On 13 November 1860, J.S. Moore of Indiana wrote a letter to his Virginia relative Doctor Thomas Moore. Much of the letter has to do with health matters and the vibrant Indiana economy. The “Indiana Moore” then turned his attention to the recent 1860 presidential election. He provides “Virginia Moore” his thoughts on Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and who was responsible for the secession crisis pervading the nation at the time.

“I suppose Lincoln is elected President and report says the result has created a consternation in the South and an effort is being made to adopt a plan for secession. It does appear to me that it is folly and madness on their part to attempt resistance at all events until Lincoln or his party is guilty of an overt act that would justify such a procedure if justifiable it could be. I know that Mr. Lincoln holds today principles that you and I use to battle for under the leadership of Henry Clay.

And I do say when the Republican Party is assailed the assault is not made on their principles but a misrepresentation of those principles and I hold the Democratic Party responsible for the ill feeling engendered both North and South. They persist in saying here at home that the Republican Party proposes to make war on the Institutions of the South. In a word that it is the fixed purpose of Lincoln to abolish slavery in the States when they know he stands pledged against any thing of the kind and would frown down such a movement let it come from whatever source it may. The Democratic Party has depended for success on lieing [sic] and misrepresentation for the last Twenty years and their lies and slanders have recoiled on their own heads. And they can now have the melancholy pleasure of reviewing their past course and see the ‘Rock upon which they Split.’

If the Negroes of the South looked for assistance from the North simultaneously with the election of Lincoln they gathered it from the speeches and movements of such men as Keit, Rhett, Gist, Yancy, Wigfall, and your own citizen Henry A. Wise. And those men will live to see that they by given credence and utterance to slanders started in the North have done more to excite servile insurrection among the Slaves than any other set of published articles purporting to have been copied from the New York tribune & Cincinnati Gazette that were pronounced by these papers base slanders and forgeries and I knew them to be such as I am a somewhat careful reader of those papers.

I think the conservative men both North & South should counsel moderation and thereby allay the bitter strife that has convulsd [sic] the country the last six years. I will go ‘Old Abes’ security that he will do right  and I hope he will make those corrupt officials ‘scamper’ like the money changers of old for they have almost perverted the Government. Enough on this subject.”

The letter continued as J.S. Moore proceeded to get Dr. Moore up to date on various Moore family members and his upcoming marriage.

The J.S. Moore to Dr. Thomas Moore letter, along with other Civil War era correspondence found in the Rockbridge County court records, is available at the Library of Virginia.

-Greg Crawford, Local Records Coordinator

At the October 1903 session of Rockbridge County court, Oliver R. Bane, called “Dock” Bane (alternately spelled Bain), was convicted of unlawful assault against Lone B. Vess (alternately spelled Vest) and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary.  The grand jury indictment of Bane charged him with making “an assault and him the said Loane B. Vest feloniously and maliciously did strike, beat, cut and wound with intent him the said Loane B. Vest there and then to maim, disfigure, disable and kill.” The official charge was mayhem.  A newspaper article from the Lexington Gazette gives a fuller picture of the circumstances surrounding the crime.  The article states that Bane and Vess had gotten into a fight at the home of Mr. Dave Potter while returning home from a dance.  “Knucks and chairs were freely used in the battle” and Vess was struck on the head with a fire shovel.  Jury instructions from the case file indicate that part of Bane’s defense was that Vess had attacked him first and without provocation.  The article explained that Vess was not expected to recover and that the doctor had extracted several fragments of bone from his wounded skull.  Preserved as evidence in the case file are these bone fragments, wrapped up in tissue paper.  Vess did survive the attack and the loss of pieces of his skull and was summoned as a witness for the prosecution.  Bane arrived at the Virginia Penitentiary on 17 October 1903, prisoner #5086.  He served just over one year of his sentence and was paroled on 22 October 1904. The documents for Bane’s criminal trial can be found in Commonwealth vs. Oliver R. Bane alias Dock Bane in the Rockbridge County Judgments and Commonwealth Causes, 1902-1904 (Barcode 1140736).

-Sarah Nerney, Senior Local Records Archivist

In July 1814, entrepreneur William Weaver made a chance investment in the Virginia iron industry along with his new partner, Thomas Mayberry. Weaver and Mayberry purchased Union Forge (later renamed Buffalo Forge), located in Rockbridge County, and two blast furnaces, Etna Furnace and Retreat Furnace, in neighboring Botetourt County. Later, Weaver would become a prominent and successful ironmaster in Virginia and one of the largest slaveholders in Rockbridge County.

Initially, Weaver staffed his furnaces with a mixture of white laborers and hired slaves, but in October 1815 he purchased 11 slaves. Weaver would use this group of slaves, which included a valuable ironworker named Tooler, to form the basis of his large crew of skilled ironworkers.

In 1825, Weaver filed a chancery suit in the Augusta County courts to dissolve his partnership with Mayberry. It was a rather acrimonious dissolution, with contention over who owned the slaves purchased in 1815. In a cagey move, Weaver had the bill of sale for the slaves made out to himself, rather than to the partnership of Weaver & Mayberry, claiming that Mayberry was against slave ownership. While examining volumes found at the Augusta County Courthouse, I discovered nine volumes belonging to Weaver and his iron interests, which had been used as exhibits in the case.

The volumes cover a variety of topics and document the purchases Weaver and Mayberry made while establishing their iron interests in Virginia and record customer purchases of iron. But it is the details concerning the slaves living and working at Etna Furnace and Union Forge found throughout the records that make these volumes so unique. Weaver documented expenses paid for hiring slaves by listing their bond prices, recording the purchases of clothing and blankets for the slaves, and frequently mentioning payments made to “negroes for overwork.”

Slaves were compensated with their choice of either cash or goods from the ironmaster’s store for their “overwork.” To earn these funds slaves would perform such extra work as cording wood or working on Sunday or Christmas. They used their extra funds to purchase small luxury items such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, shoes, trousers, coats, cloth, or household items. Records included in the collection, such as the Etna Furnace Negro Book, illustrate the priorities of slaves and the choices they made with the funds they controlled themselves. This is a rare and invaluable glimpse into the private lives of slaves might not exist without such records.

The chancery cause, William Weaver vs. Thomas Mayberry, 1831, is part of the Augusta County Chancery Collection and is being prepared for digitization funded in part by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC); however, the volumes that comprise the William Weaver Business Records are open for research.

-Bari Helms, Local Records Archivist