Collections

Typescripts compiled by a Wellsburg local historian, on the history of Holliday's Cove and the Hancock-Brooke County area. Subjects include prominent settlers, churches, schools, post office, toll roads, oil and gas wells, floods, gristmills, manufacture of gunpowder, iron and brick industries, newspapers, Indians, and the James Campbell and Alexander Morrow family genealogy.

Material written and collected by a former curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection that includes bibliographies, transcripts, photostats, papers and historical sketches on various aspects of West Virginia history. Items deal with prominent West Virginia University historians, the Civil War, early settlement, industrial growth, and West Virginia University. A number of letters and circulars discuss the West Virginia Historical Society in 1869.

Pamphlets include Henry Ruffner's antislavery pamphlet, 1847, and his Union speech, 1856. Subjects of the manuscripts and correspondence include family history; travel; Kanawha Salt Works; schools in Virginia and Kanawha County; Lane Seminary Library; Presbyterian Church; slavery, coal, gas, iron, and timber; Johns Hopkins, Washington and Lee, Harvard, Hobart, Cornell, and Hampden-Sydney colleges; Greenbrier County; Alabama; election of 1904; University of Virginia; Kanawha Valley floods; Venezuela; American Colonization Society; and the Philippine Islands. Persons mentioned or commented on include Philip Doddridge, John Letcher, Hugh Mercer, and Nelson A. Miles. Correspondents include Charles H. Ambler, John Eaton, John P. Hale, H.R. Helper, W.S. Laidley, David L. Ruffner, John W. Wayland, and William L. Wilson.

Business and personal correspondence of several members of the Holt and Keyes families of Barbour County, West Virginia, including Ben M., Charles, Samuel T.H., and Stephen Holt, and W.G. and Bertha Holt Keyes. The collection includes records of firms operated by these families, mainly the Keyes Lumber Company, the Holt Ice Company, and Holt's Mill; genealogical material on the Holt family; records relating to foundries, coal, coke, building supplies, general merchandise, farm and construction work, mine post sales, and the Elk Creek Oil and Gas Company.

Personal and business papers of the Lewis family, mainly of John D. (1800-1882), Charles C., Sr. (b.1839), and Charles C., Jr. (b.1865), of Kanawha County. For the period 1825-1875 there are papers of various members of the Ruffner, Dickinson, and Wilson families of West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and other states. The business papers relate to farming operations, the purchase and sale of slaves, salt manufacturing and trade, the Old Sweet Springs Company, coal, iron, oil, lumbering, railroads, and real estate in Kanawha, Clay, Boone, Fayette, and Nicholas counties. There are newspaper clippings, speeches, and other papers reflecting the Lewis' interests in the Democratic Party in the period 1914-1920. Settlement papers and correspondence regarding the estates of John D. Lewis, and Joel, Daniel, and Andrew Ruffner are in the collection. The personal papers include diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, and letters. Travel accounts in the United States, South America, and Europe are given in the correspondence, as well as comments on schools in West Virginia and Virginia; the building of a church in Kanawha County in 1834; missionary work in Colombia, South America, 1874-1875; Civil War and postwar conditions in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri; conditions at Camp Chase, in the Civil War; and material relating to World War I.

Records of the Preston County court, consisting almost entirely of land records such as maps, surveys, plats, deeds, and indentures. There are also some personal papers and correspondence of Preston County residents, including Israel Baldwin and Julius K. Monroe, and the Fairfax family. Some photographs from this collection have been digitized.

Letters of McKelvey concerning disposal of his property, a small forge shop. Also includes articles from a Pittsburgh newspaper about the early iron making industry near Morgantown.

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.

Photocopies and transcriptions of Bible records for the Jones, Wallace, and Testerman families. Original Bible records are in the possession of Miss Lorena Wallace, Beckley, West Virginia.

The papers of Colonel William McCleery of Morgantown, a Revolutionary War veteran, attorney, county clerk, prosecuting attorney, representative from Monongalia County to the Federal Constitutional Convention, founder of the Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, and landholder and purchasing agent. The papers include correspondence, typescripts, land records, and some printed materials. Much of the correspondence is between McCleery and his agent, Benjamin Oden of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, regarding a debt owed McCleery by General Henry Lee. Later letters to Matthew Gay concern the purchase, operation, and sale of the Monongalia Iron Works, and landholdings in Ohio and Indiana. The typescripts include sketches of McCleery, Isabelle Stockton McCleery, John Minor, and James Swan. Correspondents include William Shinn and James and John Swan. Other letters are by or mention Aaron Burr, William Haymond, Thomas Jefferson, Zackquill Morgan, and John Rutherford.