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Reverend C. Shirley Donnelly, a Baptist minister and local historian, collected these materials for his own research and interest in West Virginia history. The collection contains various materials pertaining to coal mining and West Virginia history, especially in the New River area and Fayette County. It includes correspondence, land grant and deed records, pamphlets, journals, local histories, records, photographs, and art relating to mining and life in the New River area. One set of correspondence includes recollections, a yearbook, and newspaper clippings by a World War II sailor from the USS West Virginia. Another series of correspondence includes the antebellum, wartime, and postwar letters and personal receipts of Charles Dequasie, a Confederate soldier from Fayette County, West Virginia, and Robert Edward Dequasie's personal and business correspondence. Other ephemera includes West Virginia and mining journals and certificates belonging to Donnelly and others. A scrapbook and notebook of newspaper clippings pertain to early court hangings and executions in West Virginia. Political posters include those for West Virginia Governor William C. Marland and West Virginia Senators Harley Kilgore and Robert Byrd.

These files constitute the major record series generated by the office of Francis H. Smith, VMI's first Superintendent. He served from 1839-1889. The records, (ca. 30 linear feet) consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence, order books, speeches and publications, annual reports, personal file, and subject files.

This collection consist of ca. 16,000 items, 1787-1936, and contains the papers of the Bondurant familyof Buckingham County, Virginia, and the Morrison familyof Rockbridge County, Virginiawho were related through the marriage of Alexander Joseph Bondurantand Emily MacFarland Morrisonin 1859. Alexander J. Bondurantand Emily (Morrison) Bondurantwere the chief correspondents in this collection. Alexander J. Bondurant(1836-1910) was a Confederatesoldier, farmer, politician, superintendent of Buckingham County, Va.schools, professor of agriculture at Auburn University, and tobacco consultant to the government of Australia. His father, Thomas Moseley Bondurant(1797-1862), was a landowner, member of the board of trustees of Hampden-Sydney College, a soldier in the War of 1812, a member of the Virginia Senate, and one of the founders of the Richmond Whig. His oldest son, Alexander Lee Bondurant(1865-1937) was professor of Latin and head of the graduate school of the University of Mississippi.

This collection contains miscellaneous correspondence, documents, publications, and newspaper clippings pertaining to Hampden-Sydney College from 1776 through 1988, organized into folders by year. This primary source material was collected and originally organized by Paul L. Grier.

The Sheet Music Collection includes sheet music collected by the Special Collections Research Center.

The collection consists of correspondence, day books, blueprints, photographs, genealogical research, maps, DVDs, artwork, textiles, and artifacts, circa 1760-1990, relating to the Tucker family of Bermuda and the Taliaferro-Bolton families of Richmond, Virginia.

This collection contains the papers of the family of Martha L. Robinson Johnson, nineteenth-century matriarch of a Carroll County, Virginia family. The collection consists largely of correspondence to Johnson from various family members and friends, providing a chronicle of the life of a Southwest Virginia family during the mid-nineteenth century, mostly from a feminine perspective. The letters focus on childbirth, death, illness, folk medicine, fashion, sewing, knitting, quilting, gardening, food, spirituality and the Civil War. The letters were mailed from various locales--mostly in Virginia--including Hillsville, Copper Mines, Orange Court House, Lynchburg, Texas House, Chatham Hill, Coal Hill, Warm Springs, Red Sulphur Springs, Spring Valley, Grayson County, Cove and Hickory Grove. Though the majority of the correspondence is addressed to Martha Johnson, the collection also contains correspondence to and from her husband, Robert C. Johnson, a Carroll County tavern keeper, postmaster and commissioner of revenue.