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Copy of an order book of the Continental Army, originating at Lancaster and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In the back of the volume is a copy of a travel diary, "Journal of a Voyage to California in Brig A EMERY" which sailed from Sandy Hook, New York 25 January 1849.

Diary and memoir of a Confederate soldier, railroad laborer, and shop owner from Grafton. The memoir begins with Mugler's birth in Alsace-Lorraine in 1838, and covers his immigration to the United States; enlistment in the United States Army in 1851; military duty in New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Texas, California, and the Washington Territory where he participated in the expedition against the Yakima Indians as a member of Company B, Third Regiment, United States Artillery, under Phil Sheridan; and his return to Orange County, Virginia, where following the passage of the Secession Ordinance he enlisted in the Thirteenth Virginia Infantry serving as chief musician. The memoir concludes with Mugler's military career during 1861-1862. The diary covers the remainder of his military service, 1862-1864, and his confinement as a war prisoner at Elmira, New York, 1864-1865. Following the war, Mugler returned to Washington, D.C., and eventually gained employment with the National Cemetery Corps, working at various Virginia battlefields. While in Virginia he served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Convention of 1867. He worked at the National Cemetery at Grafton and for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, eventually becoming superintendent of painters on the Road Division in West Virginia. After 1874 he worked briefly as a self-employed painter, and then opened a paint and hardware store in Grafton which he managed until the end of his life. Subjects include the Battle of Mine Run, the retreat from Antietam, the Battle of the Wilderness, prison life at Elmira, New York; reconstruction in Virginia; railroading and the railroad towns of Keyser, Oakland (Maryland), Parkersburg, Fairmont, and Wheeling; the strikes of 1877; interviews with Generals Ord and Sheridan; the Murphy Temperance Movement and W.C.T.U. activities; the Liberal Republican movement of 1872; the Greenback Party; the Chicago World's Fair of 1893; political figures such as John S. Carlile, John G. Carlisle, John T. McGraw, John W. Mason, Frank Hereford, John E. Kenna, John A. Logan, James G. Blaine, and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson.

Chronicle written by Hayden, Mayor of Fairmont, of his trip to the west coast. He describes the perils of a steamboat trip from Pittsburgh to Independence, Missouri, and the joys and hardships of travel by wagon across the Great Plains to California. Indian encounters, river crossings, inclement weather, scarcity of water, thieves, and firing squads are some of the topics noted.

Letters of Henry and Joseph Bennett concerning travel by sea from New York to Chagres, Panama, overland across Panama and by ship to San Francisco in 1851. Letters from California, 1852-1853, discuss arrival of immigrants; employment conditions and wages; gambling and social life in San Francisco; investment opportunities; conditions in the gold mines; travel by steamboat to Hangtown (Placerville); churches; crime; Indians; mining profits; cost of land; ranching; blacksmith and plough shop in Santa Clara; digging a canal to take water from the American River to supply Hangtown, Coon Hollow, and Gold Hill; and Webber Run. Two letters by Joseph Bennett from Australia in l853 comment on mining, living conditions, profits of mining, and criminals sent from Great Britain. There is one 1849 letter to Samuel Bennett from relatives in Sheffield, England. There are several items of Jacobs family correspondence, 1880-1923, concerning family affairs, schools, economic conditions in Jackson County, and Monongalia County taxes in 1907.

Papers of Hu Maxwell (1860-1927), historian, editor, and author of several county histories of West Virginia, along with papers and records of other family members. There are manuscripts of fiction, verse, and local history written by Maxwell, as well as a number of his manuscripts and publications dealing with forestry which were prepared while he was a member of the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. Maxwell kept a diary during the years 1901-1919 while residing in Morgantown, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., which is extensive for the period of World War I and which contains notes on the diary of Rufus Maxwell (1855-1907). See scope and content note for more detail.