Search

Private and business correspondence of Charles A. Wade, a farmer in Burnsville, and Charles W. Wade, a justice of the peace in Braxton County. Included are bills, receipts, and many agriculture-related advertisements and offers.

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.

Account book of G.B. Stathers, a Justice of the Peace for McElroy District, Tyler County, West Virginia, and a carpenter who operated from the towns of Alma and Blue, Tyler County. The account book shows that Mr. Stathers made and sold wagons, buggies, coffins, window frames, doors, railroad ties, and many other wooden articles.

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.

County court records consisting primarily of marriage records and sheriff settlements relating to roads, schools, and poor funds. There are also estate administration papers; lunacy proceedings; Board of Education records; receipts and bank records; other misc. records, and an account book of the firm of Meador and Graham in Hinton, WV. There are also some papers of former clerks E. H. Peck and P. B. Pack.