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SCOPE AND CONTENT
This collection is in one flat box, and covers the dates of December 1916 to July 1917. The collection is comprised almost exclusively of affidavits of monthly alcohol inventories in places of business in Rockingham County, Virginia.

On 10 March 1916, the General Assembly of Virginia passed Chapter 146, an act foreshadowing the Eighteenth Amendment of 1920. In this act, the General Assembly defined ardent spirits and went on to prohibit their manufacture, sale, transportation for sale, and general distribution. Further, it regulated the sale of alcohol for medicinal purposes by requiring those businesses who were allowed, by court license, to sell alcohol to file a monthly report, or inventory, of their alcohol on hand. This act was not written to prevent personal manufacture for consumption; it was designed to start Virginia on the road to temperance. Chapter 146 was strengthened on 19 March 1918 with the passage of Chapter 388, which required that common carriers of ardent spirits be required to keep their records of quantities transported in an alphabetical file box, which was to include affidavits attesting to whom the alcohol was shipped, the amount and kind received, the date of delivery, and the consignee. These records mostly comprise this collection. Both of these acts were repealed, however, with the passage of Chapter 403, section 54 (20 March 1920), which required that the clerk of the circuit court of each county keep these affidavits in an alphabetically arranged book and took all the paperwork off the hands of the transportation companies.

ORGANIZATION
This collection was received in rough chronological order (by month) and alphabetically by consignee within each monthly record. Affidavits were reorganized into a series of twenty-two packets by company (Southern Express, Adams Express, or Wells Fargo), then by locale and date, and packaged in nine envelopes. There is one folder of notarized letters.

PROVENANCE
This collection was placed in the Library on depository contract by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, Sessions of 1916, 1918. 1920. Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1916, 1918, 1920, respectively. LAW: Laws, Statutes, Codes.