Digital Collections and Resources

The digital collections and online resources of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source and educational materials related to the local history for each U.S. state and territory.

Architecture and Historic Buildings

Part of the digitized image collections, these architectural and engineering records can be useful in researching local history and genealogy.

Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South
Noted architectural photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) created a systematic record of early American buildings and gardens called the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South (CSAS). This collection, created primarily in the 1930s, provides more than 7,100 images showing an estimated 1,700 structures and sites in rural and urban areas of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, and to a lesser extent Florida, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Johnston’s interest in both vernacular and high style structures resulted in vivid portrayals of the exteriors and interiors of houses, mills, and churches as well as mansions, plantations, and outbuildings.
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
The collection includes photographs, measured drawings, and written historical documentation on thousands of structures from about 1933 to the present. Search the collection to find the communities and buildings where your ancestors lived, worked, or visited. View the Place Index to look up entries posted for your community.

Bibliographies and Guides

These research guides provide additional digital and print state-specific resources.

City and Telephone Directories

City and telephone directories allow you to look for individuals, families, or businesses to view such details as: addresses, occupations, and household residents. Observed broadly, they will also provide a community perspective. The following resources provide an inventory of the city and telephone directories available at the Library of Congress.

Images Online

U.S. Telephone Directory Collection
The Library of Congress's online collection of telephone directories represents the following states and localities: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the city of Chicago. The dates of the directories span most of the 20th century. The Library's United States telephone directory collection consists of 8,327 digitized reels of microfilm; of these, about 3,500 are presented in this collection.

For a convenient list of the digitized directories:

Click on the Collection Items tab.
Scroll down the sidebar until you see Location. On that list, click More Locations.
On this page, you can select the option to organize the location list alphabetically.
Now you can navigate all cities included in the digital collection. Once you select the city of interest, you can use the Sort By box in the top-right corner to arrange the directories for that city by date.

Lists of Available Directories in Print and Microform

Directories By Address: Inventories of Library Collections
There are directories that organize alphabetically and there are directories that organize by street address. The Library has both types, but this guide is primarily an inventory of directory collections where the directories are organized by address.
United States: City and Telephone Directories
City and telephone directories are used to identify people and businesses from a specific time and place. This guide provides an index to the extensive collection of United States city and telephone directories available at the Library of Congress.

Coal Mining

These research guides provide access to material in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

Battle of Blair Mountain: Topics in Chronicling America
In 1921, West Virginia coal miners revolted at Blair Mountain and forced President Harding to intervene. This guide provides access to material related to the “Battle of Blair Mountain” in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.
Mother Jones: Topics in Chronicling America
Mother Jones was a union organizer known for her activism and ability to organize labor against mine owners. This guide provides access to material related to "Mother Jones" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

Maps

The following online map collections include maps and views of West Virginia cities, battlefields, and geography. Explore each collection using the search box on the upper-right. Type in city or town names to view related items. Search all digitized map collections to find additional local and state geographical documentation of West Virginia communities from the colonial era to present day.

Cities and Towns
This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems.
Civil War Maps
Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. There are over 200 items related to West Virginia, in this collection.
Hotchkiss Map Collection
The Hotchkiss Map Collection contains cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. Hotchkiss made detailed battle maps primarily of the Shenandoah Valley, some of which were used by the Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson for their combat planning and strategy. The collection also includes maps made or used by Hotchkiss during his post-war years, including maps with information about railroads, minerals and mining, geology and history, most of which focus on Virginia and West Virginia, but also cover other states and even the world.
Panoramic Maps
The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective.
Railroad Maps, 1828-1900
Type the state name into the search box on the upper-right to reveal state-specific railroad maps that represent an important historical record, illustrating the growth of travel and settlement as well as the development of industry and agriculture in the United States. Included in the collection are progress report surveys for individual lines, official government surveys, promotional maps, maps showing land grants and rights-of-way, and route guides published by commercial firms.
Sanborn Maps
The Sanborn maps are arranged by state, then city and release data. The Sanborn Map Company, the best known of the U.S. fire-insurance map producers, has made maps since 1867. The fire insurance maps produced by Sanborn show building footprints, building material, height or number of stories, building use, lot lines, road widths and water facilities. The maps also show street names and property boundaries of the time. This collection of maps is historically significant as it is sometimes the best detailed map of a town or city dating from the mid 1800s.

Also see the Union List of Sanborn & Other Fire Insurance Maps External for the most comprehensive list of maps that are known to exist. The include maps at the Library of Congress as well as other repositories.

Military

(Also see Veterans History Project below.)

Harper's Ferry: Topics in Chronicling America
In 1859, abolitionist John Brown attempted to create a slave uprising. This raid helped spark the American Civil War. This guide provides access to material related to "Harper's Ferry" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

Newspapers

Historic newspapers also provide important content for historical and genealogical research.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Chronicling America contains millions of word-searchable newspaper pages from 1756-1963, covering the United States and Territories. The headlines, articles, and advertisements capture the life and times of the American people, shining new light on historic events as they unfolded. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries
Use the Directory of U.S. Newspapers to find information about American newspapers published from 1690-present.

To search the Directory, click the "Collection Item" tab and then choose "Advanced Search." Once you generate the search results, click on each entry to learn more. Go to the "Libraries That Have It" tab to discover which repositories house the archives.

Prints and Photographs

The Library of Congress has digitized a wealth of unique and historical visual materials important when researching local and family history.

Search the digitized print and photographic collections to view images related to West Virginia history, locations, events, and people.
To learn more about locating local and family history photographs, view the Library of Congress Using Local and Family History Photographs to Tell the Stories of Your Ancestors Research Guide.

The Teacher's Page

The resources on this site are designed for teachers of elementary through high school teachers and students.

Primary Source Set: West Virginia
The extensive collections at the Library of Congress contain historic artifacts and cultural materials from across the U.S. This list is just a sample of the many West Virginia resources available for free on the Library's Web site.

Today in History

These web pages highlight important events connected to particular dates in history.

October 16, 1859
John Brown: Late on the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one armed followers stole into the town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, (now West Virginia) as most of its residents slept. The men–among them three free blacks, one freed slave, and one fugitive slave–hoped to spark a rebellion of freed slaves and to lead an “army of emancipation” to overturn the institution of slavery by force. To these ends the insurgents took some sixty prominent locals including Colonel Lewis Washington (great-grand nephew of George Washington) as hostages and seized the town’s United States arsenal and its rifle works.
June 20, 1863
Mountaineers Always Freemen: On June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the thirty-fifth state in the Union. The land that formed the new state formerly constituted part of Virginia. The two areas had diverged culturally from their first years of European settlement, as small farmers generally settled the western portion of the state, including the counties that later formed West Virginia, while the eastern portion was dominated by a powerful minority class of wealthy slaveholders. There were proposals for the trans-Allegheny west to separate from Virginia as early as 1769. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the residents of a number of contiguous western counties, where there were few slaves, decided to remain in the Union. Congress accepted these counties as the state of West Virginia on condition that its slaves be freed.

Veterans History Project

The Veterans History Project (VHP) collects and preserves the remembrances of American war veterans and civilian workers who supported them.

Veterans History Project: West Virginia

West Virginia: Local History & Genealogy Resource Guide

Local History & Genealogy: Ask a Librarian