Collections

Personal and business papers of Arthur I. Boreman (1823-1896), lawyer, U.S. senator, circuit court judge, and first governor of West Virginia. The bulk of the collection consists of papers relating to his judgeship and to the law firm of Boreman and Bullocks, Parkersburg, WV. Series include correspondence, notes on cases tried before Judge Boreman, envelope cases of material regarding legal cases in which Boreman was involved, financial material, and political and judicial printed material. Correspondence includes letters to Boreman from Francis H. Pierpont (1866-1867), which concern politics in West Virginia, the admission of Berkeley and Jefferson counties into the state, the Virginia debt, and Reconstruction in Virginia. There is little other material relating to the governorship or political activities. Additional correspondents include J.W. Davis, John J. Davis, D.D.T. Farnsworth, D.H. Strother, J.G. Jackson, Charles J. Faulkner, and E.W. Wilson. Also includes manuscripts of speeches; muster rolls; household accounts; civil and court case papers concerning oil well drilling and sales; railroad property inventories and operation; coal prices, shipping data, and strikes; liquid fuel transportation; and steam and tow boat cargoes, navigation data, and names of boats in service on the Ohio River. There is also genealogical information on P.G. Van Winkle and Ebenezer Zane, and a letter and deposition by J.H. Diss Debar. For more details and box-level contents list, see Scope and Content Note. For more information on Arthur I. Boreman, see Historical Note.

Scrapbooks, mainly of newspaper clippings, maintained by a mining engineer, geologist, and businessman from Charleston. The scrapbooks contain clippings, announcements, and a few letters relating to Krebs' business, Charleston civic affairs, and professional engineering organizations. Topics covered include: the oil boom at Blue Creek in 1912; oil field development in Kanawha and Clay counties; oil and coal shipments on the C.&O.; coal, oil, gas, and coke production figures; report on the coal strike of 1922; surveys of West Virginia's coal, oil, and gas resources; machinery used in coal production; disputed land claims of the Colonial Timber and Coal Corporation, 1923; the New River Coal field; drainage areas and water power in West Virginia; Hinton Dam; Pennsylvania bituminous districts; rate hearings of the United Fuel Gas Company; early coal and gas operations in West Virginia; Norfolk and Western Railway affairs; silicosis cases resulting from the Hawks Nest tunnel construction, 1933; and bituminous coal prices in West Virginia and the U.S., 1906-1925.

Papers of a Huntington attorney, member of the West Virginia National Guard, 1909-1916, employee of the C&O Railway Company, president of the Union Bank and Trust Company of Huntington, president of the Ben Lomond Company, president of the Blackberry, Kentucky and West Virginia Coal and Coke Company, attorney for Central City, prosecuting attorney of Cabell County, 1905-1908, chairman of a county Democratic committee, and delegate to the Democratic National Convention, 1912. Wallace served in the Spanish-American War and as judge advocate general in West Virginia during the coal strike in 1912-1913. During World War I he was a state draft executive, a major in the judge advocate general corps in Washington, and a lieutenant colonel in France. Subjects include the influenza epidemic of 1918, the depression of 1929-1932, state and national politics, and genealogy of the Wallace and allied families. The collection also includes three typescripts, "Runnymede Receipts,"Train Running for the Confederacy," and "Norborne Parish and St. George's Chapel," by Philip P. Gibson; Civil War data; an account of the taking of San Juan Hill in 1898; a military diary; a scrapbook of Cabell County court records; a speech against the League of Nations; and notes on a trip to Nice, circa 1919.

A collection of typescripts, brochures, pamphlets, books, tape recordings, and assorted ephemeral publications concerning radical political and economic groups and community organizing related to labor history in Appalachia and the United States as compiled by Keith Dix. Organizations and publications represented in the collection include New Directions in Labor (1970-1971), New American Movement (1970-1971), New University Conference (1971), Labor Research Association (1971), Students for a Democratic Society (1963), and Radical Education Project (1968-1969), among others. Also includes material from 1923 to 1976 concerning coal mining labor relations and the role of unions such as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Topics of these items include rank-and-file members of the union, strikes, agreements, and mechanization. Tape recordings contain oral history interviews conducted by Keith Dix. Interviews chiefly concern coal mining in West Virginia. A more complete list of publications and tape recordings is available in the library. Most of the collection is arranged according in subject files, according to the topic or name of organization.

Transcript of an interview by Richard Hadsell with Major W.P. Tams, Jr., former mine operator in the Winding Gulf coal mining region. Tams discusses his early days in coal mining, the opening of the Kanawha coal region, and coal operators and union officials such as: E.J. Berwind, Joe Beury, George Collins, Jarius Collins, Justus Collins, John J. Cornwell, Samuel Dixon, Elias Hatfield, Troy Hatfield, Isaac Mann, S.T. Patterson, J.A. Renahan, James O. Watts, and George Wolfe. Other individuals mentioned include: Henry D. Hatfield, John L. Lewis, John Mitchell, Fred Mooney, Bob Patterson, and "Mother" Mary Jones. Tams also discusses the Winding Gulf Collieries, the Beaver Coal Co., the Smokeless Coal Field, the N&W Railroad, the C&O Railroad, the Virginian Railroad, Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, unions and strikes, racial relations, blacks, scrip, company stores, Atwater, and Castner, Curran and Bullitt.

Correspondence between Harold Houston, chief attorney for UMWA District 17 and Floyd Evans of the legal firm of Evans and Sampselle concerning trials after the "Matewan Massacre." Legal affidavits pertaining to the miners' trials of 1922 in Charles Town, West Virginia and to the Red Jacket Coal and Coke Co. and Hitchman Coal and Coke Company's suits against John L. Lewis and John Mitchell of the UMWA. Proclamations of Governor E.F. Morgan concerning the 1921 Mingo County mine strikes. An affidavit dated 1934, complaining of unauthorized union dues check offs by the Lang Coal Co. of Eskdale, WV.

Correspondence, reports, petitions, agreements, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles relating to the soft coal industry and labor conditions, generally in southern West Virginia. Subjects covered include the eight-hour day; strikes; consolidation of coal operations; freight rates; government contracts for coal; Paint and Cabin creeks, 1912-1913; working conditions in the Polack Cigar Factory, Wheeling, 1914; investigation of the Gay Coal and Coke Company, Logan County, 1917; investigation of the Wheeling Can Company, 1918; labor conditions in West Virginia, 1917; publicity releases of Winding Gulf Operators Association, 1923-1925; and eviction of miners; labor conditions in Logan County, 1923. Correspondents include D.T. Evans, Carl Hayden, W.E. Borah, M.M. Neely, Van A. Bittner, J.P. White, F.J. Hayes, Mary "Mother" Jones, Thomas Haggerty, Woodrow Wilson, and J.J. Cornwell.

UMWA international representative and organizer, member of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, director of the CIO Organizing Committee, and vice-chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee Correspondence, legal papers, diaries, clippings, and other papers relate to Bittner's early career in the western Pennsylvania coal fields; his presidency of District 5, UMWA, 1911-1916; and his organizational activities in southeastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, northern West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kansas, 1916-1928. Subjects include labor strife and strikes in West Virginia, 1912-1913, 1924-1928, Alabama, 1920-1921, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 1911, and Oklahoma and Kansas, 1922; UMWA intra-union affairs; relief for striking miners; Kansas Industrial Court; Workers Communist Party; Red International of Labor Unions; American Association for Labor Legislation; National League of People's McAdoo Clubs; labor trouble in Montana, 1920; the railway assigned coal car problem; and Bittner's activities on various state and national labor boards and committees. There are photographs of mining towns, camps, and tent colonies, labor parades, conventions, demonstrations, and strikes; portraits of labor leaders; and pictures of the Irwin, Pennsylvania coalfield strike of 1911, the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, and the northern West Virginia strikes of 1924-1926. Frank Farrington, William Green, Frank J. Hayes, John L. Lewis, John Mitchell, Philip Murray, and John P. White are included among the correspondents. A detailed listing of the correspondence in boxes 1-7 is available upon request.