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[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Watson Family Papers, A&M 1949, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.
630, 1815, 1949
The collection includes manuscript materials (correspondence, land warrant, accounts, receipts, petition and will) and printed and typescript materials (invitations, broadside, newspaper and magazine clippings). Subjects of the various items include sale and survey of land; schools, churches, estates, comment on and description of agriculture, social and economic conditions in Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, California, Morgantown, Fairmont, and Wheeling, WV, and Ireland; westward migration [1849]; gold mining, enslaved Africans; and business and family affairs.
Correspondents include C.J. Cox, James and Louisa Creegan; Bridget Flinn; Creed Haymond; Archbishop John Hughes; James D. Lamb; Harrison Low; William Macdonnell; Asa Squires; W.O. Tarleton; Zephaniah, Mary L., Sophia, Mary G., Delia, & Benjamin H. Watson; and A. M. Wheeler. Persons receiving correspondence, mentioned, or commented on, and persons or organizations, parties to various business or legal papers include Abraham and Muriel Brookbank; Orestus A. Brownsun; Matthew Campbell; Cornelius B. Carney; Isaac and William Collins, Susanna Cook; Joseph Cunningham; Thomas Dison; Fairmont and Palatine Bridge Co.; Peter Flinn; Thomas Fowler; Abraham & Jacob S. Hayden; W. C. Haymond; Jeremiah Highfield; Martin Hurley; Basil Patterson; George W. Paris; Joseph and Charles Peach; Benjamin Reader; Margaret Reeves; Richard Smith; Thomas G. Steele; James Eliazor; and Azariah, Zachariah, Elizabeth, Sarah, James, Ann, Dent, Thomas, Henry, and Louisa Watson.
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Subjects include: Travel -- Wheeling, VA [now WV] to Keokuk, IA by boat, Keokuk to Burlington, IA by stage; traveling conditions; comment on Cinn. [Cincinnati], OH and St. Louis, MO; description of cathedral in St. Louis; mention of St. Patrick's church; comment on Keokuk; disturbance at Nauvoo and comment on the temple; comparison of Iowa to Virginia; and family news and friends.
Subjects include: Travel -- Wheeling, VA [now WV] to Burlington, IA by boat (name of steamboat given); Cincinnati, OH (comment on Catholic churches, museum); Andrew Jackson (comment on A.J.'s role in the Battle of New Orleans, LA); Louisville, KY (comparison to Cincinnati); St. Louis, MO (comment on business as compared to Cincinnati); stage coach travel; Nauvoo (comment on the Mormon temple); Burlington, IA (comment on size in comparison to Morgantown, VA [now WV]); description of farm (wheat growing on prairie land, description of soil); and family news (Harrison and James mentioned regarding their business).
Subjects include: travel -- comment on members of party going to California; number of miles traveled per day; camp and traveling routine; comment on sickness of wagon train people; number of wagons; estimate of time it will take to reach California; and prices of supplies.
Subjects include: the church -- NY vice (answer to letter from Watson calling the Bishop's attention to the vice prevailing in New York City); suggests pecuniary aid to the church to combat the problem would be welcome; comment on large number of immigrants arriving in city daily and difficulty "to preserve them intact, poverty and many other causes conspiring to their destruction;" and hope to remedy this condition in part by erection of Magdalen Asylum.
Subjects include: politics; "Know Nothings" -- the Irish in America -- Catholic Church; intolerance of Americans for the Irish as a class; opinion of the conduct of Irishmen; opinion on the platform of the Know Nothings; comment on hostility of political parties to Catholics; dislike of Brownson's action on the Know Nothings, his extremes in upholding the Catholic Church; and intention of not supporting the Whigs if they identify with the Know Nothings: "...the American people as a Nation are the most entensely [sic] intolerant of all people under the sun..."
Subjects include: Catholic Church and the Know Nothings; comment on Steele being refused membership by the Know Nothings in Fairmont, VA [now WV]; opinion on Catholicism and Protestantism and persecution of the Catholic Church; opinion on Brownson's article; comment on the foreign populations, the industrious labor class, and wish they would come as fast as steamers can bring them; the American people who are ruled by their prejudices maltreating and abusing the privileges of the foreigner; prejudice against the Catholic Church adversely affecting the business affairs of the Catholic; and advises silence rather [than] ineffectual efforts to remedy the situation, trusting that the "Church must and will triumph as she has ever done."