Search

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.

Journal of accounts, 1810-1820, for the Hart and Woolworth Lumber Mill, located in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The mill was originally owned by Stephen Hart and Reuben Woolworth, but Walter Martin bought Woolworth's share in March 1811. Pages of the account book are organized according to account owner. Entries list all work, amount charged, and account balance. Work typically include the sawing of boards, planks, lath boards, and clapboards (ash, oak, hemlock, birch, butternut), related items (joists, nails, logs, pickets), and the amount of labor. The last page consists of a list of repairs made to the saw mill.

Correspondence, business papers, and account books of companies in the town of Hendricks, West Virginia. Included are records of J.E. Poling and Company; Hendricks Lumber Company; Piedmont Grocery Company; C.W. Harvey & Company; J.C. Orrick and Son Company; and the Baer Grocery Company of Cumberland, Maryland.

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.

Business and personal correspondence of several members of the Holt and Keyes families of Barbour County, West Virginia, including Ben M., Charles, Samuel T.H., and Stephen Holt, and W.G. and Bertha Holt Keyes. The collection includes records of firms operated by these families, mainly the Keyes Lumber Company, the Holt Ice Company, and Holt's Mill; genealogical material on the Holt family; records relating to foundries, coal, coke, building supplies, general merchandise, farm and construction work, mine post sales, and the Elk Creek Oil and Gas Company.

A collection of 400 letters, cards, petitions, telegrams, printed, and other similar items received and sent by U.S. Senator and Representatives Howard Sutherland (1865-1950) of West Virginia. The papers are part of Sutherland's constituent mail and are all concerned with the question of women's suffrage. The period covered is 1914-1919, and correspondence regarding both the Bristow-Mondell House Resolution, considered in Jan. 1915, and the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, voted upon 5 June 1919, is included. About one-third of the collection is anti-suffrage in sentiment; the other two-thirds is made up of material from suffrage supporters. The collection is arranged chronologically, with carbon copy replies from Sutherland attached to the letters to which they reply. Among supporters of women's suffrage may be found the National American Women Suffrage Association, the National Woman's Party, the West Virginia Equal Suffrage League, the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, various West Virginia chapters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, individual professional women and housewives, the West Virginia chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Victory Union, the Women's Home Missionary Society of Wheeling, West Virginia, the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc., various labor groups, including the West Virginia Federation of Labor, numerous professional and business men, the Woman's Republican Club of New York City, and various other non-West Virginia state women's suffrage organizations. Anti-suffrage correspondents include the American Constitutional League, numerous individual professional and business men, housewives, and various state and local associations opposed to women's suffrage. Especially important among the pro-suffrage correspondence are letters signed by Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, and Maud Wood Park of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. These letters are dated 25 Sept. 1918, and 17 Feb. and 13 June 1919. Further description of the collection, including excerpts from some letters, may be found in the inventory folder for the Howard Sutherland Papers.

Papers of a livestock broker, farmer, and merchant of Mingo Flats, Randolph County, who was associated with John T. McGraw in the development of Marlinton and the purchase and sale of land, coal, and timber in neighboring Pocahontas County. There are some items of Civil War interest, while the bulk of the correspondence relates to the marketing of ginseng, beeswax, wool, venison, animal pelts, and farm machinery. There is significant correspondence relating to state politics and railroads. Correspondents include J.M. Bennett, J.N. Camden, David Goff, John J. Jackson, McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, John T. McGraw, and The Pocahontas Development Company. Also includes some material of G.E. Jarvis, father of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day.