Collections

Papers relating to property owned by Anne Haughwout Cutler, of the Bucktrout-Braithwaite family in Williamsburg, Virginia. Cutler was the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Bucktrout, a cabinetmaker from London who moved to Williamsburg in 1766, where he opened a business making funeral coffins.

This collection contains chiefly correspondence with Washington and Lee University and United Daughters of the Confederacy officials, resolutions, and reports relating to her participation in the controversy over W&L President Henry Louis Smith's proposed renovation and expansion of the Lee Chapel. Also includes correspondence and clippings relating to fund-raising for the Stratford Hall restoration. Correspondents include members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Washington and Lee officials, and Lee family members. It also includes a copy of Mary Randolph Custis Lee's will dated 1918.

The collection consists of a variety of French, English, and American documents that span from the late thirteenth century to the year 1950.

The papers of Gordon M. Buck consist of professional legal papers and a small collection of personal material. The papers range mainly from the early 1920s to the 1940s, and contain records and briefs, memoranda, personal and business correspondence, court transcripts, and railroad trusteeship instruments. There are also several bound volumes of legal forms and documents, as well as case briefs and memoranda. Very thorough—if not entirely complete—records are included for the cases of Bogert v. Southern Pacific Co., Newark Plaster Co. v. Cross & Brown Co., the Pacific Oil Co. dissolution, and Young v. Southern Pacific Co.

The papers of New York attorney James L. Skerritt contain the cases of Thomas Smidt and Richard H. Strongman, US nationals with assets and property in Germany at the time of their deaths in 1940. Skerritt, acting as executor for both clients, dealt with the problems the settlements presented because of World War II. The majority of the documents consist of executor accounts and correspondence with the heirs. There is some correspondence with German lawyers and petitions with the War Claims Settlement Commission. Both cases were not completed until the 1960s.

The papers of John Ritchie III include professional papers, mainly correspondence, concerning legal education. There are also files that are related to his deanships at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin, and Northwestern University, as well as files that document his years at Virginia from 1972 until his death in 1988. His files reflect the range and intensity of his work after his official retirement. Predominant are the manuscripts and correspondence for Cases and Materials on Decedents' Estates and Trusts, editions five, six, and seven of The First Hundred Years: A Short History of the School of Law of the University of Virginia for the Period 1826-1926, as well as correspondence files concerning publications of the Foundation Press and committee activities of the Virginia Bar Association. The largest group of files is comprised of miscellaneous professional correspondence.

An artificial collection of papers created from material acquired during the 1930's and 1940's. Mostly letters, financial records, published material and official records of individuals in Virginia and elsewhere. Includes documents and signatures of well known people, such as Benjamin Harrison, John Randolph and Franklin D. Roosevelt.