Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

A travel journal, ca. 1857; a diary, 1941; survey records, 1894-1896; account books, 1788-1811 - 1891-1894; county and parish tax levies, 1800; a book of geographic terms and facts kept by Susan I. Branson in 1836; and a Branson family record book. People mentioned include Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. Places mentioned include: Cincinnati, Ohio; and, in West Virginia, Romney, Evansville, Clarksburg, Parkersburg, Coolville, Athens, Branch Mountain, Moorefield, Front Run Valley, Camp Branch Run, Sapling Lick Ridge, Hanging Rock Ridge, Little Ridge, Cacapon River, Kim's Run, Lost River, and South Branch Valley. Subject areas covered include family and women's history, cattle business in Hardy County, and business dealings between the South Branch Valley and Baltimore and other east coast cities.

The interviews, correspondence, notes and reports of a Wisconsin based, New York born antiquarian and early researcher of frontier history. Lyman C. Draper's manuscripts were willed to the Wisconsin State Historical Society where he had been its corresponding secretary and instrumental in its development. Microfilm was produced by the society of his papers and made available for purchase to libraries because of their significance for studying the Eastern frontier and its pioneers. Draper had originally planned to publish on the basis of these manuscripts a series of books on frontier history and biographies of famous pioneers. Only one was published, King's Mountain and Its Heroes. Draper, in his writings, generally reflected biases common to white male Americans of the nineteenth century but he collected many documents and interviewed women, Native Americans, and African Americans connected with the frontier and their descendents. Indeed he had collected enough material that he had decided to write biographies of chiefs: Tecumseh and Joseph Brant. Other materials for biographies are of white frontier notables such as Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Lewis Wetzel, Simon Kenton, and Samuel Brady. His papers are also organized regionally with holdings encompassing an area bordered by the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas and portions of Georgia and Alabama, encompassing the entire Ohio River Valley, and part of the upper Mississippi Valley from the era of frontier conflicts in the 1740's and 1750's to the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

Letter from Mary "Mother" Jones to T.V. Powderly, Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. "Mother" Jones introduces Fred Mooney, secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, District 17, asks Powderly to get him a passport, and says she does not know when she will leave for Mexico.

Typescript memoir of the life of Mother Jones, entitled "Mother Jones: the Life Story of the Irish Immigrant Girl Who Became the Most Unique Character in the American Labor Movement, Living Past 100 Years," written by Lillie May Burgess of Hyattsville, Maryland, and copyrighted 8 February 1938. The manuscript is in two parts, several pages of which are missing. The first part (241pp.) is entitled "The Life Story of Mother Jones: American Labor's Joan of Arc," and is a narration of events in Mother Jones' life. It includes a description of her early years, before she became a labor activist, and some of the highlights of her labor career. Her activities in organizing miners in West Virginia and Colorado receive most emphasis, but also included are her activities among women brewery workers, her participation in the 1919 steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, her interest in the Mexican Revolution of 1911, her views on woman suffrage and prohibition, her meetings with various presidents and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and her friendship with Terence V. Powderly, fellow labor activist. The narration follows closely that of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER JONES, published in 1925 by Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, Ill., with the addition of some chapters on her life after 1925. The second part (106pp.) is entitled "The Last Years of Mother Jones (Personal Reminiscences)." It is a narration of the later years of Mother Jones' life, ca.1927-1930, most of which she spent under the care of the author, Lillie May Burgess, at the Burgess home in Hyattsville, Maryland. Mrs. Burgess relates the circumstances under which Mother Jones and she became friends, how Mother Jones came to live with the Burgess family in 1927, and what these years of her life were like.

A collection of folk sayings, medicinal remedies, and words of songs collected in Lewis County by Opal Jones and Beth Curry through personal interviews with old residents.

A genealogy of the Osborne family of Greenbrier County. Originally from New Jersey, the family settled in Greenbrier and Hampshire counties.

An exhibit created by Anna M. Schein to commemorate the planting of a peace tree and its annual honoring ceremonies conducted by leaders of various Native American peoples including the Iroquois. Representative leaders were Peterson Zah, Navajo Nation President; Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation Faithkeeper and Leon Shenandoah Tadodaho, Presiding Moderator of the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy. The tree planting ceremony dates back to the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy (ca. 1450) by the legendary leaders Deganawidah, Hiawatha, Atotarho and Jigonhsasee. The latter being the earliest noted of the clan mothers, an institution crucial for the Iroquois in determining who would be designated league chief. The peace tree, a white pine, under which war hatchets were originally buried by the Iroquois, is a primary symbol of unity and peace as well as that of reason and health. Symbolically, it signifies that Mankind should take Nature as an example of nurture superseding the need for Man to make war.