Search

Private journal of George K. Campbell of Athens County, Ohio, who served as an officer in Company B of the 116th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Gettysburg campaign and the summer, fall, and winter of 1863, when he saw service in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Campbell served detached duty as an escort officer for recruits and prisoners during the spring and summer of 1864 and visited New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He joined Company B of the 187th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in September 1864. That unit was soon consolidated and became Company E of the 174th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

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 correspondence, legal documents, photocopies of printed material, and land grants. Subjects of the correspondence include West Virginia politics; the elections of 1840, 1860, and 1861; Reconstruction; the Flick Amendment; Southern sentiment in Clarksburg; and the location of the capital. Other papers deal with Indian scouting between the West Fork and Buckhannon Rivers during the Revolution; land speculation in Harrison and nearby counties; New York merchants and the Civil War; public schools in Shepherdstown, 1850; the Meade Collegiate Institute; Mount de Chantal Academy; Wheeling Female Seminary; the Chicago, Parkersburg, and Norfolk Railroad; and the Virginia Debt Question. There are several items of correspondence of the Reverend John S. Martin which relate to Methodism in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., particularly camp meetings, parish life and the slave question. There are also original and photocopied land grants signed by James Monroe, Edmund Randolph, Patrick Henry, and Henry Lee (late 1700s to early 1800s). Correspondents include Judge John J. Allen, Robert M.T. Hunter, Alexander Campbell, Judge E. J. Pitts, James A. Hall, W.P. Cooper, George W. Thompson, Judge Hugh W. Shuffey, Thomas Maslin, William E. Arnold, J. M. Mason, and Samuel D. Tompkins.

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.

The collection consists of correspondence and legal papers concerning 9,580 acres in Kanawha County, West Virginia, on Cabin and Slaughter creeks, mentioning coal and railroad possibilities, interest rates, livestock breeding and costs, and organization of the company.

Three photograph albums of Harry Snedden Laird (September 11, 1868-October 1, 1952), a civil engineer, and resident of Preston County, West Virginia (WV). They document dam and railroad construction projects. The first album contains 50 photographs, arranged chronologically (1912-1913). The photos record construction of Cheat Lake dam ("Cheat Haven"); subjects include: a coffer dam, a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge, and turbine form construction. The album also contains an annotated document which gives the measurements for "Bridges Required on Harrisville-Southern Railroad" (1914). The second album contains 47 photographs (1910-1913). Subjects include: Cheat Lake dam construction, continued from the first album (1913); identified individuals in Harrisville, WV associated with Harrisville and Cornwallis Railroad (1914); Rockville Bridge near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Western Maryland Railroad (WMRR) tracks; and railroad bridge and tunnel construction, likely east of Frostburg, Maryland (MD) (1910). The third album contains 109 photographs, most of which are labeled (1910-1911). Photographs depict construction work on the Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad and WMRR near Mt. Savage, Frostburg, and Cumberland, MD. Highlights include a photo of Helmsetter's Farm in Cumberland and two photos of a Hurley Track Laying Machine in use for WMRR (all 1911).

Diary and memoir of a Confederate soldier, railroad laborer, and shop owner from Grafton. The memoir begins with Mugler's birth in Alsace-Lorraine in 1838, and covers his immigration to the United States; enlistment in the United States Army in 1851; military duty in New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Texas, California, and the Washington Territory where he participated in the expedition against the Yakima Indians as a member of Company B, Third Regiment, United States Artillery, under Phil Sheridan; and his return to Orange County, Virginia, where following the passage of the Secession Ordinance he enlisted in the Thirteenth Virginia Infantry serving as chief musician. The memoir concludes with Mugler's military career during 1861-1862. The diary covers the remainder of his military service, 1862-1864, and his confinement as a war prisoner at Elmira, New York, 1864-1865. Following the war, Mugler returned to Washington, D.C., and eventually gained employment with the National Cemetery Corps, working at various Virginia battlefields. While in Virginia he served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Convention of 1867. He worked at the National Cemetery at Grafton and for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, eventually becoming superintendent of painters on the Road Division in West Virginia. After 1874 he worked briefly as a self-employed painter, and then opened a paint and hardware store in Grafton which he managed until the end of his life. Subjects include the Battle of Mine Run, the retreat from Antietam, the Battle of the Wilderness, prison life at Elmira, New York; reconstruction in Virginia; railroading and the railroad towns of Keyser, Oakland (Maryland), Parkersburg, Fairmont, and Wheeling; the strikes of 1877; interviews with Generals Ord and Sheridan; the Murphy Temperance Movement and W.C.T.U. activities; the Liberal Republican movement of 1872; the Greenback Party; the Chicago World's Fair of 1893; political figures such as John S. Carlile, John G. Carlisle, John T. McGraw, John W. Mason, Frank Hereford, John E. Kenna, John A. Logan, James G. Blaine, and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson.

Letters and tax papers deal with lawyer-client matters between Weston attorney Henry Brannon and Boston capitalist, Robert H. Waters. Subjects include Waters' suit against Equitable Oil and Mining Co. and purchase of 1,500 acres on Three Lick Run of Oil Creek in Lewis County, taxation of the property, redemption of the property from its sale for delinquent taxes, tenant relations, the sale of timber, illegal cutting of timber, and efforts to sell the land. Brannon also addresses his 1881 election as circuit court judge and solicits capital investment from Bostonians in support of railroad projects in central West Virginia. Other correspondents are the law firm Angell & Jamison, Festus Williams, and J. G. Vandervort.