Dandridge Family Collection

Archive

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Jefferson County Museum

Name/Title

Dandridge Family Collection

Entry/Object ID

ARC229

Scope and Content

The Dandridge Family Collection contains 1874 individual items, including seven accounting ledgers, receipts for financial/ commercial transactions, letters, and legal documents from several generations of the Dandridge family living on the Bower farm near Leetown, West Virginia. The collection primarily reflects management of a large estate and domestic affairs, including enslaved and freed African Americans, by three generations of women in the family. Documents are labeled by number and described briefly in an inventory attached in Media. Most have dates ranging from 1817 to 1915. Many of the receipts are from the accounts of Sarah Pendleton Dandridge and date from 1821, when her husband (Adam Stephen Dandridge I) died to 1838, when her son (Adam Stephen Dandridge II) began managing the farm. Letters and accounts extend the materials through circa 1915. Many of the letters belonged to Adam S. Dandridge II (1814-1894) and his daughter Serena Catherine Dandridge (1838-1904), known as Nannie. Many of the accounting records were by Isabelle Lawrence Dandridge who married Lemuel Dandridge, son of A. S. Dandridge II and Serena Catherine Pendleton Dandridge. Arrangement of numbered items #1-97 Letters to Sarah Pendleton Dandridge and A. S. Dandridge, I and II, 1814-1856. #98-104 Account books of Sarah Pendleton Dandridge, A. S. Dandridge II, Lemuel Purnell Dandridge, and Isabelle Lawrence Dandridge. #105-583 Receipts, statements of accounts with individuals and businesses, mostly 1820s and 1830s. #584-636 Letters, many of Nannie's, 1860s through 1915. #637-1874 Receipts and records as above, including personal property tax records for the county, 1820s-1830s. In Media is more information about the Bower Dandridges and this collection of documents written by a descendant of A. S. Dandridge I and Sarah Pendleton Dandridge. See ARC767 for Dandridge genealogical information and Jefferson County Historical Society Magazine, Vol. XXIV, Dec 1958, pp. 9-15, for more information on The Bower and Dandridges.

Acquisition

Accession

185

Source or Donor

Dandridge Family (E. P. Dandridge, Elizabeth Dandridge McDonald, Elizabeth Dandridge Wolf)

Acquisition Method

Gift

Archive Details

Date(s) of Creation

1817 - 1915

Archive Size/Extent

5 boxes