Civil War Archive of the Summers Family, West Virginia

Civil War Archive of the Summers Family, West Virginia, 1863-1866

Archive of approximately 104 letters from the Summers Family of Kanawha County, in what became West Virginia, the majority dated between 1863-1866 many including stamped envelopes. The letters are exchanged mainly between Lewis Summers with his father George William Summers, his mother Amacetta Laidley Summers, and his uncle William Sydney Laidley (1839-1917) while Lewis was attending Marietta College.

George William Summers II (1804-1868) was a prominent attorney, judge, and politician in Virginia and the newly created West Virginia. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and later he was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Whig from Virginia’s 19th Congressional District. Following an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1851, Summers was elected a circuit court judge for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. He represented Kanawha County at the 1861 Richmond secession convention where he gave an impassioned Unionist speech against the Ordinance of Secession. In 1871, Summers County in southern West Virginia was named in his honor. He married Amacetta Laidley (1818-1892) in 1833, the eldest child of John Osborne Laidley (1791-1863), a veteran of the War of 1812 and Virginia politician.

The correspondence of the Summers family colorfully illustrates the complex opinions and turbulent politics of the newly formed West Virginia. The Summers themselves seem to have mixed opinions despite patriarch George being a staunch Unionist, rumored to have been considered for a cabinet position or federal judgeship by President Lincoln. His son Lewis seems to have Confederate sympathies remarking on March 20, 1864, “I suppose Crook will advance if the rebs don't do it before him. Breckenridge is to command...then I certainly hope that there will be no more retreats that would finish up the Valley.” He writes periodically about classmates and friends on both sides serving in the war. By the end of the war, however, he seems to have been won over by Unionist sentiments writing to his mother on April 2,1865, that he is writing a speech, “‘The Lessons of the War.' I shall show that nations need education...shows us what faults we have committed and what to avoid in future, to secure a firm well established government. I intend to treat slavery, on the abolition side, of course.” Just a few weeks later, he wrote a passionate and heartfelt letter about the assassination of President Lincoln, “I have no heart for anything further. The murder of President Lincoln is the only thing now that can be discussed of, and it is a heart-sickening subject...we must punish treason.”
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Amacetta writes to Lewis about the politics of the area, referring to the “radicals” and the conflicts among the conventions. On September 25, 1863, she mentions Lewis Ruffner (1797-1883), Unionist and future mentor of Booker T. Washington. She also writes about the split of the Presbyterian church in West Virginia in a letter sent in October 1863, “The Presbyterian congregation are in a terrible state of excitement at the time, bitterness of spirit, dissensions and agitations, distract them more [and] more than at any previous time, the question of North + South has been raised...some want the Church to belong to the Greenbrier presbytery + some to the Wheeling.”

At the close of the war, the politics of West Virginia were no more certain. Amacetta writes on April 5,1865, that “We have had cannon firing today in honor of the fall of Richmond.” And on October 24, 1865, George writes of lawyers “returned from Dixie” who were being asked to swear an oath “that they have not borne arms, render aid & conform etc.”

The start of the West Virginia oil boom is hinted at throughout the archive. George writes to Lewis on October 30, 1864, “The oil fever is prevailing here to a considerable extent. We have quite a number of N. Yorkers & other Northern men among us prospecting.” Lewis excitedly responds on November 3, “I am glad that the Oil Fever is spreading up our way. I’m in hopes it will turn out well (& the wells will turn out) and that now only the Valley generally will be benefitted but Geo. W. Summers individually.”
Condition Report: Some minor toning and brown spotting.