Since 1922, the Huntington Library has been home to the massive collection and papers reputed to be one the largest and most valuable collections of Virginiana ever assembled. Remarkably broad in scope and idiosyncratic in composition, it was accumulated by Robert Alonzo Brock (March 9, 1839 – July 12, 1914), a prominent antiquarian, historian, and genealogist.
A native of Richmond, Brock was born in the family of Robert King Brock (1801-1850) and Elizabeth Mildred Ragland Brock (1814-1882). After his father’s death, Brock joined the family lumber business. In April 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army, as private of the 1st Regiment of Virginia Volunteers (later the 21st Regiment of Virginia Infantry). Beginning in September of 1862, he served as a hospital steward at Camp Winder (Richmond, Va.). After the war, he returned to the lumber business.
In 1875, Brock was elected corresponding secretary of the Virginia Historical Society, taking charge of the embattled society’s collections of books, manuscripts, and maps. Brock launched an ambitious publication program and personally edited and published the letters of Alexander Spotswood, papers of Robert Dinwiddie, Abstract of the Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, Hugh Blair Grigsby’s History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788, materials on the Huguenot immigration in Virginia, etc.
In 1881, he retired from the lumber business to concentrate on his studies. Brock also served as secretary of the Southern Historical Society and edited its papers, primarily memoirs and reminiscences of the Confederate veterans. In 1892, he was pressed to leave the Virginia Historical Society, in part due to a conflict of interests.
From 1879 to 1882, Brock was editor for literary, historical, and genealogical content for the Richmond Standard and frequently contributed to the newspaper. He also wrote biographies of Confederate veterans for Hardesty’s Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia, Illustrated (1884) and compiled Virginia and Virginians (1888), the state’s first large biographical reference guide.
Brock served as historian and registrar of the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, belonged to the William and Mary chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa. He was also a corresponding member of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, Rhode Island Historical Society, American Numismatic Society, and other learned, heritage, and genealogical societies and associations in North America and Europe.
Brock died in Richmond on July 12, 1914, survived by Elizabeth Carrington Brock (1870-1857) and Ann Beaufort Brock (1872-1954), the daughters of his first marriage to Sallie Kidd Haw (d. 1887), and son Robert Alonzo Brock, Jr. (1890-1980) born by his second wife Lucy Ann Peters.
Image Credit: Lewis Historical Publishing Company. (1915). In Tyler, L. Gardiner (ed.), Encyclopedia of Virginia biography (pp. 2). Lewis Historical Publishing Company.