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Correspondence, legal papers, photographs, and printed materials of John W. Mason (1842-1917). Mason was a circuit court and state Supreme Court judge, member of the Virginia State Debt Commission, and commissioner of Internal Revenue. The general correspondence contains personal and business letters, as well as manuscript speeches, notebooks, and reports. The period while Mason was circuit judge is particularly sparse. Also includes Internal Revenue correspondence consisting of about 8,500 pages in letter press copy books. Roughly half of the collection is devoted to his legal papers and printed materials concerning law in general. Subjects include early development of the Republican Party in West Virginia; political campaigns in West Virginia from 1870-1916; Monongalia Academy; industrial development; Internal Revenue Service (1889-1893); the Virginia Debt question; early banking development in Grafton; and the development of coal companies, particularly around Fairmont. Correspondents include Arthur I. Boreman, A.W. Campbell, Stephen B. Elkins, Benjamin Harrison, Francis H. Pierpont, and others.

Scrapbook of Sylvia Soupart, an early graduate of University High School. Much of it is about the early development of this school by West Virginia University including clippings about its first commencement. There are also photos and clippings about Morgantown's involvement in World War II.

Papers of the managing editor of the Parkersburg DAILY STATE JOURNAL, 1889-1895, editor of the WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL JOURNAL, and member of the English faculty of West Virginia University, 1895-1925. The collection includes manuscripts of Barbe's published poetry and unpublished short stories, correspondence, notes, speeches, class lectures, illustrations for short stories drawn by John Rettig, a scrapbook of clippings of reviews and correspondence relating to Barbe's book, GOING TO COLLEGE, and memorabilia. The correspondence includes letters, in some cases accompanied by holograph verse, from Winston Churchill, Richard Harding Davis, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, R.W. Gilder, Edward E. Hale, William H. Hayne, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Rupert Hughes, Stephen Leacock, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Brander Matthews, Margaret Prescott Montague, Bliss Perry, Melville D. Post, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Booth Tarkington, Charles Dudley Warner, Barrett Wendell, William Allen White, W.L. Wilson, and Owen Wister. There is also a volume of mounted holograph letters, 1884-1895, from the following American authors, a few of whom are also included in the general collection: Edward W. Bok, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin, Danske Dandridge, Oliver W. Holmes, Clifford Lanier, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, Margaret J. Preston, James Whitcomb Riley, and John G. Whittier. Most letters are brief and many are simple acknowledgements.