Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of James Mercer Garnett, Accession #1719 , Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was purchased from the Peabody Book Shop, 1943 July 9.

Scope and Content Information

The collection contains the papers of Garnett; his son, James Mercer Garnett, Alumni Secretary of the University of Virginia; and his wife, active in the founding of Daughters of the Confederacy.

The papers include Garnett's diary for 1864; a letterbook of armament orders for the Confederacy; sketches of Civil War battles, probably read at Daughters of the Confederacy meetings; sketches of University of Virginia alumni who died in the Civil War; reminiscences of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg by Frederick W. Colston; an issue of the Baltimore Sunday Morning, June 29, 1913, re Gettysburg; and miscellaneous clippings.

There are also Sons of Confederate Veterans correspondence; University of Virginia alumni correspondence; Maryland Alumni Association of the University of Virginia correspondence; and Daughters of the Confederacy correspondence and reports, including a critique, 1905, of a U.S. history textbook unsympathetic to the Southern view of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

An 1893 letter from A.P. Bibb concerning Charlottesville River View Cemetery is written on stationery depicting land for sale by the Locust Grove Investment Company. A law register, 1894-1896, contains a record of cases handled, possibly by Benjamin Kurtz of Baltimore, Md. The 1895 October 28 issue of the Charlottesville Daily Progress contains an article on the burning of the Rotunda.

The collection also contains papers, 1901-1906, prepared for the Woman's Auxiliary, of Memorial Church, Baltimore, by Kate H. Garnett, re: mission work of the Episcopal Church in China, Japan, Liberia, and among North American Indians.

Miscellaneous University of Virginia items include an invitation to finals, 1895; football songs, 1897; final celebration of the Washington and Jefferson literary societies, 1898; closing exercises, 1898; salesman's dummy of "University of Virginia Its history, influence, equipment and characteristics"; summer school brochure, 1909; constitution and by-laws of the Jefferson Literary Society, n.d.; and an address delivered before the Society of Alumni of The University of Virginia, by Muscoe R. H. Garnett, 1850; and a University of Virginia library book of bound pamphlets including Garnett's "Address to the alumni of St. John's College," and extracts from his Civil War diary as published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, XXVII and XXVIII.

Miscellaneous family papers include photographs of James Mercer Garnett, Jr.; Old Blandford Church; and "Aldie," Doylestown, Pa.; proofs of Mercer family genealogy articles; a letter, 1903, from W.R. Mercer, on the family; and an article by Garnett on John Francis Mercer.