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This collection consists of 701 .tif files representing six scrapbooks and one envelope of newsclippings and pamphlets documenting the aftermath of the Buffalo Creek Flood, which occurred on February 26, 1972 in Logan County, West Virginia. The flooding was caused by a Pittston Coal Company coal slurry impoundment dam bursting. Subjects covered in the clippings include investigation into Pittston Coal Company, survival stories, and legal disputes. A small number of original community and government created materials, including handouts and pamphlets, are present related to the rebuilding process. Newsclippings are international in scope.

Personal and professional correspondence (1914-1956), typescripts, research notes, clippings, photographs, maps, drafts and manuscripts of published and unpublished historical studies. The correspondence includes a number of letters from historians in the 1920s and 1930s. Other subjects covered in the papers include the McNeill Rangers, the Civil War, Moravian Missionaries, floods in the South Branch Valley, and secondary education in West Virginia.

Newspaper clippings, mainly from Doddridge and Harrison county, concerning marriages, deaths, family histories, letters from World War I service men, nurses, and from former residents who had moved, or gone to other states to teach, including a series of letters from L.P. Willis from the Phillippine Islands and Japan. Mr.Willis was employed as a teacher and Head Of the Bureau of Education in Japan, and the Phillipines for twenty years. Also, included in the collection are tax and school tuition receipts, orders,unsigned copy of Thomas Hickman's will, deed and other papers of several members of the Hickman family of Harrison county. A photostat copy of a form letter from the State Medical Society Committee on Examination of the Medical Botany of the State addressed to Dr.P. Davis from Wheeling, 1868.

Newspaper clippings, principally from Harrison and Doddridge county papers, concerning W. Va. Servicemen in World War I, weather and flood reports, and miscellaneous West Virginia Subjects. There are also some clippings from Parkersburg and various Ohio papers.

Diaries of Thomas M. Leeper, 1886-1950 (Box 1). Samuel Leeper wrote a few of the first entries, and some family members wrote some of the last entries documenting Thomas Leeper's last days. Subjects in the diaries include family life; work life; weather; encounters with visitors, friends, and neighbors; and travels. Counties traveled include Calhoun, Clay, Lewis, Harrison, Marion, Wirt and more. Inserts in the diaries include receipts, penciled sketches, and other paraphernalia. Added entry at the end of the 1950 diary: "Thomas M. Leeper died 3:30 the morning of July 31-1950, funeral August 2 in Methodist Church, preacher-Rev. McKinney."

Collection includes family correspondence of the Bowman, Veach, and Leeper families. Manuscripts include a recounting of the Civil War event known as "Jones' Raid." In another document Nathaniel Cochrane, an ancestor of Thomas Leeper, recounts his capture and imprisonment by indigenous people, along with a biography of Cochrane. Daily life for that time is captured in "Home Life of the Leeper Family." Other typescript histories include "Monongah," Thomas Leeper's diary regarding heavy rains and high waters of 1888, a history of West Monongah High School, and "History of the Leeper Family."