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Photocopy of typescript transcription of the manuscript journal kept by Marcia Louise Sumner Phillips of French Creek and Buckhannon, Virginia (West Virginia). It contains commentary on local and family affairs, and on Civil War military activities in the western Virginia and Virginia areas. Other subjects include churches, travel, elections, holiday celebrations, and the 1863 statehood convention in Parkersburg. There are descriptions of and quoted conversations with officers of both the Union and Confederate armies. Military units mentioned in the narrative include: the Third Virginia Volunteer Infantry, One Hundred Thirty-third Virginia Military, Eighteenth Virginia Cavalry, Tenth Virginia Infantry, Second Virginia Infantry, the Ringgold Cavalry, and the Imboden Rangers. Military camps commented on include Flatwoods, Elkwater, and Baldwin. Marcia L.S. Phillips was the wife of S.B. Phillips, Captain of Company E, Third Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. There is also an additional photocopy preservation copy of the journal.

Correspondence, business and legal papers, notebooks, speeches, historical essays, genealogical records, clippings, and printed material of a Buckhannon lawyer, state jurist, member of Congress (1927-1929), and West Virginia Secretary of State (1933-1948). The collection also includes papers of O'Brien's father, Emmett J., a member of the state's first Constitutional Convention; letters from O'Brien's brother, Lieutenant A.L. O'Brien, 1874-1887, a West Point graduate serving at forts Assinniboine, Belknap, and Spokane in the Montana Territory and Washington State; letters of Henry M. White, O'Brien's brother-in-law, and a lawyer with the Immigration Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission; a diary of a trip to Texas in 1907; and genealogical records of the Joseph Hall, William Norris, O'Brien, and Jacob Reger families. Subjects include West Virginia Wildlife League; Methodism in Upshur County; an expedition in pursuit of Sitting Bull; the Rush Holt contested election of 1934; the McAdoo-Smith contest of 1924; the Townsendites; presidential election of 1936; state politics; pioneer history of West Virginia; and the Vandalia Company.