Collections

Correspondence, legal papers, photographs, and printed materials of John W. Mason (1842-1917). Mason was a circuit court and state Supreme Court judge, member of the Virginia State Debt Commission, and commissioner of Internal Revenue. The general correspondence contains personal and business letters, as well as manuscript speeches, notebooks, and reports. The period while Mason was circuit judge is particularly sparse. Also includes Internal Revenue correspondence consisting of about 8,500 pages in letter press copy books. Roughly half of the collection is devoted to his legal papers and printed materials concerning law in general. Subjects include early development of the Republican Party in West Virginia; political campaigns in West Virginia from 1870-1916; Monongalia Academy; industrial development; Internal Revenue Service (1889-1893); the Virginia Debt question; early banking development in Grafton; and the development of coal companies, particularly around Fairmont. Correspondents include Arthur I. Boreman, A.W. Campbell, Stephen B. Elkins, Benjamin Harrison, Francis H. Pierpont, and others.

Charter for the Morgantown, West Virginia "tent" of the Knights of the Maccabees, a fraternal organization which provided life insurance and other benefits to its members. The charter is dated 20 December 1894 and is 22 1/2 in. X 28 1/2 in. The charter was signed by members of the "tent", including an "A. Dayton", assumed to be Alston Gordon Dayton, alumnus of West Virginia University and West Virginia Federal Court Judge. For more information concerning Dayton, please see A&M 52. For more information regarding the Morgantown Ladies Auxilliary of the Knights of the Maccabees, please see A&M 1687. Also includes original frame that the charter was displayed in.

The collection consists of: a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings on the explosion at Monongah Mines No.6 and No.8 on 6 December 1907, rescue operations, the inquest, and mine law reforms; photographs of the disaster; maps of the interior of the mines; printed and typescript reports and pamphlets on mining operations; script of a 1952 television broadcast on the disaster; material on mine disasters in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Illinois; and newspaper accounts of the agitation for the removal of Judge Alston G. Dayton; and on the imprisonment of Miss Fannie Sellins, a labor organizer.

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.

Business and legal correspondence of Spencer Dayton including letters describing the state legislature of 1872; college correspondence, biographical sketches, testimonials, and memorials of Alston G. Dayton. Other A. G. Dayton material includes papers and letters dealing with his support of the "Big Navy " program in congress and his tour of the British Naval Yards in 1903. There are several family letters including his last letters to his wife. The rest of the collection contains material on family genealogy and history including papers of Adam See, 1801-1837, a Randolph county lawyer and member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention, typescript volume , "Records of the See family of Virginia," by T. J. J. See (1913). Correspondents include H. G. Davis, David Goff, Charles Ambler and T. J. J. See. A detailed paper guide to this collection can be found in the control folder for A&M 0052. An electronic copy of the same guide is available through a curator at the History Center.