Attic with 400 years of paperwork found.

[GL]

This may not be gold dubloons or a box of diamonds...but how cool is THIS?

For four centuries, they were the ultimate pack rats. Now a Maryland family's massive collection of letters, maps and printed bills has surfaced in the attic of a former plantation, providing a firsthand account of life from the 1660s through World War II.

"Historians are used to dealing with political records and military documents," said Adam Goodheart, a history professor at nearby Washington College. "But what they aren't used to is political letters and military documents kept right alongside bills for laundry or directions for building a washing machine."

Goodheart is working with state archivists and a crew of four student interns to collect the documents, which were found stuffed into boxes, barrels and peach baskets.

"Look at this: 'Negro woman, Sarah, about 27 years old, $25,'" Goodheart says, reading from a 19th century inventory. "It was as though this family never threw away a scrap of paper."

The documents include maps, letters, financial records, political posters, even a lock of hair from a letter dated Valentine's Day, 1801. There's a love poem from the 1830s (in which a young man graphically tells his sweetheart what he'd do if he sneaked into her room on a winter's night), along with war accounts and bills of sale from slaves and crops.

The papers come from several generations of the Emory family, prominent tobacco and wheat farmers who settled here on a land grant from Lord Baltimore in the 1660s.

The former Poplar Grove plantation is still in family hands, though the mansion now is used only as a hunting lodge. The documents were moldering in an attic until students touring the house started sorting through them this spring.

"I don't believe any of us knew these papers were there," said Mary Wood, an Emory cousin whose son inherited the plantation in 1998. "We didn't go there all that often, and when you do, you don't go up in people's attics and look around."

Washington College has had access to the plantation for years, but Goodheart said he assumed the papers in the attic weren't old or important.

They aren't in any particular order, and some are mouse-eaten tatters that look like something out of "The Da Vinci Code."

"You really get a sense of the range of America through these papers," said Edward Papenfuse, director of the Maryland State Archives, which will eventually house them.

Perhaps most strikingly, letters tell of a family's torn allegiances during the Civil War. The Emorys lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore, across Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore, where the plantation economy of the South ended and the abolitionist industrial North began.

It was a conflict the Emorys catalogued, anti-slavery petitions stacked alongside records of slaves sent to Natchez, Miss., and a packet of letters, still tied in silk ribbon, titled, "Correspondence with W.H. Emory and wife in regard to his resignation from U.S. Army, 1861."

The Emorys owned slaves, but some signed an 1832 petition to the Maryland legislature calling for the gradual eradication of slavery.

One family member, William H. Emory, was a colonel in the U.S. Army when the Civil War began. He wrote out a resignation of his post, then changed his mind and fought for the Union.

Two sons also fought in the Civil War — one for the Union, one for the Confederacy. Bundles of letters from all family members detail their divided feelings. The family kept not just personal letters, but political posters about the conflict.

"These are things that usually do not survive," Papenfuse said, pointing to a broadside blasting then-President Martin Van Buren for favoring voting rights for "every free negro." "After the heat of a campaign, this printed matter was thrown out or put to other uses, including the outhouse."

Not so at the Emory house, where even small scraps of paper were kept alongside military uniforms and other family heirlooms.

The collection also includes notes on an aspect of slavery historians know little about: the practice of renting slave labor to neighbors and plantations farther south.

"Scholars have not paid a great deal of attention to it, but this is something that helps recreate and draw back together the lives of these people who were considered chattel," Papenfuse said.

Relatives are also curious to know what historians find.

"I can't believe they didn't throw this stuff out," Wood said with a chuckle. "I mean, it's kind of weird. It's fascinating, though. I can't believe that something might come out of it."

 

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[pegleglooker]

I would love to see what they have on William H Emory. He was very important in early Southern California history.





During the Mexican War, General Stephen Watts Kearny and advance units of his Army of the West made a rigorous trek west from Yuma in 1846. Lieutenant William H. Emory in his narrative of the expedition reported that the soldiers proceeded southwest around the dunes to the well at Alamo Mocho, which he described as:

"What had been the channel of a stream, now overgrown with a few ill-conditioned mezquite, a large hole where persons had evidently dug for water. It was necessary to halt to rest our animals, and the time was occupied in deepening this hole, which after a long struggle, showed signs of water. An old champagne basket, used by one of the officers as a pannier, was lowered in the hole, to prevent the crumbling of the sand. After many efforts to keep out the caving sand, a basket-work of willow twigs effected the object, and much to the joy of all, the basket, which was now 15 or 20 feet below the surface, filled with water.” (7)

Lt. Emory continued that they followed a winding course, skirting the base of the dunes, and then proceeding northwest over, "...an immense level of clay detritus, hard and smooth as a bowling green. . .." They reached a salt lake (probably the "Big Laguna," one of the ponds caused by a flow in the New River) but the soldiers found no relief, as Lt. Emory noted: "As we approached the lake, the stench of dead animals... put to flight all hopes of our being able to use the water.” (8) From that point the column proceeded to Carrizo Creek, where it finally located water and a way out of the desert. Lt. Emory calculated that the soldiers had made the desert crossing of some 96 miles in 3 days. Although this was done in November, thereby missing the summer heat, the troops did suffer from lack of water and the difficulty of marching through sand. These contributed significantly to the fatigue of animals and men that plagued Gen. Kearny's command in its unfortunate encounter with Californio lancers at San Pasqual. In an ironic twist, later that year much the same route was followed in reverse by the defeated Mexican General Jose Castro in his flight from Alta California to Sonora.



The map above is one of the earlist records of where and how the path went. This would most likely be the path that Pegleg Smith would have taken..Since this is from the early to mid 1800's.

PLL

 

[pookie-princess of rust]

interesting...

 

[Burdie]

LOVE THAT HISTORY!!

Burdie

 

[ncali_treasurehunter]

That would be an awesome find just sitting in someones attic for so long and to be able to go through it and read generations of things going on in this family and our nation valuable piece of history.

 

[StormGazr]

That would be an awesome find just sitting in someones attic for so long and to be able to go through it and read generations of things going on in this family and our nation valuable piece of history.

AMEN to that!!! What a fantastic find!!

Storm/Tammy