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Papers of the Goff family of Harrison County, West Virginia. This collection is minimally processed. Includes the papers of Nathan Goff III, grandson of Nathan Goff Jr. (1843-1920), as well as his daughter Laura Ellen Goff Fireman (later Davis). Also includes correspondence of Howard Caplan, the Administrator of the Estate of Nathan Goff III, and H. Dotson Cather, the brother-in-law of Mrs. Goff Fireman Davis who may have been involved in Goff's estate. Formats in the collection include correspondence, ephemera, programs, invitations, plats, photographs, clippings, and much more. Nathan Goff's correspondence includes mostly business but also some family and personal correspondence. Correspondence includes both incoming and typescript copies of outgoing letters, as well as a few cards and telegrams. Subjects include mines, farming, livestock (especially sheep and horses, with special concentration of Clydesdale material), politics, land, wells, oil and gas leases, Citizens Publishing Company, the Waldo Hotel, the Nicholas Land Company, West Virginia Consolidated Coal Company and its Hardman Mine, Illinois State Fair, engineering, books, finances, and more. Mrs. Goff Fireman Davis's correspondence mainly concerns her father's estate. There are also two folders of material pertaining to Nathan Goff Jr., mostly correspondence and financial information (box 1, folders 17-18, 1884-1919). See Historical Note for additional information.

Well leases and records, geologic reports, maps, printed material, photographs, and other papers of McGinnis, an oil and gas operator who owned the Tri-State Oil & Gas Co. of West Virginia, and who, after graduating from Marshall University in 1910, became a leading figure in the oil and gas business. Some of his poetry is included in the collection.

Papers of the Kendall Family of Mannington District, Marion County, West Virginia. Family names Hibbs and Cunningham also appear frequently in the collection. Contains the following series: correspondence; financial records; land records; legal records; legal correspondence; election records; funeral records; oil, gas, and coal records; subjects; photograph; and scrapbook. Election records includes a list of voters (1908) and a poll record for a U.S. Presidential election (1928). Oil, gas and coal records contains leases and agreements concerning drilling and mining on Kendall family land in the Mannington District (ca. 1900-1930). The Scrapbook contains pension records regarding Minerva Hibbs, widow of William W. Hibbs who served with the 12th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War; it also contains a printed invitation to a "Mother's Day Service" and two hand-written tributes to mothers, among other items.