Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.

Conditions Governing Access

No special access restriction applies.

Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Goshorn Family Papers, A&M 2426, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Scope and Contents

This collection comprises the personal and business correspondence, as well as financial and legal papers of the Goshorn family of Wheeling, West Virginia, including papers from members of several allied families. The original papers were acquired by Wheeling College from the Goshorn family. These materials are available as microfilm; for a detailed list of the microfilmed materials, please see the collection's control folder. Personal correspondence includes letters from William S. Goshorn during his Civil War imprisonment and Jean Daugherty's letters describing her travels. The business correspondence discusses loans, deeds, wills, land sales, and stock certificates. The financial and legal papers include bills, bank notes, tax forms and receipts, court summons, and insurance policies. Also included is a Goshorn family ancestry chart and family history, letters from a Virginia legislator in the House of Delegates (1833), Civil War military affidavits for General Benjamin F. Kelley, and an oath of allegiance certificate from the new state of West Virginia (1863).

Addendum of 2012/09/14 includes three ledgers of John Goshorn (b. 1791): two daybooks (1838-1874) and an auction daybook (1827-1853). John Goshorn, born in Pennsylvania in 1791, was the younger brother of the prominent Charleston businessman, George Goshorn. John settled near Wheeling where he became a prominent farmer, merchant, and land speculator. These daybooks document his activities as a landlord and investor, his more routine payments for labor and items for his farm, and his operation of an auction business in Wheeling. The last half of the auction daybook contains copies of Goshorn's business correspondence (1843-1853). The transactions, the large amounts of money in the exchanges of real estate, and the business correspondence suggest that Goshorn was an important entrepreneur in the northern panhandle in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s. By 1850, Goshorn had amassed an estate worth $79,000, which was considerable for that time.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Account books
• Civil War -- letters
• Daugherty, Jean.
• Goshorn family
• Goshorn family - Genealogy
• Goshorn, John.
• Goshorn, William S.
• Kelley, Benjamin F., 1807-1891
• Land.
• Politics and government.
• Taxation
• Travel accounts.
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons
• Virginia
• West Virginia - oath of allegiance.
• West Virginia. Legislature
• Wheeling (W. Va.)