Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Cabell Rives (1793-1868) span the years 1674-1939, with the greater part dated between 1830 and 1890. The collection consists of diaries, correspondence, writings, financial records, printed matter, and miscellaneous material and is organized into eleven series: Diaries ; Journals ; Letterbooks ; Bound Correspondence ; Family Correspondence ; General Correspondence ; Speech, Article, and Book File ; Financial File ; Scrapbooks ; Miscellany ; and Thomas and Francis Walker Papers .
The papers include Journals and Diaries kept by various members of the Rives family and a large group of family letters dated from 1817 through 1939. The non-family correspondence , covering the years 1674-1909, contains letters of political and diplomatic significance reflecting on Southern politics, Jacksonianism, the Whig political movement, diplomatic relations with France, slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The collection also includes a draft of The History of the Life and Times of James Madison,an uncompleted biography by Rives published between 1868 and 1873, as well as drafts of an unpublished autobiography, his speeches, novels, and other writings.
Prominent among Rives’s correspondents were James Barbour, David Campbell, James Fenimore Cooper, Edward Everett, Millard Fillmore, James Hamilton, Jr., William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, Abbott Lawrence, Hugh Swinton Legaré, William Berkeley Lewis, Dolley Madison, James Madison, J. M. Mason, James Monroe, Nathaniel Niles, Thomas Ritchie, John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, and Robert C. Winthrop.
The papers of Thomas Walker (1715-1794), physician, explorer, merchant, army officer, guardian of Thomas Jefferson, and grandfather of Rives’s wife, Judith Page Walker, and his son Francis Walker (1764-1806), lawyer and United States representative, have been separately arranged as the final series of the Rives collection. The Walker papers span the years 1744-1835. The majority of these fall between the years 1760 and 1795.
Of major interest among these papers are the journal kept by Thomas Walker during his exploration of the Loyal Land Company’s holdings in 1750; correspondence between Jefferson and the elder Walker, as well as accounts, concerning the administration of Peter Jefferson’s estate; a large number of accounts, invoices, and receipts bearing on Walker’s service as commissary-general to Virginia troops under Washington and William Byrd, in 1755 and 1760-1762; and the other report of the Virginia commissioners on negotiations with the Ohio Indians at Fort Pitt in 1775.
The General Correspondence is fairly evenly divided between letters to the elder Walker and to his son. The correspondence of Thomas Walker spans the period from 1745 into the early 1790's, bearing chiefly on his activities as a merchant and land speculator; that of Francis Walker is concentrated between 1790 and 1795, concerning legal and family affairs. Chief correspondents include Adam Hoops, Robert Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Lewis, James Madison, James Monroe, Edmund Pendleton, and George Washington.
Over three-fourths of the Walker papers are of a financial nature, chiefly accounts, invoices, and receipts. In addition to the Jefferson and commissary accounts of Thomas Walker, these items also include many items pertaining to his activities as a planter and merchant. There are several items bearing on the affairs of the Loyal Land Company and the Dismal Swamp Canal Company, land ventures with which both Walkers were associated.
Of note in the Miscellany series are the surveyor’s notebooks and plats made by Thomas Walker, chiefly from his tenure as deputy surveyor of Augusta County, Virginia. Also included are printed items apparently used by Francis Walker during his term as United Sates representative from Virginia.