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Correspondence, business and legal papers, maps and printed materials of a French emigre, land speculator, and merchant from Cincinnati and Parkersburg. Subjects include Levassor's extensive landholdings in Kanawha, Lincoln, Jackson, Wood, Wirt, and Monongalia counties, and activities of his land agents; James Swann lands; the coming of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad to Parkersburg; the Panic of 1857 in that city; oil fever in the Wood County area, 1859-1866; and the activities of J.H. Diss Debar, West Virginia's first commissioner of immigration. Correspondents include J.H. Diss Debar, James M. Laidley, Charles Lisez, and Alexander Quarrier.

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.

Microfilm copy of the papers of the Henderson and Tomlinson families of Wood County, West Virginia, from 1789 to 1859. Materials relate to frontier life in the Parkersburg-Marietta area, and include Alexander Henderson's journal about his settlement on the Little Kanawha River, 1798-1803; his plantation accounts; letters on the Burr conspiracy; and an account of a duel between Henderson and Stephen R. Wilson in 1803. Also includes several items related to Marine Corps Commandant Archibald Henderson; pioneer Isaac Williams; and A.B. Tomlinson's account of the Indian mounds and frontier settlement at Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Diary and memoir of a Confederate soldier, railroad laborer, and shop owner from Grafton. The memoir begins with Mugler's birth in Alsace-Lorraine in 1838, and covers his immigration to the United States; enlistment in the United States Army in 1851; military duty in New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Texas, California, and the Washington Territory where he participated in the expedition against the Yakima Indians as a member of Company B, Third Regiment, United States Artillery, under Phil Sheridan; and his return to Orange County, Virginia, where following the passage of the Secession Ordinance he enlisted in the Thirteenth Virginia Infantry serving as chief musician. The memoir concludes with Mugler's military career during 1861-1862. The diary covers the remainder of his military service, 1862-1864, and his confinement as a war prisoner at Elmira, New York, 1864-1865. Following the war, Mugler returned to Washington, D.C., and eventually gained employment with the National Cemetery Corps, working at various Virginia battlefields. While in Virginia he served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Convention of 1867. He worked at the National Cemetery at Grafton and for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, eventually becoming superintendent of painters on the Road Division in West Virginia. After 1874 he worked briefly as a self-employed painter, and then opened a paint and hardware store in Grafton which he managed until the end of his life. Subjects include the Battle of Mine Run, the retreat from Antietam, the Battle of the Wilderness, prison life at Elmira, New York; reconstruction in Virginia; railroading and the railroad towns of Keyser, Oakland (Maryland), Parkersburg, Fairmont, and Wheeling; the strikes of 1877; interviews with Generals Ord and Sheridan; the Murphy Temperance Movement and W.C.T.U. activities; the Liberal Republican movement of 1872; the Greenback Party; the Chicago World's Fair of 1893; political figures such as John S. Carlile, John G. Carlisle, John T. McGraw, John W. Mason, Frank Hereford, John E. Kenna, John A. Logan, James G. Blaine, and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson.

Diary and commonplace book with miscellaneous entries showing: types of employment in Parkersburg and Charleston; weather conditions; and prices of clothing, room and board, tools, and wages.

Aside from routine municipal affairs these journals contain material on the development of internal improvements in the Parkersburg, West Virginia, area like the Wheeling-Parkersburg struggle for the western terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the development of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, and the demands for various river improvements. There are also a few references to Civil War military activities and the development of the oil industry in the Wood County area. Mayors mentioned include C.S. Despard, John J. Jackson, and Peter G. VanWinkle.

Sermons, essays, lectures, correspondence, and miscellaneous papers of a Methodist preacher who served in Clarksburg and Sutton, West Virginia; Louisa, Kentucky; and along the Ohio River from Ashland, Kentucky, to Parkersburg.