William Worrell Vass was treasurer, 1845-1893, of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad and an official of the Chatham, the Raleigh and Augusta, and the Seaboard Airline Railroads (later merged into the CSX Corporation). Railroad business records, family and personal business correspondence, and other materials of W. W. Vass. Railroad materials are most plentiful for the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, but are present for the numerous roads with which Vass was in some way associated over his long career. These materials include extensive incoming and copies of outgoing correspondence as well as financial records of many kinds, reports, minutes of stockholders meetings, and other items.The bulk of the railroad records date from the 1870s to the 1890s, with some earlier material included. Also included are letterpress copy and sales invoice books of the Carolina Paper Company, 1895-1896. Family and personal business correspondence of Vass consists mainly of correspondence and other items concerning the numerous loans Vass made to individuals in Granville and Wake counties and other areas and to the properties he rented, particularly in Granville County.There are also letters from relatives and friends, papers relating to Vass's activities as a Baptist layman, especially material relating to the North Carolina Baptist Publications and Sunday School Society in the 1840s, and detailed records of the course and treatment of the typhoid fever suffered by Vass's son Will in 1898.
