Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Guide to the Hubard Family Papers, Accession # 8039, 8039-a, 8039-b, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The original collection was a 1965 loan of Robert T. Hubard Jr. (IV) of Hampden-Sydnye, Va. On May 14, 1974, Mr. Hubard made a gift of the original collection (8039) to the University of Virginia together with two groups of additional materials (8039-a, 8039-b), which are interfiled in the original collection. On the same date Mr. Hubard gave his literary rights to the collection to the University of Virginia.

Scope and Content Information

The Hubard Family Papers, ca. 1749(1845-1930)1950, consist of 12 shelf feet of chiefly correspondence, legal documents, bills and receipts, account books and printed material os the first, second, and third Robert T. Hubards.

Robert Thruston Hubard I (1808-1871), who was educated at Hampden-Sydney and the University of Virginia, was a planter at "Rosney "in Buckingham County and after 1850, at "Chellowe ", which he purchased from his brother-in-law, Robert Bolling. Hubard's wife, formerly Susan Pocahantas Bolling, was seventh in descent from John Rolfe's marriage to Pocahantas through a granddaughter, Jane Rolfe, who married Colonel Robert Bolling in 1675. This ancestry is represented in the collection by ca. 50 pages of genealogical material. Of interest in the correspondence are letters to Hubard from his brothers William Bolling Hubard and Edmund Wilcox Hubard, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1841-1847, touching on political issues of the period, and ca. 30 letters, 1851-1857, from Hubard's son, James L., relating his experiences as a cadet at Virginia Military Institute. Also included are a letter from Philip St. George Cocke concerning James Linneaus Hubard's appointment to VMI, an extensive 1840 letter from Buchner Thruston re: Hubard family history and numerous letters concerning plantation business. Other Robert Thruston Hubard I material of note are his plantation journals, 1847-1871, and his lecture notes for Professor Tucker's economics class at the University of Virginia in 1828.

Robert Thruston Hubard II (1839-1921) after attending Hampden-Sydney College and the University of Virginia Law School, practiced law for several years in Richmond before returning to "Chellowe "in 1887, practicing law thereafter in Buckingham, Cumberland, and Prince Edward Counties. Among the legal papers in the collection are ca. 40 documents of the Orange- Keysville Railway, of which Hubard was president. The majority of the correspondence to and from him concerns the legal cases that he handled. Included are letters from members of the Tucker family re: the family estate, letters from H.C Cabell and H.P. Randolph as well as several letters from Thomas Staples Martin relating to a legal case. Of special note among the correspondence are a letter from Horace Greeley dated May 30, 1872 concerning the sending of a delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, a letter from George C. Cabell to President-Elect McKinley recommending that Hubard be appointed First Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, and a letter from Governor William Smith commending Robert T. Hubard II for his work in the Virginia Legislature, 1875-1877.

During the Civil War, Robert T. Hubard was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Third Virginia Cavalry, during which time he wrote several letters containing accounts of battles in which he participated. And in a June 5, 1910 letter to his son, he recounts the battle of May 8, 1864, on the Brock road near Spottsylvania Courthouse.

Also among the correspondence are copies of letters dating 1835-1842 from John R. Edmunds, Hubard's father-in-law, to Walter C. Coles, a member of the U.S. Congress. In these letters Edmunds discusses political issues of the period, e.g. abolitionism, the U.S. Treasury, and economic policy. In addition the collection contains ca. 70 pages of genealogical material and history of the Edmunds family.

Robert Thruston Hubard III (1876- ) was educated at Hampden-Sydney College, as was his father, and the University of Virginia Law School, after which he practiced law in Fayetteville, West Virginia. He married Ruth Drewry Whittle, daughter of Judge Stafford G. Whittle of Martinsville, Va., after a courtship in which they exchanged numerous letters amounting to 2 shelf feet along with those written during their marriage.

Among the general material of the colelction are several items concerning slavery, such as a list of Robert T. Hubard I's slaves and their value at the time of emancipation, a list of Virginia counties having fewer than 500 taxable slaves and a table of the population, both slave and white, of Virginia by decades from 1790-1840.

Organization

The collection is divided into four major sections in the following order: 1) correspondence, 2) legal documents and memoranda, 3) bills, receipts, promissory notes and accounts, 4) general material. In each of sections 1-3 the material is arranged chronologically. The material of section 4 is grouped topically in descending order of importance.