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The James B. Reynolds Papers:
Donated by Dr. James Surratt
Transcribed and edited by Betty Drees Johnson
Contents of Collection
In December 2004, the Stetson University Library was given fourteen
historical manuscripts: thirteen letters written to U.S. Rep. James B.
Reynolds, a 19th-century congressman from Tennessee, and a handwritten
draft of a circular Reynolds wrote to his constituents in 1825.
The collection was donated to Stetson by Dr. James Surratt, Volusia school
superintendent from 1984 to 1991 and father of alumna Joy Surratt Baskin
(1992). Surratt, now semi-retired, is an antiques collector who acquired
the letters from a North Carolina woman whose husband was descended from
Congressman Reynolds.
The original documents are preserved in the Library Special Collections
area of the University Archives, but images and the transcriptions and
notes are posted on this site for study by historians of the pre-Civil War
period. In the transcripts information from the reverse of many of the
letters is included in a box before the letter itself. This information
may include postal information or simply notes for Congressman Reynold's
filing system.
Congressman James B. Reynolds was born in County Antrim, Ireland, in
1779. After coming to the United States as a young adult, he settled in
Clarksville, Tennessee, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar
in 1804. He was elected as a Republican to the Fourteenth Congress
(March 4, 1815 - March 3, 1817) and the Eighteenth Congress (March 4,
1823 - March 3, 1825). He returned to Clarksville where he again practiced
law and maintained an active correspondence with many notables of the day.
He died June 10, 1851.
Among Congressman Reynolds' correspondents were Missouri Senator
Thomas Hart Benton; Tennessee Congressman Cave Johnson; Congressman,
Senator, and presidential candidate Daniel Webster; and Kentucky
Congressman, Senator, and presidential candidate Henry Clay.
Letters describe the very bitter political contests between the Whigs
and the Democrats in the 1840's, including Cave Johnson's description
of "fisticuffs" on the floor of Congress in September 1841.
For brief biographies of the political figures mentioned above and
throughout the letters, see
Biographical
Directory of the United States
Congress, 1774-Present
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp).
In the transcripts bracketed words in italics indicate uncertainty
regarding the correct word.
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