The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the completion of the Petersburg chancery causes digital project. The scanning project was funded by the Circuit Court Records Preservation Program along with a $155,071 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The collection has been digitized from 1787 through 1912 and the images added to the Chancery Records Index. The most recently added suits cover the years 1889-1912.

The following are a few suits of interest found in the newly added Petersburg chancery digital images. 

In chancery cause 1907-055, George E. Fisher, for, etc. vs. Virginia Passenger & Power Company, etc., the plaintiffs ask the court to take over the floundering Virginia Passenger & Power Company in order to protect their financial stake in the business. The suit contains numerous exhibits including plats (images 616, 2030, 2032), minutes from board of directors’ and stockholders’ meetings (images 1878 and 1673). In 1908-034, John F. Crowder, etc. vs. Eli Tartt, etc., the suit stems from the unhappiness of the First Baptist (Colored) Church members with their pastor Eli Tartt. The plaintiffs wanted the court to remove Tartt as pastor of the church and their bill of complaint gives an account of a church meeting that became so uncontrollable that local police had to be called in to restore order (image 7). Crowder, the custodian of the church records, also accused Tartt of breaking open an iron safe in order to steal the records of the church (image 10). The church constitution was used as an exhibit in the suit (image 18). Chancery cause 1911-025, Frank Roberts vs. Emma Grace Roberts, is a scandalous divorce case in which plaintiff Frank Roberts claimed that his wife was impregnated by a person other than him. A letter from Mrs. Roberts’ paramour, living in Idaho at the time, was referred to in a deposition (image 19) and used as an exhibit (image 21).

The Petersburg (Va.) Chancery Causes, 1787–1912, are a nationally significant archival collection. The collection consists of approximately 270,000 leaves and 3,900 individual cases. The records illuminate the lives of numerous under-documented populations through a host of primary sources such as depositions, bills of complaint, affidavits, wills, business records, correspondence, and photographs. These records are particularly significant to historians in three ways: they enable historians to study industrial and economic development in an urban area, and the extent to which such cities provided opportunities for upward mobility, especially to minorities, in the eighteenth century; they document the lives of free African Americans in the city with the largest population of freedmen in the Mid-Atlantic states prior to 1860; and they contribute significantly to existing and future scholarship in the humanities, especially in the areas of African American, women’s, and legal history, but also with great potential in the areas of labor, immigrant, economic, and social history.

-Sherri Bagley, Local Records Archivist

Editors Note: This post originally appeared in the Virginiana section of Virginia Memory.

The beautiful maps in the Voorhees collection and those that reside in Special Collections are well known to Library of Virginia researchers. Yet thousands of rough but informative maps exist in the Library’s local government records collection. Often classified as “plats,” these detailed property maps were created and filed as part of county land records, chancery records, or other legal proceedings.

Some of the most interesting local plats are found within criminal papers. Murder trials occasionally required jurors to consider a particular crime scene, and the resulting sketches created for this purpose offer fascinating glimpses into landscapes and violent episodes. One is featured on the Library’s 1997 web exhibit The Common Wealth: Treasures from the Collections of the Library of Virginia. This drawing shows a portion of Manchester, Virginia, in 1869, at the time of a barroom-related shooting, complete with building facades and streets. And in her 2003 book A Murder in Virginia, based on three Commonwealth Causes against Pokey Barnes, Solomon Marable, and Mary Abernathy, historian Suzanne Lebsock drew upon a court-directed plat from Prince Edward County to illustrate the scene of an infamous 1895 crime involving four black defendants.

While processing Henry County’s criminal causes, I came across a number of particularly gruesome plats. The most remarkable one was filed in Commonwealth vs. Wade W. Lester, July 1897. This trial involved a mill owner who allegedly poisoned one of his mill hands with a mixture of liquor and strychnine, a rat poison. After drinking the mixture, the mill hand staggered back to his home and collapsed in the yard in view of his relatives. The court mapped out the man’s final steps, with a dotted line showing the man’s meandering walk towards home to the very “Point at which [he] died,” just 74 ½ yards short of his residence. The plat also shows neighborhood roads, railroad lines, creeks, and buildings.

In another cause, Commonwealth vs. Sam Valentine, April 1893, a plat was drawn to document a shooting. Trouble began one evening when Sam Valentine, an officer of the law, arrived at Alfred Hairston’s house party to serve a warrant on a guest. After Valentine entered and apprehended the accused man, someone in the crowd resisted, and a scuffle broke out. In the midst of the activity, Valentine shot one of the rowdies in the head, and the man eventually died from the wound. At the trial, the inquest committee sketched a floor plan of Hairston’s house, showing the position of the participants, as well as the hearth, stairs, and doors.

An even more elaborate plat was drawn for an arson investigation for Commonwealth vs. Silas Minter, September 1898 and January 1899. This oversized drawing revealed one neighborhood’s roads, houses, and creeks, plus its many barns. The defendant was accused of setting a barn full of oats and wheat on fire, causing $400 in damages. One issue under debate was whether the fire from several nearby stumps had set the barn on fire, so the map dutifully records the spot of the stumps and brush surrounding the barn in question.

Such maps may not match the artistic merit of those in specialized map collections, but for budding forensic historians, their lines can be just as revealing.

-Ryan Smith, Former Local Records Archivist