Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Military records, business papers, and correspondence of a brigadier general, Kingwood attorney, state legislator, secretary of the West Virginia Horticultural Society, state adjutant general, and state Selective Service director. Other papers include a letter book, West Virginia National Guard, 1903-1907; state Selective Service memoranda, 1940-1947; and a "Historical Record of Selective Service in West Virginia." Other subjects include the Morgantown and Kingwood Railroad, Pierce's coal mining, public utilities, oil, timber, gas, fruit growing, and other business activities. Correspondents include William G. Conley, William M.O. Dawson, Davis Elkins, William E. Glasscock, Walter S. Hallanan, Lewis B. Hershey, Homer A. Holt, Harley M. Kilgore, J. Howard McGrath, Edward Martin, Clarence W. Meadows, E.F. Morgan, Matthew M. Neely, Okey L. Patteson, Chapman Revercomb, and Howard Sutherland. This collection also includes the business and legal papers, ca.1840-1890, of James H. Carroll, Kingwood attorney and editor of the PRESTON COUNTY HERALD.? Subjects include the presidential elections of 1856 and 1884 in West Virginia.? Other papers relate to Kingwood and area mercantile firms, and the operation of the PRESTON COUNTY JOURNAL, 1891-1894; and a circulation record of Preston County newspapers, 1889-1897. Correspondents include Gideon D. Camden and Henry G. Davis.

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.

Typescripts compiled by a Wellsburg local historian, on the history of Holliday's Cove and the Hancock-Brooke County area. Subjects include prominent settlers, churches, schools, post office, toll roads, oil and gas wells, floods, gristmills, manufacture of gunpowder, iron and brick industries, newspapers, Indians, and the James Campbell and Alexander Morrow family genealogy.

The office files of Charles McCamic of the law firm of McCamic and Clarke, Wheeling, West Virginia. McCamic was president of the Interstate Bridge Company; president and director of the Northeast Mississippi Oil Company; director of the Sehon-Stevenson Company; president and director of the American Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Company; and a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1905. The files contain correspondence, case papers, and business reports of clients; also papers of the companies with which McCamic was associated. The papers of the War Effort Committee of the West Virginia Bar Association, including correspondence from servicemen in World War II, are also in the collection.

Papers of Judge Gideon D. Camden (1805-1891) of Clarksburg, Harrison County, West Virginia, and papers of his grandson Wilson Lee Camden (1870-1958). Gideon D. Camden was a lawyer, Democratic politician, member of the Virginia Convention of 1850-1851, circuit judge, and state senator (1872-1876). His papers include correspondence, legal and business papers, surveys and plats, and printed material. Subjects include Virginia, West Virginia, and national politics; the railroad, oil, timber, and coal industries; and Camden's law practice. Wilson Lee Camden papers include correspondence, legal papers, surveys and plats, printed material, business manuscripts, photographs, map, and ledgers. Subjects include the settlement of his grandfather's estate, and extensive coal, timber, land, railroad, and oil interests in West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania. See Scope and Content Note for more information.

Well leases and records, geologic reports, maps, printed material, photographs, and other papers of McGinnis, an oil and gas operator who owned the Tri-State Oil & Gas Co. of West Virginia, and who, after graduating from Marshall University in 1910, became a leading figure in the oil and gas business. Some of his poetry is included in the collection.

Business and personal correspondence of several members of the Holt and Keyes families of Barbour County, West Virginia, including Ben M., Charles, Samuel T.H., and Stephen Holt, and W.G. and Bertha Holt Keyes. The collection includes records of firms operated by these families, mainly the Keyes Lumber Company, the Holt Ice Company, and Holt's Mill; genealogical material on the Holt family; records relating to foundries, coal, coke, building supplies, general merchandise, farm and construction work, mine post sales, and the Elk Creek Oil and Gas Company.

Papers of oil and gas driller and producer in Tyler County and other places. The collection consists of three diaries, 1 January 1894 through 31 December 1896; a typescript; and clippings. The diaries contain daily comment on wells drilled, including hours worked, depth of well, difficulties encountered, geologic strata, number of barrels of oil produced per hour or pressure of gas flow. Diaries include personal affairs, wages received and paid, oil sold, rent on leased property, oil market quotations, local affairs in Sistersville and Tyler County, voting in elections of 1894 and 1896, fire at the Big Moses Gas Well, drilling in the United States and Mexico, salt wells in West Virginia, biographical information on W.A. Furbee, and Drake and Burning Springs wells controversy.