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Start Over Date range 1943 Subjects Diaries and journals.

Siler Family Papers 66.6 Linear Feet Summary: 66 ft. 7 in. (149 document cases, 5 in. each); (1 document case, 2 1/2 in.); (1 small flat storage box, 3 1/2 in.); (2 oversize folders, 2 in.); (25 wrapped packages, 3 ft. 8 in.)

Seiler family

This is a collection of letters and documents tracing the personal and business life of an eastern panhandle West Virginia family. The papers concern a broad range of political, social, financial, and legal topics, particularly focusing on J. Hammond Siler, Jr., his parents, J. Hammond Siler, Sr. and Jessie Castleman Siler (residents of the Town of Bath better known as Berkeley Springs). Also includes correspondence and other papers from related families. Subjects include banking, the Civil War, the Episcopal church, secession of Virginia, Virginia Loyalty Oath, women's diaries, and women's letters and papers. A notable item in the collection is the diary of Anne Doyne Wolff Strother, wife of artist and writer David Hunter Strother, documenting a trip with husband and daughter Emily to New Orleans in 1857 (S2/Box 67, folder 1a).

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Storer College Correspondence, Business Papers and Other Material 21.3 Linear Feet Summary: 21 ft. 4 in. (39 document cases, 5 in. each); (4 document cases, 2 1/2 in. each); (2 records cartons, 15 in. each); (1 small flat storage box, 3 in.); (1 large flat storage box, 3 in.); (2 large flat storage boxes, 3 1/2 in. each); (1 card file box, 4 in.); (1 roll storage box, 4 in.)

Storer College
Records of Storer College, West Virginia's first African American institution of higher learning, located in Harpers Ferry. Types of records include correspondence, business papers, photographs, memorabilia, issues of the Storer Record (the Storer College newspaper), financial records, scrapbooks, bulletins, minute books, newspaper and magazine clippings, diaries, motion pictures, and miscellaneous material. Includes records regarding the early years of the College, among other topics. See "Scope and Content Note" and "Historical Note" for further information.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Van Amberg Bittner (1885-1949), Labor Leader, Papers 6.42 Linear Feet 6 ft. 5 in. (13 document cases, 5 in. each; 1 document case, 3 in.; 1 small flat storage box, 3 in.; 1 large flat storage box, 3 in.; 1 unboxed scrapbook, 3 in.)

Bittner, Van A. (Van Amberg), 1885-1949
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.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Victorine Louistall Monroe Papers 5.25 Linear Feet Summary: 5 ft. 2 1/2 in. (8 document cases, 5 in. each); (3 flat storage boxes, 3 3/4 in. each); (1 flat storage box, 3 in); (2 flat storage boxes, 1 3/4 in. each); (1 index card box, 4 3/4 in.)

Monroe, Victorine Louistall, 1912-2001
Papers of Victorine Louistall Monroe, the first African-American woman to receive a graduate degree from West Virginia University (WVU), and the first African-American to serve as a WVU faculty member. Contains material regarding Louistall's education, career, and personal life, including correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, awards, and other material. See "Scope and Content Note" and "Historical Note" for further information.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Walter R. Thurmond (1881-1967) Papers 6.15 Linear Feet Summary: 6 ft. 1 3/4 in. (10 document cases, 5 in.); (1 records carton, 15 in.); (5 reels of microfilm, 1.75 in. each)

Thurmond, Walter R., 1881-1967
Operator in the Logan coalfield for many years, collector of Internal Revenue for West Virginia, and president of the state Board of Control, 1937-1941. Thurmond returned to the coal industry in 1941 and helped organize the Southern Coal Producers' Association, serving as its secretary until his retirement in 1958. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, scrapbooks, and other papers, including Thurmond's diaries for 1938-1967. Subjects include labor relations, taxes, mine safety, non-union fields, company stores, the United Mine Workers of America, race relations, and national politics. There is specific comment on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

Ward Engineering Company Archives and Manuscripts 82.2 Linear Feet 82 ft. 2 in. (178 document cases, 5 in. each); (2 document cases, 2.5 in. each); (2 flat storage boxes, 3 in. each); (1 folder, 0.25 in.); (1 ledger, 1 in.); (1 oversize folder, 1 in.); (map cabinets, 80 in.)

Ward Engineering Company

Records of a Charleston, West Virginia, business which introduced to the western waters of the United States a new design of towboat whose essential features were water-tube boilers, multiple-expansion engines, and screw propulsion; thus replacing the traditional paddle wheel towboats that navigated the Ohio and Mississippi river systems. Charles Ward (1841-1915), a British engineer, who emigrated to Charleston in 1871, founded the industry and designed these new boats. This collection consists of business correspondence, U.S. Government business papers, company financial papers, compensation files, deeds, contracts, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, charts, catalogs, information on ships, blueprints, maps, patents, biographical information, and more.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

West Virginia Civilian Conservation Corps Records 0.15 Linear Feet Summary: 1 3/4 in. (1 reel of microfilm, 1.75 in.)

West Virginia Civilian Conservation Corps
Journals and newsletters of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal agency involved in environmental reclamation projects such as reforestation. Includes diaries and newspapers of CCC involvement in West Virginia documented in district and local camp periodicals, programs, and pictoral reviews.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

William B. Curtis (1821-1891) Papers 0.15 Linear Feet Summary: 1 3/4 in. (1 reel of microfilm (5 vols. and 9 folders), 1.75 in.)

Curtis, William B. (1821-1891)
Papers of a brigadier general of the Twelfth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry and his family from West Liberty include correspondence, business and legal papers, military and veterans' records, photographs, clippings, and account books. Includes papers of West Liberty Post 78, Department of West Virginia G.A.R.; records and photographs of the Twelfth West Virginia Infantry Regiment; photographs, clippings and published and unpublished material pertaining to the town of West Liberty and the Normal School; local and state historical materials compiled by Maude Curtis; mercantile letterheads of Wheeling; West Liberty Presbyterian Sunday School register, 1830-1834; C.N. Short's register of funerals, 1893-1917; and a Civil War diary and account book, 1863-1865. Subjects include Montgomery and Shotwell family history, West Liberty Academy and Bethany College.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

William Earle Rumsey, Entomologist and Photographer, Papers 7.75 Linear Feet (10 document cases, 5 in. each; 2 document cases, 2.5 in. each; 1 records carton, 15 in.; 5 card file boxes, 4.5 in. each; 2 oversize folders)

Rumsey, William Earle, 1865-1938

Papers of William Rumsey, WVU Agricultural Experiment Station entomologist and photographer. Initial acquisition includes correspondence from a friend at Cornell University, Rumsey's student essays and diaries (1880-1925) and family photographs. There are also glass plate negatives, and lantern slides of West Virginia University subjects, and other subjects as well.

  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

William E. Brooks (1875-1960), Collector, Papers 5.1 Linear Feet Summary: 5 1/2 in. (1 document case, 2 1/2 in.); (1 small flat storage box, 3 in.)

Brooks, William E. (William Elizabeth), 1875-1960
Civil War materials collected by Dr. Brooks in writing his biographies of Grant and Lee. Included are pamphlets, scrapbooks, newspapers, photographs, and originals and copies of soldiers' letters, journals, and military reports. There are typed copies of a journal, 3 November-2 December 1863, of a civilian observer in Tennessee, who was at Grant's headquarters at the Battle of Chattanooga; letters, 1861-1864, of William Ludwig, a private in the Thirty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry in Fayette, Kanawha, and Cabell counties; Confederate officers' reports on the action around Beverly in July 1863; and a Union soldier's letter of 9 May 1863, describing the Battle of Chancellorsville.
  1. West Virginia and Regional History Center

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