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Papers of Thomas W. Gavett, Chairman of the Commission. Subjects covered include: surveys of equal employment opportunities, newspaper clippings, material from the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, correspondence regarding non-discriminatory college applications for West Virginia institutions of higher learning, memoranda from the executive director to commission members, minutes of meetings, hearings, West Virginia Interracial Commission created by Governor M.M. Neely, West Virginia Advisory Commission to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, statement to the West Virginia Board of Education from a committee of the West Virginia State NAACP on 2 September 1964, First Governors Conference on Human Rights in Charleston on 16 December 1965, special report on the New Year's Eve incident in Huntington on 14 January 1966, the special hearing at Lakin State Hospital on 21 April 1966, and the resignation of Howard McKinney. Correspondents include Governor W.W. Barron, Rabbi Samuel Cooper, Paul Crabtree, Rev. C. Anderson Davis, Thomas W. Gavett, Ken Hechler, Senator Paul Kaufman, Paul A. Miller, Julius W. Singleton, and Governor H.C. Smith.

The collection contains typescript copies of the proceedings of this Commission at Charleston, West Virginia, 1912, and the military commission at Pratt, 1913, concerning conditions in the Cabin Creek and Paint Creek coalfields. Included are the military commission's orders, clippings from the Charleston LABOR ARGUS, names of individuals appearing before the commissions, and extracts of speeches by persons involved, including five speeches by "Mother" Jones.

Extracts from a diary of a tour of the eastern states by a resident of Meadville, Pennsylvania, with descriptions of travel through Greenbrier, Fayette, Kanawha, and Cabell counties, (West) Virginia. Subjects covered include descriptions of buildings, as well as musings about diversions and people of various U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. (where Reynolds attended a session of Congress and heard Clay, Calhoun and Buchanan), Richmond, Charlottesville (he visited Monticello), Charleston, and a number of smaller Virginia cities. There are also descriptions of "natural wonders", including Weirs Cave, Devil's Bake Oven, the Natural Bridge, White Sulphur Springs, and Kanawha Falls.

Letter and account books, clipping scrapbooks, and miscellaneous family papers of a pioneer, Ohio Valley, general merchandise firm founded by Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., at Marietta, Ohio, and operating under various names for a period of more than sixty years. The collection also includes the account books of Daniel, Richard, and John Greene, 1808-1844; account books of F.B. Loomis, 1842-1844; a medicinal formulary book; the estate records of John Brody; records of a pension and bounty land claims agency operated by George M. Woodbridge, 1861-1864; and justice of the peace accounts, 1832-1863. Subjects include the development of river markets, transportation, and the livestock industry in the early Ohio Valley; fur trade and commerce with England and Europe; the Marietta and Susquehanna Trading Company; Kanawha and Sciota salt works; Ohio Company lands; Woodbridge-Harman Blennerhassett partnership; ginseng trade; Wheeling Cotton Manufacturing Company; ropewalk and shipbuilding in Marietta; military land warrants; estate of George Morgan; career of William Woodbridge, United States senator and governor of Michigan; pioneer education; Meadville Seminary; Ohio University; Miami University; Marietta Collegiate Institute; Belpre, Ohio; American Catholic missions; early history of Marietta; the American Colonization Society; Washington County Colonization Society; churches; Washington County Tract Society; recruiting in Marietta during the Civil War; impact of the War of 1812 on westward migration and labor; and Woodbridge family affairs. Letters are addressed to merchants in London, France, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston (West Virginia), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, and Baltimore. Correspondents include Lewis Cass, Philip Doddridge, and Benjamin Reeder.