1818.120: Memorial of Inhabitants on Rivers of Western Virginia (Federal).
Published: 1818
Full Title: To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. The memorial of the underwritten inhabitants of the country bordering on the James River and its branches, the Greenbrier, the New River, the Kanawha and the Ohio respectfully represents ...
Author: Inhabitants of the Country Bordering on the Western Virginia Rivers.
Place Issued: Virginia
Issuing Press: Uncertain
Description: 1 sheet [1 pg.]; 32 cm. x 22 cm. (broadside).
Notes
Sheet lacks colophon and date; only known copy is held by the Library of Virginia. Petitioners here asked that Congress incorporate a company to build new transportation links from the James River to the rivers of the western Virginia counties emptying into the Ohio River. Language herein replicates that in the Memorial of Kanawha County Committee for Internal Improvements (1817.109), which first met in September 1817 in the recently incorporated town of Charleston; as no press operated there until 1820, this evidently issued from a press located elsewhere; a run of the committee's initial imprints held by LVA suggests a Richmond origin, but such an attribution is speculative at best, so the indeterminacy here. The Annals of Congress report that the "internal improvements" requested here were part of the debate in the House of Representatives in early 1818; the speeches recorded there also employ the same language used in the September 1817 memorial and this later petition; that timing indicates an early 1818 publication date, as reported here. A nearly identically worded petition was entered with the December 1818 General Assembly (1818.121).