Collections

The Woodbine Cemetery Records, circa 1830-2006, consist of materials relating to the operation of Woodbine Cemetery, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The collection includes a wide array of financial and commercial materials, including receipt books and loose receipts, account books, checks, ledgers, bank statements, board minutes and reports, customer correspondence, insurance information, maps, and other materials produced during the course of business over approximately the past 150 years.

Correspondence and financial records of the firm of Dudley Woodbridge and Company of Marietta, Ohio, pertaining to Woodbridge's partnership with Harman Blennerhassett. Subjects include early Ohio River trade, transportation, and markets; Blennerhassett's financial misfortunes; the Burr conspiracy; and family and social affairs. Included in the collection are extracts from the Silas Brown letters in the Library of Congress relating to the Burr Conspiracy; and an unpublished manuscript by Josephine Phillips, "The Blennerhassett-Woodbridge Partnership: An Experiment in Chain Store Operation, 1798-1806.

Letter and account books, clipping scrapbooks, and miscellaneous family papers of a pioneer, Ohio Valley, general merchandise firm founded by Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., at Marietta, Ohio, and operating under various names for a period of more than sixty years. The collection also includes the account books of Daniel, Richard, and John Greene, 1808-1844; account books of F.B. Loomis, 1842-1844; a medicinal formulary book; the estate records of John Brody; records of a pension and bounty land claims agency operated by George M. Woodbridge, 1861-1864; and justice of the peace accounts, 1832-1863. Subjects include the development of river markets, transportation, and the livestock industry in the early Ohio Valley; fur trade and commerce with England and Europe; the Marietta and Susquehanna Trading Company; Kanawha and Sciota salt works; Ohio Company lands; Woodbridge-Harman Blennerhassett partnership; ginseng trade; Wheeling Cotton Manufacturing Company; ropewalk and shipbuilding in Marietta; military land warrants; estate of George Morgan; career of William Woodbridge, United States senator and governor of Michigan; pioneer education; Meadville Seminary; Ohio University; Miami University; Marietta Collegiate Institute; Belpre, Ohio; American Catholic missions; early history of Marietta; the American Colonization Society; Washington County Colonization Society; churches; Washington County Tract Society; recruiting in Marietta during the Civil War; impact of the War of 1812 on westward migration and labor; and Woodbridge family affairs. Letters are addressed to merchants in London, France, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston (West Virginia), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, and Baltimore. Correspondents include Lewis Cass, Philip Doddridge, and Benjamin Reeder.

A sketch of Woodburn Seminary, by Susah Maxwell Moore, written in 1939; it traces the development of the property on which the school was located, through the Thomas P. Ray estate; the names of the founders are given; describes the origin of the name of the school and concludes with a sketch of student life.

Records from the offices of circuit and county clerks containing inventories, wills, appraisements, estate and administrative settlements, and bills of sales.

Six ledgers of the Worthington Baptist Church of Marion County, WV. Includes financial records, meeting minutes, annual reports, church statistics, building plans, and membership lists. There is also a history of the church, which is a denominational affiliate of the American Baptist Convention, USA.

The Writers' Program was a federal New Deal program (1935-1942) that employed jobless individuals with literary and writing skills for the purpose of researching and recording a broad assemblage of information regarding their states and local counties. This collection contains some of the records of the West Virginia division of the Program (the bulk of which are in A&M 454), including material regarding Mineral and Hampshire Counties, as well as Berkeley, Grant, Hardy, and Pendleton Counties. For additional detail, please consult the scope and content note.