1817.111: Petition seeking Toll-Free Bridge over James River near Lynchburg.
Published: 1817
Full Title: To the honorable the General Assembly the petition of sundry inhabitants of the county of Amherst and town of Lynchburg ...
Author: Inhabitants of Amherst County & Lynchburg.
Place Issued: Lynchburg
Issuing Press: Uncertain
Description: 1 sheet [1 pg.]; 32 cm. x 22 cm. (broadside).
Notes
Petitioners sought license to build a toll-gree bridge over the James from Amherst County land of Benjamin Schofield to land of George Cabell near Lynchburg; request generated an larger investigation into the operation of a toll-bridge there authorized in 1810; committee found that the toll-bridge proprietors had acquired the rights to that bridge as speculative venture, and so could not expect the state to guarantee them a monopoly; the petitioners were then granted permission to build a toll-free alternative (Chap. LXXI of Acts of December 1817 Assembly). Only known copy, held in the state archives at the Library of Virginia, lacks colophon; as the request concerns an interest limited to Lynchburg and its environs, this sheet certainly issued there; still, a definitive attribution to one of the two presses operating there is impracticable without further evidence, so the indeterminacy here.