Collections

Personal and business papers of Arthur I. Boreman (1823-1896), lawyer, U.S. senator, circuit court judge, and first governor of West Virginia. The bulk of the collection consists of papers relating to his judgeship and to the law firm of Boreman and Bullocks, Parkersburg, WV. Series include correspondence, notes on cases tried before Judge Boreman, envelope cases of material regarding legal cases in which Boreman was involved, financial material, and political and judicial printed material. Correspondence includes letters to Boreman from Francis H. Pierpont (1866-1867), which concern politics in West Virginia, the admission of Berkeley and Jefferson counties into the state, the Virginia debt, and Reconstruction in Virginia. There is little other material relating to the governorship or political activities. Additional correspondents include J.W. Davis, John J. Davis, D.D.T. Farnsworth, D.H. Strother, J.G. Jackson, Charles J. Faulkner, and E.W. Wilson. Also includes manuscripts of speeches; muster rolls; household accounts; civil and court case papers concerning oil well drilling and sales; railroad property inventories and operation; coal prices, shipping data, and strikes; liquid fuel transportation; and steam and tow boat cargoes, navigation data, and names of boats in service on the Ohio River. There is also genealogical information on P.G. Van Winkle and Ebenezer Zane, and a letter and deposition by J.H. Diss Debar. For more details and box-level contents list, see Scope and Content Note. For more information on Arthur I. Boreman, see Historical Note.

Survey by Charles B. Shaw for the Board of Public Works of a road between Berkeley Springs, Morgan Co. and Shepherdstown, Jefferson Co. Provided are statistics on course and grade as well as surveying location. Also includes sketches of the route's lay of the land, including some natural features such as streams and man made features.

Letter written by Charles H. Ruggles to a Mr. Lossing (possibly Benson J. Lossing), dated 26 November 1864. Ruggles asks Lossing to inquire of Colonel Milford at Fortress Monroe regarding the location and status of Majors David Ruggles and Edwin Moore, Union Army paymasters who had been taken prisoner by Mosby's Rangers during the Greenback Raid on the railroad between Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg on 14 October 1864. Collection contains a user copy. Please see "Historical Note" for further information.

Facsimiles of printed material of Charles J. Faulkner (1806-1884), who was a Martinsburg attorney, Virginia legislator, member of Congress, and ambassador to France during the James Buchanan administration. Also includes some facsimiles of manuscript material. Materials relate to Faulkner and the eastern Panhandle. Topics include Virginia-West Virginia politics; the Strother Hotel in Berkeley Springs, (West) Virginia; Berkeley County Court of Appeals; Berkeley and Jefferson County Whig mass meetings; and the Martinsburg Savings Association. Authors include Charles J. Faulkner; John Strother, and various Whig Party members. The originals are in the collections of T.T. Perry, Jr.; Boyd Stutler; and Oglebay Institute. See inventory in control folder. For more information about Faulkner, see the Historical Note.

Correspondence, photographs, post cards, newspapers, pamphlets (regarding typical antebellum and postbellum topics such as slavery, states rights, etc.), official records including the 1793 marriage license for Lund Washington (George Washington's cousin) and Susanna Grayson, a 1732 shipping order for items, including gold and silver, to be transported from Delaware to London, a 1837 document authorizing payment of a navy pension to the children of Lt. John Packette, and memorabilia of a prominent Jefferson County family, the Davenport-Gibson-Packette-Todds. The bulk of the correspondence is that of Mrs. Frances Packette Todd, Braxton Davenport (Port) Gibson, Susan G. (Zan) Gibson and Mrs. Anne Gibson Packette. Mrs. Todd was an heiress who travelled much in her youth and she was married to a distant cousin, Augustine J. Todd, who, like her, also claimed descent from George Washington's family. Her aunt, Zan Gibson, was an active local historian and genealogist. Her uncle B. D. (Port) Gibson was a lawyer who was a state legislator at the turn of the century. There are letters and artifacts of his days as a student at the University of Virginia where he was quite popular and an esteemed member of the rowing team. There are also several letters of his sisters, Anne and Zan, from a private French school in Canada. There is a shell jacket of a Confederate uniform belonging to Mrs. Todd's grandfather, John Thomas Gibson. He was a non-commissioned officer serving in an engineering unit of the CSA Army which was stationed around Richmond near the end of the Civil War. Gibson also commanded militia units during John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. There are letters of his concerning the hiring out of slaves before and during the war. After the war he once again became successful in business and built a mansion in Charles Town upon the site where John Brown was executed. One other prominent family member was Capt. James Gibson who served in a Virginia infantry regiment stationed at Norfolk during the War of 1812. Subjects covered include family matters, politics, land, slavery, education and warfare.

Correspondence and business papers of the family of George Koonce of Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County. Koonce was a prominent Unionist during the Civil War, a representative at the 1861 Wheeling Convention, and later a member of the West Virginia State Senate. The correspondence spans 1854 to 1920 (the bulk of which is from the period 1870 to 1900) and principally includes personal letters to and from family members spread out from Baltimore to Galveston, Texas. The topics, for the most part, involve family matters although there are some letters discussing politics and the Civil War. There are also some business papers concerning the firm of George Koonce & Son, a Harpers Ferry general store, and tax receipts.

Correspondence, staff minutes, trail notes, and other materials relating to the management of Harpers Ferry National Park. There is also a map of Harpers Ferry with historical information by the US National Park Service (published in 2010).

Miscellaneous papers collected by Helen Goldsborough of Shepherdstown. Includes wills, deeds, broadsides, and some legal and personal papers of Edmund Lee.

Interviews with and reviews of the fiction of Julia Davis, a member of a prominent Harrison County family whose most distinguished member was her father, John W. Davis, the 1924 Democratic Presidential candidate. In the interviews she tells of the influence upon her career of Melville Davisson Post and of the historic activities of her family, particularly before and during the Civil War. Her maternal grandparents, who resided in Jefferson County, observed the trial and execution of John Brown. Based upon their memoirs and those of their neighbors she wrote a successful play for the West Virginia centennial, "The Anvil" about the Brown raid and trial. There are also two reviews of the body of her literature emphasizing its historical nature and its sympathetic but realistic exploration of the dialectical tensions between minorities and the dominant group in America.