Background Image for Header:
Blog
Following Veterans Day this November, the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC) will have the pleasure of working with West Virginia high school students for the third consecutive year of the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project. The goal of the project, which is funded by the West Virginia Humanities Council, is for students to research veterans who are buried in one of the two national cemeteries located in West Virginia and publish works that tell their stories.
In the first year of the project, students created biographies of many of these veterans, including men and women from different branches of the military, which can be found on the project website. In the second year of the project, the students researched veterans Clifford Condon and Nelson Bickley and contributed to online exhibitions about their lives and service: “The Record Keepers,” about Clifford Condon, and “The Mentor,” about Nelson Bickley.
The role of the WVRHC in the project is to provide hands-on experience with primary sources that reinforce what students are learning from their project advisors. The WVRHC has also scanned related documents from the collections to create a ‘surrogate’ collection that the students could use in their classrooms. This year, we will be hosting students from University High School, in Morgantown, and Grafton High School. Their field trips will bring them into a university library and archive, perhaps for the first time, and introduce them to the foundations of historical research. In small groups, the students will rotate through stations where they will analyze different types of archival material with guidance from the WVRHC and project staff.
This collaboration can spark the interest of the next generation of historical researchers and educate the public about the service members laid to rest in our national cemeteries. This Veterans Day, we encourage you to take a look at the exhibits and biographies online, and we look forward to sharing with you what this year’s students publish!
Written by Olivia Howard, reference assistant
Another Fall semester means the start of a new football season! As we headed into the first game of the season on August 31st, I became curious about the history of football at West Virginia University.
I began my search by looking through the many photos of Mountaineer football through the years that can be viewed on West Virginia History OnView and then filled in the gaps with more detailed information from books within the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s collection, such as Bring on the Mountaineers by Kevin Keys and Shelly Poe.
WVU football traces its origins all the way back to 1891, but like most great things in history, it didn’t have an easy start.
It all began with a small group determined to organize a team. At the time, only 224 students were enrolled at the university, but even with limited options, they were able to recruit others and create a team of fourteen players. Despite knowing very little about the game and facing a negative response from faculty and other students, the team enthusiastically took on the challenge. They arranged a game with Washington & Jefferson on Thanksgiving Day, raised money for equipment, and worked to transform pastureland into a suitable game site.
An estimated crowd of 250 gathered to watch the game. They arrived in carriages decorated in gold and blue and enjoyed treats like hot chocolate before the game in an early version of the ever-popular fan tradition of tailgating.
Though WVU suffered a loss of 72-0, this first game made its mark. It served as the beginning of the long-lasting tradition of Mountaineer spirit that we know today.
Over the next several years, WVU football experienced many changes. They increased the number of games in their schedule and took on new opponents, even beginning a rivalry with one. On October 24, 1895, they played their first game against Pitt (then Western University of Pennsylvania) and took home the victory with a score of 8-0.
In 1918, a record crowd of 8,000 attended a game against Washington & Jefferson and by 1922, during their only undefeated season, the Mountaineers saw another record crowd of 15,000. They had come a long way since that first crowd of only 250 spectators and it was time for a stadium upgrade.
Plans for a new stadium were set in motion in 1922 by athletic director Harry A. Stansbury. The site of the new stadium, located down the hill from Woodburn Hall, was chosen because of its proximity to the railroad stations. Steam shovels and horse-drawn wagons were used for the excavation process, which took more than four weeks to complete.
Mountaineer Field was completed in time for the 1924 season. The first game was a win against West Virginia Wesleyan with a score of 21-6 in front of a crowd of 16,000. At the time, this was the largest crowd to gather for a sporting event in West Virginia, but by 1979, Mountaineer Field would see a crowd as large as 38,681!
When the location of the original Mountaineer Field limited its ability to be expanded, Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium was constructed. The field was dedicated on September 6, 1980. Not only was this game the first for head coach Don Nehlen, but it was also the exciting game where John Denver made an appearance and led fans in the singing of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
The largest crowd the newest stadium has seen was in 1993 with 70,222 in attendance and it regularly sees crowds of around 60,000.
WVU Football has come a long way since that first game in 1891, but one thing has remained the same through it all: the deep sense of pride one feels to be a mountaineer.
Let’s have another great season and let’s go, Mountaineers!
Written by Devon Lewars
In today’s standards, it is frowned upon to tear signatures from their page, however, this used to be a common practice amongst collectors. Signatures were often torn from pages of correspondence, deeds, or even wills. The West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) currently owns multiple archives and manuscripts (A&M) collections that include items of this nature. A collection of signatures was donated to the WVRHC and a few of those pieces are currently on display in the rare book room.
Similarly, in the past, it was common for individuals to loot sites of archeological significance. An artifact is most valuable when it is found in relation to the age of the soil it rests in. If an object is taken from its historical context, it loses value.
In the 1970s, five cultural shields of the Acoma Pueblo (Uh-Ko-Muh Pweh-Blo) village of New Mexico vanished from the home of one family. Although under the protection of one caretaker, the shields were collectively owned by every member of the tribe. The shields, when not used in ceremony, were kept in a cold, dark room. They were part of the tribe’s identity, never to leave the Acoma or be destroyed.
In 2016, after nearly 50 years, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI brought photos of one shield to Acoma. The shield was pictured under fluorescent lights and to be sold at EVE, a Paris auction house. Elena Saavedra Buckley, an editor of the HighCountryNews perfectly describes the shield as “round and rawhide, it showed a face in its center, with black, low-scooped horns, like a water buffalos, and a red-lipped, jagged smile. The rich colors of the paint — emerald green, with red, blue and yellow radiating from the face’s edges — seemed to have survived the years unfaded, even as they flaked and mottled the surface. Two feathers with rusted tips, like an eagle’s, hung at each side, pierced through the leather and strung by their quills.”[i] It wasn’t until the evening of November 15, 2019, that the shield was seen by members of the tribe. Acoma leaders prayed alongside the shield past midnight that day, never leaving its side.
Between 2016 and 2019 the Acoma Pueblo fought desperately against the convoluted systems of Paris’s government and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Instances of looting and/or stealing artifacts from native reservations have been occurring for centuries. The repatriation of these artifacts is a slow and often grueling process for the tribes and those that see the loss of the items rarely get to see its return.
Although the donated signatures in our care have lost their context, they provide an opportunity for current generations to reflect on practices of the past. The WVRHC and other institutions that make research accessible do not condone the tearing or cutting of historical documents.
Courtesy of West Virginia & Regional History Center – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For further discussion of this collection, refer to Stewart Plein, Curator of Rare Books at the history center and frankly, a wonderful person to chat with. To learn more about current processing standards speak to Jane LaBarbara, Head of Archives and Manuscripts and a strong advocate for the protection and accessibility of archival collections.
[i] Buckley, Elena Saavedra. “Unraveling the Mystery of a Stolen Ceremonial Shield.” HighCountryNews, August 1, 2020. https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.8/indigenous-affairs-unraveling-the-mystery-of-a-stolen-ceremonial-shield.