Written by Pam Pritt
Photos by Sheree Wentz
It’s admittedly not as fast as a Google search, but the depth and breadth and height of Appalachia’s yesterdays available in the West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University are worth the time investment. And the possibilities of discovery are nearly as endless as the mountains.
Lori Hostuttler, the Center’s director, does have her favorites among the vast collection of books, papers, artifacts and items, but she can’t name one on any given day. It seems to be the one she’s holding at the time. Hostuttler can, without hesitation, explain what attracts researchers of every level to the sixth floor of the Wise Library in Morgantown.
“The joy of discovery is alive and well within the manuscripts in these collections,” Hostuttler said. “Reading through people’s correspondence and diaries, seeing how they connected with others, and engaging with inspiring stories as well as challenging ones; it’s all there in these papers. They’re primary sources that offer first-hand accounts of West Virginia’s history and culture.”
That means that they are original, and beyond the Shakespeare folios, Diderot’s encyclopedia, a vellum-bound 15th century choir book and other published volumes in the Center’s special collections, are records, diaries, scrapbooks and photo albums, personal accounts of how living through a time in history really was.
The Center’s collections began with the papers of West Virginia’s founding father, Waitman T. Willey, and grew to include the papers of leaders such as Francis H. Pierpont, and capitalist titans Henry Gassaway Davis and Johnson Newlon Camden. After that, Hostuttler said, the collection grew to include authors, artists, educators, families, businesses, scientists and more to encompass the state’s social was well as political and economic history.
Hostuttler’s mission is to fill in some of the gaps in West Virginia’s stories by collecting more papers from women, ethnic communities, people of color and the working class. She wants to document the history of the state so future researchers will have access to a richer and more complete historic record.
Most students make their first visit to the Center as part of an assignment; some of them return. And some of them arrive in the throes of their own unique search.
Matthew Powell graduated from Penn State in 2023. He’d found his passion for history there, to understand the people who experienced the history he was studying, specifically coal miners in Pennsylvania. As his undergrad research continued, his interest in extractive industries grew and WVU was a good place to continue his education as he worked on his master’s degree.
Powell discovered a note in the research of Philip Bagdon, an author noted for his books on Shay engines in the logging industry of the early 20th century. The note was about a strike at a Westvaco paper mill then located in Davis, West Virginia. The history of the strike didn’t make it into Bagdon’s final book and Powell began his own pursuit of a distant and not-widely-known event. Through a genealogy website where he found the manuscript Bagdon mentioned, Powell arrived at the Center, where he read newspaper accounts of the strike and its aftermath — instead of negotiating to give its workers union recognition and union wages, Westvaco left Davis and took the town’s water system with it.
His research focus is now the power dynamic between industry, workers and the environment, and he uses the resources at the Center for other projects, as well.
Powell also works at the depository, an off-site location where documents-in-waiting are sorted and digitized. He was also part of a separate project with the Friends of Blackwater in Tucker County and other graduate students who transcribed recordings done in the 1960s with miners who had worked underground as early as 1910.
While he’s always liked history, it was an undergrad project that involved writing short biographies for Black Civil War soldiers in the area of his Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home that made him feel, for the first time, that he wasn’t passively absorbing history, but helping to create historical knowledge for others.
“That was really thrilling,” Powell said.
Hostuttler shares that mission to have not only the founders’ and the industrialists’ stories, but the stories of those who lived with the decisions made by the men whose names now endure through streets and towns in the state. Like Powell, she hopes to ensure that hidden or untold stories — aspects of history that haven’t received attention — are documented within the Center’s collections.
Mostly she wants to make sure the history of the state and region is not only collected, it is available.
“The Center exists for the public. We are here for you.” Hostuttler said. “I want people from all walks of life to know they’re welcome to explore and research. If you visit, you will easily find something that interests, and hopefully, inspires you.”
