Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Preferred Citation

Dromgoole family. Records, 1788-1840. Business records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA 23219.

Acquisition Information

Gift of the Brunswick-Greensville Regional Library, 8 April 1959.

Biographical Information

Edward Dromgoole, Sr. (1751-1835) came from Ireland to Maryland in 1770. He served in various parts of Virginia as a traveling minister. Upon his marriage to Rebecca Walton (1753-1826) he settled in Brunswick County, Virginia in 1786, where he became a successful planter and merchant. He continued as an active local preacher on the Brunswick and later the Greensville circuits.

Dromgoole's children were Edward Dromgoole, Jr. (1788-1840), physician, planter, merchant, and Methodist minister of Brunswick County; Mary (d. 1835); Rebecca; Richard; and Thomas, who was also a Methodist minister. Another son, George Coke Dromgole (1797-1847), was a member of the Virginia House and Senate. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1835 through 1841, and from 1843 until his death.

Family mercantile operations appear to have been directed from a store at Canaan in Brunswick County, Virginia, with branch stores designated as Belfast, Oak Hill, Pleasant Grove, and Sligoe. These place names have not been definitely located on contemporary maps.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of the financial record books of the Dromgoole's stores at Belfast, Canaan, Oak Hill, Pleasant Grove, and Sligoe, Virginia. Accounts are recorded with individuals from Brunswick, Greensville, and Mecklenburg Counties, Virginia and from North Carolina. Invoice books contain names of numerous firms or individuals with whom Dromgoole placed his orders. All stores seem to have stocked a large selection of hardware, dry goods, groceries, cutlery, and china. Records of the various stores include daybooks, journals, ledgers, as well as arithmetic ciphering and exercise books of Asbury and George C. Dromgoole.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged into the following series: