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Start Over Places Ohio River and Valley. Level Collection

Atkeson-Morgan Family Papers 1.9 Linear Feet Summary: 23 in. (4 document cases, 1 flat storage box)

Atkeson-Morgan Family

Papers of John and Sarah Atkeson-Morgan documenting Atkeson-Morgan family history and the history of the Morgan home and farm in Putnam County, West Virginia for period ca. 1840-1900.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

E.C. Smith, Student, Diary Regarding Experiences While at West Virginia University 0.1 Linear Feet Summary: 2 items (diary and transcript)

Smith, E.C.

Diary by E.C. Smith, a student at West Virginia University (WVU), regarding his experiences in 1874. Activities documented include academic (preparing papers, Greek and Latin studies, reading Charles Darwin, etc.), literary society (elections, debates, recitations), military cadet (drills, lectures, marching), and Methodist Episcopal Church events (including sermons and other activities). He also attended a commencement (June 18). Recreational and social activities are also recorded, including baseball, boating, swimming, croquet, and amateur musical performances; and picnics, dances, visiting friends from the Morgantown Female Seminary, and eating at restaurants. Names of professors and fellow students are recorded. Alexander Martin, the first President of West Virginia University, is reported to have delivered two sermons, and a lecture on astronomy. There are references to carriage, railroad, and steamboat travel, and to the towns and cities of Morgantown, Fairmont, Grafton, Parkersburg, Ravenswood, Point Pleasant, Spencer, and Harper's Ferry. Includes transcript of 108 pages.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Ellison Family Papers 3.3 Linear Feet Summary: 3 ft. 4 in. (8 document cases, 5 in. each)

Ellison family

The correspondence, wills, deeds, receipts, recipes, remedies, and genealogy, of the Ellison-Dunlap Petrie families of Monroe County. The letters discuss family and business matters, enslaved Africans, the Civil War, and settlement of some family members in Kansas. There are papers about land and farming, including surveys, deeds, memos, and accounts as well as correspondence and printed material about the WVU Agricultural Extension Service. There are ledgers for Han Creek Mill and an account book of William Petrie. There is also an 1831 journal of William Petrie with entries about his travels to England, Cuba, New Orleans, and along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. There are separations from this collection of photographs, pamphlets, newspapers, and broadsides.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Joshua & William Russell, Sistersville General Store, Daybooks and Ledgers 1.25 Linear Feet Summary: 1 ft. 2 1/2 in. (6 ledgers, 14 1/2 in.)

Russell, Joshua & William. Sistersville General Store.
Partners in a Sistersville general store, Joshua and William Russell were merchants who conducted business along either side of the Ohio River between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The daybooks and ledgers document the trade of their Sistersville store. The daybooks record daily transactions with many examples of barter payment in labor or agricultural goods. These transactions were then transferred to ledgers which contained running accounts for each customer. The ledgers include a name index at the front and refer to balances owed and means of payment. Beyond such routine entries, the ledgers also make frequent references to the occupations and residences of the customers.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Lyman C. Draper, Antiquarian, Manuscripts 17.94 Linear Feet Summary: 17 ft. 11 1/4 in. (123 reels of microfilm, 1.75 in. each)

Draper, Lyman Copeland, 1815-1891
The interviews, correspondence, notes and reports of a Wisconsin based, New York born antiquarian and early researcher of frontier history. Lyman C. Draper's manuscripts were willed to the Wisconsin State Historical Society where he had been its corresponding secretary and instrumental in its development. Microfilm was produced by the society of his papers and made available for purchase to libraries because of their significance for studying the Eastern frontier and its pioneers. Draper had originally planned to publish on the basis of these manuscripts a series of books on frontier history and biographies of famous pioneers. Only one was published, King's Mountain and Its Heroes. Draper, in his writings, generally reflected biases common to white male Americans of the nineteenth century but he collected many documents and interviewed women, Native Americans, and African Americans connected with the frontier and their descendents. Indeed he had collected enough material that he had decided to write biographies of chiefs: Tecumseh and Joseph Brant. Other materials for biographies are of white frontier notables such as Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Lewis Wetzel, Simon Kenton, and Samuel Brady. His papers are also organized regionally with holdings encompassing an area bordered by the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas and portions of Georgia and Alabama, encompassing the entire Ohio River Valley, and part of the upper Mississippi Valley from the era of frontier conflicts in the 1740's and 1750's to the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Marshall, Ohio, and Wood Counties Legislative Petitions 0.15 Linear Feet Summary: 1 3/4 in. (1 reel of microfilm, 1.75 in.)

Marshall, Ohio, and Wood Counties
Petitions from northwestern counties to the Virginia State legislature for internal improvements, namely turnpikes, railroads and river navigation claims. Mention is made of the Ohio River, Little Kanawha River, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the Northwestern Turnpike.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Virginia B. Evans, Artist, Papers 0.8 Linear Feet 9 1/2 in. (1 document case, 5 in.); (1 flat storage box, 3 in.); (1 large flat storage box, 1 1/2 in.); (17 artworks in secure storage)

Evans, Virginia B., 1894-1983

Papers and artwork of Virginia B. Evans, a landscape painter and glassware designer of the upper Ohio Valley. She was a native of Moundsville, West Virginia who at one time headed the art department at West Liberty State College. Her art was widely exhibited regionally and nationally. Although she preferred working in a variety of styles and media, she was most noted for her rather representational landscapes and her fusion of traditional Chinese sensibilities with modern Western industrial glassware design. Collection also includes a white confirmation dress from Mount de Chantal where Evans completed a degree in art in 1914.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

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