Scope and Content Note
The papers of the Dunlop family consist of correspondence, business records, legal files, wills, indentures, estate papers, financial papers, speeches, printed matter, and miscellaneous items and span the years 1713-1930 with the bulk of the material dating from 1776 to 1876. The papers are organized in the following series: General Correspondence, Business Records, Legal File, Financial Records, Miscellany, and Oversize.
The collection contains family letters from 1776 to 1816 and from 1840 to 1860. General correspondence, legal papers, and financial and business records from 1775 to 1825 document the tobacco and grain business of James Dunlop I (1724-1790) and James Dunlop II (1755-1824) in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.; New York; Glasgow; and London. Similar material highlights the Washington law practice of Robert P. Dunlop and his brother, James Dunlop III (b. 1793), a lawyer and judge of the Criminal and Circuit Courts of the District of Columbia.
The Miscellany series includes school and collegiate papers and records of Francis Key Dunlop and William Laird Dunlop, sons of James Dunlop III, material concerning the court martial of Samuel W. Downing, Eliza Biddle's diary, land deeds, lot numbers, and surveys in Washington, D.C., and vicinity, and papers relating to the Union Turnpike and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company.
Principal business correspondents include Andrew Buchanan, David Buchanan, James Buchanan, James Campbell, Thomas Hyde, John Laird, William S. Nicholls, Henry Ritchie, James Ritchie, James Robertson, William Robertson, Michael Wallace, and Hugh Wyllie.
Other family correspondents include Barbara Laird Dunlop, Grace Dunlop, William Dunlop, and William Laird.