Scope and Content Note
The papers of the Feamster family consist of diaries and notebooks, correspondence, financial papers, legal papers, trust agreements, notes and essays, circulars, certificates, tickets, newspaper clippings, genealogical material, and miscellaneous items. The collection is organized in four series: Diaries and Notebooks , Correspondence , Financial Papers , and Miscellany .
The papers span the years 1794-1967, with the bulk of the material originating between 1813-1946. Within this period the papers illustrate the activities of four interrelated families, whose members were engaged in farming, the law, medicine, the military, politics, religion, and other pursuits. The correspondence is replete with descriptions— physical, social, economic, and educational— of various areas and states in which members of the family visited or resided: Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Maryland. The collection also contains genealogical information about the Cary (Carey), Mathews (Matthews), Alderson, and Feamster families.
Specific items include a memorandum book, 1844-1872, of Martha Alderson Feamster; account book of Company A of the 14th Regiment of Virginia Cavalry kept by her sons, Thomas L. Feamster and Samuel William Newman Feamster, during the Civil War; diary, 1864-1865, of Thomas L. Feamster; journal of the military career, 1901-1923, of his grandson, Claudius Newman Feamster; letters, 1914-1953, from his sons, Robert Cantrell Feamster and Felix Claudius Feamster, concerning their experiences at college and as army surgeons in World War II; diary, 1849-1851, of Charles William Cary as a medical student; and correspondence, 1794-1879, of the allied Mathews (Matthews) and Cary (Carey) families of Virginia and Maryland
Of particular interest are letters that refer to the conduct of the War of 1812 in the West (Ohio), troop movements under General William Henry Harrison's command, and descriptions of camp life in the army of that period. Mention is made of Lafayette's visit to the United States in 1824, affairs of the Episcopal Church, the James River and Kanawha Company, local and national politics, and occurrences in the Virginia legislature in 1833-1834. Also of interest are letters and diaries that detail the movements and actions of a company of Virginia cavalry in the Civil War, especially an account and map of the Battle of Gettysburg. In later diaries and letters are descriptions of army life in the early 1900s and of occupied Germany after World War I. Still later groups of correspondence illustrate a college student's activities in the 1930s; detail conditions of life and events in the United States Army in Europe during World War II; and describe the American sector of occupied Germany immediately after the war. In the Miscellany is a typescript genealogy, written by the donor, of the Cary, Mathews, Alderson, and Feamster families, and biographical sketches of the more prominent members of the families.
Correspondents include J. D. Alderson, Cyrus Cary, Ophelia Mathews Cary, William Cary, Thomas L. Feamster, Eliza Cary Greene, Robert E. Lee, John Mathews, and Bishop William Meade.