Search

Burial flag, cord, pictures, and correspondence, 1963-1964, concerning disposition of these items. There is a resume of Rowan's life after 1922 and information on his military service, which included a mission in Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War, which was glorified in Elbert Hubbard's A Message to Garcia. There is a resume of Rowan's life, most notably his U.S. Army career, 1881-1909. An 1881 graduate of West Point, he served on the frontier against Indians and on the International Railway Survey in Central and South America before being appointed military attache to Chile, where he co-authored The Island of Cuba in 1897. This book established him as an expert on Cuba, which led to his assignment as a courier to the rebel general Garcia prior to America's war with Spain in 1898. The successful fulfillment of this mission made him famous and, along with gallantry in the subsequent Philippine campaign, was the basis for his being given the Distinguished Service Cross and other rewards.

Correspondence, sketches, records, charts, broadsides, newspapers, pamphlets, books, and one West Virginia University cadet uniform of 1898. There are typescript carbon copies of county court records from Bath County, Virginia, and Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties, West Virginia; list of scholars attending Lewisburg Academy 1883-1885; and genealogical material on Arbuckle, Beard, Bell, Boone, Bright, Burger, Burr, Cooley, Cunningham-Gudgell, Dickinson, Feamster, Gillilan, Gilmore, Griffith, Handley, Haptonstall, Hunter, Kincaid, Lisle, Lyle-Montgomery, Mann-McClintic, Mathews, Mauzy, McCue, McMillion, McNeel, Poage, Price, Quarrier, Rader, Renick, Revercomb, Shrewsbury, Steele, Walkup, Warwick, and Young-Kemper families. Correspondents include T.E. Hodges.

Research papers and sound recordings compiled by Louis Watson Chappell, an English Professor and folklorist at West Virginia University who collected, documented, and preserved West Virginia's folk music and folk traditions. He was born in Belvidere, North Carolina and educated in English Language and Literature at Wake Forest University (B.A.), and the University of Virginia (M.A.). Receiving a faculty appointment at West Virginia University in 1922, Chappell embarked upon a career dedicated to documenting and preserving West Virginia's folk music, which proved to be highly significant.

Papers of Hu Maxwell (1860-1927), historian, editor, and author of several county histories of West Virginia, along with papers and records of other family members. There are manuscripts of fiction, verse, and local history written by Maxwell, as well as a number of his manuscripts and publications dealing with forestry which were prepared while he was a member of the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. Maxwell kept a diary during the years 1901-1919 while residing in Morgantown, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., which is extensive for the period of World War I and which contains notes on the diary of Rufus Maxwell (1855-1907). See scope and content note for more detail.