Collections

Correspondence of Charles J. Faulkner (1806-1884), who was a Martinsburg attorney, Virginia legislator, member of Congress, and ambassador to France during the James Buchanan administration. Subjects include national and Virginia-West Virginia politics, 1827-1876, and foreign affairs, 1868-1876. Other subjects include the French Colonization Society, the slave controversy, Maryland-Virginia boundary dispute, Virginia Revolutionary debt claims, disposal of the Harpers Ferry Armory, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, numerous internal improvement schemes in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and local history of the Martinsburg and Shenandoah Valley area. Correspondents include Sherrard Clemens; Lyman C. Draper; John J. Jackson, Jr.; Daniel Lamb; Alexander Martin; Samuel Price; George W. Summers; Henry A. Wise; and Waitman T. Willey. For a more complete list of subjects and correspondents, see Scope and Content Note. For a partial list of contents, see the control folder. For more information about Faulkner, see the Historical Note.

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.

Correspondence, legal and business papers, mercantile records and tax receipt books of Isaac McNeel, who operated a store at Edray and Mill Point, Pocahontas County, West Virginia, served as sheriff of the county, operated a gristmill, raised livestock, and was appointed provost marshal of the county in 1862 by the Confederate Army. The collection also includes letters and school reports of McNeel's sons, Winters and Summers, while students at Washington and Lee and the Medical and Law Departments of the University of Virginia, 1893-1897. Other school material pertains to the Hillsboro Male and Female Academy and the Lewisburg Female Institute. Subjects include mercantile and cattle trade with Baltimore and Richmond; business conditions in the l850s and in Richmond during the Civil War; slave hiring; ginseng trade; agriculture; the American Party, 1855; Henry A. Wise; Virginia Secession Convention; effect of the Union blockade on Richmond commerce; speculation in whiskey, tobacco, and cattle during the Civil War; and postwar economic and political conditions in the Pocahontas County area.

Charles Henry Ambler (1876-1957) was a professor of history at West Virginia University and the author of numerous books about American and West Virginia history, including The Life and Diary of John Floyd (1918). Collection contains some of Ambler's research materials for this biography of Floyd, who was a soldier and surgeon in the Virginia militia in the early nineteenth century and the governor of Virginia from 1830 to 1834. One folder contains letters and notes from 1912 and 1913 related to Ambler's efforts to locate manuscript material related to Floyd and a partial typescript draft of Ambler's biography with handwritten annotations. Two additional folders contain typescript copies of letters that Ambler presumably collected during his research. Letters from 1778 to 1782 are chiefly from William Davies, William Preston, and Thomas Jefferson and primarily relate to the Revolutionary War and Virginia militia. Materials from 1830 to 1834 consist of letters between Floyd and John Tyler, Littleton Tazewell, Thomas Gilmer, and other mid-nineteenth-century politicians. Topics include Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, national and Virginia state politics, the status of Virginia, and the Nullification Crisis. It is unclear where the original manuscripts of these two folders of letters are located or when the typescripts were made.

Correspondence, maps, business records and other papers of a U.S. Senator, Democratic politician, and promoter of the oil industry, railroads, and coal and timber resources of West Virginia. The papers regard Camden's purchase of land in the 1850s; his activities in oil production and refining, 1860-1875; his presidency of the Camden Consolidated Oil Company and the Baltimore United Oil Company; the affairs of the Stewart Brick Company of Parkersburg; the Virginia debt controversy; and his development of railroads, including the Ohio River Railroad, the West Virginia and Pittsburgh Railroad, and Monongahela River Railroad, 1879-1892. See the "Scope and Content Note" for more information.

Papers of Lewis Summers, a lawyer, businessman, member of the Virginia House of Delegates, 1817-1818, delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-1830, and his brother George W., a lawyer in Charleston, a judge, a member of the House of Delegates, 1830-1832, 1834-1836, the U.S. House of Representatives, 1841-1845, a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, candidate for governor in 1851, member of the 1861 Peace Convention, and delegate to the Richmond Secession Convention, 1861. Correspondence between the brothers is for the years 1818-1843. There are also business, legal, and family papers, speeches, and an autograph book of George W. while a student at the University of Virginia, 1854-1857. Correspondents include George Carlisle, James Craik, James M. Laidley, and Luke Wilcox. Persons mentioned or commented on include John Q. Adams, John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, Henry Clay, Thomas R. Dew, Andrew Donnally, Millard Fillmore, John Floyd, William H. Harrison, Andrew Jackson, the Ruffner family, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, and Henry A. Wise.