West Virginia Biography

You can usually find biographical information in state, regional, and county histories. An excellent source of biographical information on past and present West Virginians is:

Comstock, Jim F. West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia and the supplemental series. , volumes 1-25

An index to biographical sketches in several hundred local histories and genealogies is:

Wardell, Patrick G. Timesaving Aid to Virginia-West Virginia Ancestors: A Genealogical Index of Surnames from Published Sources. Four Volumes. Athens, Georgia: Iberian Publishing Company, 1990.

Representative biographical sources at the Family History Library are:

Atkinson, George Wesley. Prominent Men of West Virginia. Wheeling, West Virginia: W. L. Callin, 1890.

Callahan, James Morton. History of West Virginia, Old and New. Three Volumes. Chicago, Illinois: American Historical Society, 1923.; Volume 1 on Volumes 2-3 on  Volumes two and three are biographical.

Men of West Virginia. Two Volumes. Chicago, Illinois: Biographical Publishing Company, 1903.

Miller, Thomas Condit, and Hu Maxwell. West Virginia and Its People. Three Volumes. New York, New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913. Volumes two and three include family and personal histories. *West Virginia, Order Sons of Italy in America, Lodge Records, 1921-1969 at Ancestry.com ($)

Web Sites
West Virginia Biographies Project: http://www.wileygenealogy.com/~usbios/wv.html

A History of The Middle New River Settlements and Contiguous Territory http://www.kinyon.com/westvirginia/midnewriver/contents.htm