Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Papers of Francis Harrison Pierpont (1814-1899) of Monongalia and Marion Counties, West Virginia, who served as governor of the Restored Government of Virginia during the Civil War. Includes manuscripts, typescripts, printed materials, and photocopies consisting of genealogies, correspondence, college essays, speeches, official messages, articles prepared for newspapers, legal documents, pamphlets, scrapbooks, and ephemera. Topics include Pierpont's education; his career as governor of the Restored Government of Virginia at Wheeling, Alexandria, and Richmond; the West Virginia statehood movement; politics; and his later work in the Methodist Protestant Church. Notable series include Pierpont's personal and professional correspondence; his writings and speeches, which include several drafts of his reminiscences on Lincoln; correspondence and notes of Charles H. Ambler, biographer of Pierpont, in the Subject Files series; and a series of several hundred telegrams related to statehood and the Civil War. Pierpont's correspondents include Gordon Battelle, Arthur I. Boreman, John S. Carlile, Abraham Lincoln (copies), Waitman T. Willey, and others. For civil war telegrams related to this collection, go to wvhistory.org.

Papers of the Goff family of Harrison County, West Virginia. This collection is minimally processed. Includes the papers of Nathan Goff III, grandson of Nathan Goff Jr. (1843-1920), as well as his daughter Laura Ellen Goff Fireman (later Davis). Also includes correspondence of Howard Caplan, the Administrator of the Estate of Nathan Goff III, and H. Dotson Cather, the brother-in-law of Mrs. Goff Fireman Davis who may have been involved in Goff's estate. Formats in the collection include correspondence, ephemera, programs, invitations, plats, photographs, clippings, and much more. Nathan Goff's correspondence includes mostly business but also some family and personal correspondence. Correspondence includes both incoming and typescript copies of outgoing letters, as well as a few cards and telegrams. Subjects include mines, farming, livestock (especially sheep and horses, with special concentration of Clydesdale material), politics, land, wells, oil and gas leases, Citizens Publishing Company, the Waldo Hotel, the Nicholas Land Company, West Virginia Consolidated Coal Company and its Hardman Mine, Illinois State Fair, engineering, books, finances, and more. Mrs. Goff Fireman Davis's correspondence mainly concerns her father's estate. There are also two folders of material pertaining to Nathan Goff Jr., mostly correspondence and financial information (box 1, folders 17-18, 1884-1919). See Historical Note for additional information.

Correspondence and writings of Granville Davisson Hall, reporter for the Wheeling Intelligencer during the Wheeling conventions, 1861-1863; secretary of state of West Virginia, 1865-1873; and author of numerous works of fiction and historical studies about West Virginia.

Correspondence, maps, business records and other papers of a U.S. Senator, Democratic politician, and promoter of the oil industry, railroads, and coal and timber resources of West Virginia. The papers regard Camden's purchase of land in the 1850s; his activities in oil production and refining, 1860-1875; his presidency of the Camden Consolidated Oil Company and the Baltimore United Oil Company; the affairs of the Stewart Brick Company of Parkersburg; the Virginia debt controversy; and his development of railroads, including the Ohio River Railroad, the West Virginia and Pittsburgh Railroad, and Monongahela River Railroad, 1879-1892. See the "Scope and Content Note" for more information.

Correspondence, legal papers, photographs, and printed materials of John W. Mason (1842-1917). Mason was a circuit court and state Supreme Court judge, member of the Virginia State Debt Commission, and commissioner of Internal Revenue. The general correspondence contains personal and business letters, as well as manuscript speeches, notebooks, and reports. The period while Mason was circuit judge is particularly sparse. Also includes Internal Revenue correspondence consisting of about 8,500 pages in letter press copy books. Roughly half of the collection is devoted to his legal papers and printed materials concerning law in general. Subjects include early development of the Republican Party in West Virginia; political campaigns in West Virginia from 1870-1916; Monongalia Academy; industrial development; Internal Revenue Service (1889-1893); the Virginia Debt question; early banking development in Grafton; and the development of coal companies, particularly around Fairmont. Correspondents include Arthur I. Boreman, A.W. Campbell, Stephen B. Elkins, Benjamin Harrison, Francis H. Pierpont, and others.

Correspondence and papers of a major political figure dealing largely with politics in Virginia, West Virginia, and Virginia in the Confederacy. Bennett, a lawyer and legislator, was a member of the Virginia General Assembly, 1852-1853; president of the Weston Branch of the Exchange Bank of Virginia; auditor of Virginia, 1857-1865; member of the senate of West Virginia, 1872-1876; and a member of the commission appointed to adjust the Virginia debt question in 1871. Correspondents include James Barbour, Arthur I. Boreman, G.D. Camden, J.N. Camden, R.P. Camden, John S. Carlile, Spencer Dayton, J.H. Diss Debar, Matthew Edmiston, John W. Garrett, Nathan Goff, William L. Jackson, Joseph Johnson, Edwin Maxwell, J.H. Pendleton, Francis H. Pierpont, Beverly Randolph, John H. Reagan, William Prescott Smith, Felix Sutton, William P. Thompson, John Tyler, and P.G. Van Winkle.

Diary of Lyman Stedman (1824-1916), a farmer and former member of the House of Delegates, 1877, from Brown's Island, Hancock County. Entries concern farm operation, Republican political activities on the district and county level, comments on state and national organizations, floods on the Ohio River, steamboat and barge traffic, Hopedale School, Methodist Episcopal Church, railroad travel, circuses and fairs, taxes and land valuations, and Memorial Day.

Correspondence, letter books, newspapers, pamphlets, and papers on suits that were tried before Judge Nathan Goff (1843-1920) while he was serving as a U.S. District Attorney and a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court. Goff's career included terms as West Virginia Legislator (1867-1868), U.S. district attorney for West Virginia (1868), Secretary of the Navy (1881), U.S. Congressman (1883-1889), federal judge in the U.S. Fourth Circuit (1892-1911), and U.S. Senator (1913-1919). The majority of the correspondence relates to his professional activities. For contents list, please see control folder.

Professional correspondence, newspaper clipping, manuscript notes, and speech of West Virginia politician Nathan Goff, Jr. (1843-1920). Goff's career included terms as West Virginia Legislator (1867-1868), U.S. district attorney for West Virginia (1868), Secretary of the Navy (1881), U.S. Congressman (1883-1889), federal judge in the U.S. Fourth Circuit (1892-1911), and U.S. Senator (1913-1919). The letters and telegram are in a series written in August, 1876; correspondents are Nathan Goff and Henry M. Mathews, who was the Attorney General of West Virginia at the time and would go on to be governor. The clipping is from the Morgantown Post and describes Goff's speech at a Union League's Lincoln Dinner in Brooklyn, New York (November 7, 1891). The manuscript notes were written by Goff about a speech by M.T. Frame (October 1886). The speech by Goff addresses the Protective Tariff (undated).

Negative photostats of letters of Nathan Goff, Jr. (1843-1920), as Secretary of the Navy, to President Rutherford B. Hayes. Goff's career included terms as West Virginia Legislator (1867-1868), U.S. district attorney for West Virginia (1868), Secretary of the Navy (1881), U.S. Congressman (1883-1889), federal judge in the U.S. Fourth Circuit (1892-1911), and U.S. Senator (1913-1919).