This collection consists of photostatic copies of correspondence, accounts, legal documents, records of crops and slaves, diary extracts, an estate inventory, and maps for William Massie's Pharsalia plantation and other large landholdings, chiefly between 1820 and 1862. There are also copies of correspondence, a will, and plantation accounts of Thomas Massie. These include the Major's recollections, dictated to a Justice of the Peace in 1833, of details of his service in the Continental Army of Virginia, 1775-1781, from the incursions of Lord Dunmore through the Battle of Yorktown, and containing his account of carrying a message from General Washington to General Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmount. The Papers may be considered those of Thomas Massie from 1780-1820 and those of William Massie from 1820-1862, with the major portion dated between 1847 and 1862.
In addition to correspondence, there are extensive legal records for Nelson County, Virginia, 1820-1823, and several unbound volumes relating to the operation of a plantation. The latter volumes include crop memoranda books, orchard records, field maps and plats, architect's plans, weather memoranda, account books, and records of household expenses. A register of slaves covers the period 1836-1866, and an estate inventory, 1862, gives detailed information on the household.
The scrupulously detailed records of their holdings and business operations, kept by the Massies over so extensive a period, make these papers unique, and their interest to the student of ante-bellum plantation economy may lie in the Massie's planter class typicality and the representative nature of the operation of their holdings.
