Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Correspondence and documents pertaining to the West Virginia Asylum for the Incurables, now Huntington State Hospital, mainly concerning the location of a suitable site by the office of the secretary of state. Correspondents include John W. Davis and W.A. MacCorkle.

Bills, receipts, and letters of Kincaid of Greenbrier County, West Virginia, mainly concerning his attempts to obtain a position at the Richmond, Virginia insane asylum as a medical student and his various contacts with Greenbrier County as a school teacher. Also there is a Renick family history.

Court case papers, wills, deeds, surveys and plats, ca.1772-1879, along with bound volumes of court records, deeds, estrays, road and tax records, a register for free blacks, and private account books, 1783-1923. The account books include: records of a U.S. Army post hospital at Union, 1867-1869; oil well drilling, 1886-1890; Union and Fort Spring Stage Line, 1876-1877; newspapers, 1867-1903; taverns, 1815-1872; and Union Lyceum minutes, 1845-1847.

Correspondence of William A. Harrison, a Clarksburg lawyer, assistant federal district attorney, member of the Virginia Assembly, and judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia; most letters are from members of the family to Mrs. Anna Robertson Harrison. Subjects include construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; Civil War loyalty Oaths, Camp Chase land purchases, and road building. There are also grade school attendance certificates and notes concerning the Lunatic Asylum West of the Allegheny Mountains and Weston State Hospital.

Original appraisement and account book pertaining to the estate of John S. Camden, 1862-1881. There are two ledgers of T.B. Camden, a physician, covering his medical practice in sixteen counties, listing private accounts, cost of medical care, insurance claims, and statements of Camden's income, 1865-1907. There is a scrapbook of clippings, numerous broadsides, and correspondence on professional and political activities of Camden including letters from friends regarding his dismissal as superintendent of the state hospital for the insane at Weston. The microfilm includes entries from the diary of Thomas S. Feamster, a Confederate soldier, noting troop movements in Greenbrier County, 1861, 1864-1865, and entries from the commonplace book of Theodore Woodridge.

Papers of the managing editor of the Parkersburg DAILY STATE JOURNAL, 1889-1895, editor of the WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL JOURNAL, and member of the English faculty of West Virginia University, 1895-1925. The collection includes manuscripts of Barbe's published poetry and unpublished short stories, correspondence, notes, speeches, class lectures, illustrations for short stories drawn by John Rettig, a scrapbook of clippings of reviews and correspondence relating to Barbe's book, GOING TO COLLEGE, and memorabilia. The correspondence includes letters, in some cases accompanied by holograph verse, from Winston Churchill, Richard Harding Davis, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, R.W. Gilder, Edward E. Hale, William H. Hayne, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Rupert Hughes, Stephen Leacock, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Brander Matthews, Margaret Prescott Montague, Bliss Perry, Melville D. Post, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Booth Tarkington, Charles Dudley Warner, Barrett Wendell, William Allen White, W.L. Wilson, and Owen Wister. There is also a volume of mounted holograph letters, 1884-1895, from the following American authors, a few of whom are also included in the general collection: Edward W. Bok, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin, Danske Dandridge, Oliver W. Holmes, Clifford Lanier, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, Margaret J. Preston, James Whitcomb Riley, and John G. Whittier. Most letters are brief and many are simple acknowledgements.

Correspondence and miscellaneous papers of: a Monroe County, West Virginia, farmer and politician; his wife, Harriette Boswell Alexander; their daughters, Isabel and Alice Beulah; Alice's husband, Frank Hereford, U.S. senator from West Virginia; and his daughter, Katherine Hereford Stoddard. There is one folder of business papers, 1820-1841, of Thomas Edgar; a few letters from Caperton's son, John, while a cadet at the Camp of Instruction, Richmond, 1861; a folder of letters concerning Isabel's trips through the American West, the British Isles, and Europe; and a folder on family genealogy. Subjects include mid-nineteenth century life in Union, Monroe County; the excitement in Virginia following John Brown's raid; Washington, D.C., and the slavery controversy, 1860; the secession crisis in Virginia; impressment of material in Monroe County by Union troops; the effect of the war on the social and economic life of Richmond; work of the Ladies Relief Hospital in Lynchburg; and the aftermath of war in Virginia.