Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Marriage, birth, and death records; wills; estate inventories and settlements from various West Virginia counties; Sons of the Revolution applications; Harrison County family records and obituaries, and obituary clippings for West Virginia. Thistle, Roy, Collector. Papers, 1853-1934. ca.30 items (photocopies) and 1 reel of microfilm (1 vol.). Loaned for duplication by Roy Thistle, 1961. No.1443. A scrapbook containing: a brief history of Sistersville and the oil industry, particularly in Tyler County, West Virginia; a stock certificate of the Sistersville & Salem Turnpike Company, 1853; bills of lading for Ohio and Muskingum River steams, 1855-1934; and a list of steamboats operating on the Muskingum River, 1830-1890.

A survey for a plot of land in Greenbrier County dated 1789, a map showing coalfields in the Kanawha Valley dated 1867, genealogies of the Chapman and McGlathlen families, and letters from M.M. Neely, Arthur Capper, and Walter F. George.

One hundred and fifty-six documents, dating from 1784 to 1837, mounted and bound in a single volume. The collection contains business papers of William Ewin, of St. George, Tucker County, West Virginia, 1835 to 1850, subsequently a surveyor of prominence in West Virginia, and a member of the West Virginia State Senate (1879-1882). Approximately one third of the collection consists of patents, surveys, and other papers pertaining to wild lands in Randolph County, (West) Virginia, of which William Ewin owned a large acreage.

Several thousand pieces mounted in bound volumes. Ewin, whose home was in St. George, Tucker County, was a land speculator who owned and developed large holdings in Barbour, Preston, Randolph, and Tucker Counties. He was a surveyor and surveying instrument maker in Baltimore Maryland, from about 1835 to 1850 and was a member of the West Virginia State Senate, 1879-1881.

William F. Randolph (1800-61) and some of his children and father's papers. Randolph's father, Johnathan, a Harrison Co. justice of the peace, and his predecessors were prominent farmers near Salem. Randolph, who owned a farm south of Salem on Greenbrier Run, was a surveyor, and later a justice of the peace of early Doddridge Co. Some of the papers concern the estate of Johnathan Randolph and the legal conflict between Isaac Randolph, his son, and other heirs. There are estate papers for William F. Randolph and also for his son, Ezra Randolph. Also included are court settlements in which Randolph was involved (mainly Samuel Bond and Jane Van Horn) and his business papers of the Salem-Harrisville turnpike. There are land, tax, militia, store, church, school, debt and news subscription receipts of William Randolph and his children. Also there are manuscripts developed on the basis of this collection by the donor about the Randolph family and early Doddridge County.

William G. Brown (1800-1884) of Kingwood, West Virginia, was an attorney; member of the Virginia Assembly in the 1830s and 1840s; and a member of Congress from Virginia from 1845 to 1849 and West Virginia from 1861 to 1865. Chiefly contains deeds, plats, surveys, and other papers related to Brown's land in Preston and Monongalia counties, West Virginia, from 1860 to 1874 and items from Brown's law office concerning deeds, wills, and financial transactions from 1870 to 1883. A ledger book from Brown records the sale of dry goods items, chiefly food such as bacon, wheat flour, corn, coffee, meat, and tobacco, and notes the cost of items, debts, and account settled. Papers also include typescript essays on American history, the Constitution, and slavery, written circa 1927 and a typed copy of a letter of J.J. Phillips of Lantz, 18 July 1931, concerning the removal of Confederate remains from the Rich Mountain Battlefield.