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Records of the Homestead group and their efforts at self government. Copy of recording secretary's diary (1935-1938) includes entries about organizing committees and managing projects at Arthurdale such as athletics, maintenance, social programs and medical care. Noteworthy is the mention of organizing efforts by the Homesteaders in their relations with the federal government, particularly lobbying for higher pay scales. Also included is a typescript copy of a diary of the founding days by one of the early members (November-December 1933), in which he mentions construction efforts, weather conditions, and a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt. This collection is also available on microfilm (1 reel).

Arthurdale, West Virginia, was the first Federal homestead community established under President Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal. Two scrapbooks, available on microfilm only, document the history of Arthurdale, West Virginia, from 1935 to 1975. Photographs, newspaper clippings, fact sheets about the community, and event programs offer insight into the development of the town, the involvement of Eleanor Roosevelt, students, and reflections on life in Arthurdale. Photographs and clippings on Volume I are chiefly from the 1930s and 1940s. Event programs come from a Labor Day celebration in 1938 and the Mountain Choir Festival in 1946. Book II contains clippings and photographs from the 1940s to the mid-1970s. These chiefly pertain to the Arthurdale church and high school students.

Letter written by Carl Feiss of Gainesville, Florida, describing his experiences as a young architect supervising the construction of the vacuum cleaner plant at Arthurdale, West Virginia. Mentions living conditions, Eleanor Roosevelt, and offers an assessment of the impact that the project had in community planning.

Correspondence, notes, government reports, newspaper clippings, bibliographies, news releases and other materials on education in Zambia and northern Zimbabwe as gathered by a Benedum Professor of Education at West Virginia University. Addenda include: 1) vitae with list of writings, reprints, career scrapbook, and special journal issue authored by Parker on George Peabody. 2) Twenty-eight articles regarding mostly prominent educators, historians, politicians, scientists, etc. of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Includes articles on: Arthurdale, West Virginia (1933); Philip Vickers Fithian (1747-1776), a "Princeton Tutor on a Virginia Plantation"; and "General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) and Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869) at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23 - August 30, 1869". Also includes biographical sketch regarding Franklin Parker and research partner and wife Betty J. Parker.

Correspondence of A.F. Haymond and A. Brooks Fleming, Fairmont attorneys. Correspondents include J.M. Bennett, G.D. Camden, J. Carlile, Henry Mathews, and F.H. Pierpont mentioning politics, separation from Virginia, the Arthurdale community development, and routine legal business. Included are land and legal papers, 1760-1797, from Hampshire, Monongalia, and Ohio counties, mentioning Patrick Henry and Henry Lee. Also in the collection are: a leather billfold; estate papers and marriage records; stock certificates of early West Virginia public utility and industrial firms; and miscellaneous personal papers of A. Brooks Fleming.

The microfilm collection contains 10 diaries and inserted supplementary letters, clippings, and photographs kept by Presbyterian missionary Mary Behner during her years as the first director of The Shack, a settlement house in the Scotts Run Area of Monongalia County. In addition to the microfilm, there is an addendum to this collection dating from 2006. It includes a photograph album kept by Anna Santore DeLancy, who was a Sunday School teacher at the Shack, a Presbyterian neighborhood house operating in Pursglove, West Virginia. Anna was the recreation director after the founder Mary Behner Christopher left in 1938. The photographs document the people and activities of the Shack in the 1930s. There is also correspondence between Bettijane Burger and people who knew Mary Behner Christopher, and clippings regarding the history of the Shack, among other material.

A revised and indexed transcript copy of an interview with Dr. O.C. Stine, an expert in agricultural economics who was employed with the Department of Agriculture from the Progressive Era to that of the Fair Deal. Stine tells of his childhood on a farm in Jackson County, WV, his subsequent education in small town southeastern Ohio where his family moved, and his attendance and graduation from Ohio University with a bachelors in liberal arts and education. After teaching briefly on the secondary level agricultural vocation courses, he attained a masters in agricultural economy at the University of Wisconsin. Upon graduation he went to work in Washington, DC for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, a statistically based research and survey branch of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. There he pioneered in the establishment of professionalized statistic keeping and in creating accurate economic forecast indicators. He was also helpful in the creation of various and changing proposals for parity farm price support programs. Privately, he was a founder of the Agricultural History Society. Of note, he mentions much interaction with the New Deal agency, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and his opinion of it. He talks about an official trip to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy before World War II and comments on agriculture, the economy and society in Europe. Also he gives a candid evaluation of the Arthurdale project. Prominent names mentioned are: William J. Bryan, Calvin Coolidge, Howard M. Gore, Herbert Hoover, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Gray Silver, and Henry Wallace.