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Correspondence and genealogical materials related to the William B. Edwards family of King George County, Virginia, and the Capt. William Sommerville family of Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These families were joined when Elizabeth Sommerville (1812-1886), daughter of the Revolutionary War veteran, married William B. Edwards (1810-1888), a Methodist clergyman from a planter family, in 1833.

Facsimiles of letters, a deposition, and an indenture related to civilian affairs under Colonel Campbell's command. The collection also includes a letter dated July 20, 1796, from Lancaster, to a Miss Mary Witmer, Berkeley Springs who is visiting the baths.

Military orders, telegrams, military correspondence concerning Campbell's command, lists of Confederate deserters, ordnance and quartermaster returns, additional military records, and a personal diary of Colonel Campbell, commander of the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers which operated along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Cumberland, Maryland, and Martinsburg, West Virginia. Subjects include civilian-military relations; guerrilla activities of John D. Imboden, the Ringgold Raiders, and the McNeill's Rangers; treatment of Confederate sympathizers; fighting in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1864; and military operations in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

Papers of a Baltimore essayist and novelist which include selected materials pertaining to the Berkeley Springs-Martinsburg-Winchester area, visits to Richmond, Salt Sulphur, and White Sulphur Springs, and a journey in 1850 to Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville from Kennedy's journal, 1848-1855; and his diary, 1829-1832. There are also selected letters and portions of a diary copied from originals in the Library of Congress.