississippi river and will free every thing as he goes, and I think if we be pretty keen we will get our freedom too.” In May 1861, the county court convicted Sam of conspiring to make insurrection and sentenced him to be sold out of state, which the governor later commuted to forced labor on the public works, which likely meant Confederate defensive fortifications.

Virginia’s secession and the outbreak of war led to the creation of the new, free state of West Virginia. In May 1861, Robert Johnston, from Clarksburg, asked the governor to provide for the defense of politically divided western Virginia, explaining that in the west, “our intercourse is almost entirely with the West and the North, we have none with the Central and eastern portions of Virginia. We are not Slaveholders, many of us are of Northern birth, We read almost exclusively Northern newspapers and books, and listen to Northern preachers.”

Like a majority of Virginians, Governor Letcher (read his biography here) opposed secession until the middle of April 1861, and like most white Virginians in the east supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. His mail can be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in this period of Virginia’s history.  Learn more about this collection at the Library of Virginia in the Guide to the Executive Papers of Governor John Letcher, 1859-1863 (Accession 36787). 

 -Brent Tarter, founding editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography

Genealogists, take a break from the microfilm machine and those dusty documents! Find a seat on the couch and get ready to see your passion brought to life on the small screen.

The second season of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? begins this Friday, February 4, at 8 P.M. As you may know, each episode of the show follows a celebrity whose family tree is researched by experts – how fabulous it is to be a celebrity! The celebrities discover their hidden family stories and secrets as they travel to the archives that house their family records and the places where their ancestors lived. One episode last season featured Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith and revealed his family’s connection to Mecklenburg County, Virginia. See the episode here. Smith traveled to the county courthouse in Boydton to view records there and visited historic Boyd Tavern across the street.

This season promises more connections to Virginia with celebrity participants Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Rosie O’Donnell, Steve Buscemi, Kim Cattrall, Lionel Richie, Vanessa Williams, and Ashley Judd.

If you are inspired to begin tracing your ancestry after watching the show, the Library of Virginia is a great place to start. Our collection contains a wealth of Virginia records that cannot be found anywhere else. We also provide free access to Ancestry.com – a major sponsor of the show — in the building through our institutional subscription. The institutional subscription provides free access to all of the Ancestry.com databases; however, it does not provide access to message boards, family trees, etc.  Patrons must have individual subscriptions in order to access those features. A great guide to getting started with your genealogical research is here and a guide to the resources in the library building is here.

Tune in and tell us what you think of the show. Perhaps this program will inspire a few viewers to begin asking questions about their own families and start researching. The stories in those dusty documents and microfilm are waiting to be discovered.

-Dale Dulaney, Local Records Archival Assistant