"To Make the Crooked Ways Straight and the Rough Ways Smooth" by Billy Joe Peyton, 1998-2000 (includes facsimiles)

Kemp chaired the committee overseeing Billy Joe Peyton’s dissertation. Later, Kemp also nominated Peyton for the West Virginia Humanities Council. The box includes materials related to the nomination and Peyton’s dissertation, entitled “To Make the Crooked Ways Straight, and the Rough Ways Smooth: Laying Out and Building the Cumberland Road.” The box includes drafts of the dissertation chapters, correspondence, catalogues of dissertations, brochures, handwritten notes, and a floppy disk. The box also includes facsimiles of the following: brochures and ephemera used to process dissertations. Subjects include WVU’s process for completing a dissertation, job opportunities in history in West Virginia, transportation in the United States, engineering the Cumberland Road (also known as the National Road), actual construction of the road, and the history of federal involvement in road construction.