Family letters, financial and legal materials, and other papers relating to the Munchus and Galyean families. Letters are mostly from relatives, who were either travelling on business or settled in Alabama or Georgia. Letters show relatives selling brandy in Georgia in 1842. Two letters, 1855 and 1860, urge James Munchus to move west. The 1860 letter also mentions humorist and local color writer Hardin E. Taliaferro, who left Surry County for Tennessee and Alabama in the late 1850s. Also in the 1860s, there is an unsigned note that laments the writer's having lost his slaves and investments during the Civil War and bad luck working with freedmen after the war. An undated letter, probably from the 1870s, is from a homesick acquaintance of James C. Galyean in Winston, N.C., to Galyean, complaining about her loneliness in town. The greater portion of the collection consists of indentures, bills, receipts, plats, summonses, and other financial and legal materials relating to both families. In 1844 and 1847, there are deeds conveying land from the Munchuses to the Galyeans; these are the only materials linking the two families. Also included are four small notebooks, two of which contain extensive printed discussions of the efficacy of various patent medicines.
