Search

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.

The collection includes 57 letters (1795-1871) to or from Benjamin H., Henry, James G., James O., Rebecca D., and Thomas Watson; 3 land grants on sheep-skin (1787-1798) Monongalia County; 25 articles of agreement (1812-1875), manuscript; 4 manuscript wills or copies of wills (1852-1862); 32 surveys, maps, and plats of coal fields (1798-1892); 99 tax receipts (1807-1865), manuscript and printed forms; 44 receipts for clerking fees (1815-1845) manuscript and printed forms; 79 receipts, bills, notes (1782-1862), manuscript and printed forms; 51 miscellaneous manuscript and printed forms (1790-1902), including inventories of estates, sale bills, notes on legal matters with respect to property, court proceedings, etc.; and one manuscript constable's receipt book of Campbell and Watson.

Personal papers of the Watson family in Marion County, including a genealogy of the Watson and Haymond families, newspaper clippings of weddings, obituaries, social and business activities, and European travel. Mention is made of coal mining development in Marion County, strikes, labor meetings, conservation, and improvement of farming practices. There is material on politics, industrial development, early iron mining, Marion county history, the Barrickville covered bridge, Beverly-Fairmont Turnpike, and the Presbyterian Church in Fairmont.