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Business and personal papers, pamphlets, clippings, and photographs of Benjamin Fleming (1806-1891), and his son Thurston Worth (b.1846), relating to various business enterprises carried on by the family in Fairmont. These included a large trade in manufacturing, importing and selling hats and furs, general merchandising, fertilizer and hardwood sales.

Additional papers of Benjamin Fleming and several members of the Fleming family. Manuscript items include land grants and deed Monongalia County, letters, account and tax statements. Printed items include Sabbath School program, Fairmont, 1861; concert and commencement programs of Fairmont State Normal, 1892, 1897, 1906; Alfred Fleming Cemetery Association, proposed organization pamphlet. A clipping scrapbook contains some poetry by Thurston Worth Fleming, biographical sketch of Col. William Fleming and genealogical information on the Fleming family.

Historical and genealogical typescripts, clipping scrapbooks, copies of family and court records, and personal recollections of the Guyandotte Valley area of Cabell, Wayne, and Lincoln counties compiled by F.B. Lambert. Several typescripts deal with the religious institutions of the area, the development of road, river, and rail transportation, and the spread of education in the valley. Other materials deal with the frontier and Indian history of the Guyandotte country and the collection includes a school commissioner's book for 1819. Barbourville school record book, 1863, and a minute book of the Barboursville Common Council, 1950-1911.

Collection includes family correspondence of the Bowman, Veach, and Leeper families. Manuscripts include a recounting of the Civil War event known as "Jones' Raid." In another document Nathaniel Cochrane, an ancestor of Thomas Leeper, recounts his capture and imprisonment by indigenous people, along with a biography of Cochrane. Daily life for that time is captured in "Home Life of the Leeper Family." Other typescript histories include "Monongah," Thomas Leeper's diary regarding heavy rains and high waters of 1888, a history of West Monongah High School, and "History of the Leeper Family."

Papers, mainly correspondence, of the Hubbard family of New Haven and Litchfield, Connecticut and Wheeling, West Virginia. There are several hundred letters which document the growth of the family and its business enterprises in Wheeling. Correspondents include Gad Smith, Dana Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, General John Hubbard, Roger Dorman, H Moran, William P. Hubbard, Dana L. Hubbard, Stephen B. Elkins, John W. Mason, and Waitman T. Willey.

Correspondence, miscellaneous family papers, nineteenth century school records, ledgers, bank books, and memorabilia of Hugh F. Sayre and family of Parkersburg, Reedy, St. Marys and West Creek, West Virginia. Some material relates to oil and gas leases on the Sayre family farm and Sayre's invention of a scientific alphabet called EBDECORD.

Collection consists of photographs, publications, letters, and newspaper clippings regarding the Jolliff and Watson families. Jolliff family history is highlighted in photocopies of the publication, Family Record and Genealogy of the Jolliff Family, From the Year 1760 to 1878 Inclusive by Oliver P. Jolliff and James S. Watson (1878). A photocopy of the Journal of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Encampment, Department of West Virginia, Grand Army of the Republic, Wheeling, West Virginia, May 19th, 20th and 21st, 1908 (pages 26-28 only) includes a memoir and photograph of James S. Watson. Family obituaries from the 1930s and 1940s from the Morgantown and Fairmont areas comprise most of the photocopied newspaper clippings. Most photographs are unidentified, undated portraits from Morgantown photography studios (Protzman, Rogers, and Morgan) and are most likely portraits of Jolliff and Watson family members. Two identified photographs are of students and teacher(s) from the Uffington, West Virginia Public School House (1907), and a group in front of Watson Rock (named for the Watson family) Monongah, West Virginia (ca. 1900-1910). Other items of interest include a West Virginia University commencement announcement (1937), an invitation to the dedication of the WVU Agricultural Experiment Station (1894), a Fairmont Normal School program (1893), an advertising card titled, Dr. Jayne's Tonic Vermifuge (undated), and a postcard depicting the Balanced Rock near Elkins, West Virginia (1909).