Historical interference

One of the problems - or one of the excitements - about researching Alexander Donald is that obviously his letters are not digitalised, are not available online and are not on in neat bound volumes on shelves. Therefore it all involves a lot of rolling up sleeves and going through boxes of papers where you think there might be something, but you are not totally sure. One of my problems is that fact that I get distracted by what is in these boxes and start off on tangents. Call it historical interference.
For instance at the Valentine in Richmond, I was given a huge box of Patrick Henry papers where they thought there might be something - turns out there wasn't, but it was still great fun to go through it. Here's an example - a tiny bit of paper, like a receipt:
In Committee, December 1775. 
Ordered that Colonel Henry be at liberty to give directions to the keeper of the public goal for the discharge of James a mulatto slave belonging to Lord Dunmore
Now, this is a few months after the Gunpowder Incident involving Henry and Dunmore. On April 20th 1775 at the start of the revolutionary war, Lord Dunmore ordered that the gunpowder be removed from the magazine in Williamsburg and taken to a Royal Navy ship. Local militias were not happy and Patrick Henry led the Virginia Militia to force the return of the gunpowder. He was instead given £330 - and this was the beginning of the end for Dunmore, he soon retreated to a HMS Fowey and dreamt of building a pineapple-shaped building in Airth, Scotland, or retiring to it, depending on when you think it was built, before or after he was in Virginia.
So what is the significance of this tiny scrap of paper in an old musty box? Who knows, but I find it diverting. What was James doing in prison and why was Henry getting him out?
Other pieces of interference which threw me off the scent - a letter from a brother to his sister who he had never written to before describing his feelings about his wife dying. That really was very beautiful. A recipe to make minced collops from the start of the 19th century - sound like burgers to me. A letter from 1801 from a landowner to his neighbour telling him to clear up his pond as it stank - early neighbourhood wars:
The remaining stagnant water just below me has become so offensive that a physician called on me this morning supposing it was on my lot, and informed me it was also totally necessary that the water be drawn off, or the hole filled up immediately, as several persons in the neighbourhood of the pond are ill with a fever, which it was believed had been produced from the stagnant water below me, which is very putrid indeed.
Does sound fairly unpleasant.
Then another letter about a slave in prison. This was from Richmond Prison in November 1814
Sir, I will esteem it a favour of you to inform my master that I acknowledge that I have done wrong and I have reflected very curiously upon my conduct and I find myself in fault, there for if he thinks proper to take me out of this place he may rely on my former conduct being better than my latter, you will please to state to him that any acknowledgement that I can make to him that I am willing to do and perform what I promise. 
Jack 
Mr Call's man
The more observant amongst you will have noticed that Mr Call is the chap who Alexander Donald gave his land to  in Richmond in 1804 from that last post. Again, to me a letter like that asks so many questions - but questions which are obviously not relevant to why I am here. However, they do make looking through old boxes all the more exciting as you never know what you will uncover next. And there are lots more to go through in Williamsburg.