Collections

A microfilm copy of the McClellan Papers, Vols. 12-14, held by the Library of Congress. There are letters to and from Gen. McClelland and his staff headquartered in Cincinnati. Also there are Confederate letters presumably captured during McClellan's first campaign into western Virginia. The rebel correspondence is between A.J. Wilson at Grafton and his family of Franklin and also orders from Richmond to Col. George Porterfield. Porterfield mentions the difficulty of raising Confederate companies from the local population in northwestern Virginia. Noteworthy correspondence (21, May 1861) to McClellan from Gen. Winfield Scott, Dept. of the Army, Washington, DC reiterates the Western Department's objective as being an offensive to secure the Mississippi River and not a campaign into north-west Virginia. Also reports to the Federal army by local citizens of the Kanawha Valley about the activities of the occupying Confederate forces. Reputedly the Confederates were imposing themselves on a Unionist population by drafting unwilling conscripts and influencing the outcome of secessionist referendums. In general, the letters of this collection are about military conditions and popular sentiment in the Western Theater, particularly western Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War.

Papers of Dr. Jasper Allen Moyers and his descendants. The Moyers family lived in Franklin, Pendleton County, W.Va. The collection includes personal and business correspondence, photographs, artifacts, and ephemera. The collection is organized into the following series: Historical information (undated), Correspondence - Dr. Moyers (1890-1946), Correspondence - Businesses in Harrisonburg (1920-1968), Family photographs (1862-1978), Papers of Raymond Moyers (1919-1946), Telephone Co. records (1902-1976), Patient ledgers (1905-1939), Scrapbook (1916-1931), Certificate (1939), Artifacts (undated), Glass plate negatives (undated). and Oversize (one poster, 1931).

Records of the Circle, Franklin, Will Run, Sugar Grove, and Union school districts. Included are minutes to the Board of Education meetings, files of teacher contracts, and financial ledgers such as those for building funds.

A collection of account, record, and minute books, as well as ledgers relating to the history of Franklin and Pendleton County, West Virginia. Included are account books belonging to George Hammer (1859-1889); a minute book of the Franklin Water Works (1845-1877); a Pendleton County tax book (1826); and a book of bonds for the administrators and executors of estates from 1802 to 1820. Included are letters to Mary M. Colaw, from relatives in Pendleton County, mainly concerning family news, social events, schooling, and the like.

West Virginia related publications of the Work Progress Administration, mainly consisting of Inventories of the County Archives of West Virginia prepared by The Historical Records Survey Division of Women's and Professional Projects, as well as inventories of federal archives in West Virginia, church archives, public vital statistics, and calendars of letters and papers. Also includes two folk studies of counties by the West Virginia Writers' Program. The Historical Records Survey was a project of the Works Progress Administration New Deal program in the United States. Originally part of the Federal Writers' Project, it was devoted to surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives. Please see "Scope and Content Note" for further information.