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Volume 58 is now available!Order Your Copy Today! |
Volume 58 of West Virginia History will interest Civil War historians and genealogical researchers alike. Thousands of West Virginians served in local state militia and home guard companies, protecting Union property and pursuing Confederate guerillas. Their role in the war, as well as postwar efforts to compensate these citizen-soldiers and document their service, are surveyed in a short introduction. Information compiled on members of companies in four counties Barbour, Boone, Braxton, and Brooke includes rank, unit, company, age, and other remarks on military service. The list contains names from the West Virginia State Archives online militia database. Researchers will also find a large number of additional names extracted from records of the West Virginia State Service Commission, created in 1901 to examine claims for compensation by members of these local units. Information found in these latter records is made available for the first time in this issue of West Virginia History.
The impact on West Virginia of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrialization is the subject of two other offerings in Volume 58. In Clarksburg and Moundsville, the growth of the glass industry attracted significant numbers of foreign-born workers, who altered the ethnic, cultural, and political character of the two communities. Other parts of the state experienced industrial development in different, but equally profound, ways. In Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, Ronald L. Lewis examined the impact railroad building and large-scale lumbering had on the state's backcountry regions. During the 1999 Appalachian Studies Association conference, a group of scholars critiqued Lewis's book. Their comments appear in this issue.
West Virginia History also looks at U.S. Senator Peter G. Van Winkle and his role in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. Van Winkle was one of a small group of Republican senators to vote with Democrats and Johnson Conservatives for the president's acquittal.
Since 1939, West Virginia History has featured some of the best scholarship on the economic, political, social, and cultural history of West Virginia and the Appalachian region. West Virginia History also reviews the latest books on state and regional history. West Virginia History, Volume 58, is available for the subscription fee of $12 per year in the U.S. or $15 per year outside the U.S. To receive your copy, return the order form with your check or money order. Checks or money orders should be made payable to "West Virginia Archives and History" and sent to Archives and History Section, The Cultural Center, 1900 Kanawha Boulevard East, Charleston, WV 25305-0300. Many back issues are also available.
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