The Duvall and Williams families were community-oriented people who served as farmers, doctors, and attorneys from Kennedyville, Kent County, Maryland, and Salisbury, Wicomico County, Maryland as well as northern Delaware. Within the Duvall and Williams Families collection are family photograph albums, ledgers, a scrapbook, and ephemera. The photograph albums dating to the 1880s to 1950s offer a glimpse into the lives of the families. The primary focus of the collection is the series of photographs that depict farm life, a Methodist Church Camp Meeting one of the families attended, family vacations, their pets, and farm animals. The ledgers date from the 1850s to the 1890s and pertain to farming on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Delaware’s New Castle County. The scrapbook dates from the early 1800s to 1900 and contains newspaper clippings from the Mid-Atlantic region.

Sylvia Bunce Duvall was born in 1937, the daughter of William and Alice Bunce, a Foreign Service officer in Japan. Sylvia met and married William G. Duvall Jr., (1936-2012), a trial lawyer in Salisbury, Maryland. He received his education from Swarthmore College and studied law at the University of Pennsylvania. He was heavily involved in the local area of Eastern Shore of Maryland, including the Wicomico County School Board, the Salvation Army Boys Club, and the Judicial Nominating Commission for Wicomico, Worcester, and Somerset counties. In addition to his many activities, Duvall was an avid lover of American history, having his own personal library of rare and historic books.  He was born in Baltimore to William G. Duvall Sr. and Anna Elizabeth Sutton Duvall (1909-1989). Anna was the daughter of George W. Sutton and Mary Pennington Sutton, a farmer in Kennedyville, Kent County, Maryland.

William G. Duvall Sr. (1909-1972), was  the director of Western Electric Company’s labor relations department as well as involved with his alma mater, Washington College. He and his wife had three children, William Jr., Edmund P. Duvall and Elizabeth D. Parker. He was born outside of Annapolis in 1909 to dairy farmer Zachariah R. Duvall and Bertha Williams Duvall. Zachariah born in 1886 was a state roads inspector. He died in 1939.

Zachariah’s wife, Bertha Williams (1882-1928)  left him a widower, and Bertha’s sister Elizabeth “Bessie” Williams lived with Zachariah well after Bertha’s death. Bessie, a public-school teacher was born in 1880. Bertha and Bessie were the daughters of Dr. William Gover Williams (1837-1912) and Matilda Dare Linthicum (1840-1927). Dr. Williams received his medical education from The George Washington University and worked as a physician and a farmer in Anne Arundel County, near the area of Crownsville, Maryland. His wife Matilda kept house and raised their three daughters.   

The Duvall and Williams Families collection is comprised of family photograph albums, ledgers and a poster pertaining to Jefferson Davis and document the various activities of the Duvall, Williams, and Pennington families who were primarily from Kennedyville, Kent County, Maryland. The photograph albums dating to the 1880s to the 1950s and feature various family members participating in a variety of types of activities including their pets, farm life and family vacations to upstate New York. One album features a family attending a Methodist Church Camp Meeting. The photographs from the Camp Meeting depict the tents and pavilion among other activities tied to the Camp Meetings.

Originally belonging to William Duvall Jr.’s great grandfather, Edmund Burke Pennington the series of ledgers date from the 1860s to the 1890s and document farming activities done by the Pennington family in Kent County, Maryland and New Castle County, Delaware. Within the ledgers, bills of sale, business notes, and other information have been inserted. One business note pertains to the Kennedyville Creamery which operated from 1888-1909. The loose note regarding the creamery includes the names of the business’s president, vice president, and treasurer. One of the ledgers dating to the early 1800s to 1900 was later utilized as a scrapbook, by one of the Pennington family members, with many of the ledger notes covered in early twentieth-century newspaper clippings on women’s fashion, short stories, and poetry pieces.

The materials are notated by their location in each box; any given subject may be disbursed throughout the entirety of the collection.