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Records of the North family of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties, West Virginia, including mostly the papers of William D. North. Includes land survey for Hugh Davison (1808), financial records of William D. North (1842-1856), miscellaneous papers of William D. North (1831-1886), land records of the North and Gill families (1815, 1848, 1849), Gill estate sale record (1841), deed between Elizabeth Ward and Nancy Holmes of Berkeley County (1857), and division of land between James Burwell and Walter Burwell (n.d.). Includes tuition fee records by William D. North for "District No. 17" in Jefferson County, including a listing of students (1851).

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.

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.

Business records, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other papers of the Cupp family, including Will E. Cupp, Mary J. Cupp, and Marie Cupp Nestor, of St. George, Tucker County, West Virginia. Included are Tucker County court fee books, 1856-1898, and personal and general store account books, 1897-1933.

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.

Correspondence and miscellaneous papers of: a Monroe County, West Virginia, farmer and politician; his wife, Harriette Boswell Alexander; their daughters, Isabel and Alice Beulah; Alice's husband, Frank Hereford, U.S. senator from West Virginia; and his daughter, Katherine Hereford Stoddard. There is one folder of business papers, 1820-1841, of Thomas Edgar; a few letters from Caperton's son, John, while a cadet at the Camp of Instruction, Richmond, 1861; a folder of letters concerning Isabel's trips through the American West, the British Isles, and Europe; and a folder on family genealogy. Subjects include mid-nineteenth century life in Union, Monroe County; the excitement in Virginia following John Brown's raid; Washington, D.C., and the slavery controversy, 1860; the secession crisis in Virginia; impressment of material in Monroe County by Union troops; the effect of the war on the social and economic life of Richmond; work of the Ladies Relief Hospital in Lynchburg; and the aftermath of war in Virginia.

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.