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These family papers focus on the Rev. Dr. Adam Empie's descendants, including two letters to his daughter Mrs. James Sheppard and a transcript of his genealogy from his family Bible. Items are as follows. Letter from Thomas A. Graves, Jr., President of the College of William and Mary to Ralph James, Sr. regarding his donation of what are now the Adam Empie Papers. Notes from vestry meeting of 1860 November 13 on death of the Rev. Dr. Empie with a letter to his daughter Mrs. Sheppard. Newspaper clipping from the Newport News Daily Press, 1960 March 20, regarding nineteenth-century silhouettes of four presidents of the College of William and Mary (William Holland Wilmer, Adam Empie, John Augustine Smith, and John Bracken), purchased in a New York antique shop and put on display in the campus library. Transcript of the family records from the family Bible of Rev. Adam Empie made 1935 April 21. Bible owned by Major Adam Empie Potts. Letter and envelope addressed to Mrs. James Sheppard of Richmond, Virginia. Dated 1859 May 1 from "Bro. Will" of Waterford, Mississippi.

Warren Seymour Lurty, uncle of Adam Empie Potts, served as a captain in the Confederate army over the Virginia Horse Artillery Battery, which was involved in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. The battery was nearly annihilated and Lurty was captured at Ninevah, Virginia in 1864 and was a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware. Lurty served as a lawyer before and after the Civil War. He was US District Attorney of western Virginia from 1877-1882.