Civil War general and wife’s love letters donated to university’s archives by great-great-granddaughter

BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ/Gray News) - What’s now known as the Glencoe Museum in Radford used to be the home of Civil War Confederate Gen. Gabriel Wharton.

The home was passed down to his family, and when Wharton’s great-great-granddaughter, Sue Bell, and her parents were selling the home in the 1980s and rummaging through the attic, they could not imagine the remarkable discoveries they would find.

“We had no idea what they were, and things were written, obviously in this old-fashioned cursive. I knew how to read cursive, but I’d never read these old-fashioned documents before,” said Bell.

The Wharton family came across over a thousand Civil War documents dating from the 1840s to the 1900s, firsthand accounts during wartime in southwest Virginia, and around 500 love letters between the general and his wife, Nannie Wharton.

“It was Nov. 15, 1864, and I opened that letter, and it was Gen. Wharton writing to Nannie, saying that her brother had been wounded and they suspected it was mortal. I just knew how terrible that letter would have been received by Nannie,” said Bell.

It was not until a little over a decade ago that Bell had fully come to terms with the treasures she inherited.

She went through the letters each day to learn more about her family’s history and legacy, eventually creating a book with historian Jack Davis, on Gen. Wharton and Nannie Wharton’s love letters.

She also discovered that her great-great-grandfather also helped establish her alma matter, Virginia Tech.

She figured if he were still here, he would appreciate these handwritten accounts of his love during the war in a safe place at the university. She recently decided to donate them to Virginia Tech’s Special Collections and University Archives.

“Our goal is to make it accessible, either in person or online. This is meant to be here long after we’re all gone, and that is our job, to try to provide that access. We definitely think there’s more to this collection than just the book that they wrote,” said Aaron Purcell, the director of Virginia Tech’s Special Collections and University Archives.