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Correspondence of Charles J. Faulkner (1806-1884), who was a Martinsburg attorney, Virginia legislator, member of Congress, and ambassador to France during the James Buchanan administration. Subjects include national and Virginia-West Virginia politics, 1827-1876, and foreign affairs, 1868-1876. Other subjects include the French Colonization Society, the slave controversy, Maryland-Virginia boundary dispute, Virginia Revolutionary debt claims, disposal of the Harpers Ferry Armory, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, numerous internal improvement schemes in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and local history of the Martinsburg and Shenandoah Valley area. Correspondents include Sherrard Clemens; Lyman C. Draper; John J. Jackson, Jr.; Daniel Lamb; Alexander Martin; Samuel Price; George W. Summers; Henry A. Wise; and Waitman T. Willey. For a more complete list of subjects and correspondents, see Scope and Content Note. For a partial list of contents, see the control folder. For more information about Faulkner, see the Historical Note.

Correspondence, maps, business records and other papers of a U.S. Senator, Democratic politician, and promoter of the oil industry, railroads, and coal and timber resources of West Virginia. The papers regard Camden's purchase of land in the 1850s; his activities in oil production and refining, 1860-1875; his presidency of the Camden Consolidated Oil Company and the Baltimore United Oil Company; the affairs of the Stewart Brick Company of Parkersburg; the Virginia debt controversy; and his development of railroads, including the Ohio River Railroad, the West Virginia and Pittsburgh Railroad, and Monongahela River Railroad, 1879-1892. See the "Scope and Content Note" for more information.

Correspondence, diaries, writings, newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous papers of Wilson, a private in the Twelfth Virginia Cavalry (Confederate), President of West Virginia University, 1882-1883, member of Congress, 1883-1895, Postmaster General, 1895-1897, author of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff, 1894, and President of Washington and Lee University, 1897-1900. The collection includes portions of the diaries covering the years 1862-1863, 1865, 1868-1870, 1877-1891, 1896-1899. Most of the correspondence pertains to Wilson's career as Congressman and Postmaster General and his acceptance of the presidency of Washington and Lee University. Subjects include the tariff, the currency and bimetalism controversy, West Virginia state politics, the income tax, and foreign affairs. Also includes research papers of West Virginia University history professor Festus P. Summers on microfilm; there is a detailed listing of their contents, which includes newspaper editorials and letters.

Papers of William Nelson Page, civil and mining engineer, who was manager of the Hawk's Nest Coal Company, 1877-1880; built and operated the Victoria Blast Furnace, Goshen, Virginia, 1880-1885; organized and developed the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, 1889-1917; served in the West Virginia National Guard for twenty years; and was mayor of Ansted for ten years. Subjects include the American Society of Civil Engineers, Deepwater Railway Company, Guy's Run Iron Land, Iron and Steel Works Association of Virginia, Loup Creek Colliery Company, Mt. Carbon Company Limited, Tidewater Railway Company, Virginia Railway, and the West Virginia Mining Association. Correspondents include Abram S. Hewitt and G.W. Imboden.