The Bland family papers contain correspondence, documents, and genealogical information related to the family of Theodoric Bland, a Continental Army officer, delegate to the Continental Congress, and Virginia politician. The earliest items in the Correspondence and Documents series are related to his ancestors, including a court document from "James Citty," listing a "Theo. Bland" as a member of the court (October 16, 1665), and a 1720 letter regarding British military affairs. The Theodoric Bland in this collection wrote the majority of items, often copies of his outgoing correspondence related to local and national politics in the latter years of the American Revolution; among these are letters to Benjamin Harrison and to Patrick Henry. Two items concern the Siege of Gibraltar, including a 1778 warrant for John Sweetland and a letter by Thomas Cranfield to his mother and father about his experiences during the siege (September 7, 1783). The collection also holds a muster roll of Lt. Purviss's Company, in a regiment of guards, from 1779. Later legal documents pertain to the career of Maryland judge Theodorick Bland, of another branch of the Virginia Bland family. Later material includes several personal letters to "Mr. and Mrs. Bland" from family and friends dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as responses to genealogical inquiries.
The Genealogy and Images series contains engravings and drawings of several Bland family members, including a detailed pencil drawing of P. E. Bland, who served as a colonel in the Civil War. Other genealogical notes trace branches of the family through the mid-19th and early-20th centuries.
The Bookplates and Printed Items series holds several bookplates, 20th century newspaper clippings, and pages from books.
Theodorick Bland was born in Virginia on March 21, 1742, and received much of his education in Great Britain, where he received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1763. He returned to Virginia a year later, and practiced medicine, but retired from medicine in the late 1860s, and became a planter and major slaveholder. Despite his connection with Great Britain, he was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, and on June 24, 1775, he assisted several prominent figures in looting the governor's house. In 1776, he became captain of the regiment that was later called the First Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons, and he served in the Continental Army until November 1779, when he resigned his commission. In 1780, he joined the Continental Congress, and he served as a representative from Virginia until 1783, when he returned to his plantation and continued an intermittent political career as an Anti-Federalist member of the state assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives. He and his wife, Martha Daingerfield, had no children. He died on June 1, 1790.
