A Guide to the Virginia Electric and Power Company Records, 1849-ca. 1995 Virginia Electric and Power Company Records, 1849-ca. 1995 37345

A Guide to the Virginia Electric and Power Company Records, 1849-ca. 1995

A Collection in
the Library of Virginia
Accession Number 37345


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Library of Virginia

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Phone: (804) 692-3888 (Archives Reference)
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Email: archdesk@lva.virginia.gov(Archives)
URL: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/

© 2004 By the Library of Virginia. All rights reserved.

Processed by: Alex Lorch

Repository
Library of Virginia
Accession number
37345
Title
Virginia Electric and Power Company Records, 1849-ca. 1995
Extent
32 cubic feet and approximately 510 volumes
Language
English

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Use Restrictions

Virginia Power retains all patent rights, copyrights, property rights, literary rights, and publication rights to the records. Permission to publish must be obtained from Virginia Power.

Preferred Citation

Virginia Electric and Power Company, Records, 1849-ca. 1995. Accession 37345, Business Records Collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

Gift of the Virginia Electric and Power Company, Richmond, Virginia in May 2000.

Processing Information

Much of the collection was originally arranged by the company according to an ambiguous lettering and numbering system that could not be deciphered by the processing archivist. The collection subsequently was rearranged according to current archival standards but the numbers for the original files were retained and are written on each folder. Ute Schechter, a former archivist at The Library of Virginia, was the original processor of this collection.

Historical Information

The Virginia Electric and Power Company, now known as Dominion Virginia Power, comprises approximately 250 subsidiary companies which were purchased or merged into the company over its 220 year existence. For the purposes of this description, Virginia Electric and Power Company will be shortened to its acronym and pseudonym "VEPCO." The company became known as the Virginia Electric and Power Company in 1925 when its two principal subsidiaries, the Spotsylvania Power Company of Fredericksburg and the Virginia Railway and Power Company, merged. To facilitate description, "VEPCO" will be used to describe the company both before and after this merger.

In 1787, the Virginia General Assembly established the Appomattox Trustees, a corporation whose original purpose was clearing, improving and extending the navigation along the Appomattox River so that rum and tobacco might be hauled into the Virginia highlands from the Tidewater and Hampton Roads. Since the founding of this corporation, more than 250 subsidiary companies founded for various and sundry enterprises as water power, real estate, horse shoe manufacturing, ice making, coal mining, laundry, railway and trolley service, ferry service and street lighting have joined the corporate ancestry of VEPCO. Like the Appomattox Trustees the earliest subsidiaries of VEPCO generally organized to focus on the development of canals and water power in Virginia. By the mid-19th century, however, the arrival of passenger railways and electricity, especially in urban areas, had displaced water travel and power as the focus of VEPCO subsidiary companies. Many VEPCO subsidiaries flourished during the late 19th and early 20th century after the appearance of urban electrical streetcars.

On 29 June 1909, the Virginia Railway and Power Company was incorporated to acquire three of the largest rail companies in Richmond. This was the corporate birthday and the real beginning of the Virginia Electric and Power Company. During the 1910's the company operated streetcars in four cities under complex and inflexible franchises. After World War I streetcar fares failed to adjust to meet increased cost demand. In the early 1920's city, state and national government and courts were asked to take charge of the crisis. Ultimately the Virginia State Corporation Commission took jurisdiction over public transportation and electrical companies, but failed to address the fare issue. As a result by the mid-1920's, streetcar and electrical companies had shifted their business pendulum to focus principally on the distribution of electrical power. For the next three quarters of a century, this power company continued to consolidate smaller companies and increase the size of its power grid throughout Virginia and Northern North Carolina.

Scope and Content

Records, 1849-ca. 1995, of the Virginia Electric and Power Company (VEPCO) consisting of advertisements including posters and broadsides, correspondence, journals, ledgers, legal files, memorabilia, minute books, photographs, plats, publications including booklets and pamphlets, scrapbooks, for the company and its subsidiary companies.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically and chronologically with folder contents in reverse chronological order. Organized into the following ten series: Series I. General Counsel/Vice President Files (Subseries A. Correspondence, Subseries B. Legal Files, Subseries C. Financial Files, Subseries D. Personnel Files, Subseries E. Annual Reports, Subseries F. Jamestown Exposition Files), Series II. Treasurer's Files (Subseries A. Customer Accounts, Subseries B. Dividend and Stock Accounts), Series III. VEPCO Relief Association Files, Series IV. Publications, Series V. Right-of-Way Plats, Series VI. Photographs, Series VII. Advertisements, Series VIII. Scrapbooks, Series IX. Memorabilia, Series X. Minute books and ledgers.

Related Material

Virginia Electric and Power Company, Collection of miscellaneous brochures, ca. 1950 (LVA Accession 38155). Also see library collection for various printed items.

Adjunct Descriptive Data

Contents List

Series I: General Counsel and Vice President Files, 1887-1942
Box 1-32
14.4 cubic feet

These are the files kept by the General Counsel, who also was a vice president of the company. The majority of this series contains legal files, but there is also material in this series from other departments and pertaining to other matters that required executive decisions. The General Counsel's papers remain together as they were filed by the company; however, the folders have been alphabetically rearranged according to subject.

Alphabetically and then chronologically with folder contents arranged in reverse chronological order. This maintains the original organization incorporated by the company.

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Series II: Treasurer's Files, 1910-1925
Box 33-39
3.15 cubic feet

Contains the correspondence and financial files of the company treasurer and his staff.

Alphabetically and then in reverse chronological order.

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Series III: Virginia Railway and Power Company Relief Association Files, 1921-1927
Box 40
.45 cubic feet

Principally consists of certificates of attending physicians denoting service rendered to members of the Virginia Railway and Power Company Relief Association for injury or illness. Certificates contain information including member's name and job position, physician's name, and illness or injury.

Alphabetically by member's name.

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Series IV: Publications, 1907-1965, 1990
Box 30, 41-52
4.475 cubic feet

These are pamphlets, articles, and booklets primarily concerning public utility and jitney rates, jitney and public transportation legislation, VEPCO department yearly summaries submitted for awards, and VEPCO newsletters.

Alphabetically.

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Series V: Right-Of-Way Plats, 1905, 1909, 1928
Box 30, 52-53
.675

These are blueprints for plats of right-of-way property belonging to the Richmond and Chesapeake Railway, a VEPCO subsidiary. Arranged by adjacent property holder's surname. There is also a bound volume of court documents, 1928, pertaining to VEPCO right-of-ways.

Alphabetically.

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Series VI: Photographs, ca. 1905-ca. 1995
Box 54-61

Principally contains photographs of executives in the late 1980's and 1990's, the Twelfth Street Power Station in Richmond and other electric plants and substations, power lines and other electrical structures. There are also photographs of VEPCO staff functions from the 1920's-1950's and Richmond street photographs showing electrical and trolley lines.

Alphabetically.

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Series VII: Advertisements, 1955-1970
Map-case G-14 Drawer 19-20
Approx. .65 cubic feet.

Chiefly contains publicity broadsides created by VEPCO and VEPCO's advertising contractor Cargill, Wilson and Acree for publication as posters and in newspapers, magazines, and other printed material. These advertisements generally promote the expanded use of electrical household appliances, the purchase of electrically operated homes, and the conversion to electrical agricultural equipment by farmers.

Chronologically.

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Series VIII: Scrapbooks, 1905-1969
Box 62
Approx. 3.375 cubic feet.

Volumes of clippings from Virginia newspapers concerning VEPCO and its subsidiary companies.

Alphabetically.

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Series IX: Memorabilia, undated
Box 63-66
Approx. .35 cubic feet.

Contains insulators, embossers for VEPCO subsidiaries, and an award medal issued in 1966 to VEPCO by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.

Arranged by material type. (FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE)

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Series X: Minute books and ledgers, 1849-1952

These are account books, cash journals, board of directors' and stockholders' minute books, by-laws, stock ledgers, receivers' registers, and other general ledgers for VEPCO and its subsidiaries. Numbers in parentheses are an anitquated and undeciphered numbering system employed by VEPCO.

Arranged alphabetically and then chronologically.

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