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Wood family. Wood-Randolph family personal papers, 1813-1884.

Title: Wood-Randolph family personal papers, 1813-1884.

The papers in this accession were primarily collected by Julianna Randolph Wood and passed down to her descendants. They include her own letters to parents, siblings, husband and children, as well as those of her husband, and of her parents Edward and Mary Taylor Randolph. The letters are almost entirely limited to correspondence within the Wood-Randolph kinship group and have a distinctly domestic flavor. As such, they illuminate the social world and beliefs of an old Delaware Valley family that is maintaining its deep roots in the Society of Friends even as it enjoys increasing success through multiplying business enterprises. The papers show participation in typical Philadelphia Quaker institutions. Many letters are written to and from children while away from home at the Westtown School (which Julianna Randolph attended), the Haverford School, and Haverford College, and these are generally of a didactic nature. Other letters describe outings to Cape Island (Cape May), the Virginia Springs, or Crawford Notch. Much of the news is confined to family matters, including births, illnesses and deaths, but there are also obersvations on larger contemporary events, such as the Panic of 1857, the election and assassination of Lincoln, the Civil War, and the beginnings of Reconstruction. The letters of Edward Randolph reveal his greater involvement in the business of Quaker Meetings. In a letter from 1829, a 19-year old Julianna Randolph decribes a visit to the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's works at Mauch Chunk, then a showplace of Quaker enterprise and a popular tourist destination, and her ride on the two-year old gravity railroad. There is a handwritten family pedigree by Walter Wood and also a transcript of a poem by Harriet Beecher Stowe on the anniversary of the death of her son Henry Ellis Stowe by drowning at age 18, the latter doubtless created as an act of mourning after Caroline Wood died after being thrown from a horse at a similar age. The letters of Richard D. Wood discuss business as well as family matters, especially as he begins training his sons to enter the family firms. He refers to many of his business ventures, including the Millville Furnace and the Millville Manufacturing Company cotton factory, his investments in the Allentown and Cambria Iron Companies, his directorships in the Schuylkill Navigation Company and Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the promotion of the Millville and Glassboro Railroad, and other investments. Many of the letters are written home while on trips that combined business and pleasure, including a cotton-buying journey through Tennessee and Alabama, and to Manchester, London, and Paris. Towards the end of his life, the Woods and their younger children took an extended trip to Egypt and the Holy Land, returning through Europe. Richard D. Wood also socialized with his extended family, especially with his brothers Dr. George Bacon Wood, an eminent physician and professor of medicine, and Horatio Curtis Wood. Julianna R. Wood published Richard D. Wood's diaries and letters with some commentary in 1871-1874 in a limited edition of 100 copies for the use of family members. This biography, which is now available on Google books, give day-by-day accounts of many of the events summarized in this collection of letters. The whereabouts of the original manuscript diaries is unknown.

ArchivalResource: 289 items.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/318214155 View