Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

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Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of the Ambler, Carrington and Minor Families, Accession #244, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was given on 1938 December 9th to the Library as a gift.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of twelve items, 1796-1845, concerning the Ambler, Carrington, and Minor families. There are eleven letters, 1831-1845, from John Barbee Minor to his brother, Lucian Minor, and Charles R. Slaughter, as well as a bound volume containing manuscript copies of letters, 1796-1823, from Eliza Jaquelin Ambler to her sister, Ann (Ambler) Fisher. Eliza Jacquelin Ambler later married Col. Edward Carrington.

The letterbook labelled "The Carrington Letters, 1796-1823" contains manuscript copies of letters, 1780-1823, from Eliza Jacquelin Ambler Carrintgon to her sister Ann Ambler Fisher, and friends Mildred Dudley and Frances Cairnes. The letters contain news of family and friends including Eliza and Ann's brother-in-law John Marshall. A scandal involving the seduction of family friend Rachel Warrington by the Viscount Rochambeau and the U.S. naval career of their son Louis [Lewis] Warrington is discussed for forty years. Other topics include life in colonial Yorktown, Va., royal governors Botetourt and Dunmore, and the siege of Yorktown, flight to Winchester, Va., Tarleton's raid, verbal abuse of a family slave by visitors from England, a visit to Mt. Vernon shortly before George Washington's death, and the decline of the Anglican church after the Revolution.

Following the letters are an introduction and a chapter of a proposed novel titled Variety, or the Vicissitudes of Life begun by Mrs. Carrington "to amuse and instruct" the younger members of her sister's family. There is also an extract of a letter believed to be written by a sister of Chief Justice Marshall, which is followed by a copy of the eulogy written by Chief Justice Marshall about his wife.

John Barbee Minor (1813-1895), the youngest of the nine children of Lancelot and Mary Overton (Tompkins) Minor, was born in Louisa County, Virginia at "Minor's Folly." He attended local schools, and later spent a year at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. He entered the University of Virginia in 1831, where he graduated in law, and was admitted to the bar. He practiced law for six years in Buchanan, Botetourt County. He returned to Charlottesville where he continued to practice law, until he was appointed to be the fourth professor of law at the University of Virginia, where he taught for fifty years. Letters from John Barbee Minor are written from Kenyon College, and the University of Virginia while he attended school there. The letters discuss his experiences in college, his candidacy for the legislature, and his appointment to the University of Virginia as a professor of law in 1845. A letter of September 1845 discusses John Minor's thoughts on selling his slave, Lucy, and his desire that she be able to stay with her husband, James.

Lucian Minor (1802-1858) was also born in Louisa County, and attended the Nelsons' classical school nearby and later taught school. He spent several months during 1823 studying law at the College of William and Mary, moved to Alabama following graduation, and settled in Louisa County to practice law. He was the commonwealth's attorney for the county from 1828-1852. He became a professor of law at William and Mary in 1855. He was a temperance advocate and a participant in the Virginia prohibitory movement of the 1840s and 1850s. He published pamphlets and articles in the Southern Literary Messenger . He married Lavinia Callis Price in 1846; they had four children.