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The ledgers highlight the business activities of iron furnaces and stores owned by Isaac Meason, a pioneer iron producer in Fayette County, Pennsylvania (arguably the first west of the Allegheny Mountains). The volumes include records of Union Furnace, Union Iron Works, Mt. Vernon Furnace, Centre Furnace, and a record of teamster work. A small portion of one volume includes a common pleas court docket for Fayette County, PA in the 1830s.

Papers of the Jackson family of Monongalia and Preston County, (West) Virginia, including business, financial, and legal documents. Includes Civil War pension records for Henry C. Jackson (1864); business records of Jackson and Lamb documenting transactions with Tassey and Church, Grocers of Pittsburgh (1833-1834); and records regarding Cheat Iron Works, St. John's Furnace, and Hampton Forge (1833 and undated), among other material (1814-1891).

Papers, photos, pamphlets and postcards of a prominent Morgantown attorney, financier and businessman, James Rogers Moreland. Included are drafts of books and articles by James R. Moreland about local and family history, in particular "Early Iron Industry in Cheat Mountains" and "My Father Another Country Lawyer." There are family histories and records about the Finnicum, Hawthorne, Huston, Lewis, Lyle, Moreland and Rogers families. There are also many items of World War I that especially pertain to Morgantown. Included among these is information about the Morgantown Militia Reserve and the Military Training Camps Association. Among other papers collected by Moreland are the records and a history of the Bank of Monongahela Valley, the papers of the Mercersburg Academy, the Rotary, Sons of the Revolution, and the WVU Kappa Alpha fraternity.

The collection consists largely of correspondence to Morgantown businessman John Rogers from relatives in Pennsylvania and Maryland. It also includes two letters from Sgt. William A. Widney, who was assigned to the U.S. War Department during the Civil War, to a Morgantown friend (possibly William Hennen). One letter was written by an unidentified woman to her grandson, a West Virginia University student.

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.

Compact disc of a searchable database of 1200 facsimile pages of New River Symposium Proceedings dating from 1982-1999. Articles in the Proceedings discuss the natural and cultural features of the New River region of West Virginia, including the following topics: botany, Civil War, coal mining, environmentalism, folklore, folk music, geology, Green Sulphur Springs, historic preservation, iron industry, native Americans, railroads, rivers (Bluestone, Gauley, New), transportation, and Mary Draper Ingles.

Notes on the early iron furnaces in the Allegheny-Botetourt-Roanoke County area of Virginia; a brief history of the John Taylor family, early pioneers in the iron industry; and photographs of the Taylor iron furnaces at Cloverdale, Botetourt County.

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.