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Papers of a Monongalia County, West Virginia, farm family residing near Maidsville include: the farm account books of John and John J. Courtney, 1831-1877; family Bible records and photographs; college essays of Alpheus Courtney, a West Virginia University student; manuscript ciphering book, 1817; diary of Ulysses J. Courtney, 1878-1883 (7 vols.) pertaining to lumbering, farming, and livestock operations, and community religious and social life; correspondence; steamboat bills of lading, invoices of mercantile stores; Civil War bounty receipts; a record of lumbering operations, 1878; and records of the Bethel (Methodist) Church. Subjects include the construction of the Monongahela Valley Railroad; frontier conditions in Iowa; Morgantown Bridge Company; and Methodism within the Baltimore and West Virginia conferences. Correspondents include Alston G. Dayton.

County court and public records primarily concerning deeds, estates, guardianships, executors, poor and paupers, roads, and "scalp certificates" for various animals. There are also record books, predominantly personal property and land books, and a few private accounts. There is also a breadth of material concerning records of personal property; county courthouse and jail; marriages; liquor, attorney, minister, and professional licenses; apprenticing; surveys and plats; lunacy; court proceedings; elections and voting; and public utilities and taxation.

Papers of Judge Gideon D. Camden (1805-1891) of Clarksburg, Harrison County, West Virginia, and papers of his grandson Wilson Lee Camden (1870-1958). Gideon D. Camden was a lawyer, Democratic politician, member of the Virginia Convention of 1850-1851, circuit judge, and state senator (1872-1876). His papers include correspondence, legal and business papers, surveys and plats, and printed material. Subjects include Virginia, West Virginia, and national politics; the railroad, oil, timber, and coal industries; and Camden's law practice. Wilson Lee Camden papers include correspondence, legal papers, surveys and plats, printed material, business manuscripts, photographs, map, and ledgers. Subjects include the settlement of his grandfather's estate, and extensive coal, timber, land, railroad, and oil interests in West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania. See Scope and Content Note for more information.

Papers of Judge Gideon D. Camden (1805-1891) of Clarksburg, Harrison County, West Virginia. Camden was a lawyer, Democratic politician, member of the Virginia Convention of 1850-1851, circuit judge, and state senator (1872-1876). Includes business correspondence, financial records, legal papers, and court records. Materials include the early land papers of Camden's law partner, John J. Allen, and the legal papers of the firm Allen and Camden, which deal primarily with land suits and surveys in Harrison and surrounding counties. Later legal and business papers relate to the development of the West Virginia oil fields and Camden's extensive holdings in mineral and timber lands in central West Virginia. Other papers concern the Constitutional Convention of 1872, subsequent ratification, attempts to remove the legislature to Clarksburg, and West Virginia politics in general, particularly the period 1860-1874. Other subjects include Diss Debar's attempts to stimulate immigration from Alsace-Lorraine; H.G. Davis and the development of West Virginia railroads; and a debate on Christian baptism at Fairmont, 1872, between Benjamin Franklin and Professor Solomon of West Virginia University. Correspondents include Henry G. Davis, John J. Davis, J.H. Diss Debar, Johnson N. Camden, John J. Allen, Spencer Dayton, John S. Carlile, John Bassel, James M. Bennett, David Goff, Lot M. Morrill, James S. Wheat, Alpheus J. Haymond, John Jay Jackson, Jr. and Sr., George R. Latham, Nimrod Dent, Benjamin F. Martin, Okey Johnson, J. Marshall Hagans, J.W. Arbogast, and W.J. Bland. For partial inventory of business correspondence, see control folder. For series list, see Scope and Content Note.

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.

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.

Photostats of deeds, surveys, plats, and grants, the latter signed by Thomas M. Randolph, David Campbell, and William Smith, governors of Virginia, in 1820, 1838, and 1847, for land in Harrison and Doddridge counties; a school attendance sheet for 1865; and a report to the board of education of the number of school-age children in District 4 of Doddridge County in 1869. Also included are a number of photographs taken around Webster Springs showing the hotel, a subscription school, and public school classes, ca.1900, along with two photographs of lumbering activities near Holly River. There is also a typescript, "An Adventure of Two Years in Webster Springs High School, 1915-1917," by Maud M. Hull; and a short history of the Webster Hardwood Lumber Company at Dixie.