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Correspondence, poems, and clippings of a secondary and normal school librarian in Fairmont and West Liberty, West Virginia. Subjects include the West Virginia Library Association. There is one letter each from Mary Meek Atkeson and Waitman Barbe.

Record book, photo and certificate of the West Virginia University Alpha chapter of a national honorary fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa. A chapter charter was granted only to those institutions whose standards measured up to a high scholastic ideal. The fraternity's purpose being to undertake to conserve the influences that were restored and liberated by the Renaissance, specifically those influences that refine and humanize mankind. Membership was open to those undergraduate seniors in the top quarter of their graduating class and those graduate students "whose post-graduate work entitles them to such honor." Faculty, illustrious previous graduates, and others of prominence associated with WVU such as its presidents could be elected to membership. Although initially all chapter members were male, in the class of 1911 two women were initiated Anna Grace Cox and Helen M. Wiestling. The certificate is the charter granted in 1910 when Alpha chapter was created. The photo has a separate key of names. Included in the photo are then WVU president, Daniel B. Purinton; first chapter president, Oliver P. Chitwood; and then fraternity united chapters president, Prof. Edwin A. Grosvenor. Also in the photo are Alston G. Dayton, James M. Callahan, I. C. White, Waitman Barbe, and J. N. Deahl. The record book contains constitution and by-laws, membership rolls, treasurer reports, resolutions, and minutes. The minutes are chiefly reports of the nominating committee, proposals to change the constitution and by-laws, and eligibility and disciplinary inquiries. Among the latter is an examination of the behavior and clearing of the name from any wrongdoing of David Alfred Christopher. Christopher was connected with the student protest against taking final exams in the Spring of 1917 due to the outset of American participation in World War I in which much of the student body was inducted into military service, a phenomenon typical on other campuses all over the country. The protest occurred because many other universities for the reason of entry into the war had already cancelled exams. Also noteworthy is the controversy in the 1920's over the appropriation of its name and symbol by a satiric and humorous fraternity on campus later named the Fi Batar Cappar.

Papers of the managing editor of the Parkersburg DAILY STATE JOURNAL, 1889-1895, editor of the WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL JOURNAL, and member of the English faculty of West Virginia University, 1895-1925. The collection includes manuscripts of Barbe's published poetry and unpublished short stories, correspondence, notes, speeches, class lectures, illustrations for short stories drawn by John Rettig, a scrapbook of clippings of reviews and correspondence relating to Barbe's book, GOING TO COLLEGE, and memorabilia. The correspondence includes letters, in some cases accompanied by holograph verse, from Winston Churchill, Richard Harding Davis, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, R.W. Gilder, Edward E. Hale, William H. Hayne, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Rupert Hughes, Stephen Leacock, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Brander Matthews, Margaret Prescott Montague, Bliss Perry, Melville D. Post, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Booth Tarkington, Charles Dudley Warner, Barrett Wendell, William Allen White, W.L. Wilson, and Owen Wister. There is also a volume of mounted holograph letters, 1884-1895, from the following American authors, a few of whom are also included in the general collection: Edward W. Bok, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin, Danske Dandridge, Oliver W. Holmes, Clifford Lanier, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, Margaret J. Preston, James Whitcomb Riley, and John G. Whittier. Most letters are brief and many are simple acknowledgements.

Two lists, alphabetical and chronological, of honorary degree recipients of West Virginia University. Recipients include Newton D. Baker, Waitman Barbe, Michael Benedum, Luis Borges, Pearl Buck, Robert C. Byrd, Henry S. Commager, Roy Bird Cook, Earl Core, John J. Cornwell, Marmaduke Dent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry D. Hatfield, John L. Lewis, J.A. McBride, Jennings Randolph, Sam Rayburn, Harold E. Stassen, Cyrus Vance, I.C. White, and Charles Yeager.