About this collection:

➤The C.C. Smith's Sons Engineering Company operated in the Ohio Valley for over one hundred years, surveying residential properties, city parks, cemeteries, public works, rural farms, downtown businesses, and many other types of properties and landmarks. The records include plat drawings, surveys, correspondence, land deeds and other information relating to properties and municipalities.

The firm can trace its history in the region to the family patriarch, Walter C. Smith, who arrived in Wheeling from Washington, DC in 1852 to work on the B & O Railroad as an engineer. Along with F.L. Hoge, Smith is credited with designing and building the Main Street Stone Bridge in downtown Wheeling. His son, Clement Carroll Smith, was born in 1858 in Lynchburg, VA, and later joined his father who had returned to Wheeling. C.C. Smith learned the engineering trade from his father and they worked together until his father's death in 1897. Many early plat drawings and maps in the collection depict the insignia, W.C. Smith & Son. Several of his sons followed in his footsteps to form C.C. Smith's & Sons Engineering Company. When C.C. Smith passed away in 1924, the second oldest son, Sydney C. Smith became the main proprietor of the firm and altered the name to C.C. Smith's Sons Engineering Company.

Throughout the company’s tenure, which lasted well into the 1970s, the engineers consulted on projects in a variety of locales in the Ohio Valley, including McMechen, Wellsburg, Moundsville, and Benwood in West Virginia and Tiltonsville, Steubenville and Yorkville in Ohio. Drawings and surveys depict properties as diverse as the Capitol Theatre, the Moses Shepherd Estate at Monument Place, Wheeling Steel Corporation, Hitchman Coal & Coke Company, Woodsdale, Boggs Run Cemetery, Elm Grove Milling Company, Ohio Valley General Hospital, and the B & O Railroad.

➤ Read more about the collection and see selected images from the collection in this OCPL blog post.

➤ Interested in this material? Please use our "Ask an Archivist Form" or call 304-232-0244.

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