Search

Material written and collected by a former curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection that includes bibliographies, transcripts, photostats, papers and historical sketches on various aspects of West Virginia history. Items deal with prominent West Virginia University historians, the Civil War, early settlement, industrial growth, and West Virginia University. A number of letters and circulars discuss the West Virginia Historical Society in 1869.

Papers of Francis Harrison Pierpont (1814-1899) of Monongalia and Marion Counties, West Virginia, who served as governor of the Restored Government of Virginia during the Civil War. Includes manuscripts, typescripts, printed materials, and photocopies consisting of genealogies, correspondence, college essays, speeches, official messages, articles prepared for newspapers, legal documents, pamphlets, scrapbooks, and ephemera. Topics include Pierpont's education; his career as governor of the Restored Government of Virginia at Wheeling, Alexandria, and Richmond; the West Virginia statehood movement; politics; and his later work in the Methodist Protestant Church. Notable series include Pierpont's personal and professional correspondence; his writings and speeches, which include several drafts of his reminiscences on Lincoln; correspondence and notes of Charles H. Ambler, biographer of Pierpont, in the Subject Files series; and a series of several hundred telegrams related to statehood and the Civil War. Pierpont's correspondents include Gordon Battelle, Arthur I. Boreman, John S. Carlile, Abraham Lincoln (copies), Waitman T. Willey, and others. For civil war telegrams related to this collection, go to wvhistory.org.

Private journal of George K. Campbell of Athens County, Ohio, who served as an officer in Company B of the 116th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Gettysburg campaign and the summer, fall, and winter of 1863, when he saw service in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Campbell served detached duty as an escort officer for recruits and prisoners during the spring and summer of 1864 and visited New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He joined Company B of the 187th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in September 1864. That unit was soon consolidated and became Company E of the 174th. Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Papers regarding West Virginia statehood and the history of Wheeling and Ohio County compiled by Judge Gibson L. Cranmer (1826-1903) of Wheeling, West Virginia, who served as secretary of the Wheeling Convention that repudiated Virginia's secession from the United States in 1861. Series 1 includes manuscript narratives and correspondence describing events of the West Virginia statehood movement, written by eyewitnesses at the request of Gibson L. Cranmer. Manuscript authors include John S. Burdett, John S. Carlile, Daniel Frost, Lewis Ruffner, and Benjamin Wilson. Series 2 includes Cranmer's handwritten notes, drafts of articles, copies of documents, and letters solicited by him regarding the history of Wheeling and Ohio County, West Virginia. See Scope and Content Note for details and contents list.

This collection comprises the personal and business correspondence, as well as financial and legal papers of the Goshorn family of Wheeling, West Virginia, including papers from members of several allied families. Highlights include letters from William S. Goshorn during his Civil War imprisonment and letters from a Virginia legislator in the House of Delegates (1833). An addendum (2012/09) contains three ledgers of John Goshorn (1827-1874). See the Scope and Content Note for more details.

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.