Ambrose L. Snavely Papers,

This collection contains the papers of Ambrose L. Snavely, a farmer in Crockett (Wythe County), Virginia, during the first half of the 20th century. The collection includes four small diaries, marked by Snavely as numbers 43-46. The diary entries consist largely of work records, detailing Snavely's work activities as well as the names of workers and the work they performed. Snavely also briefly notes weather conditions and occasionally mentions trips, visitors, and incidents at home and on the farm. The focus, however, is overwhelmingly on work. The collection also includes ledgers and memoranda books containing livestock purchase, sale, and breeding records; accounts with laborers; apple, poultry, and sheep transactions; and general and household financial records. Despite their arrangement, the ledgers do not always strictly track only one type of farm account. Also found within the labor accounts ledgers, for example, are pages devoted to oil purchases, haulage, and grass sold. The business seems to have been continued by one or two of Snavely's sons (A. Frank and Maury), and the 1931 poultry ledger bears the name of Mrs. Frank Snavely. A folder of loose materials at the end of the collection includes, among other items, a single letter written by Snavely to McClain Catterlin of Staunton, Indiana; and a certificate of membership for the International Corporation of Mercer Heirs.