Collections

Pamphlets include Henry Ruffner's antislavery pamphlet, 1847, and his Union speech, 1856. Subjects of the manuscripts and correspondence include family history; travel; Kanawha Salt Works; schools in Virginia and Kanawha County; Lane Seminary Library; Presbyterian Church; slavery, coal, gas, iron, and timber; Johns Hopkins, Washington and Lee, Harvard, Hobart, Cornell, and Hampden-Sydney colleges; Greenbrier County; Alabama; election of 1904; University of Virginia; Kanawha Valley floods; Venezuela; American Colonization Society; and the Philippine Islands. Persons mentioned or commented on include Philip Doddridge, John Letcher, Hugh Mercer, and Nelson A. Miles. Correspondents include Charles H. Ambler, John Eaton, John P. Hale, H.R. Helper, W.S. Laidley, David L. Ruffner, John W. Wayland, and William L. Wilson.

Correspondence, legal and business papers, mercantile records and tax receipt books of Isaac McNeel, who operated a store at Edray and Mill Point, Pocahontas County, West Virginia, served as sheriff of the county, operated a gristmill, raised livestock, and was appointed provost marshal of the county in 1862 by the Confederate Army. The collection also includes letters and school reports of McNeel's sons, Winters and Summers, while students at Washington and Lee and the Medical and Law Departments of the University of Virginia, 1893-1897. Other school material pertains to the Hillsboro Male and Female Academy and the Lewisburg Female Institute. Subjects include mercantile and cattle trade with Baltimore and Richmond; business conditions in the l850s and in Richmond during the Civil War; slave hiring; ginseng trade; agriculture; the American Party, 1855; Henry A. Wise; Virginia Secession Convention; effect of the Union blockade on Richmond commerce; speculation in whiskey, tobacco, and cattle during the Civil War; and postwar economic and political conditions in the Pocahontas County area.

Two facsimiles of letters from J.M. Mason at the University of Virginia with reference to the management of the Virginia-West Virginia debt controversy, the nature of the Virginia claims, the history of the case, and recommendations for handling the matter for the best interest of West Virginia.

Papers of Lewis Summers, a lawyer, businessman, member of the Virginia House of Delegates, 1817-1818, delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-1830, and his brother George W., a lawyer in Charleston, a judge, a member of the House of Delegates, 1830-1832, 1834-1836, the U.S. House of Representatives, 1841-1845, a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, candidate for governor in 1851, member of the 1861 Peace Convention, and delegate to the Richmond Secession Convention, 1861. Correspondence between the brothers is for the years 1818-1843. There are also business, legal, and family papers, speeches, and an autograph book of George W. while a student at the University of Virginia, 1854-1857. Correspondents include George Carlisle, James Craik, James M. Laidley, and Luke Wilcox. Persons mentioned or commented on include John Q. Adams, John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, Henry Clay, Thomas R. Dew, Andrew Donnally, Millard Fillmore, John Floyd, William H. Harrison, Andrew Jackson, the Ruffner family, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, and Henry A. Wise.

Research papers and sound recordings compiled by Louis Watson Chappell, an English Professor and folklorist at West Virginia University who collected, documented, and preserved West Virginia's folk music and folk traditions. He was born in Belvidere, North Carolina and educated in English Language and Literature at Wake Forest University (B.A.), and the University of Virginia (M.A.). Receiving a faculty appointment at West Virginia University in 1922, Chappell embarked upon a career dedicated to documenting and preserving West Virginia's folk music, which proved to be highly significant.

Letters to Wilson at Farmville, Virginia, and Charleston, West Virginia, from members of his family at: the University of Virginia; Lewisburg, West Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Clarksville, Virginia. Includes references to family business affairs, the Ruffner-Donnally salt works at Charleston, purchase of slaves, and medical education in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1836 and 1844.