Search

Personal and business papers of Arthur I. Boreman (1823-1896), lawyer, U.S. senator, circuit court judge, and first governor of West Virginia. The bulk of the collection consists of papers relating to his judgeship and to the law firm of Boreman and Bullocks, Parkersburg, WV. Series include correspondence, notes on cases tried before Judge Boreman, envelope cases of material regarding legal cases in which Boreman was involved, financial material, and political and judicial printed material. Correspondence includes letters to Boreman from Francis H. Pierpont (1866-1867), which concern politics in West Virginia, the admission of Berkeley and Jefferson counties into the state, the Virginia debt, and Reconstruction in Virginia. There is little other material relating to the governorship or political activities. Additional correspondents include J.W. Davis, John J. Davis, D.D.T. Farnsworth, D.H. Strother, J.G. Jackson, Charles J. Faulkner, and E.W. Wilson. Also includes manuscripts of speeches; muster rolls; household accounts; civil and court case papers concerning oil well drilling and sales; railroad property inventories and operation; coal prices, shipping data, and strikes; liquid fuel transportation; and steam and tow boat cargoes, navigation data, and names of boats in service on the Ohio River. There is also genealogical information on P.G. Van Winkle and Ebenezer Zane, and a letter and deposition by J.H. Diss Debar. For more details and box-level contents list, see Scope and Content Note. For more information on Arthur I. Boreman, see Historical Note.

An 1851 letter to Rebecca Coplin from Harriet Burdett of Pruntytown, West Virginia, on community health, family affairs and Methodist church matters. A merchandise account book, 1859-63, of an unidentified general store owner and inn keeper; steamboat bills of lading for the Kathryn and French of the Little Kanawha Packet Line (Creston-Parkersburg), 1899 and 1905. There are also mimeographed sketches on the history, topography, scenery, agriculture, geology, rural development and natural resources of West Virginia by a Wood County agricultural extension agent, C.R. Titlow.

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.

Correspondence, business and legal papers, surveys, account books, and a diary of a Burning Springs surveyor, oil developer, rural entrepreneur, horticulturalist, and captain of the Little Kanawha River steamer GENERAL JACKSON. Collection includes a brief journal of a trip from Des Moines, Iowa, to the Forks of the Platte in 1860; papers of Clarke's venture in quartz mining and milling in the Colorado Territory, 1861-1863; surveys of the Burning Springs oil region; letters from James C. Clarke, president of the Wirt Oil and Mining Company of which Clarke was superintendent; papers on the National Grange, the West Virginia Grange (Patrons of Husbandry), cooperatives, and the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia Wool Growers Association; a diary of farming operations at Burning Springs; letters from Clarke's brother, James C., while a member of the Pennsylvania senate, 1875-1880; letterheads from Little Kanawha and Ohio Valley mercantile firms and steamboat companies; and family letters. Other subjects covered include: the Allegheny Valley Railroad; early history of Bethalto, Illinois; the speculative spirit and western expansion, 1860; freighting on the Great Plains during the Civil War; construction of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad near Council Bluffs in 1868; and the effect of the German crisis of 1866 on American oil prices.

Letters of Henry and Joseph Bennett concerning travel by sea from New York to Chagres, Panama, overland across Panama and by ship to San Francisco in 1851. Letters from California, 1852-1853, discuss arrival of immigrants; employment conditions and wages; gambling and social life in San Francisco; investment opportunities; conditions in the gold mines; travel by steamboat to Hangtown (Placerville); churches; crime; Indians; mining profits; cost of land; ranching; blacksmith and plough shop in Santa Clara; digging a canal to take water from the American River to supply Hangtown, Coon Hollow, and Gold Hill; and Webber Run. Two letters by Joseph Bennett from Australia in l853 comment on mining, living conditions, profits of mining, and criminals sent from Great Britain. There is one 1849 letter to Samuel Bennett from relatives in Sheffield, England. There are several items of Jacobs family correspondence, 1880-1923, concerning family affairs, schools, economic conditions in Jackson County, and Monongalia County taxes in 1907.

Diary of Lyman Stedman (1824-1916), a farmer and former member of the House of Delegates, 1877, from Brown's Island, Hancock County. Entries concern farm operation, Republican political activities on the district and county level, comments on state and national organizations, floods on the Ohio River, steamboat and barge traffic, Hopedale School, Methodist Episcopal Church, railroad travel, circuses and fairs, taxes and land valuations, and Memorial Day.

Papers of the Dahmer family of Upper Tract, Pendleton County, WV, featuring the papers and artifacts of Miles Dahmer, who served the Confederacy in the 25th Virginia Infantry.

Letters, business papers, and photograph concerning Nathan Hanes of Proctor, Wetzel County, West Virginia, a sawmill clipper operator along the Ohio River. There is a large amount of correspondence addressed to E.E. Headlee, administrator of Hanes' estate, concerning its administration. There are also thirteen cash books, ledgers, and other account books, as well as a notebook containing information on the Hanes family.