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Papers of C.M. Cornwell, a surveyor and justice of the peace of Barbour County, West Virginia. Included are: surveys, plats, deeds, court case papers, surveyor's notebooks, minutes of commissioners' meetings, survey calls on the re-survey of the Barbour-Taylor County line (1894), and family correspondence.

Personal and business papers of Isaac, Albert, and Silas R. Davis, of Ohio and Marshall counties, West Virginia. Includes estate settlements, genealogical data, justice of the peace docket and broadsides. There is a Civil War loyalty oath for J.N. Keller, a War of 1812 discharge for Thomas Moore and an 1844 presidential campaign broadside for the Whig candidate Henry Clay.

The papers of George W. Smith (1814-1860), a merchant, justice of the peace, land agent, and presidential elector in the town of Ripley, Jackson County, West Virginia. There are also papers regarding other family members. The collection serves as a narrative and record of business, local politics, and social conditions in West Virginia before and after statehood. It includes business and personal correspondence, financial and legal papers, business and political ledgers, and ephemera. The majority of the business and personal correspondence in this collection consists of incoming letters to George W. Smith from his family and business associates. There are a few letters from Nehemiah Smith, a delegate in the Virginia Assembly, some of which discuss efforts to route a proposed turnpike from Staunton to Ripley (ca. 1833-1842); and letters from Confederate prisoners of war, six from Point Lookout prison in Maryland (1864-1865), and one from Elmira, New York (1864). See scope and content note for additional details.

County and circuit clerks records, arranged chronologically. Records for the years 1835-1857, include bonds of ministers, tavern operators, ordinaries, ferries, and county officials; estate settlements; records pertaining to road, bridge, and public building; records of the overseer of the poor; school commissioners' and surveyors' appointments; and lists of county officials. Records for 1863-1874 include county supervisors' records; records of the Fairmont and Wheeling Turnpike; and muster certificates and reenlistment and bounty lists for the First, Second, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiments, the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth West Virginia Cavalry, the First Light Artillery Regiment, and the Forty-fifth Regiment, United States Colored Troops. Papers for 1867-1907 include justice of the peace records, United States Admiralty Court records, and road surveyors' statements.

The 24 letters are addressed to Mason Mathews, a Lewisburg attorney and father of Governor Henry Mason Mathews and cover the years 1873 until his death in 1878. Another letter to Mathews daughter, Sallie Patton is incomplete. One deed, dated 1836, is witnessed by Mathews as a justice of the peace. Frequent correspondents include: John Echols, John W. Johnston, Walter N. Johnston, and Howard Shriver.

Letter and account books, clipping scrapbooks, and miscellaneous family papers of a pioneer, Ohio Valley, general merchandise firm founded by Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., at Marietta, Ohio, and operating under various names for a period of more than sixty years. The collection also includes the account books of Daniel, Richard, and John Greene, 1808-1844; account books of F.B. Loomis, 1842-1844; a medicinal formulary book; the estate records of John Brody; records of a pension and bounty land claims agency operated by George M. Woodbridge, 1861-1864; and justice of the peace accounts, 1832-1863. Subjects include the development of river markets, transportation, and the livestock industry in the early Ohio Valley; fur trade and commerce with England and Europe; the Marietta and Susquehanna Trading Company; Kanawha and Sciota salt works; Ohio Company lands; Woodbridge-Harman Blennerhassett partnership; ginseng trade; Wheeling Cotton Manufacturing Company; ropewalk and shipbuilding in Marietta; military land warrants; estate of George Morgan; career of William Woodbridge, United States senator and governor of Michigan; pioneer education; Meadville Seminary; Ohio University; Miami University; Marietta Collegiate Institute; Belpre, Ohio; American Catholic missions; early history of Marietta; the American Colonization Society; Washington County Colonization Society; churches; Washington County Tract Society; recruiting in Marietta during the Civil War; impact of the War of 1812 on westward migration and labor; and Woodbridge family affairs. Letters are addressed to merchants in London, France, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston (West Virginia), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, and Baltimore. Correspondents include Lewis Cass, Philip Doddridge, and Benjamin Reeder.