Preston County (W. Va.) Court Records and Miscellaneous Papers
Collection
Collection Number: A&M 0956
Records from the Preston County court, consisting almost entirely of land records such as maps, surveys, plats, deeds, and indentures. Land records are of private individuals, corporations, and general surveys of the County, as well as a few records on the Deakins Line on the border of West Virginia (then Virginia) and Maryland. There are also some personal papers and correspondence of Preston County residents, including Israel Baldwin and Julius K. Monroe, and the Fairfax family.
This collection consists of two parts: the original accession and the 1996 addendum. The original collection includes boxes 1-7 and 1 reel of microfilm. Boxes 1-5 are primarily land records from Preston County, and include land in Monongalia and Harrison Counties. The collection includes early papers relating to land, court cases, mills and furnaces, post offices, inns, mineral development, Morgantown and Kingwood Railroad Company, roads, the Virginia-Maryland boundary, and estate settlements. Boxes 6-7 are almost exclusively maps and surveys, and the materials are primarily from circa 1900-1915. The microfilm reel is a copy of a 1909 Map of Kingwood (item A-24); the original was returned after being filmed. Five of the seven photographs are available digitally. The 1996 addendum is box 8. This box is exclusively photocopies of the loaned materials, no original materials exist. These materials were the papers of Julius Kemble Monroe, a surveyor in Preston County.
Both the originals and the addendum may have at one point been the papers of Monroe, but the original accession was donated by the Preston County Court through the Leroy Bucklew Museum. The papers in this collection include court records, but seem to have been returned to the court from private citizens. As a result, the records in this collection include the kinds of court records kept by individuals, and include private papers, such as correspondence. Furthermore, this collection is representative of specific individuals who kept records, rather than the general population of Preston County. The collection of private records by the County may have occurred after a fire at the courthouse in 1869 destroyed most of the original records, or it may be a result of the collecting efforts of the Bucklew Museum, which appears to have been connected with the court.
Highlights of this collection include: Original survey maps from 1790, 1792, and 1794 (A-17); a survey of the border between West Virginia and Maryland (undated, A-16); records of local industries such as a coal report (undated, A-171), Muddy Creek Iron Furnace (A-318, circa 1860), and the Kingwood Railroad; Accounts of Mail for Preston County Post Offices (1845-1849, A-269); records of first Kingwood Sunday School, including Semi-Annual report of Kingwood Sunday School, 1828 (A-274) and a list of scholars and donors (A-280); lists of voters for Evansville (1844 or 1848, A-278); Literary Digest maps of New Europe and Africa following World War I (1920, A-156 and A-168); Soil, topography, and agricultural surveys for Preston, Monongalia, Marion, and Taylor Counties (1912-1914, A-148-149, A-169); and a poster advertising a “Judicial Sale of Very Valuable Land” (1868, A-167).
No special access restriction applies.
Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.
4.15 Linear Feet (Summary: 4 ft. 1.75 in. (5 document cases, 5 in. each); (2 large flat storage boxes, 3 in. each); (1 Oversized record carton, 17 in.); (1 reel of microfilm, 1.75 in.))
English
Records of the Preston County court, consisting almost entirely of land records such as maps, surveys, plats, deeds, and indentures. There are also some personal papers and correspondence of Preston County residents, including Israel Baldwin and Julius K. Monroe, and the Fairfax family. Some photographs from this collection have been digitized.
This collection consists of two pieces: the original accession and the 1996 addendum. Materials in the first piece were numbered as “items” A-1 to A-280. An “item” could either be a single document or item, or could be a collection of materials. Some “items,” such as A-22, include specifications of their contents, the contents identified as 1-67, while other items have their contents designated alphabetically, such as A-163, which includes A-L. There are three items in box 6 designated as X-123, X-124, and X-126. These items appear to have been added after the inventory. Item numbers were written on folders or directly on the items. Additionally, several of the boxes contain a few miscellaneous unnumbered items.
The addendum in box 8 uses a similar system, but are designated MON 1-MON 45, in reference to Julius Kemble Monroe, the originator of these materials. This label is not related to Monroe or Monongalia Counties.
The materials in boxes 1-5 and box 8 are in folders labeled with item numbers, and arranged numerically by item number. The materials in boxes 6 and 7 are generally not foldered, and are not arranged in numerical order.
Photographs 015954, 015955, and 015959 are part of A-18; 015735 is A-19; and 015958 is part of A-20. The other photographs were never scanned, and do not have ID numbers.
West Virginia and Regional History Center / West Virginia University / 1549 University Avenue / P.O. Box 6069 / Morgantown, WV 26506-6069 / Phone: 304-293-3536 / URL: https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/
Gift of Thomas Ward, President of the Preston County Court, 1957 April 16.
Addendum: Gift of the McCrum Estate through the Leroy Bucklew Museum, 1996 August.
Part of the West Virginia and Regional History Center Repository