Collections

Papers of a Morgantown attorney, including correspondence, broadsides, and other materials relating to politics in Monongalia County, West Virginia.

Correspondence, 1903-1947; lists of names of Revolutionary War soldiers and officers, burials, location of graves, and pensions. There is a list of frontier forts in Monongalia County; data on servicemen in World Wars I and II; and genealogical information on about one hundred families.

Correspondence, reports, and other manuscripts of the Morgantown chapter of the D.A.R., relating to the history of Stewartstown, Morgantown, and Monongalia County; also genealogical materials for this area.

David Boston Stewart (1826-1915), a farmer from Monongalia County, West Virginia, who served with the 48th Virginia Infantry and the 20th Virginia Cavalry during the Civil War and was a member of the Virginia Legislature from 1863 to 1864. Collection primarily consists of letters written to D.B. Stewart between 1862 and 1864 and between 1894 and 1906 that concern Stewart's time as a Confederate prisoner of war during the Civil War, and his personal life in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Includes records from several generations of the Deakins family of Montgomery County, Maryland and north central West Virginia. William (1742-1798) and Francis (1739-1804) Deakins, among the first generation, were active as land speculators after the American Revolution, applying their skills as surveyors to leverage acquisition of western lands. From 1778 their activities are documented through deeds, agreements, surveys, plats, surveyors' field books, court papers, and letters related to land purchased in Harrison, Monongalia, Preston, Randolph, Tucker, and Upshur counties. Other papers concern Leonard M. Deakins (1747-1824) and his descendants. Of special significance in the collection is the compass used by Francis Deakins to survey the "Deakins Line" in 1787-1788, a north-south line separating western Maryland from (West) Virginia.

Scrapbook of State Senator Dennis M. Willis, who represented Monongalia County from 1925-1929. The material covers West Virginia political and economic questions.

The boyhood memoirs of an elderly Monongalia County resident, entitled, "Our Daily Bread" relating rural life in the early years of the twentieth century. There is mention of home remedies, farming, country stores, school, church, holidays, transportation and folkways. He describes in detail seeing the first automobile in the western part of the county. Also contains some genealogical notes on William White and family, White is the surveyor who named that portion of the county, Battelle District.

Correspondence, book reviews, certificates and pictures of Waddell, a pioneering black veterinarian and author. His books (People Are The Funniest Animals, The Black Man in Veterinary Medicine, Universal Veterinarianism, and Historical Facts of the Black Veterinarian) document the little known contributions of African-Americans from antebellum times to the present in the field of veterinary science. They also indicate his beliefs that the veterinarian profession can also help heal misunderstandings among mankind. After graduation in 1935 from the University of Pennsylvania, one of the first schools to admit blacks into its veterinarian program, he taught and worked at Tuskegee Institute where he co-founded the first program in veterinary science at a black American college. During World War II, he joined the Ninth Cavalry, a famed black unit of which he includes some of its history among his papers. After the war, he established a private practice in West Virginia eventually locating in Monongalia County where he also served on the board of the Monongalia County Mental Health Association. His home near Morgantown served as a social center for some of the first black students who attended West Virginia University. He was also instrumental in fostering integration of other institutions within the county. After 1963 he moved to North Dakota where he worked on the Chippewa reservations of Turtle Mountain and Fort Totten. Waddell offers his observations on the aspirations of Native Americans and how they are discriminated against and neglected.