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The Alexander Haight family collection contains correspondence, legal and financial documents, account ledgers, photographs, and other materials created and collected by members of the Haight family of Fairfax County, Virginia, including during their time living and working on Sully Plantation, during and after the Civil War, and into the mid-20th century, including during World War I.

Material written and collected by a former curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection that includes bibliographies, transcripts, photostats, papers and historical sketches on various aspects of West Virginia history. Items deal with prominent West Virginia University historians, the Civil War, early settlement, industrial growth, and West Virginia University. A number of letters and circulars discuss the West Virginia Historical Society in 1869.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, memorabilia, photographs, journals, drawings, and sketchbooks of David Hunter Strother (1816-1888), a nineteenth century illustrator and writer for Harpers Magazine whose pseudonym, "Porte Crayon", was a household word. Other highlights of his career, all of which are reflected in this collection, are authorship of Virginia Illustrated (1857) and Charleston and its Resources (1878), his work as illustrator for Blackwater Chronicle (1853), service during the Civil War as a Union officer, stint as a newspaper editor, and Consul-Generalship to Mexico (1879-1885). According to Strother's biographer, Cecil D. Eby Jr., his writings linked the two traditions of literature in the south, "the genteel romanticism of the sentimental novelists and the earthy realism of the frontier humorists." In 1872-1875 Strother wrote The Mountains, which Eby considers the first important presentation of West Virginia in literature. The collection includes roughly 590 drawings and sketches, 44 volumes of journals, and several boxes of correspondence. An addendum of 2015/06/13 includes one drawing. An addendum of 2007/02/08 includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, announcements, and photographs regarding Strother and related families of the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia. An addendum of 2021/06/04 contains an abridged transcription by Cecil D. Eby Jr., of Strother's diary, 1879-1880, when Strother was General Consul to Mexico. For contents of the addenda and link to the digital collection: Drawings of David Hunter Strother, please see the Scope and Content Note.

David Boston Stewart (1826-1915), a farmer from Monongalia County, West Virginia, who served with the 48th Virginia Infantry and the 20th Virginia Cavalry during the Civil War and was a member of the Virginia Legislature from 1863 to 1864. Collection primarily consists of letters written to D.B. Stewart between 1862 and 1864 and between 1894 and 1906 that concern Stewart's time as a Confederate prisoner of war during the Civil War, and his personal life in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Papers regarding West Virginia statehood and the history of Wheeling and Ohio County compiled by Judge Gibson L. Cranmer (1826-1903) of Wheeling, West Virginia, who served as secretary of the Wheeling Convention that repudiated Virginia's secession from the United States in 1861. Series 1 includes manuscript narratives and correspondence describing events of the West Virginia statehood movement, written by eyewitnesses at the request of Gibson L. Cranmer. Manuscript authors include John S. Burdett, John S. Carlile, Daniel Frost, Lewis Ruffner, and Benjamin Wilson. Series 2 includes Cranmer's handwritten notes, drafts of articles, copies of documents, and letters solicited by him regarding the history of Wheeling and Ohio County, West Virginia. See Scope and Content Note for details and contents list.

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.

Records of the Harrison County court, including the first land entry book for the county (1784-1799), four court minute books (1797-1805).

A collection of court records, genealogies, historical sketches and other materials relating to Hampshire and Mineral counties in West Virginia and surrounding areas in Virginia and Maryland. Subjects include a naturalist description of the area and an early history of the region including Indians, white settlement, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. There is material on the Civil War and World War I and World War II veterans.

Papers of James ("Jim") Franklin Comstock of Richwood, West Virginia, whose position as editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly and avocation as collector and advocate of all things West Virginia led to the preservation of much of the state's physical, visual, and textual history. The collection includes materials Comstock collected about West Virginia history as well as his own personal and professional papers. Materials include: general series of historical documents such as letters, deeds, and county court cases pertaining to a diverse range of subjects (1717, 1754-1988, undated [includes facsimiles]); letters of Lucy Prichard, former instructor at Marshall College (now Marshall University) (1925-1927, undated); clippings and typescripts of Wirt County resident and Atlantic Monthly writer Louis Eckert Reed (ca. 1960-1975, undated); account books concerning economic development and commercial activities in the northern part of the state in the 19th and early 20th centuries (1830-1938); printed material about West Virginia schools, businesses, and events as well as non-West Virginia books and pamphlets (1829-1995, undated); Comstock's personal and professional correspondence (1882-1995, undated); a wide variety of photographs, including images of West Virginia cities and towns, among many others (ca. 1850s-1995, undated); microfilmed records of the Civil War and Dunmore's War (undated); glass lantern slides, which include views of scenery and buildings in Wheeling and various other locations in Ohio County, WV (1871-1897, undated); Grand Army of the Republic and U.S. military history scrapbooks (1883-1918); broadsides, including advertisements for a circus in Moundsville (ca. 1827-1960 [includes facsimiles]); and maps and atlases of pre- and post-statehood West Virginia, counties, colonial North America, and other topics (1730-1976, undated [includes facsimiles]). An addendum of 2013/05 includes additional personal and professional correspondence, publications, newspaper morgue files, photographs, audio-visual material, artifacts, scrapbooks, account books, and maps. For more information on Jim Comstock, see the Historical Note.