The West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History announces publication of Volume 60 of West Virginia History, the state’s journal of history, biography, genealogy and bibliography.
This latest issue of the journal highlights pro-labor politician T. C. Townsend, the New Deal-era Federal Music Project in Huntington, a centennial history of the West Virginia State Archives, and selections of Civil War correspondence found in the adjutant general’s papers. The volume also pays a tribute to the state’s first historian laureate, the late Otis K. Rice.
Townsend was a significant figure in West Virginia’s labor movement. His contributions centered around two events: the coal miners’ treason trials of the early 1920s and the 1932 gubernatorial election, when he ran for governor on the Republican ticket with the backing of the major labor leaders in the state. His successful defense of the coal miners and union leadership in the courtroom kept industrialists from dealing a death blow to the UMWA in West Virginia.
The Federal Music Project (FMP) of the Works Progress Administration was an early component of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Second New Deal which provided financial relief to unemployed musicians and sought to ease the nation’s psychological malaise through free public concerts during the Great Depression. The FMP came to West Virginia in 1936 to establish musical organizations throughout the state.
The West Virginia State Archives celebrated a milestone in 2005–its
100-year anniversary. Established in 1905, Archives and History serves as the official archives for the State of West Virginia and is one of the state’s most important repositories of materials on the history of West Virginia and its residents.
One of the archives’s most significant collections is the West Virginia Adjutant General’s Office Papers. Most of the collection deals with the Civil War period and contains papers of Francis H. Pierpont and Henry J. Samuels, wartime governor and adjutant general respectively of the Restored Government of Virginia. This issue of West Virginia History presents a selection of correspondence from the Union militia records for Hardy County. The correspondence dates from 1861-68, with the largest portion dating to the 1864-65 period.
West Virginia History is a publication of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Since 1939, the journal has featured some of the best scholarship on the economic, political, military, social, and cultural history of West Virginia. West Virginia History also reviews recent state and regional history books. Volume 60 is available for the subscription fee of $15 in the U.S. or $18 outside the U.S. To purchase a copy of Volume 60, send a check or money order to West Virginia History, Archives and History Section, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, The Cultural Center, 1900 Kanawha Boulevard East, Charleston, WV 25305-0300.
For more information, call (304) 558-0230.
The West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, brings together the state’s past, present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. The Cultural Center is West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. Visit the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division. The Department of Arts, Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
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Ginny Painter
Director of Public Information
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History
The Cultural Center
1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East
Charleston, WV 25305-0300
Phone (304) 558-0220
Fax (304) 558-2779
[email protected]