Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.
Recently, while working the reference desk in the Manuscripts Room at the History Center, I browsed the papers of West Virginia Governor Ephraim Morgan (1921-1925) that had been retrieved for a researcher and discovered a couple items of historical interest. While the era of the early 1920s was a time in which Governor Ephraim’s attention was focused on the conflict between labor and management in the coal industry, a conflict known as the “mine wars,” it was also a time of prohibition in America, so it wasn’t surprising to discover letters in the collection related to its enforcement.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
April 29th, 2019
Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC.
In 2018, the WVU Humanities Center funded a project to explore the memories of the Scott’s Run community through oral history and photography. For the project, grant team members chose a set of historical images of the Scott’s Run area from the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s online photographs database, West Virginia History OnView. Over a series of interviews with community members who gather every Saturday at the Scott’s Run Museum, team members recorded residents’ memories and observations derived from viewing the selected photographs.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
April 15th, 2019
Blog post by Jessica Eichlin, Reference Supervisor, WVRHC.
Lucy
Shuttlesworth, a twenty year old West Virginia University student, recorded the
1918 flu epidemic in her diary, writing that “the Spanish influ[enza] is
spreading like mad, 150 of the boys have it, (the Delt house has been taken
over as a hospital) ten girls at the hall and five of our kids at the house”
have it. The particularly deadly strain
of Spanish influenza initially appeared in August 1918, but the first mention
of the fall epidemic did not appear in a local Morgantown newspaper until
September 11, 1918. By September
twenty-fifth, an unidentified Associated Press author states that “Spanish
influenza has spread over the country so rapidly that officials of the public
health service, the war and navy departments and the Red Cross conferred today
on measures to help local communities in combating the disease,” which had
spread to twenty-six states. By October
first, the number of cases nationwide reached 88,000, and the Spanish flu
finally arrived in Morgantown.
This blog post, written by Libby Coyner, Archivist and Assistant Librarian at Elon University’s Carol Grotnes Belk Library, was originally posted on November 30, 2018 at https://www.librarylibby.com/single-post/2018/11/30/Clover-Lick-Homecoming. You can see additional photos relevant to the post at that site.
*The
text here is from a talk I gave as part of Elon University’s Numen Lumen weekly
storytelling event.
It’s November 2018, Thanksgiving, and I’m making my way to West
Virginia, 14 miles past the Virginia border into to a place that no longer
supports a store, post office, or gas station. No cellphone service. My pal
from graduate school, now working as a librarian in Spartanburg, South
Carolina, has agreed to come along for the ride. We prepare for three days with
24 degree weather and no running water.
We are making our way to the little turn in the road where my
father was born, which has been all but abandoned for about thirty years now,
save a few old houses that get dusted off and used during hunting season.
Clover Lick, unincorporated, a sign reads, sits along the Greenbrier River, and
declined around the same time that the train stopped coming. Today, Clover Lick
is mostly in a state of neglect. My cousin maintains one of the
houses, always dubbed “Cold Comfort Farm” in our family, and this is where
we will stay.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
March 26th, 2019
Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC
Earlier this week, I attended the Seventh Annual History Roundtable, organized by the Morgantown Historic Landmarks Commission. About half of the meeting was devoted to reports about the recent Sabraton Neighborhood Survey. (FYI, the Historic Landmark Commission’s archive is at the Aull Center, if you want to see their work in full.) Despite living in the Sabraton area, I realized how little I knew about Sabraton. I learned that Sabraton was named after the first wife of Hon. George C. Sturgiss (1842-1925), Sabra. In one resource, her name was reported as Sabra Chadwick, but I think her maiden name was actually Sabra Jane Vance. In this post I briefly explore the name of Sabraton as well as what remains of Sabra’s life story.
A
native of Moundsville, W.Va., Arch A. Moore Jr. served in
the European theatre during World War II before enrolling at West Virginia
University as a political science major in 1946. He later earned his law degree
from WVU College of Law. In 1949, Moore married Shelley Riley, a fellow WVU
student, and they had three children together, Arch A. (Kim) Moore III, Shelley
Wellons, and Lucy St. Clair. Daughter Shelley served in the U.S. House of
Representatives (2001-2014) and the U.S Senate (2015-present).
In
1952, Moore began his political career in the West Virginia House of Delegates,
and in 1956 he was elected to the First District congressional seat. He went on
to serve six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1957-1969) winning as
a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state. He is the only person to
serve three terms as Governor of West Virginia (1969-1977, 1985-1989).
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
March 12th, 2019
Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.
The James Edwin Green photography collection of over
500 glass plate negatives at the History Center contains a variety of images
that document life in western Pennsylvania and Pleasants County, West
Virginia. This blog will sample images
that are seasonal, relating to the theme of springtime and warmer weather.
The first image shows the photographer, James Edwin
Green (1878-1952) with his family at Orchard View Farm:
James Edwin Green (1878-1952) and family at Orchard View Farm, Pleasants County, West Virginia, ca. 1905-1910. (From collection A&M 3460, James Edwin Green, Photographer, Glass Plate Negatives and Other Material.)
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
The
life of Frederick Douglass is infinitely compelling. Born enslaved, he barely knew his mother, who
died when he was young, and never knew his father. As a young man he escaped enslavement to
become a prominent activist and one of the finest orators of the 19th century.
With
the publication of David Blight’s new biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, it seemed an appropriate
time to share the West Virginia and Regional History Center’s extensive book
collection on Frederick Douglass.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. David W. Blight
An
award winning author, David W. Blight has written what is called the definitive
biography of Frederick Douglass.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
February 27th, 2019
Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC
Happy National Bird-Feeding Month, everyone!
February was initially proposed for this month-long observance because winter can be a hard time for birds to find food (more on the official resolution here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bird-Feeding_Month). The month is now celebrated by the National Bird-Feeding Society and bird enthusiasts across the country. The WVRHC has a few collections about birds and birding that will be of interest to other hobbyists and scholars.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
February 5th, 2019
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
While
I was browsing volumes in the Rare Book Room recently I came across an early
book of Virginia law, the Collection of
All Such Public Acts of the General Assembly and Ordinances of the Conventions of
Virginia, published in Richmond by Thomas Nicholson and William Prentiss,
1785.
Opening
the cover I could see that this particular book has an interesting provenance
history. The bookplate showed that this
book had once belonged to a Morgantown attorney, Alpheus P. Willson. The
inscription at the top of the pastedown reads: “Presented to the West Virginia
Historical Society, Nov 8, 1870, L.S. Hough.”
Another Morgantown attorney, Hough was known locally as a collector of rare
books as well as law books. The West
Virginia Historical Society may well be the Monongalia Historical Society that
operates in Morgantown today. The second bookplate, marked West Virginia
University Libraries, shows that this book was donated in 1933 by A.P.
Willson’s son, also named A.P. Wilson, though he chose to spell the family name
without the extra “l” his father used.
“REMIX the
WVRHC Archives,” an exhibition and online project by the Art in the
Libraries program, encourages people to use the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s
online resources to design unique artistic works, such as collages, memes, GIFs,
creative writing, redaction poetry and other agglomerations.
“While
archives are used for research, they can also inspire contemporary thought,
perspective and fun, which is the aim of this curated project,” said Sally
Deskins, exhibits coordinator for WVU Libraries.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
January 29th, 2019
Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC.
Fifteen years before she became a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ruth Bader Ginsburg visited West Virginia University to serve as a keynote speaker for the 1978 September Festival of Women. Evidence of her visit was recently found in sources at the West Virginia & Regional History Center. A student in a class session at the Center found images and news clippings about the festival in a photocopied scrapbook from A&M 5131, the WVU Women’s Studies Center collection. Newspaper articles found in the scrapbook were also located in the archives of the Daily Athenaeum newspaper found on microfilm at the WVRHC.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
January 16th, 2019
Blog post by Lemley Mullett, Program Assistant
Marc Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia since 2012 and an author from Marshall County, donated his life’s work collection to the WVRHC’s Distinguished West Virginians project. His collection reflects his dedication to both his craft and to Appalachia: not only do we have many of his rustic poem collections such as Believe What You Can, and Green-Silver and Silent, but many letters to and from publishers about his children’s books also are part of the collection–plus many manuscript drafts enclosed therein.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
January 7th, 2019
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.”
The first few
lines of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening, by poet Robert Frost, pictured below. One of the great masterworks now entered into
the public domain.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
December 17th, 2018
Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC.
Family papers are a relatively common sight in archives like the WVRHC. We collect them because they tell the stories of the people of our state and region, and because they can be great genealogical resources. The WVRHC has hundreds of collections of family papers, ranging from collections with just a few items to collections like the Siler Family Papers, which contain over 150 boxes of material. I’m currently processing the Orum, Eskey, and McCaffery Family Papers, detailing intersecting family lines from Sherrard, WV, and I wanted to share a few items from the collection that I found particularly special.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
December 10th, 2018
Blog post by Anna Schein, Associate Curator for Printed Ephemera, WVRHC.
McLoughlin Brothers, Inc. was a New York publishing firm which pioneered the use of color printing technologies in children’s books. Actively publishing between 1858 and 1920, the company was particularly well known for its early use of hand-stenciled colored illustrations and its later printing techniques using chromolithographs and photo engravings.
The company flourished under the leadership of John McLoughlin, Jr., who learned wood engraving and printing while working for Elton & Co., a publishing company owned by his father, John McLoughlin, Sr., and engraver/printer, Robert H. Elton. After McLoughlin, Sr. and Elton retired, John, Jr. had control of the business. He started to publish picture books under his own name and made his younger brother, Edmund McLoughlin, a partner in 1855.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
December 5th, 2018
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
Recently the West Virginia and Regional History Center received the gift of hundreds of cookbooks that are part of the Lucinda Ebersole Collection. Ms. Ebersole was bookstore co-owner, cookbook enthusiast, editor, and book collector. Her collection of cookbooks spans the late nineteenth century up to 2016. The much beloved cookbook pictured here arrived as part of the larger Ebersole collection.
Beneath the hand sewn plaid cover is the Rumford Complete Cook Book printed in 1918. Nearly every page is covered with handwritten recipes, cooking spills and splashes marking favorite recipes, clippings pasted on pages that completely cover the text and recipes attached by paperclips.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
November 19th, 2018
Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC.
Sometimes, when processing a new collection of archival materials, you get an interesting snapshot of someone’s life. Occasionally, if you want to know how that person’s story continues, you will have to do some research outside the collection. While processing a new collection, I came across clippings and a few photos of Esther Benford. According to one of the clippings, from a city newspaper, she was a WVU student on track to receive in 1937 the “first degree in civil engineering ever granted to a woman” (probably “at WVU” and not the first in the world, but the article didn’t specify).
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
November 9th, 2018
Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.
On the 11th of this month of November, at 11:00 AM Paris time, will occur the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. America suffered casualties of over 115,000 in this conflict, making it the third costliest war in American history, following World War II (over 400,000) and the Civil War (750,000). This sacrifice inspired President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 to ask Americans to recognize “those who had died in the country’s service.” In time, his moral injunction led to Congressional actions that ultimately established in 1957 Veterans Day as we know it today.
In times of relative peace, we of course recognize the service of those in the armed forces. In times of war we aspire to more. These aspirations often take the form of serving in hospitals, working in the arms industry, etc. In addition to these activities of material support, however, are ones of moral support to the troops. In the Second World War the United Service Organizations (USO), a nonprofit organization established by request of President Roosevelt in 1941, provided such support. Although many entertainers answered the call, the comedian Bob Hope has become most identified with the USO, so much so that the organization is currently known as the “Bob Hope USO.” He not only entertained during World War II, but also during the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Lesser known and even forgotten, however, is Elsie Janis, a vaudeville star who also entertained troops, albeit during World War I. Her rapport and connection to audiences of soldiers was so great that she was immortalized as “the sweetheart of the AEF” (American Expeditionary Force). The History Center has recently acquired memorabilia regarding Elsie Janis, including photographs, clippings, and other material documenting both her vaudeville years and World War I service. Read the rest of this entry »
