James Graham Ramsay (1823-1903) attended Davidson College, 1823- 1841, and Jefferson Medcical College in Philadelphia, 1844-1848, and practiced medicine in Iredell and Rowan counties, N.C. He was a Whig state senator, 1856-1864, and served in the Confederate Congress. After the war, he was active in the state Republican Party and served again in the legislature in 1883. His children included James Hill Ramsay (1855-1930), longtime postmaster of Salisbury, N.C., and delegate to the 1896 national Republican Convention, and Claudius C. Ramsay (1865-1930), a prominent citizen of Seattle, Wash. Political, personal, and family papers of Ramsay family members. Political correspondence chiefly concerns activities of the Confederate Congress and of the N.C. Republican Party from Reconstruction until 1930. Correspondents include N.C. Governor Jonathan Worth and Senator Jeter Conley Pritchard. There is also family correspondence relating to social, financial, and economic conditions on the Tennessee and Ohio frontiers in the 1790s and in 19th-century Alabama and Seattle, Wash. In 1884, there are letters from William G. Ramsay, working and traveling in Africa. In 1895, there are materials relating to Sarah Foster Ramsay's fatal battle, possibly with breast cancer. Education of both male and female Ramsays figures in the Papers, from James Graham Ramsay's tenure at Davidson College and Jefferson Medical College to his daughter's attending college in the 1860s. Financial and legal materials include records of medical treatments of both slave and free populations and hiring out of slaves, 1829-1846. There are also many speeches and writings by James Graham Ramsay, including a series of courtship letters to his wife, his autobiography, and diaries, with brief entries documenting daily activities. Also included are a few diaries, 1822-1839, of Ramsay's mother and writings of other family members on religious and political themes. There is also a notebook of Ramsay's brother-in-law, containing cures for various ailments and detailed histories of notable medical cases.
