Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Correspondence and manuscripts of articles by Grafton resident Charles Carpenter (1889-1975), a historian, writer, and collector of West Virginia memorabilia. The collection also contains a brief genealogy of the Haymond family and an incomplete Upshur County, West Virginia court record book of 1853-1856.

Correspondence, clippings, and printed material collected by the historian of Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, Grafton, West Virginia. Subjects include Anna Jarvis and the Mother's Day movement and Andrews Church and Methodism in Taylor County. There are photographs of Ann M. Reeves Jarvis and her daughter, Anna. Correspondents include Anna Jarvis and Okey L. Patteson.

Stock receipt, Taylor County Agricultural and Mechanical Society, 1870; a pass from Headquarters, United States Volunteers, Grafton, dated 3 August 1861; passes from the toll office of Valley River Bridge, Northwestern Turnpike, 1860-1863; list of indigent school children, District 17, Taylor County; and muster fines and receipts bearing Morgantown, Fairmont, and Pruntytown imprints.

Papers of a Grafton attorney, judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and coal producer. Material includes papers of the Taylor County Democratic Executive Committee, 1934; Anna Jarvis' correspondence concerning her legal affairs in Taylor County; and records of coal production at the Warder mine, 1948-1952.

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.

Private journal of George K. Campbell of Athens County, Ohio, who served as an officer in Company B of the 116th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Gettysburg campaign and the summer, fall, and winter of 1863, when he saw service in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Campbell served detached duty as an escort officer for recruits and prisoners during the spring and summer of 1864 and visited New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He joined Company B of the 187th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in September 1864. That unit was soon consolidated and became Company E of the 174th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Diary and memoir of a Confederate soldier, railroad laborer, and shop owner from Grafton. The memoir begins with Mugler's birth in Alsace-Lorraine in 1838, and covers his immigration to the United States; enlistment in the United States Army in 1851; military duty in New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Texas, California, and the Washington Territory where he participated in the expedition against the Yakima Indians as a member of Company B, Third Regiment, United States Artillery, under Phil Sheridan; and his return to Orange County, Virginia, where following the passage of the Secession Ordinance he enlisted in the Thirteenth Virginia Infantry serving as chief musician. The memoir concludes with Mugler's military career during 1861-1862. The diary covers the remainder of his military service, 1862-1864, and his confinement as a war prisoner at Elmira, New York, 1864-1865. Following the war, Mugler returned to Washington, D.C., and eventually gained employment with the National Cemetery Corps, working at various Virginia battlefields. While in Virginia he served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Convention of 1867. He worked at the National Cemetery at Grafton and for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, eventually becoming superintendent of painters on the Road Division in West Virginia. After 1874 he worked briefly as a self-employed painter, and then opened a paint and hardware store in Grafton which he managed until the end of his life. Subjects include the Battle of Mine Run, the retreat from Antietam, the Battle of the Wilderness, prison life at Elmira, New York; reconstruction in Virginia; railroading and the railroad towns of Keyser, Oakland (Maryland), Parkersburg, Fairmont, and Wheeling; the strikes of 1877; interviews with Generals Ord and Sheridan; the Murphy Temperance Movement and W.C.T.U. activities; the Liberal Republican movement of 1872; the Greenback Party; the Chicago World's Fair of 1893; political figures such as John S. Carlile, John G. Carlisle, John T. McGraw, John W. Mason, Frank Hereford, John E. Kenna, John A. Logan, James G. Blaine, and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson.

The manuscript diary of Henry Solomon White, a Corporal and Orderly Sergeant in Company N, Sixth Regiment, [West] Virginia Volunteer Infantry, covering the period of 24 September 1861 to 26 September 1864. Company N was organized at Camp White, in 1861 for a three-year tour of duty guarding the B.&O. and North Western railroads. The company was stationed at various times at Burton, Littleton, Barrackville, Fairmont, Clarksburg, Bridgeport, Grafton, and Webster. Squads of this company were detailed for special duty and scouting detail in Cornwallis, Ritchie County; Camp Burne; Camp Wilkinson; and in Monongalia, Marion, and Roane counties; and Fayette and Greene counties, Pennsylvania. Company N was on duty in Fairmont during the Jones Raid in 1863.