LIBRARIES

Raise your hand if you didn’t know Community Chest wasn’t just a card in Monopoly. I certainly didn’t.

The old English herbals (1922)

A book of portraits of the faculty of the Medical Department of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1922

Lydia Pinkham was an American entrepreneur and the creator of one of the most famous patent medicines, Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Her medicine, marketed for treatment of “female complaints,” developed a cult following in the late 19th and early 20th century. Women would often write to Mrs. Pinkham with questions about their health concerns, and Lydia (or, later, her children) would write back with answers. Eventually answers to these frequently asked questions were collected and published as Lydia E. Pinkham’s private text-book upon ailments peculiar to women. WVU has digitized a copy of this work and made it available through the Internet Archive.

This photo is described in our collection as “Mary F. Clifford, Student, Storer College, Harpers Ferry, W. Va., 1906.” In 1906, Storer College was the host of the second meeting of the Niagra Movement, a black Civil Rights organization that was a predecessor of the NAACP. One of the movement’s leaders was J.R. Clifford, the first African-American attorney to be admitted to the bar in West Virginia. Sources indicate that the credo at the second annual meeting was delivered by J.R. Clifford’s daughter, Mary. Whether this photograph is the Mary Clifford in question is unknown, but it seems likely, since the name, time, and location all match. Further information on the Niagra Movement can be found in the W.E.B. DuBois collection at the archives of UMass Amherst.

A portrait of Dr. Moore wearing a hat and carrying an umbrella. ‘Medical doctor from Mannington, West Virginia’, ca. 1902

Further background information about Dr. Moore, the first woman to enter and remain in the medical school of West Virginia University.

Unidentified Morgantown Man, ca. 1900-1910

In honor of West Virginia Day, the WVU Libraries have digitized the Francis H. Pierpont Civil War Telegram Series. These historic documents chronicle Pierpont’s struggles, in his role as Governor of the Restored Government of Virginia, to maintain Union rule in the northern and western portion of the (then) State of Virginia. These struggles culminated in the creation of the State of West Virginia on June 20, 1863.

In partnership with the Internet Archive, WVU is digitizing selected books from the Libraries’ collections. The complete list of books digitized to date can be found on WVU’s page at archive.org. There are student handbooks, bulletins from the Agricultural Experiment Station, and many more, with the focus currently tending toward items focusing on the history of West Virginia and surrounding areas.

West Virginia has been home to a number of glass manufacturing companies over the years. From Morgantown’s Seneca Glass Company to Wheeling’s Hazel-Atlas, much of the glass your parents or grandparents may have used came from the Mountain State.