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Papers of the Watson and Haymond families of Marion County, West Virginia. Includes a journal, family financial and legal materials, correspondence, genealogical research materials, publications, photographs, a painting, and other material. Includes significant material regarding the American Civil War, particularly in the diary of Virginia Haymond. Series include:

The collection includes manuscript materials (correspondence, land warrant, accounts, receipts, petition and will) and printed and typescript materials (invitations, broadside, newspaper and magazine clippings). Subjects of the various items include sale and survey of land; schools, churches, estates, comment on and description of agriculture, social and economic conditions in Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, California, Morgantown, Fairmont, and Wheeling, WV, and Ireland; westward migration [1849]; gold mining, enslaved Africans; and business and family affairs.

The collection includes 57 letters (1795-1871) to or from Benjamin H., Henry, James G., James O., Rebecca D., and Thomas Watson; 3 land grants on sheep-skin (1787-1798) Monongalia County; 25 articles of agreement (1812-1875), manuscript; 4 manuscript wills or copies of wills (1852-1862); 32 surveys, maps, and plats of coal fields (1798-1892); 99 tax receipts (1807-1865), manuscript and printed forms; 44 receipts for clerking fees (1815-1845) manuscript and printed forms; 79 receipts, bills, notes (1782-1862), manuscript and printed forms; 51 miscellaneous manuscript and printed forms (1790-1902), including inventories of estates, sale bills, notes on legal matters with respect to property, court proceedings, etc.; and one manuscript constable's receipt book of Campbell and Watson.

Personal papers of the Watson family in Marion County, including a genealogy of the Watson and Haymond families, newspaper clippings of weddings, obituaries, social and business activities, and European travel. Mention is made of coal mining development in Marion County, strikes, labor meetings, conservation, and improvement of farming practices. There is material on politics, industrial development, early iron mining, Marion county history, the Barrickville covered bridge, Beverly-Fairmont Turnpike, and the Presbyterian Church in Fairmont.

Records of the WVU Extension Service. Collection includes instructional booklets on cooking, decorating, and sewing from the 1910s to the 1960s, materials on rural electrification in West Virginia in the 1930s, annual conference programs, and materials on incomes and family budgets. Also includes materials relating to the Farm Woman's Club in West Virginia, studies of school children during the 1940s, and studies of cost of living in rural areas during World War II. There are historical sketches of various county extension programs in the state of West Virginia, most of which describe their establishment and growth.

Maps of West Virginia prepared or used by the Office of Civilian Defense during World War II and preserved by the West Virginia War History Commission.

Letters, speeches, newspaper clippings, and memorabilia of Dr. William O. Armstrong, principal of Dunbar School, Fairmont, and the first Black student to attend the graduate school at West Virginia University. Includes correspondence, articles, speech scripts, and other material regarding Armstrong's involvement with the Marion County Public Library, Marion County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and other organizations. Also includes memorial articles, obituaries, and correspondence to Armstrong's family after his death in 1970.