Collections

The collection consists of circulation, subscription, and financial ledgers, annual lecture series documents, catalogues, correspondence, and various organizational documents. Topics include: foundation of the Alexandria Library Company, its cycles of growth and decline reflecting the local economy; the formation of the local public library system; and the on-going activities of the Alexandria Library Company, most notably its lecture series.

This collection contains the records of the Alexandria Library, documenting the administration and operation of the Library, dating from the founding of the public library in 1937 through the present. Included are administrative records, annual reports, financial records, circulation records, materials documenting the history of the Library, programming and outreach records, and records of the individual branches of the library system. Formats include textual documents, photographs, and ephemera.

The collection includes five scrapbooks, covering the years 1904-1976, that contain advertisements, clippings of news articles and photographs of bank employees. These scrapbooks contain information on First National Bank, Mount Vernon Bank and Trust, Citizens National Bank, First Federal Savings and Loans, and the Bank of Alexandria. Additionally, the collection contains Statements of Condition from the Bank of Alexandria that cover the years 1907-1978.

The collection contains reports, correspondence, account books, minutes, warrants, court orders, vouchers, bills to be paid and to be collected, some printed matter, stocks and bonds, petitions, election returns, and poll books, ranging in date from 1750 to 1983, predominately 1825-1875. Topics include both the city auditor and the city treasurer records of receipts and expenditures for many city functions--the poor house, the police, employee pay records, etc.--, election results, the issuance of Corporation stocks and bonds, railroads, and canals.

Papers of Alfred A. Bolton, a professor specializing in the field of management history. He completed a dissertation that retrospectively analyzed the historically influential Hawthorne Studies that had been conducted at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Chicago from 1927-1932, of which he later wrote and lectured. The collection includes photocopies of original Hawthorne Studies records and related research material, copies of articles by Bolton, and videotapes related to management theory, history, and practice, among other material. There are also glass cutting tools that he inherited, or perhaps used as a journeyman glass cutter in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

This collection consists of three notebooks containing lecture notes taken by Alfred R. Armstrong in Roscoe C. Young's advanced physics classes, 1932-1933, at the College of William and Mary.

Papers of journalist Alice Cartledge Cornett, including newspaper articles authored by or regarding Cornett, photographs, and copies of her obituary. Although her family and career would take her around the world, Cornett returned frequently to the Morgantown area and to the Appalachian region throughout her life. Cornett's father was a professor at West Virginia University and she graduated from Morgantown High School in 1945; this collection includes material regarding her graduation and 50th class reunion. The majority of material in the collection regards Cornett's career in journalism, which began during her time living abroad in the Netherlands in the 1970s (please note that Cornett was named "Alice Drago" during this period of time). During her time in the Netherlands, she wrote articles for a number of publications and founded the first English-language newspaper, titled "The Hollander". Cornett later returned to the United States and continued her journalistic career, writing for "The Sentinel Echo" of London, Kentucky, as well as for other newspapers. Please see the first folder of this collection for further biographical information regarding Cornett.