Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Records of a local union of street car employees in Wheeling, West Virginia. There are minute books, correspondence, contracts, agreements, boards of arbitration hearings, and financial records, including membership figures and lists of members from the founding of the local to the late 1950s. The correspondence concerns mainly intra-union issues of seniority, transfers of membership, and local union governance, but there are also a few letters about Division 103's support of other organized workers and about the American labor movement. The records also include one folder of legal documents submitted to the Interstate Commerce Commission for consideration in its drafting of safety regulations for motor carriers. There is also an addendum [2010 February 03] of a copy of the March 1918 issue of "The Motorman and Conductor," a publication of this union.

The papers received from Mr. Brinkman in 1938 include manuscripts, typescripts, and printed items, and general merchandise account books. The manuscript items are mainly letters, receipts, account statements, and certificates concerning the general merchandise business of George Brinkman in Grafton, Grafton Gas Works, Charles Brinkman's History of Grafton, history of the first memorial service and the location of the National Cemetery in Grafton (Box 13), and stock in the Grafton & Greenbrier Railroad Company.

The papers include 36 volumes of business and other records, such as the ledgers of the George W. Brinkman merchandising firm, the Mutual Building Company, minutesof the Grafton Rotary Club; journal and statistical report of the Grafton Baptist Church, 1897-1906; and a mas. history of Taylor County in various American wars, and extracts from the Civil War diary of Fabricius A. Cather. Also included are 2 boxes of financial records, miscellaneous newspaper clippings, a partial index to scrapbooks, and a family genealogy. There are also 49 volumes of clipping scrapbooks dealing with Grafton and Taylor County subjects covering the period 1868-1938.