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The collection consists of a letter from William N. Page, organizer of the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, concerning dangers in mining; abstracts of land titles granted to Robert Morris in 1795; World War II production statistics for the company; copy of a contract between the company, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Charleston General Hospital for hospitalization of miners and their families; letter outlining the life of Robert Hamilton Morris, director of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1946; and two blueprints showing bore holes and face section of the Pocahontas No. 3 and No. 4 coal seams.

Correspondence of a member and president, 1921-1929, of the West Virginia State Board of Control, which directed the financial operations of all state institutions from 1909 to 1933. Most of the letters are between Lakin and Dr. Henry D. Hatfield; subjects include medical and hospital affairs, the Greater Huntington Hospital Association, the Kessler-Hatfield Hospital in Huntington, and applications for political office. There are occasional references to politics and business conditions. There are a few letters between Lakin and John W. Davis when Davis was U.S. Solicitor General, 1913-1916, and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, 1920.

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.

Minute book, 1906-1923; medical care records, 1902-1922; and miscellaneous papers of a hospital founded at Hansford in 1886 by the Protestant Episcopal Church, Diocese of West Virginia. The hospital, designed to serve the medical and surgical needs of miners and railroad workers and their families, closed in 1923.

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 of the West Virginia State Board of Control, which was responsible for all state correctional institutions, educational institutions, and hospitals from 1909 to 1949. Individuals serving on the three-man board at various times were John S. Lakin, J.W. Barnes, J.A. Chambers, J.S. Darst, Edgar B. Stewart, J.Z. Terrell, W.R. Thurmond, John B. White, and F.W. McCullough. The letters in this collection deal with all state institutioris and their problems. There are letters dealing with building construction, building repairs, the purchase of new property, thehiring of new employees, employees' salaries, institution menus, building insurance, gifts and grants to institutions, and institutional financial matters. State institutions covered in the correspondence are: Bluefield State College; Berkeley Springs Sanitarium; Berkeley Springs Park; Concord College; Colored Orphans Home; Colored Insane Asylum; Colored Old Folks Home; Denmar Sanitarium; Demonstration Packing Plant at Inwood; Droop Mountain Battlefield; Fairmont Emergency Hospital; Industrial Home for Girls; Industrial Home for Colored Girls; Industrial Home for Boys; Industrial Home for Colored Boys; Hopemont Sanitarium; Huntington State Hospital; Jackson's Mill 4-H Camp; Indian Mound Cemetery; Lakin State Hospital; Marshall College; McKendree Hospital; Medium Security Prison; Miner's Hospitals 1, 2, and 3; Pinecrest Sanitarium; New River State School; Potomac State College; Spencer State Hospital; Storer College; Reymann Memorial Farms; Andrew S. Rowan Memorial Home; Rutherford Sanitarium; School for the Deaf and Blind; School for the Colored Deaf and Blind; Shepherd College; Weston State Hospital; West Liberty State College; Welch Emergency Hospital; West Virginia Training School; West Virginia State College; West Virginia Tech; and West Virginia University. Correspondents include Charles H. Ambler, R.A. Armstrong, Thurman Arnold, Cleveland M. Bailey, Charles Baker, J.J. Cornwell, Brooks Cottle, William M.O. Dawson, John W. Davis, W.E. Glasscock, Howard M. Gore, Denzil L. Gainer, C. Howard Hardesty, Henry D. Hatfield, Thomas E. Hodges, Homer A. Holt, Rush D. Holt, B.M. Laidley, E.F. Morgan, J.F. Marsh, C.W. Meadows, Robert H. Mollohan, Matthew M. Neely, Jennings Randolph, John D. Rockefeller II, A.M. Reese, D.B. Purinton, Frank B. Trotter, J.R. Turner, W.R. Thurmond, and I.C. White. More information about collection's content is available in the control folder. Please note, the contents list in the control folder does not refer to reel numbers, and the microfilm reels are not numbered. Microfilm reels contain information about the relevatn series/volumes/etc. that they contain, which should match with the same information on the handwritten contents list.

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.